Susan L. Taylor was the featured speaker at the General Mills Black Champion Network (BCN) Good to Great Speaker Series last month, held at the General Mills’ Golden Valley headquarters. Taylor, editor emeritus of Essence Magazine and founder of National CARES Mentoring Movement, encouraged the General Mills executives and staff to be change agents in their communities, both personally and professionally.
Established in 1996, BCN was General Mills’ first employee network and has spawned six other affinity networks. BCN champions the growth, development and success of African American professionals at General Mills.
Taylor challenged Black professionals to be fearless and joyful in pursuit of their professional goals and in their ability to deliver value to their companies by showing their companies how to connect to the social, economic, and civic engagement priorities of the Black community.
For the past three years, Taylor has served as the Feeding Dreams national spokesperson. Feeding Dreams is a General Mills platform that celebrates the hero in African American moms by acknowledging their efforts to uplift their families and communities.
“To do this we are launching Feeding Dreams Get Togethers, an initiative that provides forums to discuss two things that all moms care about — health and education. We are hoping that the discussions at these Get Togethers will help encourage some small change that can make a positive impact on those who attend and therefore on our communities,” said Iman Johnson, Multicultural Public and Community Relations Senior Planner, General Mills.
“I love that General Mills has invested resources in searching out and shining the light on everyday folks who deserve, but rarely have, so wonderful and joyful a celebration,” said Taylor.
In response to Hurricane Katrina, Taylor launched the National CARES Mentoring Movement dedicated to recruiting and connecting mentors with local youth-serving and mentoring organizations to help guide struggling Black children to academic and social success and to closing the huge gap between the relatively few Black mentors and millions of our vulnerable children.
To support Taylor’s efforts, General Mills presented Taylor a check for $10,000 for her organization.
“It’s rare that anybody, especially a large corporation, would ever focus on folks like that. So it speaks directly to the work that I’m doing in the communities,” added Taylor.
This article was provided by General Mills Black Champion Network.
Reach the MSR staff at msrnewsonline@spokesman-recorder.com.