Fenton Communications, IncX

Justice, equity, excellence and respect are values that all of Fenton’s employees hold dear. These values are demonstrated in a number of ways, including setting and adhering to pay equity practices, prioritizing diversity in hiring practices, developing a career framework to ensure equity in career advancement opportunities, and creating “Fenton’s Principles of Excellence”, guidelines for all employees to achieve excellence in their respective roles. We also take inclusion very seriously — we promote respect for personal pronouns, celebrate our employee resource groups, and have an active DEIJ Task Force that works to ensure we maintain an inclusive work culture. We take pride in the fact that we lead the industry in diverse representation as 55% of our staff company-wide are people of color as well as in our leadership.

Our CEO Valarie De La Garza charts the firm’s direction, shapes its culture and ensures it remains focused on its mission. Valarie is the first woman and person of color to lead Fenton in its 40-year history, a rarity in an industry in which less than 20% of staff are people of color, and C-suite leaders of color are in single digits. Since Valarie’s tenure as CEO began three years ago, the agency doubled its revenue and staff headcount and is on track for a record year.
Valarie leads by example by encouraging open communication, welcoming feedback and responding to every situation with sincere kindness while balancing the needs of the firm. Staff members are inspired by Valarie’s commitment to servant leadership, focus on gratitude and personal story of perseverance as a Latina. Valarie is deeply committed to justice, equity and excellence. She leads by example by volunteering for organizations that promote social impact in the community including Homeboy Industries.

Fenton has multiple active affinity groups, including for AAPI staff, Black staff, Latinx staff, LGBTQIA+/Queer staff, Women-identifying staff and staff with disabilities, both visible and invisible. These groups foster a greater sense of community, create a more inclusive and collaborative culture, provide a safe space for dialogue and allow for the sharing of resources for staff to grow as professionals and allies and bring full representation to the voices of our staff. These groups bring programming to the broader Fenton community within the organization to heighten awareness of issues that affect various identifying groups.

Fenton fosters a collaborative work environment that starts at the top. Our CEO and senior members of the organization are kind, approachable and generously provide feedback, address concerns, and share knowledge. The ethos of openness is then modeled by all team members. Project leads hold weekly meetings to keep their teams informed and staff members are encouraged to share information and ask questions. The CEO holds monthly all-staff meetings to provide updates on the progress on our goals; these all-staff meetings also feature participation from employees across the organization.
Fenton also uses Slack to highlight employee accomplishments and client wins company-wide. Slack is also used daily to ask for help on projects, reinforcing that we all genuinely care for one another and succeed as a team.

In addition to compensation levels that often exceed industry standards, Fenton is proud of our additional offerings that further enhance the employee’s overall compensation package. These include an unprecedented new business commission program that awards any employee, regardless of level or discipline, with a payment of 1.5% of revenue earned on new client leads, as well as additional awards for expanded scopes of work with existing clients. The norm in our industry is commission for VPs and above only. We also provide year-end discretionary bonuses to every staff member. To recognize the foreign language skill sets that are brought to our client’s work, employees earn a premium translation bonus for generating or proofreading content in a foreign language. And, in addition to a corporate match to retirement savings of 50 percent up to 6 percent of salary, Fenton contributes between 2 and 4 percent toward retirement savings in an additional profit sharing program. We offer unlimited PTO, 11 paid company holidays, close between the Christmas and New Year’s holidays and a sick bank accrual of up to 20 days. For employees who complete seven years of service, they are eligible for a four-week sabbatical.