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Career Advice: Sean Palacio – Getting the Most Out of Mentor/Mentee Relationships

In this week’s installment of our Career Advice video series, Linda Bell, Head of Content at Fair360, interviewed Sean Palacio, Divisional Vice President of Diversity and Inclusion at Abbott (No. 9 on the Fair360 2023 Top 50 Companies for Diversity list). Palacio shared tips on managing mentor/mentee relationships, the key to boosting employee engagement and how his varied experience positioned him for success.

2024 Top 50 Companies

Abbott

Rank 13

Abbott maintained its place among the top 15 companies on the list this year. The company thanks its people for the progress it has made around diversity and inclusion.

Robert B. Ford
Chairman and CEO

“We know that diversity makes us better and stronger, so we cultivate it actively. Abbott is one of the most broadly diversified companies in healthcare. This has been our foundational business strategy for decades. We recognize that diversity gives us more options and opportunities, greater insight and broader perspective, and great resilience thanks to the varied array of strengths it brings.”

Sean Palacio
Divisional Vice President, Diversity and Inclusion

“We are united around a common purpose to help people around the world live healthier, fuller lives. To deliver on that promise, we maintain a culture where our employees can bring their true selves to work every day. This creates the environment where all ideas are welcome.”

From the Company

Diversity has been part of Abbott’s story since our earliest days as a company. As a global healthcare leader operating in over 160 countries, diversity is the foundation of our business and organization. We believe diversity fuels creativity. Creativity drives innovation. Innovation produces life-changing technologies. And none of it can flourish without a climate of equity and inclusion.

Any conversation about diversity and inclusion at Abbott starts with our people. Thanks to their efforts, we’ve made progress. Yet we continue to push for more, with the goal of infusing inclusion so deeply into our culture that it’s the natural way things get done at Abbott and in our partnerships with others. For example, we ranked No. 3 in 2024 on the Fair360 Top Companies for Supplier Fairness list and we were recently inducted into the Billion Dollar Roundtable, meaning we spend over $1 billion on diverse suppliers.

Abbott also is a leader in building diversity in clinical trials and in 2023 we created a Diversity in Research Office. The new office builds on our earlier work in this area with the goal of enhancing health equity, expanding access and affordability, and removing barriers to life-improving health technologies.