Deborah Russell

Joyce welcomes Deborah Russell from Diversity and Inclusion at Walgreens , Inc. Deb will discuss her lifelong commitment to increasing the employment of people with disabilities by leading Walgreens and other Fortune 500 companies in developing their efforts to increase inclusion in the workforce. She helped transform Walgreens’ vision to include people with disabilities into a sustainable and scalable model for a 250,000 person workforce and a model that is replicable within other corporations. Walgreens’ two most recent distribution centers employ an inclusive and integrated workforce composed of 40% of persons with disabilities who are held to the same work standards and earn the same pay as non-disabled co-workers. As a result of this success of serving both shareholders and the community, all 19 distribution centers now include people with disabilities. The division recently achieved the milestone that people with disabilities make up 10% of its workforce.