Letter from our CEO

Welcome to May, 2021

Our core values of empathy, humanity, trust, and love remain at the foundation of Rocket Software. They are our culture, our vision, and our strategy. In a recent internal Town Hall, I reminded our Rocketeers, “Let our core values guide you and inform you.”

There is no better place for our core values to guide us and inform us than on our inclusion, diversity, and equity journey.

(Note to reader: we believe that inclusion comes first, without that foundation you cannot build a diverse or equitable organization. “Inclusion, diversity, and equity.” From that thinking came our “RIDE initiative,” which stands for Rocket Inclusion, Diversity, and Equity.)

If you’ve followed my monthly letters, you know that we very intentionally introduced these three words very prominently in our Rocket vocabulary almost exactly one year ago.

I am proud of the progress we have made in the past year, with a few highlights listed here:

• We have created our RIDE working groups to design improvements at Rocket.
• We welcomed our first-ever Senior Director of Inclusion, Diversity and Equity.
• We welcomed our first-ever woman to our board of directors.
• And, we have defined objectives, key results, and measurement systems around our inclusion, diversity, and equity initiatives.

But there is much more progress to make.

We will continue to build new muscles and we know we can do more. We will do more. We are building a better Rocket by committing to even more racial diversity in each of our Rocket Communities. And, we are building a better Rocket by committing to even more gender diversity in areas such as women in technology and women in leadership. But, to be clear, we are not limiting our definition of diversity to only race and gender. We know we need to improve in all areas, including ethnicity, national origin, gender identity, sexual orientation, age, social class, physical ability or attributes, religion, and political beliefs.

Inclusion at Rocket means belonging, and we want to make our company a place where everyone not only feels welcome but is welcome. And, in our quest to be more equitable, we want Rocket to be the land of opportunity. There are thousands of potential Rocketeers that we don’t yet know how to reach. And once at Rocket, equity means every Rocketeer is given the same opportunity to develop and grow in their individual career journey.

Most Rocketeers didn’t start their career here at Rocket (although some did). And, most of Rocketeers won’t end their career here at Rocket (although some will). But while here, we believe that Rocket should offer the opportunities you didn’t even know existed and provide the opportunities you’ve been searching for your entire career.

Onward and upward,