Kingsley Gobourne joins SC Johnson as new director of global inclusion and diversity

RACINE — SC Johnson, a global manufacturing company based in Racine, has named Kingsley Gobourne director of global diversity and inclusion. He started in the new role on Monday.

Gobourne most recently held similar roles at Group Health Cooperative and SSM Health in Madison, an environment where his focus was different.

“In healthcare, you had a direct relationship with the consumer. The focus was equitable access for them to use services and products,” he said in an interview Tuesday. “I feel the work that I’m doing now is really more internally based on those teams on those units.”

And with something in the range of 15,000 employees worldwide, that work is “on a much larger scale,” he said.

“In such a large organization, as well as having regional offices across the world, a lot of what I’m doing is learning what those cultures are like, what’s our commitment to our employees in those spaces? And how do we align so we can make the experience at SC Johnson as similar as possible across that broad network. That work will be supporting work that’s been done with leadership, leadership development, talent management, talent acquisition, working with my own team on a lot of the metrics and surveys, as well as our employee resource groups, and supporting our business units and leaders across that footprint.”

SC Johnson: A family-owned company

He said he appreciated joining a family-owned business.

“For as large as the company is, you feel like you’re working for a mom-and-pop,” he said. “There’s something cool about that.”

Gobourne was born in Jamaica and grew up in Blanchardville, a small agricultural community about 30 miles southwest of Madison. He and his wife also own Artemis Provisions and Cheese, which provides locally sourced meats and dairy products. They intend to open a butcher shop and restaurant in Mount Horeb next year.