Coca-Cola Diversity Oversight Task Forced Named.

The Coca-Cola Company and the Class Representatives in the discrimination lawsuit settled last year announced that they have jointly selected the six individuals who will serve on the Company’s oversight Task Force, subject to final Court approval.

As previously announced, Alexis M. Herman, former United States Secretary of Labor, is Chairperson of the Task Force.

The proposed members of the Task Force are: M. Anthony Burns, Chairman of Ryder System, Inc.; Gilbert F. Casellas, President and CEO of Q-LINX, Inc.; Edmund D. Cooke Jr., partner of Winston & Strawn; Marjorie Fine Knowles, professor at Georgia State University Law School; Bill Lann Lee, former Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights at the U.S. Department of Justice; and René Redwood, former executive director of the Glass Ceiling Commission.

“With this group of distinguished, committed individuals on board, I am very pleased that the Task Force will soon be able to begin working with us to accelerate the Company’s progress on this vital front,” said Doug Daft, chairman and chief executive officer, The Coca-Cola Company. “Alexis Herman and I have already been exchanging information and ideas, and it is clear to me that the Task Force will be an extremely meaningful asset to this Company.”

“We are moving forward expeditiously to implement the programs, including the Task Force, that will bring about lasting change at The Coca-Cola Company,” said Cyrus Mehri, co-lead counsel for the plaintiffs. “With this group of independent, highly respected individuals prepared to commit themselves to the important work of the Task Force, we are ready to continue the progress now underway at the Company.”

The seven-member independent Task Force was created as one of the key programmatic elements of the Nov. 16, 2000 settlement between The Coca-Cola Company and the Class Representatives. It is charged with ensuring the Company’s compliance with the settlement agreement, and providing independent oversight of the Company’s diversity efforts outlined in the agreement.

Each Task Force member has a four-year term of office. The Task Force will provide annual reports to the Court, Settlement Class Counsel, Coca-Cola Chairman and Chief Executive Officer Doug Daft and the Board of Directors of the Company.

The members of the Task Force combine legal, business, non-profit, governmental and academic expertise and achievement:

M. Anthony Burns — currently Chairman of the Board of Ryder System, Inc., the Miami-based transportation services company. Mr. Burns has long been active in corporate and personal philanthropy, and he is a recipient of the Anti-Defamation League’s Americanism award as well as the National Urban League’s Equal Opportunity Award.

Gilbert F. Casellas — currently President and CEO of Q-LINX, Inc., a software development firm that serves the fields of child welfare, juvenile justice and adult corrections. Mr. Casellas formerly served as Chair of the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) and General Counsel for the Department of the Air Force.

Edmund D. Cooke, Jr. – currently a partner in the Washington, D.C. office of Winston & Strawn, specializing in employment and labor law. Mr. Cooke was a Captain in the U.S. Air Force. He has since worked in the Appellate Court Division of the NLRB, as Special Assistant to the Vice Chair of the EEOC, and as Counsel to the Committee on Education and Labor of the U.S. House of Representatives.

Marjorie Fine Knowles – currently professor of law at Georgia State University College of Law where she formerly served as Dean. She also serves as a trustee of the Teachers Insurance Annuity Association – College Retirement Equities Fund, the largest private pension fund in the country. Ms. Knowles was the first statutory Inspector General at the U.S. Department of Labor (1979-1980).

Bill Lann Lee – formerly Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights at the U.S. Department of Justice and currently Visiting Scholar at the Columbia University Law School. Before his appointment to the Department of Justice, Mr. Lee was the Western Regional Counsel for the NAACP Legal Defense Fund.

René Redwood – a consultant on diversity and organizational development. She is the former executive director of the Federal Glass Ceiling Commission, and Americans for a Fair Chance, a non-partisan consortium of six of the nation’s most prominent civil rights legal groups.