Dow Chemical Headquarters, Midland, Michigan, USA. Herbert Henry Dow, founder of the Dow Chemical Company, was a prolific inventor with 90 patents. Unlike many inventors, however, he became a savvy businessperson, founding the Dow Chemical Company in 1897. Over its 123+ years of existence, Dow evolved from being a producer of inorganic chemicals (chlorine), to organic chemistry (plastics), to petrochemicals (Saran Wrap) to being a global pro- ducer or resins, Ziploc bags, insecticides, and Styrofoam. After a brief merger with DuPont (known as DowDuPont), Dow is again a separate global company producing plastics, polyurethanes, construction chemicals, coatings, and sili- cones for packaging, infrastructure, and consumer care products. Dow has 37,000 employees and 109 factories in 31 countries, and annual revenue of $43 billion. Dow emerges from the DowDuPont merger a slimmer and more focused company, with six lines of business down from 15. Your CEO, who, like you, is a Dow "lifer," wants Dow to be a "cash- producing machine" that pays 45 percent of net income as dividends to Dow's shareholders and 20 percent to buy back shares. Costs have already been cut by $650 million and an additional $700 million in savings will be realized this year. As Dow's new chief diversity and inclusion officer, your job is to develop and carry out a plan for using diversity and inclusion to achieve these business goals. Diversity and inclusion (D&I) used to be the responsibility of Dow's global HR director. But your CEO sees D&I as a strategic priority, so he created and elevated your job to the C-suite, charging you with embedding D&I into how Dow does business around the world. Only four other Fortune 500 companies have chief diversity and inclusion officers. Like any major company, Dow has some things on which it can build and some challenges it needs to meet. In terms of challenges, you're in agreement with your CEO that Dow's record regarding opportunities for women and minorities needs improving. Another challenge, especially for recruiting a diverse work- force, is Dow's location, Midland, Michigan, a small city with a population of 42,000 surrounded by farmland that is two hours from a major city - Detroit. Dow lacks the advantage of recruiting talented researchers, managers, and employees to a multicultural city with a thriving arts and restaurant scene. On the other hand, Dow can build on some early D&I successes, such as hiring Dr. Sylvia Stoesser in 1929. Stoesser was Dow's first woman research scientist and earned 29 patents. Dow continued to hire women research scientists much earlier than many companies, including Dr. Bettye Washington Greene, an African American senior research specialist who joined Dow in 1965. As you put together Dow's new D&I plan, a good place to start is by asking, what does Dow mean by diversity and inclusion? Many people aren't sure. Ask 10 people and you're likely to get 10 different answers. If you can't explain what they mean, how can you make effective changes throughout the company? Plus, how does Dow's global footprint affect how the company defines D&I? Next, all plans begin with goals and measurements. So what should Dow's D&I goals be for the company? For major divisions? And how should they be measured, especially since it's your responsibility to make D&I a driver of Dow's business success Finally, what changes does Dow need to make in its organizational structure and company leadership so D&I is driven into the company's DNA? How can you structure the execution of Dow's D&I efforts so that managers at all levels and locations care as much about D&I as you do? According to Dow's CEO, "Diversity doesn't just happen. Just saying we are committed to diversity is not enough - we must put in place the right systems, processes, and leadership to make it happen.' If you were Dow Chemical's new chief diversity and inclusion officer, what would you do