Many diversity initiatives are well-intentioned. But experts say there’s still a sense among many women of color that policies that look good on paper are imperfect in practice. To find out what works, we need look no further than our 20 Best Companies for Multicultural Women, part of a larger diversity initiative created by Working Mother Media six years ago that now includes a nationwide series of Multicultural Women’s Leadership Summits. Our winning firms know that to succeed, it takes more than having strong diversity programs in place. It also takes resources and top-level commitment—and possibly most important, accountability on the part of managers. All of our winning companies not only require manager training on diversity issues but also rate manager performance partly on diversity results, such as how many multicultural women advance. These companies recognize that it’s not just about recruitment; inclusion programs must work to develop, retain and promote their multicultural employees as well.  We salute our winning companies for successfully achieving all three of these critical goals. They have something better than good intentions—they have results.

By Shaheen Pasha and Christina Frank