Thomas King

Thomas King
Executive Director and President, National Grid USA

Headquarters: Waltham, Massachusetts
Website: www.nationalgrid.com
Primary Business: International electricity and gas company
Revenues: $22 billion
Employees: 27,000

What Does Success Look Like?

Involved, Valued, Included Employees

The U.S workforce is becoming more diverse every year. Responsible businesses must embrace and manage diversity for continued success. A diverse workforce increases organizational effectiveness, lifts morale, taps new segments of the workforce, and enhances productivity. In short, business needs diversity to succeed.

National Grid’s objective is to embed Diversity & Inclusion throughout the company. It is no longer considered an initiative, but an integral part of how every single employee thinks and acts.

National Grid has embarked on a specific approach to leading D&I initiatives to develop, communicate and lead the organization on a compelling business case. We serve more than 16 million customers every day in very diverse demographic geographies across the Northeast. We must represent and understand our market demographics in order to serve and meet the customer expectations. A key requirement in success will be to ensure an inclusive culture in the organization representing the communities in which we live and work.

So what does success look like? Success is when all employees feel involved, valued and included. In a business climate that is forever looking to ‘do more with less,’ having a high proportion of employees feeling included is critical. In order to deliver our growth strategy we need to attract and retain high-caliber people from the widest possible talent pool.

We need to embrace diverse talent today and tomorrow for the future success of the business. D&I helps us reach goals by encouraging collaborative internal and external relationships. These initiatives are a good start but we have more work to do before it is really embedded within our culture. This is an important journey. Each day we see progress and know that we are heading in the right direction. We will know success when the communities we serve welcome our presence as service providers, employers and community partners.

Education: Louisiana State University; Executive Program Graduate, University of Michigan
First Job: Regulatory Analyst, Interstate Pipelines
What I’m Reading: The Quest, by Daniel Yergin
My Philosophy:Optimistim—positive energy is contagious.
Best Advice: Always do the right thing.
Family: Married with three daughters
Interests: Fishing, travel
Favorite Charities:American Red Cross, American Cancer Society