Marathon Oil Continues Community of Respect™ Activities with “What Would You Do?”

Date: February 20, 2009

As part of its annual Diversity Week Program, employees of Marathon Oil Corporation accepted their Community of Respect™ designation at an assembly designed to continue their diversity education with participation in video scenarios from the ABC News television program "What Would You Do?"

Over 100 employees crowded into an auditorium at Marathon's headquarters to watch the video scenarios, vote and comment on them, and be a part of the company's Community of Respect™ designation for 2009.

The "What Would You Do?" segments included a scenario in which a man who speaks Spanish but no English tries to order food in a deli, and is refused service by a counter clerk who insists "If you can’t speak English, you don’t get served here."  The other scenario involved a gay couple and how patrons at a bar react to them.

ADL provided a panel of experts to help discuss the scenarios.  They included ADL board members Mark Finkelstein and Ian Scharfman, and Mark Eggleston and Reverend Kristen Cechettini from the Resurrection Metropolitan Community Church, a church that ministers to the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender Community.

After the discussion of the scenarios, ADL Southwest Regional Director Martin B. Cominsky presented the Community of Respect Award to Dan Sullenbarger, Marathon's Vice President of Corporate Compliance and Ethics. 

The program was coordinated by Marathon's Advanced Diversity Consultant Cora Robinson and ADL Community of Respect™ Initiative Coordinator La Monica Yarbrough.