Shari Slate

Chief Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Officer

Shari Slate joined CalPERS in December 2025 as the Chief Diversity, Equity & Inclusion Officer. Reporting directly to CEO Marcie Frost, she is responsible for driving the ongoing effort to integrate diversity, equity, and inclusion across the organization, empowering employees to embody CalPERS’ purpose of serving its 2.4 million members.

Prior to joining CalPERS, Slate spent nearly two decades helping large companies work toward a purpose-driven culture that considers the needs and experiences of all employees, customers, and other stakeholders. Most recently, she served as Senior Vice President and Chief Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Officer at CVS Health, whose businesses include not only CVS drugstores but also pharmacy benefits management and Aetna health insurance.

Prior to joining CVS, Slate was Chief Inclusion and Collaboration Officer and Senior Vice President at Silicon Valley giant Cisco Systems Inc., where she helped launch the Office of Inclusion and Collaboration in 2015.

During Slate’s tenure at Cisco, she helped the company build a pipeline of extraordinary talent across the full spectrum of diversity. Fortune Magazine recognized Cisco as #1 of the “World’s 25 Best Places to Work” in 2019 and 2020 and Fortune's 100 Best Companies to Work For® in the U.S. for three consecutive years, 2021, 2022, and 2023.

A graduate of Mills College, Slate began her career in sales and was an award-winning manager for Xerox Corp. before being hired at Sun Microsystems as one of the youngest diversity officers at a Fortune 500 company.

She has served on numerous boards and councils, including the California State University Foundation Board of Governors and the World Economic Forum’s Global Future Council on Systemic Inequalities and Social Cohesion.

Slate represented Cisco on the Business Roundtable’s Diversity & Inclusion Working Group after 181 CEOs redefined the purpose of a corporation to serve all stakeholders. She contributed to shaping the group’s view of DEI not as a standalone goal, but the connective tissue linking employee well-being, business performance, customer trust, supplier inclusion, and community impact.