Aida Sabo, Vice President, leads the Diversity/Inclusion Center of Excellence at Cardinal Health. Her focus is developing a long term Global Workforce Diversity Strategy in partnership with the leadership team and key functions of Cardinal Health. The focus of strategy will be on Communication, Recruiting/Retention, Training/Development and Life/Work Integration. Prior Aida led the Corporate Diversity Function at EMC in Hopkinton, MA. Working with EMC’s Leadership team, she executed the Living Diversity @EMC., a company wide strategy focused on attracting, retaining, and developing top talent globally, advancing multi-cultural competence and providing an innovative/inclusive environment. Her work focused on integrating diversity into all aspects of EMC’s business. Leading the way with the Corporate Diversity Team, Aida dedicated herself to educate managers and employees with methods and tools to leverage diversity to create global business success. At EMC, her work has touched over 3500 managers and employees globally. Aida helped create a clear shift in the culture of EMC as it is seen internally and externally. Aida’s work on diversity has increased the comfort level of countless employees who once felt isolated and did not have the networks to get to one another. Through the implementation of the 6 employee circles and the regional reach, Aida has helped set the framework for open dialogue and positive change. Thousands of employees are involved within these employee circles. Employees now have multiple networks to collaborate, share and work on common themes. Not only has Aida focused her attention on employees directly, she has also implemented organizational diversity task forces, which work on EMC policy objectives. Externally, Aida has established EMC as a forceful player in diversity throughout the community by participating in councils, attending conferences and recruiting events. For the first time EMC has been on the list with Diversity Inc. as a notable company (ranking between 50-75 on the Diversity Inc., Best Place to Work List) as well as the Boston Journal. Before EMC, Aida was Diversity Director at Agilent Technologies in Palo Alto, California. She was the impetus behind “Diversity Made Real” – a leading edge global initiative that brought to light the link between inclusion and innovation, the many dimensions of diversity, the global perspective, and its business imperative. A child of Mexican immigrants – born in Michoacán, Mexico, Aida moved to the U.S. when she was three years old. With a passion for learning, she excelled, ultimately getting her BS degree in electrical engineering from the University of California, Davis, specializing in electromagnetics. Aida continued her education by completing Engineering graduate work at the University of California, Berkeley Extension and Georgia Tech. She has also completed Executive Education at Harvard, JFK School, Harvard Extension, UCLA and Stanford University. In 2006 she was selected to be a fellow with the National Hispana Leadership Institute. In her career, Aida has held a diverse array of positions: systems engineer, an expert on antenna and material measurement, systems engineering manager, and a Global Business Development Manager for Hewlett Packard’s Satellite Test and Base Station Test Business. She received many awards while at Hewlett Packard; the award most significant to her was being the first women to receive the Systems Engineer of the Year Award in 1995. She then won this award again the following year, 1996. HP’s first Latino Employee Network was founded by Aida, where she led the organization in her Presidential role. As the head of this organization, Aida joined the National Hispanic Latino Association. In this position Aida was selected to be a representative to the White House event on sharing Best Practices on Diversity with other Latino Corporate leaders in the United States Aida has been an active member in a wide array of associations and has held numerous board positions related to both her engineering background and diversity initiatives: she chaired the Silicon Valley Antennas and Propagation Society of the Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineering (IEEE) for six years. Aida has been on the Board of the National Hispanic Employee Association, Advisory Board for Working Mother Magazine (Women of Color Initiative), New England Minority Supplier Development Council, and a strong supporter of the Partnership of Boston, focus development People of Color in the Boston area. Her dynamic personality and experience have led her to speaking invitations at numerous events including the Peter Drucker Leadership Conference, the Institute for Research on Women and Gender at Stanford University, Linkage, Inc.’s Women in Leadership Conference, Working Mother Women of Color Town Hall, and the Silicon Valley Rainbow PUSH Organization’s Digital Connections Conference. She has had a long term commitment with her childhood Latino, volunteering in the K-12 programs in Redwood City School District of California. Outside of her academic and career interests, Aida’s passion – both on and off the job – is helping at-risk youth through her commitment to education and mentoring opportunities. Aida’s work has focused on encouraging youth to obtain higher degrees, primarily in the math and science fields.
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