BrokerDealer.com blog update takes a different tact in this post and sends a salute to 6-pack leader Citigroup, along with interest-aligned boutique firms Mischler Financial Group and Williams Capital for a focus on something other than its trading PnL. The topic? Diversity & Inclusion. Sounds corny, sounds like a social program that merely meets the ‘check the box’ approach by those who know they have to seem good to get paid. But then again, because this platform connects with broker-dealers across the US, as well as throughout the rest of the free world in which capitalism reigns, the team at BrokerDealer.com knows that the initiative highlighted here is nothing short of genuine.

Mischler Financial Group, the financial industry’s oldest minority firm owned and operated by Service-Disabled Veterans [and the securities industry’s only federally-certified SDVBE] along with Williams Capital, the industry’s leading African-American owned brokerdealer have taken great pride in playing a supporting role in the below Citigroup-produced video profiling the firm’s unqualified dedication to diversity and inclusion that Citi, one of the world’s largest banks and a Top 25 Fortune corporations maintains across their entire ecosystem.

A founder of Veterans On Wall Street (VOWS) along with Deutsche Bank and Goldman Sachs, as well as being “a lead book-runner” in multiple year-round initiatives to advance the support of many great causes, Citi is a true thought leader on the topic of D&I within the context of not only the financial services sector, but also within the framework of global corporation best practices.

The video below, which formally aired April 10 (also available on the Citi blog) is uniquely impactful thanks to the influential roles played by Citi leaders Kate Oddo, Director of Debt Capital Markets, Patrice Altongy Managing Director Fixed Income Capital Markets, Citigroup Global Markets Inc. and Karen Papazian, Director, Dealer Lending Operations, Toyota Financial Services. The presentation speaks volumes as to Citi’s D&I-driven relationship with Toyota Motors Inc. (NYSE:TM) wholly-owned subsidiary, Toyota Motor Credit Corporation (TMCC), one of the global capital markets’ most focused Issuers of securities, and indisputably, one of the corporate world’s most respected D&I practitioners.

The clip below, entitled “Wall Street Leaders Can Dare to be Different” profiles just one of many approaches on the part of Citi to further the importance of D&I initiatives, and represents a welcome and increasingly growing trend taking place across Wall Street.

Sharing the same philosophy that Citi is dedicated to, the leadership and team at Mischler Financial Group is unabashedly dedicated to the thesis that Diversity & Inclusion programs strike at the heart of corporate best practices. We believe that those who embrace the tenants of D&I are likely to be better for it in the eyes of their stakeholders , which necessarily include respective employees, the consumers and communities they serve, and the investors/shareholders who look to corporate leaders to always deliver better performance.