Fidelity Investments '18
Represented by:
Ashlee accetta
Community relations Manager
Award Profile
Courageous Thinking and Action
With more than 40,000 associates at 10 regional sites and more than 190 Investor Centers in the U.S., our employees have deep ties to the communities where they work and live. Good corporate citizenship has been a core Fidelity value since the company was founded. In partnership with established nonprofit organizations and regional school systems, the primary focus of Fidelity Cares® is to create volunteer opportunities for our employees that use their insights and experience to help provide students in need with an educational foundation to feel more confident, make smart decisions, and achieve personal and financial goals.
Vision and Innovation
Privately held for 70 years, Fidelity’s mission is to inspire better futures and deliver better outcomes for the customers and businesses we serve. With assets under administration of $6.8 trillion, including managed assets of $2.4 trillion as of December 31, 2017, we focus on meeting the unique needs of a diverse set of customers: helping more than 26 million people invest their own life savings, 23,000 businesses manage employee benefit programs, as well as providing more than 12,500 financial advisory firms with investment and technology solutions to invest their own clients’ money.
Innovation is at our core and we are always exploring new technologies, products, services and business approaches that harness innovation. With more than 10,000 technologists – approximately ¼ of our workforce – we are deeply invested in technology. Our innovation hub, The Fidelity Center for Applied Technology, is where we leverage experts and maintain close relationships with some of the world’s top universities to help the firm keep ahead of emerging trends and strategically focus on “what’s next.” In addition, we constantly explore how to tap into emerging technologies like Bitcoin/Blockchain and Artificial Intelligence to improve our customer’s lives.
Inspiring Leadership
At Fidelity, our success is dependent on our people. That’s why our teams are made up of individuals who are passionate, driven and act with the highest level of integrity and personal attention to detail. At the heart of our culture is the entrepreneurial spirit and tradition of community involvement. We are thinking differently about social responsibility and empowering our people to make a difference. We encourage associates to put away their computers and pick up a paintbrush, trade their briefcases for tool bags, and leave conference rooms and walk into classrooms. Whether it’s revitalizing schools, hosting financial education workshops, donating money, or tutoring children or advocating sustainability, our employees are empowered to make a difference. Since the inception of Fidelity Chartable, $25 billion has been given to public charities, helping a broad range of more than 200,000 nonprofits fulfill their missions. Our sustainability efforts have driven results too: total paper use is down 48%, greenhouse gas emissions are 23% lower, power consumption in our data centers has decreased 23% and our municipal water use is down 20%.
Community Mindedness
Our associates contribute thousands of hours of community service annually and share their skills to impact whether it’s teaching financial literacy in schools or partnering with local nonprofit organizations to solve their infrastructure and software challenges. Last year alone, our Fidelity Cares program had more than 12,000 associates donate their time. In fact, those employees completed 1,200+ community projects, donated 100,000+ school supplies and backpacks to local schools, and supported 65,000+ students.
Through Fidelity’s employee volunteer program, Fidelity Cares, we’ve supported JA Rhode Island, helping to impact hundreds of students through programs such as JA Job Shadow, JA Finance Park, JA in a Day, JA Inspire, JA Leaders Day and JA Congressional Leaders Day.
JA Mission Moment
As a Community Relations Manager at Fidelity Investments, I have had first-hand experience with Junior Achievement. Through Fidelity’s employee volunteer program, Fidelity Cares, I have had the opportunity to partner with JA Rhode Island on a number of different programs. One of the first programs I witnessed directly was a JA Job Shadow held at Fidelity’s regional office in Smithfield where nearly 50 students from a local Providence middle school arrived eager, excited, and ready to learn. I witnessed the students discovering new opportunities that they didn’t know previously existed.
A short while after the event, I received a full envelope of hand-written ‘thank you’ cards from the students. When reading those letters, I began to truly understand JA’s impact. One letter in particular stuck out to me: a young female student thanked Fidelity for listening to and answering the questions of her and her peers, and for telling them about all of the different kinds of careers that people hold at Fidelity. She shared with me that she had no idea such jobs existed. Further, she was very excited by the fact that she connected with a volunteer that grew up in the same city she lives and goes to school in – and now works for Fidelity.
Since that day, my appreciation for JA’s mission has grown deep roots. By working together with JA to leverage the time and skills of our employee volunteers, we’re not only preparing students to be entrepreneurial thinkers in the workplace – we’re opening their imaginations to possibilities they didn’t know existed.