Kenneth Arroyo Roldan

Kenneth Arroyo Roldan is a leader in the recruitment, retention, and professional development of women and people of color. In that capacity, he has become one of the country’s reigning experts on diversity. Considered an expert in minority hiring, Roldan has been interviewed by CNN, ABC News, Tavis Smiley, Fortune, BusinessWeek, The Wall Street Journal, Crain’s New York Business, Black Enterprise, and Hispanic magazine, and given talks on corporate recruiting, diversity, and employee retention across the country. In 2002, Roldan was nominated to serve on Cornell University’s prestigious Trustee Council.

Roldan has dedicated his entire life to helping minority professionals and women advance in the corporation, fight for their rights, and create a level playing field where candidates can rise to their natural ability. As Partner at the leading executive search firm Battalia Winston International, he heads the newly-created diversity practice group. Battalia Winston recruits senior-level executives for the technology, financial services, industrial, healthcare, professional services, not-for-profit and consumer/retail sectors.

His recent book, Minority Rules: Turn Your Ethnicity Into a Competitive Edge, helps minority professionals plan their career, create a strategic roadmap for success, master mentoring and networking, handle corporate politics, and strengthen their performance. The book also shows HR departments how to level the playing field and provide minority candidates an equal opportunity to rise in the corporation.

With a BS from Cornell University and a law degree, Roldan has been in the forefront of developing and ensuring equal employment opportunities for non-traditional candidates. Previous to joining Battalia and Winston, he was at Wesley, Brown & Brattle where he became the first Hispanic CEO of a national search firm. Before that he had a career in the Civil Rights Bureau of the New York State Assistant Attorney General’s Office where he was instrumental in shaping and enforcing EEO legislation.

Roldan has worked with top corporations such as Microsoft, Tyco, BP, Target, Raytheon, Wachovia, Wells Fargo, Pitney Bowes, Boeing, Hewlett-Packard, OfficeMax, Computer Associates, AstraZeneca, Cox Communications, and Wyeth Pharmaceuticals to create formal strategies to bring talented minorities professionals into the company. Moreover, he works with companies to ensure that minority professionals embark on a career path, are mentored, and fit into the company’s overall culture.

With a passion in diversity management recruitment for over a decade, Roldan’s unique strategies in diversity staffing, succession planning and retention have made a difference to the ethnic, gender and cultural diversity in America’s corporate structure. He is currently working on assembling an advisory council of notable Hispanic corporate executives with an underlying mission of increasing the representation of Hispanics on corporate Boards. In addition, he was recently selected to serve on the Nominating Committee for the Girl Scouts of Greater New York.

Roldan resides in Hempstead, New York with his wife and two children.

Minority Rules: Turn Your Ethnicity Into a Competitive Edge

Four Keys to Rising in the Corporation: Mentoring, Networking, Performance, and Learning to Master Corporate Politics

How to Make Employee Retention an Essential Part of Corporate Strategy

How HR Departments Can Level the Playing Field

Keys to Strengthening Performance

Overcoming the Old Boys' Network