As Bradley Gayton prepares to leave the legal department at Ford Motor Co., where he's worked for nearly 30 years, and take over as top lawyer for the Coca-Cola Co., he's spending some time reflecting on his legacy. 

While many in-house leaders have signed letters and pledges supporting diversity initiatives, few, if any, have put in the amount of real-world effort that Gayton has in working tirelessly to encourage and support women and people of color in the legal industry. 

He's traveled the country visiting with Ford's outside law firms, sitting down with partners and associates to discuss the importance of diversity and inclusion. He helped create the Diversity Lab's "Move the Needle Fund" to promote inclusion. He's pushed to hire and foster diverse in-house legal talent. And he recently established a program aimed at inspiring public school students in Detroit to pursue legal careers. 

Gayton is slated to leave Ford and its Dearborn, Michigan, headquarters on Aug. 31 and begin settling into his new office at Coca-Cola in Atlanta the following day. He spoke Friday with Corporate Counsel about his formative years, his multipronged approach to driving diversity, the Black Lives Matter movement, and why he's such a sharp dresser. The conversation has been edited for clarity and length. 

Corporate Counsel: Let's start by going back to when you were growing up in Syracuse, New York. I understand that you grew up in a predominantly white neighborhood and went to public school in the midst of court-ordered busing. To what extent did that shape your character and how you operate as a general counsel?

Bradley Gayton: That experience did shape who I am. My parents bought a house in a neighborhood that they deemed to be the best school district. And so my brother and I actually walked to school. But every other Black kid in the school was bused to school. For me, I would later realize, this was the first time that I started dealing with people who were really seeing me for the color of my skin. I spent all day long with my teachers and as my brother and I got ready to leave the building every day we would walk out and across the street to go home. Time and time again my teachers would take me and my brother and try to route us into the gym. In the gym was where all the Black kids queued up to get on the bus. Time and time again, I would have to explain, "I don't take the bus. I walk home." It was a notion that my teachers couldn't get their head around, even though I'm spending all day with you, which means you're really not seeing me, you don't know me. Now, I wasn't thinking that way when I was a kid, but I did later on. 

The other thing that happened in the school is I became an advocate early on about getting the library to have books about Black people. At one point I refused to read until they got books about Black people in the library, and they did. And then at one point I went back and said, "I've read everything about George Washington Carver and Martin Luther King and Jackie Robinson, what else do you have?" 

The reason this shaped a sense of advocacy and debate is that I had to do all of this without getting in trouble. I had to be respectful to my teachers. I could not have the teachers calling my house and telling my parents I'd misbehaved. That would have been unacceptable. There would be consequences I didn't want to deal with at home. So I ended up in these debates with my teachers but doing it in a way that achieved the objective of getting what I wanted but just pushing far enough that I wasn't being disrespectful. 

CC: And now you're working to establish a talent pipeline for minority lawyers. As part of that effort, you'd wanted to establish a high school focused on legal careers, right? What's happening with that effort?

BG: There was a realization over the last two decades, maybe even a little longer, that there has been a precipitous decline in the number of black lawyers and law students in the country. It's really important to me that we have a pipeline program. I came up with this idea to create a school that would focus on nurturing and developing all the skills that are required to be an effective lawyer and get kids really excited about the possibility of going to law school. There was a charter school that was failing in Detroit and I thought we could take over that school. We started to explore that but as we got into it the better answer was creating a curriculum that we could plug into many schools. Instead of just having one brick-and-mortar school and trying to understand how to run the school, let's work with experts to develop a curriculum that we can plug into schools. In the fall, there will be two charter schools in Detroit that will incorporate this curriculum into their school, starting with ninth-grade classes. I'm quite excited about it. Now, we're stepping back to see if we can scale this and effectively put this Ford Law Academy curriculum in a box and maybe go to our law firm partners around the country and encourage them to do the same thing.  

CC: Guessing there weren't any programs like this when you were in high school. 

BG: No. I was a Boy Scout and the closest that I can recall is the Explorer Program in Scouts. I participated in the medical explorer. There wasn't a legal explorer in Syracuse at the time. 

CC: Who inspired you? Who supported you and motivated you to go to college, pursue a career in law? 

BG: My parents were really supportive. It's interesting, I, at the time, just took that for granted. I figured everyone's parents were telling them that they're bright, they're capable, to sit down and do their homework. I just took that for granted and don't think I really believed much of it. But I had a teacher in fourth grade, Rosemary Dugan, she saw something in me, I still don't know what. She stayed after school with me like three days a week. She gave me fifth-grade math and reading. By the time I left elementary school, I was incredibly strong in math and it became a strength that I still have. This was a person who didn't look like me and wasn't a part of my family but took an interest in me. I think because she did, it sparked something in me that made me think about more possibilities. 

CC: Do you think Big Law partners sometimes misunderstand the power that GCs have in making diverse hiring decisions? Or do you think most GCs just talk a good game about diversity but fail to take real action to move the needle?

BG: Here's my view of this: I spend a lot of time trying to go deep on this issue. My view of this is it's a stubborn issue. I approach it as if everyone is desirous of seeing change and I view my responsibility as trying to facilitate that change by getting engaged. So what I've done is actually meet with our law firms, physically go and visit with them. I go over the scorecard that I have for their firm and the people, the women and people of color, who are engaged in our work. I know what they're working on. I'm asking questions about, "Is this work accretive to their development? If it's not, what work would be accretive to their development? I have a very large portfolio of work and I would be more than happy to participate in their development by giving them the work they need so they can develop." I also manage the people that bill on our account. We have a billing system that you have to get people approved as billers before they can do the work. So you can't show up and pitch me with a diverse team and then do something different later.  

I also created an outside counsel diversity summit. I bring women and people of color together in Dearborn and I do a couple things. I give them exposure to our business leaders. They then get to hear from the leaders in the legal office about our legal challenges, how we manage those challenges, and some of the challenges on the horizon. And then I share with them my view of where the future of the practice of law is headed and what things they need to be thinking about to be competitive. Lately, I've been focused on explaining the importance of [artificial intelligence] and machine learning and how it will impact the practice of law. My expectation when they leave this summit is, "Now, I want you to go away and come back and pitch me work." 

CC: Looking in-house, talk about what you've done to improve your team's diversity numbers. 

BG: For that, I don't have a lot of hiring opportunities. But as a leadership team in the legal office, we have to jealously guard every opening that we have. We cannot start interviewing people for openings unless there's a diverse slate of candidates. And so we've embraced the Mansfield Rule and set for in-house, 50% of the candidates should be diverse before we even start interviewing. As it relates to internal candidates, we are acutely focused on development of the team. We're doing quite well as it relates to women and we have some progress to be made as it relates to people of color. But we're trying to do that with every opening we have to make sure we can attract and continue to achieve more diversity. 

CC: What would you like to see your successor at Ford, John Mellen, do to take those initiatives further? 

BG: John and I had a conversation about this. I was a founding general counsel to the Diversity Lab's "Move the Needle" initiative. And I'm going to continue to work with Diversity Lab. John has also agreed to continue that work as well. John was a partner with me, crafting and refining these initiatives and actually helping to implement many of them. I'm confident that that work will continue. Many of these things may have been imagined and created by me. But the way I work, the leadership team helped ultimately procreate and refine and implement these things. It's a culture that believes in this work. 

CC: Diversity, racial equality, justice, inclusion. All are issues at the center of a major national, even worldwide, conversation at the moment. And now you're headed to Atlanta, where the Black Lives Matter movement is strong. What are your personal thoughts on BLM?

BG: This is a unique time where the consciousness around these issues has really become more acute and I think there's opportunity to really bring people together. There's a focus on creating environments where people feel included, but, more importantly, once they're included, environments where people have a strong sense of being valued and feeling that they belong so they can contribute at the highest levels. The environment seems to right now be one where we have a real opportunity to really enhance the environments in which we live and work by doing that. There seems to be much more of a willingness to have open dialogues about this right now. There's a real opportunity to make a significant difference right now. 

CC: Looking ahead to your next role, I know that Atlanta lawyers will want to know what they can do to work with Coca-Cola. Of course, you haven't started that job yet, but do you have a sense of what particular legal expertise you'll be looking for in outside counsel when you take over as GC?

BG: First of all, the men and women who have led the legal office over the last seven months without a general counsel, I just want to really honor them. I have a lot of respect for the journey they've been on. At this point, I wouldn't presume to know what they need or don't need. My sense is I need to be in listen mode and learn from a team of really talented lawyers. And, at the same time, as I learn a completely new business from a group of colleagues who have just been really warm in their embrace, virtually. 

CC: Last thing, you're a dapper dresser. Bow ties. All that. When did that start? 

BG: It started because of my observations of my grandfather. My grandfather had a small farm. And I would go visit him quite a lot. What I observed is he would go to the feed store or the lumber store and sometimes we would go and he'd be in his overalls because he'd just be picking stuff up. But when he would go to do business, sometimes pay his bills, negotiate for things, I always observed that he got dressed up. And he always went and purposefully paid all his bills in person. He was really intentional about the relationships he had with people. Being intentional about how you present yourself when you're engaging with people and doing business is a lesson I took from him. And then I just have a lot of fun with it as well. I probably dress in ways he wouldn't. A lot of color. I have fun with it. And it's something I really enjoy.