Discover Financial Services has opened a customer-care center in a historically disadvantaged Chicago neighborhood, saying that it plans to employ more than 1,000 people from the local community by 2024.
The 126,000-square-foot call center is located at the intersection of 86th Street and Cottage Grove Avenue in the Chatham neighborhood on the city’s South Side. Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot, Discover CEO Roger Hochschild and U.S. Rep. Bobby Rush, D-Ill., were among the speakers at a grand-opening event on Monday.
“Investing in neighborhoods on the South and the West Side that have historically been disinvested in, it’s not charity — it’s good business,” Lightfoot said.
Discover, which offers credit cards, student loans, personal loans and online banking services, first
Over the last year, Discover has hired more than 300 people to work at the customer-care center, according to the Riverwoods, Illinois-based company. The employee retention rate at the Chatham location has surpassed all other Discover customer-care centers across the country, the company said.
“I’ve been lucky enough to spend time with a few of the new hire classes as they come through here, and during the Q&A, someone invariably asks, ‘How do I grow my career at Discover so I can be CEO?’” Hochschild said.
The card network's shares fell 10% on Thursday from news that it's conducting an independent investigation of its student loan operation, signaling potentially costly regulatory actions ahead.
“I tell them that it’s my hope that a future CEO of Discover has already joined us here in the Chatham location, and I am certain that many of Discover’s future leaders will come from the South Side of Chicago.”
To build and maintain the Chatham site, Discover awarded 47% of its business to minority-owned suppliers and 28% to women-owned suppliers, the company said. Nearly $4 million, or a quarter of the construction cost, went to Black-owned contractors.
“This isn’t a rose growing out of concrete. I would say that this was fertile ground all along,” Lightfoot said. “And what Discover has done in partnership with the community has planted seeds, tilled the soil, made sure that it is properly watered, and what you see blooming is the fruit of a beautiful South Side neighborhood.”
