The Planning Board
EXECUTIVE SPONSOR
Affectionately known as “The” Ken Charles, Ken is a founding partner of TC BANDD and continues to serve as Executive Sponsor.
Ken Charles has joined Thrivent, a Fortune 500 diversified financial services organization, as its Senior Vice President, Chief DEI and Corporate Responsibility Officer. In this role, he will lead Thrivent’s diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) and corporate responsibility teams. He will be responsible for advancing and executing Thrivent’s DEI strategy, building upon Thrivent’s progress while also helping them make greater strides. He will also be responsible for strengthening and deepening Thrivent’s community partnerships, striving to increase impact and amplify their generosity efforts.
Prior to joining Thrivent, Ken was most recently the Founder of Intentional Talent Advancement, LLC., a strategic DEI consulting firm he has led for the past two years. Before that, he held a variety of key leadership positions focused on DEI and talent at American Airlines, U.S. Bank and General Mills.
In addition, Charles has received the Ted Childs Life Work Excellence Award from WorkingMother magazine, only the second male to receive the honor. Previously, he was listed as one of the Top Executives in Diversity by Black Enterprise and served on the Human Rights Campaign Business Advisory Council.
Ken Charles
SVP, Chief DEI & Corporate Responsibility Office
Thrivent
Current Board Members
ERic Alexander
Founding Board Member. Eric is a Senior Organizational Leader who executes enterprise level initiatives, develops key corporate strategies, leads executive level dialogues with key external and internal partners, and champions organizational leadership and Diversity and Inclusion efforts.
He has a proven ability to lead and develop teams, manage large spans of control in support of multi-billion-dollar business units, and deliver bottom line results. He leads through a personal brand lens of "delivering key strategic results in a way that is professional and genuine," and he sets the tone with model driven leadership, clear expectations, follow up and support, and timely-situation specific feedback.
Jonathan Oliver Jr.
Jonathan is a people-centric marketing professional that approaches business challenges with an enthusiasm for the "why's" that drive business decisions. He uses communication strengths and a collaborative approach when embracing new and exciting projects.
Jonathan is a world-class academic and practical experience meet along the journey of a lifelong learner.
Latano Hall
Eric Black
Founding Board Member. Eric is an accomplished, mission minded and results oriented executive and strategist who specializes in growing existing B2B businesses through disruptive strategies that address untapped customer pain points.
Eric is a relationship oriented, customer-centric business leader who creates winning strategies by leveraging a unique skill set in P&L management, business development and engineering to discern value creation opportunities across the supply chain from new product discovery to winning the hearts of customers. Adept global business development and marketing leader with highly refined talent development and organizational optimization abilities.
Karmin Bryant
Solomon Anderson
Solomon is an Oracle ACE Assc. & Oracle DBA. He joined the board in 2021 and volunteers extensively in the Twin Cities community. Solomon is currently a Masters of Science candidate at the University of St. Thomas and serves on the board of community nonprofits such as the University YMCA.
Drinal Foster
Founding Board Member. Drinal is an award-winning financial services leader, certified in Human Resources management with over 20 years of complex HR expertise and business leadership experience.
Drinal was recently celebrated as a 2020 Minnesota Civic Leader by the Citizens League and selected as a 2019 Minnesota Young American Leader by the Itasca Project in partnership with Harvard Business School & the University of Minnesota. Drinal received Wells Fargo’s coveted Diversity Champion Award for her unwavering commitment to diversity, equity and inclusion. She is a three-time Wells Fargo Sales & Service award winner (the top 3% of all company employees).
Cecilia Charter
Cecilia Charter is a Director of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion for Target. In her role, Cecilia leads a team responsible for providing consultation to business units to advance Target’s DEI strategy and goals across Headquarters, Stores, and Global Supply Chain & Logistics. Cecilia began her career with Target in 2010 holding multiple operational management and human resources positions across Supply Chain and Headquarters. Prior to Target she served in the US Army as an Air Defense Artillery Officer specializing in Logistics and Transportation.
Hailey Grigsby (Reed)
Hailey is a recruitment professional with over six years of experience in various sectors including Banking, Financial Services and Healthcare. Expert in full cycle recruiting and campus recruiting, including sourcing, interviewing, selection process, compensation, offer proposal and approval process, offer closure, on-boarding, branding, program management, university relations and diversity programs & more.