When it comes to workplace diversity, companies in old-line manufacturing and heavy industry have lagged behind their consumer-products peers. Praxair, a Danbury, Connecticutbased supplier of specialized gases for industrial use, was certainly no exceptionat least until recently. Indeed, when James Breedlove took over as Praxair’s general counsel in late 2004, he recalls that the company’s legal department employed just two women attorneys, and exactly one lawyer of coloran African American male.
Today, after less than a decade under Breedlove’s stewardship, the mix is much improved. Nearly a quarter of Praxair’s in-house legal team in the United States is now composed of minorities, and roughly 40 percent of the company’s 68 lawyers worldwide are women.
