Brenda brings over 20 years of international risk leadership experience from a diversity of industries and scale of businesses. She has a unique perspective on how businesses work as she engages with all levels and functions within the organisational framework. This has enabled her to successfully implement risk management systems that are applicable and best suited to the organisations.

Brenda is also impassioned about transforming company culture through diversity and inclusion and opposing inequality. She has been nominated to set up steer Employee Resource Groups and on a personal front, she leads similar community-led groups.

During this episode, we talk about Brenda’s career in Risk. Brenda believes that the Risk sector is continuously evolving, with new risks emerging frequently. Suggesting it is crucial to remain proactive of the future and plan ahead, understanding that resilience is key. Brenda mentions the importance of always over-delivering, remaining adaptable and open to learning at every given opportunity.

Brenda has experienced inequality in the workplace and believes that organisations that have a meritocratic culture, have the ability to improve fairness and enable equal opportunity. The meritocratic style enables employees to be rewarded based on their achievements and successes, disregarding discriminatory, prejudice and bias-related factors.

We discussed the importance of having a strategic look at how you resource for your organisation and think about HR techniques to improve diversity and inclusion. How can we strategize for the future if we do not meet the needs of our consumers? We can only meet the needs of the end-user by having diverse teams. Diverse teams have diverse viewpoints and generate innovative ideas, leveraging diversity to create more inclusive products and services.


Brenda believes that workplace diversity must be more than a tick-box exercise, and describes the current state of diversity as a metaphor by diversity expert Trevor Phillips, "The glass ceiling hasn't been broken for women, but it's cracking. [Yet] people of colour seem to be superglued to the floor."

Brenda then discusses how it’s okay to not know where you are going with your career, as this will give you more flexibility and opportunity to learn what it is you do want to do. Brenda believes as long as you can be strategic with your thinking and have an end goal enables you to have a pathway, with your journey being fuelled by your desire for knowledge, passion and drive.

We can help you to achieve a culture of belonging where diversity is the default. At Broadgate Search, inclusion is the norm, not the exception. Reach out to us at [email protected] or visit our website at www.broadgatesearch.com