Walmart's Jessie Spellman: Building for a more inclusive workplace
"Always center the 'H' in HR," according to Jessie Spellman. Walmart's Lead of Global DEI Talent dives into the biggest challenges workers face, initiatives at Walmart, & emerging hiring trends.
Interview with Jessie Spellman, Director of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion at Walmart
February 2, 2023
Quick note: I am so pleased to chat with Jessie for the inaugural interview in my “New Age of Work” interview series, which illuminates top of mind questions, challenges and opportunities shaping the future of work according to HR leaders across the world. I first connected with Jessie last year to discuss ways we can best support diverse candidates to succeed in the workplace, and I’m so excited for her to share additional thoughts with this newsletter.
Biography: Jessie Spellman is an empathetic and transformational business leader and community organizer. Jessie currently leads Walmart’s Global DEI Talent team, creating a more diverse, equitable, and inclusive candidate and associate experience. Jessie has dedicated her career to advocating for marginalized and disenfranchised groups of people. Starting as a middle school math teacher in Philadelphia with Teach For America and more recently as a management consultant and DEI implementation expert at Bain & Company, Jessie is committed to the lifelong journey of being a pro-human, anti-racist DEI leader. In her spare time Jessie loves to read, listen to podcasts, crochet, practice yoga, play dress up, and host dinner parties for her friends. Jessie has a BA in Urban Studies and an MS in Mathematics Education from the University of Pennsylvania. She also has an MBA from the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania.
On the Clock 🕘🚀
Great to have you here, Jessie. You've had a long career in advancing DEI, spanning from your time at Bain to Wharton to Walmart. How did you first get involved in this space and how has your personal background impacted your professional journey?
I am a fourth generation New Yorker with many queer family members and am used to being around different people in my day to day, but like most white people in America I grew up extremely ignorant and naïve about race. After arriving in Philadelphia for college I quickly realized just how ignorant and naïve I was. For example Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. did not “fix” all of America’s problems during the civil rights movement in the 1960s like my public school taught me growing up. I majored in Urban Studies to examine the segregation and inequity deliberately architected throughout American schools, hospitals, banks, and communities.
After graduating from college I decided to stay in Philadelphia to teach middle school math via Teach For America. I loved working with young people but I quickly realized two things: first, I was teaching as a “cultural tourist.” I wasn’t from the neighborhood I taught in and I didn’t live in the neighborhood I taught in. All of my students were Black and most of the teachers were white women like me. Secondly, if I wanted to enact change at scale, I needed to learn skills that I couldn’t cultivate as a classroom teacher.
Despite years of community organizing and work in public education, I decided that corporate America offered me the greatest opportunity to make the greatest impact on American society and I took a role as a consultant at Bain & Company.
I decided to go into management consulting because it would give me the broadest exposure to the most industries while building strong business acumen. I looked at my time in management consulting as business boot camp. While at Bain I established and ran several internal DEI initiatives and programs - we just didn’t call them that at the time. After several years at Bain, I decided to get my MBA because I believed that I needed more corporate experience (and frankly, credibility). Even though the moral imperative is what drives me to do this work personally, I understand that we also need to demonstrate a business case to get things done. After I finished my MBA, I went back to Bain for a few more years, and was able to do some more explicit diversity and inclusion work there before transitioning to Walmart.
How would you describe your role at Walmart and what is your favorite part of the job?
I am responsible for the candidate experience at Walmart. I serve as the DEI Partner in Walmart’s Talent function working to broaden the talent pool, enable equitable and inclusive talent practices, and drive accountability to talent outcomes across the business. My favorite part of the job is dismantling and redesigning legacy systems and processes to remove barriers and mitigate biases.
Walmart was recently listed as one of the nation's top companies for diversity. What are some of the initiatives that Walmart has led, and how should other managers best build for a culture of inclusivity?
In many organizations DEI is considered only as an HR function, but transformative DEI is embedded throughout the business. Walmart has a robust supplier inclusion program and four Shared Value Networks (SVNs) that focus on using our business capabilities and scale to help address root causes of systemic racism. SVNs have launched multiple business initiatives and pilots to achieve equitable outcomes across health, finance, education and criminal justice.
Walmart and the Walmart Foundation committed $100 million over five years through the Walmart.Org Center for Racial Equity to complement the societal impact of Walmart business across those four areas of finance, health, education and criminal justice.
Internally, our CEO, Doug McMillon, has established the President’s Inclusion Council, which is made up of senior executives across the company working on various DEI initiatives that we present to Doug and his leadership team. For example, I’m involved in a working group focused on making Walmart a more accessible and inclusive place for people with disabilities.
While we're talking about DEI, I think that our commitment to the environment also deserves a spotlight here because of the intersectionality of environmental justice. Our Gigaton Initiative, which is to remove one gigaton of carbon from the atmosphere, is something unbelievable that we've done as a company.
In your opinion, what are some of the biggest challenges for diverse workers to advance in the workplace today?
The biggest challenge for all workers is the dearth of living wage jobs in America. More than half of jobs in the United States do not pay enough for a person to live on, let alone support a family, and most of the people in these jobs are of prime working age. Even with important and meaningful efforts focused on economic and career mobility across industries, employers are not focused enough on economic and career stability. If you are struggling to pay rent, grocery bills, or find childcare you do not have time to invest in any sort of “upskilling” program or plan your next career move. Moreover, if more than half of a company’s jobs are low-wage, economic mobility is only available to a fraction of a company’s workers. Many folks may earn promotions or pay raises and still struggle to support themselves and their families.
More broadly, what emerging trends do you see shaping the future of work?
One strategy that addresses parts of the challenge I outlined above is a move towards skills-first hiring. That is, employers assess the skills and abilities of talent as opposed to only experiences and education. There are several paths to learning the requisite skills for any given job, but the majority of living wage jobs in America require a college degree even though only 40% of Americans (and 28% of Black Americans and 21% of Latine Americans) have this particular credential. By removing a college degree requirement and assessing only candidate skills relevant to the job, we begin to create a more level playing field and value different life experiences equally.
More broadly, the only thing constant is change. American workers’ relationships with and attitudes towards work have changed profoundly over the past several years. The pandemic showed us that many of our jobs can be done remotely, and many of the jobs that we deem “essential” are sorely under paid. Technology will continue to reshape how we do our jobs and which jobs there are for us to do. Employers and employees alike must learn how to withstand and grow from change.
What advice do you have for someone who is looking to start a business in the HR tech space?
Always center the “H” in HR. People are the greatest assets and the most worthy investments a company can make. The most enduring and useful technology solutions will center the human experience and human outcomes. In a crowded field like HR tech, what value does the tech provide to the humans who use it and the humans it serves?
Just For Fun
What are you reading or listening to right now?
“The Persuaders” by Anand Giridharadas and “The Dawn of Everything” by David Graeber and David Wengrow. I also have to plug Abbott Elementary on ABC/Hulu.
What would be your superhero skill?
To make rich people demonstrate empathy for others.
Have thoughts or questions you’d like to share? If you or anyone you know wants to be featured in “The New Age of Work”, reach out to helenjlu@stanford.edu.