Home Depot ties associate culture to Milken Center American Dream exhibit

Home Depot is putting its associate culture beside a high-profile Washington exhibit on the American Dream, signaling that it wants workers to see the orange apron as a path to advancement, not a stopover. In the company’s May 26 culture story, Home Depot said associates from across the country are featured in the Milken Center for Advancing the American Dream’s permanent American Dream Experience.

The center, part of the Milken Institute, opened its flagship exhibition in September 2025 after a 12-year renovation of historic downtown Washington buildings, including the former Riggs Bank and American Security and Trust Company buildings. The center says the exhibition uses immersive storytelling and visitor participation to illuminate pathways to opportunity. For Home Depot, that framing fits a long-running message that frontline retail work can lead to something bigger than a schedule and a paycheck.

That message matters inside stores, where experienced associates are costly to lose and hard to replace. Home Depot’s 2025 annual report said the company was focused on “Drive Our Core and Culture,” and said its stores remain the core of the business. The company said it had more than 470,000 associates at the end of fiscal 2025 and operated more than 2,300 retail stores in the U.S., Canada and Mexico. It also said its stores average about 104,000 square feet of enclosed space, plus about 24,000 square feet of outdoor garden area, a scale that makes frontline staffing, product knowledge and department leadership central to daily operations.

Home Depot is also tying that culture story to a familiar face inside the company. Crystal Hanlon started at Home Depot in 1985 as a cashier while attending the University of Houston. Today, the company says, she is senior vice president of culture and values and chief culture officer, overseeing the Home Depot Foundation, The Homer Fund, WeAreTHD initiatives, events and internal communications teams. Her career is the kind of progression Home Depot appears eager to put in front of associates and candidates: start at the front end of the store, build skills, and move into leadership.

The company has used similar storytelling before. In 2021, Home Depot released the associate-focused docuseries Behind the Apron, another effort built around employee experiences and company values. The new partnership extends that approach onto a national cultural stage, where Home Depot can link hiring, recognition and promotion to a broader story about perseverance, opportunity and achievement. For a retailer that depends on keeping skilled people on the sales floor, in the aisles and in the garden center, the message is clear: culture is not just branding, it is part of the management strategy.