Diversity In Action

Fannie Mae seeks techies to take it to world-class status

Nearly 40 percent of the company's 6,500 employees are in technical positions. Minorities and women make up 72 percent of the total workforce

Emmanuel Bailey: "exponential" workforce growth in the past two years.

Fannie Mae has experienced "exponential" workforce growth in the past two years, says Emmanuel Bailey, VP and chief diversity officer. In the process, the organization is expanding its leading-edge technologies that capture, track and report on a huge mortgage portfolio and provide an array of financial services to lenders, brokers and other business-to-business customers.

As a result, Fannie Mae needs a lot of IT pros to help it evolve into an even more technology-intensive company, Bailey notes. Last year Fannie Mae hired close to 1,500 people, many of them involved in technology, and the hiring push will continue.

The major thrust is to get Fannie Mae's financial and technical systems to "world class" status, Bailey says. Of the company's 6,500 employees, nearly 40 percent are in technical positions.

Fannie Mae's mission is to provide financial products that help low- to moderate-income families achieve home ownership: "to serve the housing finance needs of America," as Bailey puts it. Since 1968, when it became a shareholder-owned private corporation, the organization has helped more than 70 million families.

In the next ten to fifteen years, Bailey notes, the company's efforts will focus on the increasing diversity of the U.S. population. A diverse workforce will be an important part of that focus.

Fannie Mae is already very diverse, with minorities and women making up 72 percent of its total workforce. Senior officers, VP and above, are 39 percent women and 22 percent minorities. The new CIO is Asian, and the previous CIO was a woman.

The company has Washington, DC and northern Virginia data centers. Technical people also work in regional offices in Pasadena, CA; Atlanta, GA; Dallas, TX; Chicago, IL and Philadelphia, PA, and there are some fifty community business centers in various cities with a few employees in each.

The entire company is accountable for including diversity in every business process, Bailey declares. There is detailed reporting on trends in the workforce, succession planning and general compliance. Bailey's diversity team reports to a board of senior company leaders on a quarterly basis, and he meets with the group monthly to give updates.

A cultural awareness program on Fannie Mae's intranet is designed to reach the general workforce. It outlines expectations and aspirations and describes how people are expected to interact and be included.

Fannie Mae also funds fifteen active employee networking groups. They include African ancestry; Asian Pacific; employee disability awareness; Hispanic; lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT); Muslim, and women's groups.

One member of Bailey's team of seven spends full time working with the groups, and Bailey meets with them regularly.

There are also opportunities for the groups to meet with the CEO. At one of the meetings the LGBT group raised the question of full domestic partner benefits. As a result, those benefits have been offered for the past ten years. After another point was raised, sexual identity was included in the company's nondiscrimination policy.

Bailey notes that Fannie Mae conducts periodic employee surveys. Employee feedback has led to perks like an onsite emergency childcare center in Washington, DC. Various daycare and dependent-care arrangements are provided at many of the company's locations.

Fannie Mae sends talented executive-track candidates to multicultural leadership development training at a program run by the University of California-Los Angeles. The company insists on diverse representation of job candidates when positions open, even by retirement, Bailey notes.

Volunteerism is important at Fannie Mae. Most full-time employees are allowed ten hours off a month to participate in community activities, and last year an additional week was offered for folks who wanted to help with rebuilding efforts in the Gulf Coast after Hurricane Katrina.

Other helpful programs include education reimbursement, flexible work options and even a mass transit subsidy program.

Mentoring is a longstanding practice at Fannie Mae. The program is currently being revised to align more closely with the company's succession planning initiatives, Bailey says. Employee networking groups get involved with mentoring as well. The buildup of the IT systems group requires both recent grads and people with a depth of experience in systems development, systems integration, platform building and the like. IT pros work with an array of technologies including off-the-shelf programs and Fannie Mae's own proprietary systems.

In the short term Fannie Mae has focused on hiring people with degrees like MIS and CS and relevant experience in the mortgage or financial services markets. For the long haul a range of tech-training programs has been designed. People with backgrounds in insurance or government are welcome to apply, Bailey says.

Fannie Mae's recruiting strategy is both national and local. An employee referral program has been very successful, bringing in about 40 percent of new hires. The company also recruits through the Black and Hispanic MBA organizations and similar professional groups.

Looking forward, Bailey anticipates that opportunities will abound for diverse people at Fannie Mae. "Right now we are at the building stages of a new and better technology infrastructure.

"I see that continuing on for many years into the future," he says.

D/C