Andréa Carter believes that a person should be able to bring her “whole self” to her job. And she walks the talk. In her role as executive vice president and chief human resources officer at Global Payments, she says, “I am 100 percent authentically Andréa.”
When Carter, 50, started working at Global Payments in 2017, she found that it was a diverse company, but challenged herself with a goal: “How do we become intentional about ensuring that all team members feel engaged?” One way she answered this was by introducing a training and compliance app with videos, an e-book, and a podcast. Her biggest project, though, was developing an unconscious bias training for the whole company to go through. The training focuses on deeply ingrained and universal stereotypes that influence decision-making in the workplace. “If we do it right, we won’t need a specific initiative. It’ll just be what we do,” she explains. Today, all 24,000 team members at Global Payments have completed the training.
In her spare time, Carter volunteers with philanthropies in order to benefit the next generation of leaders. One of them is Millennial Bridge, a nonprofit that helps black millennials transition from college to career by helping them attain real-world corporate experience. It’s near and dear to her heart—she has two millennial children. “I do think millennials have an unfair reputation. A lot of times it’s about sitting down and listening to them,” she says. She also serves on the board of the 717 Experience, a nonprofit that works to engage black children between the ages of seven and 17 through leadership programs. Her mantra is “walk fierce,” and Carter hopes that because of her work, others will walk fierce, too.
