BY: Duane Watson

Richard Pinnock provides a detailed tour of the INROADS office in midtown Toronto like a proud parent. The Managing Director is at the podium in the presentation room, outlining the organization’s intensive interview process. INROADS is a not-for-profit organization that helps businesses develop talented visible minority and Aboriginal youth for professional careers.

“It’s about empowering, motivating, providing context, explaining the rules of the game as well as giving some coaching on how to be successful at playing the game. That’s what we do at INROADS,” Pinnock says. By recruiting outstanding visible minority and Aboriginal students in first or second year university into two or three internships with some of Canada’s top companies, they are able to train them for corporate and community leadership.

While INROADS preps students for Fortune 500 companies like Procter & Gamble, PricewaterhouseCoopers and TD Bank Financial Group, it also focuses on developing people. “One of the most valued components of our program is the character-building effect of our leadership development related to community service,” Pinnock says. “We work with disadvantaged or at-risk youth in Malvern, Jane and Finch as well as the Toronto Native Centre organizing fundraisers. Our students are making a difference and inspiring these young people. In many cases it’s the first time they have heard that they even have a choice to go to university and be successful.”

However, these Hallmark moments do little to cloud the harsh realties of the workforce. According to Statistics Canada (Census 2002), only 3.7 per cent of the senior management positions are held by visible minorities and only 5 per cent of those are female visible minorities. “Clearly, the top companies understand with a growing diverse labour workforce, it makes sense to have more diverse management, but you just can’t promote a bank teller to a senior VP role,” says Pinnock.

“The brand INROADS is starting to get out there and businesses recognize that we have not just minority students, but we have the top students who just happen to represent that emerging diversity that is defining Canada. They’re being hired because of their outstanding performance and potential, as opposed to filling a need for diversity.”

Originally published in Sway Magazine, Winter 2009

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