Roz Brewer, the only Black woman leading a Fortune 500 company, shares her 3-part strategy for making companies more diverse and inclusive

• On Tuesday, news broke that Walgreens named Starbucks exec Rosalind Brewer its next CEO.
• The move makes Brewer the only Black woman to lead a Fortune 500 company right now.
• In a 2020 TED Talk, Brewer discussed what leaders need to do to advance diversity, equity, and inclusion.

On Tuesday, Walgreens Boots Alliance, the parent company of pharmacy chain Walgreens, named Starbucks COO Rosalind Brewer its next CEO. The move makes Brewer the only Black woman leading a Fortune 500 company right now and the third in modern history after Ursula Burns, the former CEO of Xerox and Mary Winston, who briefly led Bed Bath & Beyond.

Brewer will join Walgreens and its board on March 15, The Wall Street Journal first reported.

The executive, who goes by "Roz," most recently led Starbuck's operating businesses across the Americas. Before that, she led Walmart's Sam's Club division for five years.

A seasoned executive, Brewer has spoken multiple times about the importance of leaders taking action on diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI). In a 2020 TED Talk, she shared what business leaders need to do to make DEI more than just a buzzword, as well as how the topic of racial equity impacts her personally as a Black woman.

Corporate leaders need to avoid getting caught in a numbers game

In the wake of the killing of George Floyd, many companies were quick to pledge commitments to DEI. Many of these commitments included increasing the number of Black employees or executives by a certain percent. But Brewer cautions against only pursuing more diversity. Without inclusion, she said diversity efforts will fall flat, an important point DEI consultants have been discussing.

"I think we have spent more time trying to reach numbers than we have changing our environment where people feel safe, where they feel they can come to work and be their whole self, give it everything they've got, be their natural self and be respected for it and applauded for it," Brewer said in her TED Talk.

She urges executives to not get too caught up meeting diversity metrics, but rather ensuring that the employees from underrepresented backgrounds that you do have feel included, supported, and heard.

Read more: An anti-racist's dictionary: 19 words on race, gender, and diversity you should know

Focus on building relationships

For Brewer, inclusion comes down to relationship building. She encourages leaders to hold listening sessions, where they hear stories and feedback from underrepresented employees and employees from marginalized backgrounds.

"Then help those people of diverse backgrounds engage in those conversations about how they want to see change happen. They're the best resource for a lot of this and a lot of these discussions," she said.

While at Starbucks, she regularly held breakfast sessions with employees, which often included baristas.

She describes the conversations as "rich" because she not only learned about some of the company's areas for growth, but also because employees started to network among each other around ideas they had.

"It starts there with building relationships and learning people for who they are and engaging them and saying, 'I see you, I hear you,'" she said.

Read more: 14 books all managers who want to build diverse and happy teams should order right now

Advancing diversity means investing more in mentorship and sponsorship

Mentorship and its more active sister, sponsorship (where an executive not only mentors you, but advocates on your behalf), are key to making sure America's C-suite looks like the rest of the country.

Brewer said executives should codify mentorship programs, so that all employees, but especially employees from underrepresented backgrounds, have access to senior leadership who could mentor and perhaps sponsor them. That's how companies will see their executive teams become more diverse, she said.

Read more: Black women are less likely to have sponsors, here's how to fix that

"Just imagine if you're a new hire in the company, and someone wants to meet with you at a senior level once a month, twice a year, even - that's game-changing," she said.

On formalizing mentorship programs and enacting other DEI measures, Brewer said, "the time is now."