Acclaimed vocalist, composer and educator Ruth Naomi Floyd sings during her presentation to Everence Financial employees during the organization's 2024 MLK Day training event. (Photo: Madalyn Metzger/Everence)
GOSHEN, Ind. – As part of the organization’s commitment to diversity, equity and inclusion, Everence® Financial employees participated in the fifth annual Martin Luther King, Jr. Staff In-Service Training Day on Monday, Jan. 15, 2024.
All Everence offices and retail branches across the United States were closed to host the all-day professional development event, designed to help nurture cultural competencies to better understand and appreciate the perspectives and experiences of the organization’s diverse membership, clientele and the communities where staff live and serve.
“We began this annual event in 2019 not just to observe a federal holiday,” said Ken Hochstetler, Everence President and CEO. “We wanted to create an intentional space for colleagues to have conversations about race, ethnicity and discrimination, and to help all of us continue Dr. King’s work of engaging in and creating a world of peace and justice.”
Ken Hochstetler, Everence President and CEO (left) talks with guest speaker Ruth Naomi Floyd during the 2024 Everence Financial MLK Day employee training event. (Photo: Madalyn Metzger/Everence)
Featuring guest speaker and renowned vocalist, composer and educator Ruth Naomi Floyd, this year’s training focused on the intimate role music has played in the African American experience of struggle, resilience and hope across centuries.
Floyd led the nearly 400 Everence employees in a morning keynote session titled “We’ve come this far by faith,” highlighting how African American music, in its various and evolving forms, has been shaped by political, social and economic forces – and how engaging with the music is one step toward greater understanding of the past and hope for a better future.
“The African American spirituals are the embodiment of the quest for dignity and freedom, and creativity is a vehicle for truth-telling,” said Floyd. “Hopefully, through truth-telling, we can create a moral compass that leads to transformative action… We, as a community, nation and society, have hit many wrong notes over the course of history… but we have the opportunity to be instruments of peace and of God’s justice.”
For more than 25 years, Floyd has been at the forefront of creating vocal jazz settings that express Christian theology, history and justice. A prolific performer and lecturer – and committed music educator – Floyd served as Director of Jazz Studies at Cairn University (Langhorne, Pennsylvania) and is adjunct professor and artist-in-residence at Temple University (Philadelphia, Pennsylvania). Her latest body of compositions, “The Frederick Douglass Jazz Works,” is based on the speeches and writings of the abolitionist, writer, publisher and statesman.
“We are honored to have Ruth Naomi Floyd lead us in our 2024 Martin Luther King, Jr. day of training,” said Mike Nicholas, SPHR, SHRM-SCP, Everence Chief Human Resources Officer. “We recognize that our lives are shared as part of a community of people, and by better understanding the various and different realities that our colleagues, clients and communities face, each of us are then better able to meet our members where they’re at on their financial stewardship journeys.”
The training was held at the Everence corporate headquarters in Goshen, Indiana, with employees from its other 30-some office and retail locations across the United States joining via videoconference. Following Floyd’s morning presentation, Everence colleagues participated in a variety of afternoon breakout workshops or chose to volunteer at local nonprofit organizations as a tangible way to fulfill Dr. King’s dream of a Beloved Community.