Karen is an Amick Brown Co-Founder and Managing Partner. She has long history in IT, serving both in technical and leadership roles.  She spent 26 years supporting various technologies at AT&T.  Karen’s last 10 years there was spent as a Senior Technical Director where she lead a team tasked with building the enterprise SAP BI solution at AT&T—a solution which served the company’s human resources, procurement, legal, network, finance, and real estate organizations and had a diverse end-user population of more than 400,000.

In 2010, after an outsource of the AT&T SAP application to a large consulting company, Karen shifted her focus and with her business partner Anitha Brown, started Amick Brown LLC, an IT consulting and staffing company. The company, while still a small business, is enjoying steady growth and has been listed on the San Francisco Business Times Top 100 Woman Owned Businesses in the San Francisco Bay Area list since 2013.

Karen’s role at Amick Brown focuses on the internal business functions of the company and the teams supporting Human Resources, Accounting, Marketing, Legal and Finance. She is a member of the Society of Human Resource Management (SHRM) and has earned her SHRM certified HR Professional certification (SHRM-CP) which enables her to stay abreast of HR developments and ensures Amick Brown adheres to all Labor laws and regulations.  Karen ensures that business functions are running smoothly and efficiently so Amick Brown’s primary focus can remain on how to best serve both Amick Brown’s client’s and employee’s needs.

Karen lives in Livermore, California with her husband of 37 years.  She has three grown children and one “almost 3” year old grandson whom she adores.  She loves spending time with friends and family and spends as much time as possible at Lake Oroville, California where the family maintains a small houseboat.

Follow Amick Brown at: https://www.linkedin.com/company/amick-brown-llc

Connect to Karen through  Karen’s LinkedIn Profile.  Say hello, she would love to hear from you!

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We live, play and work in an immensely diverse world.  To classify ourselves, we align with others of the same representative group.  We categorize ourselves into numerous different groups based on race, gender, age, religion, culture, ethnic background, etc.  The list of identity groupings can be endless.

The traditional view of diversity in the corporate world has had a focus on preventing discrimination of specific minority groups – preventing exclusion.  We are experiencing a shift now….from preventing exclusion to embracing inclusion.  We are moving away from regarding diversity only as a compliance requirement, to recognizing the value of and benefiting from the various perspectives of different identify groups as a business strategy.

The new view of diversity as defined by the Society for Human Resource Management encompasses “the qualities, life experiences, personalities, education, skills, competencies and collaboration of the many different types of people who are necessary to propel an organization to success.” 

20633211 – diversity color tree finger prints illustration background set. file layered for easy manipulation and custom coloring.

Some of the benefits associated with a focus on diversity and inclusion include:

• Diverse teams that include individuals of different ages and with different backgrounds and perspectives can be more creative and innovative because the contribution and influence is more varied and therefore rich.
• Employers want the best and brightest to join their organization. You don’t know what identity group your best match might be associated with.  A company with strong diversity and inclusion goals and a diverse workforce will be attractive to high potential candidates regardless of their identity group.
• As with employees, customers will be associated with many identity groups as well. A diverse and inclusive workforce as well as a brand that represents a company’s diversity position will be helpful in attracting those customers.
• While affirmative action programs still exist to counter-balance historic discrimination, fostering a diverse workforce, and working with diversity supplies will satisfy compliance requirements – not doing so might result in missed opportunities.

At a high level, developing a business strategy to support diversity and inclusion can be approached in a similar fashion as other business strategies.

• Must have Executive commitment;
• Create a responsible party/organization to champion the effort and shepherd its development and progress;
• Perform an assessment of the current state that includes not only the demographics of the organization but also the perspectives of the employees regarding the company’s diversity;
• Evaluate the results of the assessment and determine path forward that might include hiring goals encompassing all of the dimensions of diversity, diversity supplier purchasing goals and organization leadership goals to name just a few;
• Facilitate organizational, process and any system changes required to support the strategy and goals;
• Communicate and provide training to all in the organization. Ensure the message is shared by the executive leadership to demonstrate its commitment to diversity;
• Monitor, measure and evaluate – adjust as needed over time.

Consider diversity in terms of the benefits it can bring to an organization.  Companies that expand their hiring practices to include individuals from varying backgrounds and those just entering the workforce in addition to those that are seasoned with experience will be rewarded with a rich and diverse workforce.  The brand will benefit as well, and at a minimum, the daily work life will be enriched by the many cultures, generations and viewpoints offered by a diverse group of individuals.

As a core belief in how we approach our business, Amick Brown works hard every day to promote the internal and client-facing benefits of diversity.

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The Importance of Cultural Due Diligence

We have all been there. You are a few months in to a new job and something is just not perfect. The work itself is on target, challenging, fulfilling, and not too many surprises. Your colleagues are professional and friendly, but you are floundering around still to find your comfort zone. It is likely that cultural fit is imbalanced between you and your new company.

In the fairly recent past, corporate culture has evolved from the scenario of if you were in business the dark suit went on in the morning, arrived at your cubicle, and preserved the time-honored tradition of being a staunch professional. Now, companies take on all sorts of personalities, expectations, and cultures which range from the still staunch professionals in dark suits and cubicles to bean bags, mandatory relaxation breaks, and shorts/jeans/tshirts as office attire.

The bottom line is that they are all correct! How a company excels in business is driven by their beliefs and success stories. It has become a critical step to not only evaluate skill requirements, but also intimately understand the cultural aspect of a new business.

Organizational culture evolves over time based on attitudes, customs and values that make up a company’s unique social and psychological environment. An organization’s culture touches all aspects of the business and it is expressed in its products, the way it interacts with it employees, customers and the rest of the world. Certainly, it will impact the new employee directly. The subtleties of culture are definitely something that can be sought out and matched to candidates with due diligence.

What is a fit for one candidate may not be suitable for another. You can teach an employee new skills but is hard to train for cultural fit if they don’t fit the mold. When there is a cultural fit, the person will naturally perform consistent with how things are done in an organization. It results in employees being engaged and focused on growth and the organization reaps the benefits. As well, the employee reaps the benefit of loving their job, not only for the skill and professional challenge, but because it is where they thrive psychologically. The opposite is true when there is a cultural mismatch. Studies show that cultural fit positively impacts performance, ability to adopt to changes and retention.

The same principles apply to staff augmentation decisions. It is exceptionally successful to take the culture fit analysis step when hiring contractors. At Amick Brown, we have built our successes on the practice of not only understanding our clients’ cultures, but staying involved after the placement with both the company and the contractor. Ongoing team building puts everyone in a position of positive communication and therefore reduces churn.

Amick Brown’s IT sourcing strategy in recruiting and staffing projects is to ensure that, apart from technical skills, there is a cultural fit both for the customer and the consultant. Our proprietary methodology incorporates thoroughly understanding the client’s cultural personality. We take into consideration the leadership and the communication style of the client’s team. At times the role that we are staffing might need a heavier emphasis on technical skills vs cultural fit. We are realistic about both the positive and negative aspects of the culture and balance our recruiting strategy for each client. We are aware of the need to strike a balance between technical and cultural fit in IT recruiting. We are proud to say that this has helped us to achieve more than 95% consultant retention with our clients. Cultural due diligence in hiring and staff augmentation makes a big difference!

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