Run your finger down the list of DiversityInc magazine's top 50 American companies for diversity last year and you'll stumble upon some icons of Atlanta business.

Let's see, there are Turner Broadcasting, BellSouth, Cingular Wireless, SunTrust and - what's this? - Coca-Cola ranked No. 6 in the country? Wasn't it just a few years ago that Atlanta's big beverage company settled a discrimination lawsuit?

"As I look back now at the five-plus years since we settled the litigation, I'm amazed at how far we've come," said Steve Bucherati, director of diversity and workplace fairness for Coca-Cola Co.

It was a matter of taking time to do it right, Bucherati said.

"It was about us taking time to look at best practices in diversity among companies like McDonald's and IBM," he said. "We took the time to do a very deep dive to look at employee processes. And we took time to develop an infrastructure to measure fairness with people programs. And, lastly, we looked at diversity more broadly than most people do - in workplaces, communities and suppliers."

Talk to executives with the other Atlanta firms on DiversityInc's list and you'll hear the same themes echoed. While not long ago company executives considered themselves pretty progressive if they set hiring goals for minorities and women, the bar is a little higher in the 21st century.

"We've been talking about diversity as a country for two decades, and, 20-plus years later, some companies are still focused on race and gender in the workplace," said Loretta Walker, senior vice president of human resources for Turner Broadcasting System, No. 2 on the DiversityInc list.

"But Turner has taken a holistic approach. We deliver a product to the entire world, and it is critical to have a work force that reflects the audience we serve."

Walker points to the changing face of CNN's on-air talent over the last two years as an example of the news network's efforts to look like the worldwide audience it reaches.

She said the company is also mar-keting its programming in new ways, offering "Sex and the City" syndications as an example.

"How do you market that show to all women, because it's not a very diverse cast?" she asked. "Well, it's not just about four white women; it's about fashion and lots of things all women like."

DiversityInc reports 203 companies competed for a spot on its list by submitting responses to a 200-question survey. The questions fell into the categories of CEO commitment, human capital, corporate communications and supplier diversity.

BellSouth, for example, made the list (No. 42) because of its strengths in "supplier diversity, multicultural marketing, work-force
and management representation of blacks and CEO commitment," according to DiversityInc.

Cingular Wireless, ranked No. 45, received kudos for - among other things - its inclusion of Latinos in its work force. And that just makes good business sense, said Bob Reed, Cingular's vice president of diversity.

"Cingular is the No. 1 wireless company in the United States in marketing to Hispanics," Reed said.

"We've taken a look at the existing labor force and identified areas where there is a high level of traffic of Hispanics. We put Spanish- speaking employees in [those] stores" and have marketing materials in Spanish.

The result?

"Since we put in that initiative, sales in those stores have grown 25 percent," Reed said.

Executives charged with implementing each company's diversity program tend to endorse leadership programs along the lines that SunTrust uses. The Southeast regional bank with 1,600 branches is No. 38 on DiversityInc's list.

It's a commitment to training new leaders and providing settings for junior employees to interact with top management that is yielding strong results, said Carolyn Cartwright, SunTrust's senior vice president of corporate diversity.

She said a manager must show a commitment to diversity in order to rise through the ranks at SunTrust, and that has been distilled into a measurable quality in employee evaluations.

"It's a part of your overall leadership style," Cartwright said.

CEOs' commitment to diversity programs helped land companies on the DiversityInc list. Coca-Cola's CEO, Neville Isdell, last fall gave a speech to his company's Executive Leadership Council that sums up his firm's journey from perceived villain to
hero in recent years.

"As a lifelong employee of the global Coca-Cola system - and as someone who has spent more of his time in Africa than any of the other five continents on which I have lived - the discrimination lawsuit the Coca-Cola Co. settled in 2000 was an embarrassment . . . an embarrassment to me looking in from the outside and to everyone who loves our company, " Isdell said, quoting from a copy of the speech furnished by the company.

"It was also indicative of a much more substantial breakdown: the failure of Coca-Cola share owners to receive the full benefit of our unrivaled global reach.

"As much as we'd like to, we clearly cannot change history. However, we have made substantial progress in moving from just compliance to commitment and in making diversity a competitive advantage for our organization."