Fisher Philips Honors Janet Fiore with Business Leadership in Diversity Award

PHILADELPHIA (December 3, 2018) – Fisher Phillips presented its fourth annual Business Leadership in Diversity Award to Janet Fiore, CEO of The Sierra Group and President of The Sierra Group Foundation. Janet, who was honored for her tireless effort in reversing the rate of unemployment of people with disabilities, received the award at a reception on Saturday, December 1, in New York City during Pennsylvania Society Weekend.

“Janet’s tireless commitment to fostering diversity and understanding in the workplace and workforce is unmatched,” said Lori Armstrong Halber, partner in the Philadelphia office of Fisher Phillips. “We are proud to recognize her with our 2018 Business Leadership in Diversity Award to honor the hard work she has put in over many years in the Greater Philadelphia region.” Philadelphia partner Rick Grimaldi added, “Janet’s focus on not only job training for people with disabilities but also training companies on how to accommodate disabilities in the workplace, creates a roadmap for how to successfully advance diversity and inclusion in the workplace that employers can adopt regardless of their size.”

As a woman with disabilities, Janet combines her business and rehabilitation knowledge, along with her own professional and personal accommodation experiences to ‘drive up’ employment success for her clients. She created The Sierra Group in 1992 and since that time, it has grown to employ a diverse staff, more than half of whom are people with disabilities. Janet has consulted with household names like Aetna, Toyota, Tiffany & Company and Comcast on the skills needed for business and human resource professionals seeking to properly recruit, hire and accommodate Americans with disabilities. Her trainings have been incorporated into hundreds of corporate HR programs locally, regionally and nationally, and under Janet’s leadership, The Sierra Group has performed over 10,000 worksite assessments. The Sierra Group also runs the region’s largest vocational training program of its kind, where 73 percent of their regional job seekers with disabilities who graduate each year are placed in the workforce.

She was recently nominated by the PA Secretary of Labor and Industry and appointed to the Pennsylvania Governor’s Council on Diversity and Inclusion for Small Business Owners (DISBO) and is past president of the Pennsylvania Rehabilitation Association and the National Association of Rehabilitation Leaders (NARL). As an advocate for those with disabilities, she routinely provides media input as well as testimony for Congress, the GSA and the Department of Veterans Affairs.

Previous recipients of The Fisher Phillips Business Leadership in Diversity Award include Michael Pearson, CEO and founder of Union Packaging; JoAnne Epps, Temple University's Executive Vice President and Provost; and Angela Giampolo, founding Partner of the Giampolo Law Group.

Pictured from L-R: Lori Armstrong Halber, Rick Grimaldi, Janet Fiore, Michael Pearson, CEO Union Packaging and the first Business Leadership in Diversity award winner.

Pictured from L-R: Lori Armstrong Halber, Rick Grimaldi and Janet Fiore.