Greenleaf Trust recognized for diversity initiatives and for being a "cool place to work"

August 2019, Kalamazoo, MI — In the span of one week, Greenleaf Trust has been named a winner of the 2019 Salute to Diversity Award by Corp! Magazine, and a “Cool Place to Work” by Crain’s Detroit Business.

The two distinguished awards reflect Greenleaf Trust’s ongoing success in integrating “best practices” throughout its wealth management business, now with $14B in assets under advisement.

The DIVERSITY award recognizes Greenleaf Trust’s success in: Defining and monitoring diversity; demonstrating how diversity adds value; committing to diversity among its workforce and suppliers; fostering an inclusive workplace; making accommodations for minority and disabled employees; fostering career development of women, minority and disabled employees; supporting community outreach programs that encourage diversity and advancement of women; creating initiatives to meet the challenges and opportunities created by diversity.

Diversity in the field of finance, securities research and wealth management has long been a challenge. Greenleaf Trust is committed to diversity in its company, as well as creating opportunities for increasing diversity across its profession. The organization participates in specific minority focused recruiting events, as well as provides a minority scholarship and internship program. When viewing all aspects of diversity, Greenleaf Trust is proud to have a 57% female and 43% male employee ratio, and employs four generations as well as people with many different ethnic, religious, gender, handicap, employment and family backgrounds.

“Greenleaf Trust sets high expectations for itself to be a place that embraces diversity, provides opportunity for all, and strives for continuous improvement,” said Karen Baldwin, VP and Director of Human Resources at Greenleaf Trust. “To that, diversity has been a focus for our company from the very beginning. As we continue to focus on diversity, our goal is to continue to work to change the landscape of the financial industry by educating and increasing opportunities for inclusion of all.”

The COOL PLACE TO WORK award falls within Crain’s Detroit “Best Places” competition. Greenleaf Trust was recognized as the #1 “Cool” firm within the medium company (50 – 249 employees) category, and #6 in the all-inclusive national category. In competing for the award, Greenleaf Trust was evaluated on its workplace policies, practices, and demographics, followed by a comprehensive survey of its employees. At Greenleaf Trust, culture and being a “cool place to work” is a behavior consistently practiced publicly and privately by our team members.

“We formed a communication and culture workgroup sixteen years ago to focus on nurturing and growing our workplace culture,” explained Annie Henn, Marketing and Business Development Specialist. “Workgroup members are selected from all divisions to ensure fair representation. The mission of this team is quite simple, and that’s to cultivate a caring workplace established by our founder.”

With offices in Kalamazoo, Grand Rapids, Birmingham, Traverse City and Bay Harbor, Greenleaf Trust is an independent Michigan-chartered trust-only bank, exclusively focused on wealth management, trust and estate administration, and administration of company-sponsored retirement plans. Through our unique, client-centric team approach, we provide highly personal and customized client service, with no conflicts of interest, to ensure our clients’ financial security from generation to generation.

CONTACT:
Marketing
Greenleaf Trust
269.553.7268
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