Theodore Colbert III

Theodore Colbert III

Board Member at Archer Daniels Midland
Company Tenure: 2 years
Education:
Morehouse College (B.S.) Georgia Institute of Technology (B.S.)
Biography:

Theodore Colbert III became the President and CEO, Boeing Defense, Space & Security for Boeing in April 2022. Colbert has also been on the Board of Directors for Archer Daniels Midland since May 2021, a Board Member for the DC College Access Program since January 2020, the Chairman of the Board for New Leaders Org since 2016 and a Board Member for Thurgood Marshall College Fund since September 2014. Prior to his current roles, Colbert also worked for Boeing as their President and CEO, Boeing Global Services from 2019-2022, their CIO & SVP, Information Technology & Data Analytics from 2016-2019;, their CIO from 2013-2016, their VP, Information Technology Infrastructure from 2011-2013, their VP, IT Business Systems from 2010-2011 and their Director, Enterprise Network Services from 2009-2010. Before working for Boeing, Colbert worked for Citi as their SVP CATE Senior Architect form 2008-2009 and their SVP, Strategy & Planning from 2007-2008. Prior to his work with Citi, he also worked for Ford Motor Company as their Manager, Global Support Operations from 2006-2007, their Manager, Special Programs (office of the CIO) from 2005-2006, their Manager, Engineering Workstation Technology from 2001-2005, their Portfolio Manager, Ford Europe Financial Analysis Systems from January 2001 – December 2001, their Process Reengineering Specialist from 1998-2001 as well as their Ford College Graduate Program from 1996-1998. Prior to his roles with Ford, Colbert worked for AT&T as a Senior Technical Associate from 1995-1996.

Profile Details

Affiliated Companies

Key Statements

"The Racial Equity Task Force, as I mentioned before, is made up of a diverse group of employees across the entire company and they are largely helping to facilitate that process. It's an empowered team, but the HR team is helping them make sure that they are making good progress in breaking down barriers, opening doors where needed, helping, and, frankly, making sure that they come into the sessions with our executive council with a no fear attitude, that they know that they're in a psychologically safe environment and they can share the no kidding feedback about what's really going on in the company."

"I think that, first of all, diversity, equity and inclusion are absolute force multipliers for performance."

“We have a racial equity task force, for example, that's made up of a broad group of diverse, talented employees across the company. They represent all of our employee resource groups and all of our business units and functions and others. They've been providing input for the targets and approach that we've been taking… I don't mean that in an old school way of creating targets to hire people. I mean, we're trying to figure out from a business perspective what we need to do to move forward on diversity, equity, inclusion, and specifically make progress on racial equity. That's black representation.”

"So we went and spent some time with our CEO and many of the other leaders of our executive council and developed a three pronged plan to root out racism in the company, advance key measures of success around equity and inclusion, and really strengthen our commitment to our people and our community. We've published that since then."

"You need to have continuity with your people, and when you create an environment that is diverse and inclusive. It creates the conditions to have a safe place for people to bring their whole selves with them, to work every day and contribute."

"Because my skin is brown. If I didn't zoom the camera all the way into my skin, all of the sort of lighter colors, all the white in the room just sucked up all the metering on the camera. Well, it turns out that it took our pandemic and our sort of video collaboration culture I won't mention any brands, but our video collaboration culture for the camera folks to figure out that they should prioritize improving the performance of cameras for people with darker skin. Because if your background is soaked out in color, you're going to end up looking like two eye pupils blinking for hours and hours and hours. That, to me, is just a reflection of diversity. And I suspect, and I don't know for a fact that the folks developing cameras more broadly for video usage, especially in this type of environment, didn't do a lot of testing across the board or they didn't prioritize putting the metering on these cameras to support a broad spectrum of skin color. I know that's a really weird one to bring up, but that is a real challenge."

"We're investing at a minimum of $25 million in nonprofit organizations that advance equity by 2023."