Posted on 04/28/2009 7:54:21 PM PDT by reaganaut1
A few years ago, when New York City was pressuring advertising agencies to hire more black executives, City Councilman Larry B. Seabrook, chairman of the Council’s Civil Rights Committee, approached one of the largest companies with a plan to address the issue.
The company, the Omnicom Group, ultimately endorsed Mr. Seabrook’s plan to create a high-powered diversity committee and agreed to spend $2.25 million on initiatives. It also decided to retain a consultant from Atlanta whom Mr. Seabrook had proposed to help run the committee.
The City Council speaker, Christine C. Quinn, praised the plan. H. Carl McCall, a former state comptroller, agreed to serve on the committee. And Omnicom saw the plan as an effective response to concerns that just 2 percent of the higher-ranking jobs at New York advertising firms were held by blacks.
But Ms. Quinn, Mr. McCall and the company say they were never told that the candidate recommended by Mr. Seabrook in early 2007 was his sister.
Omnicom officials said they did not learn of the sibling relationship until they discovered it on their own, shortly before they settled on Mr. Seabrook’s sister, Priscilla A. Jenkins, for the job of coordinating the committee’s work.
Ms. Jenkins was a former college administrator who ran a consulting business out of her home. Company officials said they were not concerned that Mr. Seabrook never mentioned the relationship to them. And the officials would not say what the company pays Ms. Jenkins.
The company decided to retain Ms. Jenkins as the committee’s executive director because of her “extremely impressive résumé,” said Weldon H. Latham, the company’s outside legal counsel on diversity.
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
but surely she was the best qualified of all the one candidates interviewed for the position............
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