This week, Ramona Hood, president and chief executive officer of FedEx Custom Critical in Green, Ohio, joined female executives at Bizwomen Mentoring Monday presented by Advance Ohio in Cleveland.
Mentoring Monday pairs women leaders with businesswomen seeking insight. During the event, professionals meet and learn from one another, engage in one-on-one speed coaching, conversations with different mentors, and group sessions.
Hood said that when she started her career as a receptionist, more than 25 years ago, she was a young mother who just wanted a job that had a shift that would allow her to do training and professional development courses.
While working at FedEx Custom Critical, she has earned a Bachelor of Arts in Business Management from Walsh University and an Executive MBA from Case Western Reserve University Weatherhead School of Management.
In January, Hood became the first black American to become CEO of a FedEx subsidiary. At the Mentoring Monday event this week, she spoke of the importance of mentors in a workplace where are no blacks in senior leadership.
"Once I decided I was interested in leadership I decided it would be best to be intentional about what kind of roadmap I wanted to create for my career," she once famously said.
Virginia Albanese, a former chief executive at FedEx, is one of her biggest mentors and sponsors. Albanese helped Hood aspire when there wasn't much diversity at the delivery services company.
First, Hood held increasing responsibilities within FedEx Truckload Brokerage for eight years.
Hood also said she sought the support of Virginia Addicott, who retired as president and CEO in December.
“For whatever reason, I started to have issues with being the only African American,” she said on Monday. “I got the whole head trash, ‘Am I worthy? Did I deserve the seat I’m seating in?’”
Hood said she shared her thoughts with Addicott, who told Hood, “I’m a woman, but I don’t know what it means to be an African American person.” About a month later, she scheduled a meeting between Hood and some African American female executives.
"It is that level of intentionality that you have to have,” Hood said at Monday's event.
“I know what I need to do to move the organization further ahead,” she said. “I now have a team that has no women on it. I have one African American man. As I add positions to the team, I need to focus on the diversity I’m talking about.”
