Director of people strategies for Shawmut’s New York Metro region, Richard Hinton was named a Crain’s New York Business Notable HR Leader, recognized for his ability to power change and for his accomplishments that are both transformative and innovative. Read more about Richard’s impact below and in his Crain’s profile here.

In his role, Richard develops and implements talent strategies and tactics that drive business goals for the New York Metro region. His key responsibilities include talent management, acquisition, onboarding, and driving the culture. Richard advises executives in creating a more inclusive, collaborative environment that better develops talent, in turn fueling company growth.

Richard leads with empathy, welcoming people to be their true selves and creating a level of trust that opens the door for conversations, learning, and motivation. When Shawmut formed its Diversity Leadership Council (DLC), Richard played an integral role in building out the strategic framework to progress towards workplace equity. A key initiative that resulted from this work is sponsorship relationships. Leading the construction industry, Shawmut pairs high-potential, underrepresented employees with executive sponsors—mitigating the natural affinity for leaders to sponsor employees like them—leveraging the sponsors’ experience to bolster sponsees’ career aspirations, with the goal of promotion to leadership.

As advisor to the New York Regional Diversity Leadership Council (RDLC), Richard helps drive the strategy for progressing Shawmut’s DEI work in the New York office, jobsites, and local construction industry—through trainings, organization memberships, panels, and events. The New York RDLC launched a supplier diversity taskforce that led to a national Shawmut program, focused on increasing Underrepresented Business Enterprise partner outreach and participation, and setting diverse supplier goals outside of client requirements. Richard is also leading the RDLC in eminence building and philanthropy, working to identify and partner with organizations to help support and drive DEI work in the community.

Through his work with the DLC and RDLC, Richard has shaped:

• Sponsorship relationships – As both a sponsee and sponsor, Richard provides a holistic view of best practices and lessons learned, shaping the work and driving changes in New York and companywide, including adjustments to drive sponsee engagement and motivation. Richard coaches eight sponsors and checks in with all sponsees, collecting feedback for continual improvement.
• Inclusion Learning and Awareness Plan – Developed for employees to learn about, understand, and interrupt unconscious biases. Inclusive Conversations training introduces participants to a framework and tools that foster an inclusive work environment, providing managers the skills to become equitable leaders.

Richard is co-lead for DICE (Diversity and Inclusion in Construction and Engineering), a national peer collaboration group of industry leaders, formed to discuss the most pressing issues around DEI, develop possible solutions, and advocate for real change within the industry.

Richard actively supports Summer Search, a mentoring and experiential learning program that supports students in navigating the systemic barriers to success so they can achieve economic equity. He developed Shawmut’s relationship with The Posse Foundation, a comprehensive and renowned college access and youth leadership development program and has been a mentor and interviewer to Posse scholars for 8+ years.