Wells Fargo exec Daniel Shannon promotes HBCUs

By Kelvin Childs

Daniel K. Shannon (B.A. ’07, magna cum laude) believes in the need for diversity, equity and inclusion. More than that, he believes in their true meaning. 

Shannon puts these concepts into action as head of Enterprise HBCU Strategy for Wells Fargo, the global banking and financial services company. Wells Fargo is a partner with Howard University Athletics and sponsors the annual Bison Blue Carpet Awards, which honors its student-athletes, coaches and staff. As a student, Shannon was on the men’s track team and found Howard attracts the best. 

“I haven’t seen an environment where the standard of excellence was just across the board as high as Howard anywhere else that I’ve been. Every space I’ve been to has had very talented people, to be clear. But there’s a friendly competition at Howard where everybody was the president of their student council before they got there, myself included. Everybody was the captain of their sports teams, myself included,” he said. 

“I was a competitor; I was a star, a standout in high school at track,” he continued, but Shannon notes one of his track teammates was an Olympics bronze medalist (David Oliver BBA ’04) and now runs the program. “I mean, that was not in my future, but it just changes the aperture of what the standard of excellence is, right?” Shannon said.

This was the Black excellence he had been seeking his whole life. “When I was 17 years old, I developed a personal mission statement for myself that has really been influential on the trajectory of my life,” Shannon said. 

“People always ask the question, what do you want to do when you grow up? I didn’t know what that meant in terms of a profession necessarily. What I knew, I wanted my talent, my time, my treasure, that my investment would be spent doing work that would reverse the trend of perpetual poverty in marginalized communities. And so, I started to try to build an equation or a trajectory that would allow me to do so,” Shannon said.

“That pointed me very closely to an HBCU. And so, in looking at HBCUs, Howard is and has always been a top-tier institution, not just for HBCUs, but for all colleges.”

“Putting the pieces together just felt like it was going to be the best place to set me on the path towards what I was hoping, the contribution I was hoping to make in the world. So, it became an HBCU. Howard’s the best HBCU.”

Shannon met his wife, Traci (Allen) Shannon (BFA ’07, summa cum laude) at Howard. He majored in economics and minored in Spanish. And with the University as his foundation, he went on to a career that includes stints at Thrivent Financial, Target, Amazon and now Wells Fargo with leadership responsibilities for diversity, equity and inclusion. 

DEI is a business imperative to bring forth the best talent, he said. “And wherever they sit in the ecosystem, whether that’s as an employee, as a customer, as a stakeholder, as a shareholder, you want everybody to be able to give the most that they are inclined to give of themselves. And that’s just good business,” Shannon said.

Developing fluency in Spanish has served him well, too. “I found myself working in environments where Spanish was, you know, it was at least prominent, if not dominant. And so, I was able to, just in the same way that if you tell somebody you went to an HBCU and they also went to an HBCU, that the bond gets accelerated. I think Spanish is another one of those accelerants that helps people trust you a little bit quicker if they speak Spanish as their first language as well,” he said.

As for giving, “I don’t know if there are very many things that make you feel more accomplished than to see how something you have given to the world elevates other spaces and extends beyond you,” he said.

“And so, when I think about giving back to Howard, every time I go on campus and I’m like, ‘Oh man, Drew Hall has air conditioning now. We didn’t have it when I was here.’ But I’m glad that they are not up here, you know, in this sweltering August heat on move-in day questioning whether they made the right choice because it’s so hot in their room.” The students’ focus can be on their studies or the University’s programs or its research, Shannon said.

“When Howard elevates, when Howard increases, when the HBCU system, any space with which I have an affinity, personal or professional affinity, gets better, then I get the credit for that too,” he said.

With the Impact Howard Funds, your donation may be directed specifically to a purpose you select — research, scholarships, infrastructure, programs, a particular school or college, or another entity of your choice. Please donate here: Impact Howard Funds