At Fresenius Medical Care, we care about our people. And yet the word took on renewed meaning during the COVID-19 pandemic and the social justice movement ignited by George Floyd’s murder. Like many organizations, our employees were hurting and searching for community, support, and action amid these crises. After hearing directly from many of our employees about the environment they wanted to foster within our company, particularly around diversity and inclusion, Care Delivery CEO Bill Valle formed an executive council to bring a Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DE&I) lens to company operations.

The team created a plan to understand what DE&I could and should be at Fresenius Medical Care. A new DE&I team was born from that council, which quickly got to work building out DE&I goals and strategy. Successful tactics have included forming 16 Employee Resource Groups (ERGs), developing a DE&I Glossary of Inclusive Terms, broadening employee understanding through drop-in listening sessions on sensitive topics, enhancing colleagues’ DE&I competencies through training, offering unconscious bias workshops, and more.