Diversity and Inclusion

Since the establishment of its formal Diversity Committee in 1990, the firm has made significant strides to promoting and supporting an inclusive workplace. In 2001, Goldman Sachs established the Office of Global Leadership and Diversity to translate the firm’s diversity commitments into specific actions that promote diversity and inclusion. We continue to accomplish these diversity and inclusion goals through tactical diversity planning and rigorous recruiting, retention and promotion initiatives that ensure we are managing our people and our clients with incredible attention and sensitivity to diversity.

Diversity Recruiting
We recruit individuals from diverse cultures and backgrounds. As a result of our efforts, Goldman Sachs realizes a wealth of talent and creativity where exceptional individuals work together to provide a world-class service to a broad spectrum of corporate, government, institutional and private clients. In our search for outstanding individuals, we continue to partner with numerous organizations that promote diversity. To learn more information, visit the Career section of our site.

Specialized Career Development Programs 
Goldman Sachs offers a broad spectrum of programs and initiatives to strengthen the retention and promote the development of diverse talent both within the firm and across the financial services industry. These programs often consist of targeted, high impact events designed to provide visible role models, facilitate commercial development, encourage networking and comprehensively acknowledge the issues that can affect individuals in targeted populations.

Examples of our global efforts include:

• New Directions: The Next Step in Your Career is our signature career event designed to facilitate networking and professional development opportunities for women who have left the workplace and are looking to return.
• Competitive Internships and Career Forums for Disabled Candidates serve as opportunities to demonstrate our commitment to employing individuals with disabilities and to explore career opportunities to top talent interested in the investment banking industry
• Brokering Change: A Wall Street Multicultural Women’s Exchange aims to enhance the professional experience of multicultural women in the investment banking industry by focusing on key issues related to their commercial and professional development, while providing a platform to facilitate relationship-building and networking across the industry.
• Out in the City is the financial services industry’s premier interbank networking opportunity for financial services professionals interested in gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender issues in the workplace.
• Women’s Career Strategies Initiative is a program designed to increase the retention and engagement of high-potential female associates and help with their successful transition to the next level.
• New Analyst/Associate Welcome Event is an onboarding program for Black and Hispanic new hires, sponsored by senior leaders in their respective affinity networks, that presents in an accelerated fashion, the knowledge and experience that successful professionals have gleaned over the course of their careers.
• Top 50 in the City provides an opportunity for top female professionals in the financial services industry to network and engage in discussion on timely business topics.
• Affinity Network Leadership Conferences for diverse professionals enhance network building, feature important content on leadership development and career advancement and offer access to senior leaders across the firm.
• Religion and the Workplace Panel and Forums feature prominent religious leaders, executives and and government officials who discuss the importance of recognizing and respecting the various beliefs and practices of each individual in our community.  

For a more comprehensive listing of our programs and initiatives, please view our online diversity brochure.

Diversity Training and Awareness 
Being a global firm means that our clients and professionals come from diverse backgrounds and cultures. To prepare our professionals and managers to work more effectively in an increasingly diverse, multicultural business environment, our firm offers a broad spectrum of diversity training opportunities. These include: 

• The Diversity and Inclusion Curriculum provides a suite of training tools that focus on diversity, cross-cultural issues and facilitating effective work relationships.
• History and Heritage Month programs and events play an important role in fostering an inclusive business climate, by recognizing the many achievements and contributions of the diverse professionals within the firm’s community.
• Diversity Awareness Week focuses on programming that features guest speakers and the firm’s most senior leaders who reinforce the importance of our diversity efforts.
• Diversity Dialogues and Master Classes are small group training sessions led by the firm’s senior leaders to encourage frank and open discussion on the subject of diversity.

Key Client Programs
At Goldman Sachs, we not only value diversity from an internal standpoint, but we also strive to emphasize its importance to our clients. On several occasions, we have had the opportunity to reach our clients with respect to diversity and demonstrate to the external community how critical diversity is to our core values and business strategy.

• ascend, A Goldman Sachs Leadership Exchange is a global series that brings together influential women business leaders with our own senior professionals to discuss politics and government, economics and business, thereby advancing existing and future business relationships.
• Girl’s Day provides a unique opportunity for daughters of our clients and internal senior leaders to learn about the financial industry and think about future career opportunities.

These client programs are part of our broader Commercial Outreach efforts.