“There’s no pressure on you to be global - there’s pressure on you to think about who is around your table. To think about who you’re bringing in to start a strategy.”

In Episode 28, I am joined by Claire Brody, Director of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion at Warner Bros. Discovery, to discuss the art of localisation. Claire shares valuable learning and insight on how to develop a DEI strategy that can be adapted at a local level, addressing proximity bias and the importance of perspective-taking.

Claire’s DEI journey is filled with varied career experiences - she has worked as an assistant producer and on-camera presenter. She is also a certified yoga instructor, a poet, and a published children’s author. Claire’s experiences outside of the US deepened her commitment to empowering her colleagues in local regions. Through leading with radical empathy and a sincere intention to foster an inclusive and conscious culture of well-being and belonging, she has had numerous achievements such as building the first DEI function in EMEA, creating the first mental health infrastructure for the enterprise, and founding the inaugural enterprise Disney Pride employee resource group.

In our conversation, we explore the cultural differences between Western and Eastern cultures and how that should shape a DEI strategy. Based on a Western perspective, DEI is really about celebrating what makes you different, however, she explains that the Eastern culture is rooted in harmony. Thus, it is about organisations understanding these differences and shaping their strategy around this. As we discuss in the interview, it is important that “we empower our region to empower us as experts to create a nimble and global strategy”. As such, it becomes a strategic framework that each region feeds into, thereby making it more applicable to the local country. Claire clarifies that it is only through engaging in the art of localisation that we then truly understand the unique value each region brings to the table when creating a DEI strategy.

Further on in our conversation, Claire offers advice and tips to leaders on how to be proactive in implementing their DEI strategy. With the opportunities available at HQ, it is imperative that organisations have talent mobility schemes, which create visibility and empowers talent across the globe by providing them with an opportunity in the HQ for their own development, and also for leaders, so they have increased visibility of their expertise.

To conclude, Claire admits that addressing our biases can be challenging to do, as it requires recognising the “potency of whiteness and the hysteria that comes from it”, and that can be a very uncomfortable thing to accept. As she rightly mentions, “Having the privilege of being exposed to black culture doesn’t absolve her of her white identity”, rather, constant practice is required in “deconstructing the systems that I operate in and benefit from”. Claire explains that in order to be inclusive, we need to move beyond discomfort, adopt perspective-taking, and be active allies. By constantly doing this, we are one more step closer to building and creating an inclusive space for our employees and for ourselves.

Links:

Claire can be found on LinkedIn as Claire Brody

For more from Warner Bros. Discovery, visit their website at: https://wbd.com/

To hear Why Care? episodes first, sign up to our newsletter here, and you can find more from us at Avenir via our LinkTree here.

The Inner Work of Inclusive Leadership

“We need to be able to be so attuned to what’s going out around you. And the only way to do that in a stable way is by being rooted in the way you are. In really understanding…OK, is this me? This constant evaluating.”

In Episode 27, I am joined by Rose Cartolari, Founder and Director of RC Consulting, which specialises in Leadership Advisory and Executive Coaching, to discuss the inner work of inclusive leadership, primarily focusing on the importance of self-reflection and flexibility as a leader, and the dissonance between being a successful leader and an inclusive leader.

Rose’s interest in DEI is evident through her 30-year career journey. Rose has had experiences in management roles for large organisations such as American Express and UNICEF, and experiences teaching at elite business schools in the US and Italy, as well as co-founding and serving as COO of Scharper Pharmaceuticals SpA. Rose’s experiences has empowered her to embark on a mission to bring diverse voices into all spaces where decisions are made. To accomplish her mission in promoting DEI, she is a TedX speaker, a co-author of Winning Mindset and she serves on the Executive Committee of European Women on Boards. She also sits on the Advisory Board of DiverCity magazine and is a member of the invitation-only Forbes Coaches Council.

Upon exploring what DEI means to her, we speak about the importance of being an inclusive leader, such as the difficulties in balancing the intellectual friction between creating a culture of psychological safety and a culture that promotes freedom of speech, and the challenges technology and global ways of working bring to leaders in the DEI space.

As we explore in our conversation, there seems to be a disconnect in what is required from leaders - as an inclusive leader, it is important to show humanity and vulnerability to your employees, but as a successful leader, it is important to show competence. The difficulties in balancing these intellectual frictions are what is dampening the efforts of leaders to fully embrace diversity, equity and inclusion.Rose mentions that in order to help them overcome these difficulties, it is imperative that there is a renewed focus on empowering leaders, not on fixing them in the DEI space.

To finish our conversation, I ask Rose about how leaders can learn to embrace the inner work of inclusion. She believes it lies greatly on self-reflection, having that courage to take that step towards inclusion, receiving support and encouragement from others and leading with empathy. As such, leaders can then become someone who is reliable, trustworthy and influential, but it takes courage to make that step towards diversity, equity and inclusion. She finishes insightfully by saying that we should focus on ‘not carrying leaders but really coaching them, not fixing them but empowering them’. By doing this, we are taking a step further in promoting and perfecting the inner work of inclusive leadership.

Links:

Rose can be found on:

· LinkedIn at Rose Cartolari

· Twitter at @Rosecartolari

· Facebook at Rose Cartolari

For more from RC Consulting, you can visit their website at: https://rosecartolari.com/

To hear Why Care? episodes first, sign up to our newsletter here, and you can find more from us at Avenir via our LinkTree here.

“Talent is everywhere, but opportunity is not”

In Episode 26 I am joined by Sámi Ben-Ali, Vice President of Inclusion & Diversity at Wood, to discuss the importance of silencing the echo chambers, recognising that lived experience fuels individual perspectives, and how times of global crisis often put the focus on individual survival over the needs of the group.

Sámi’s interest in DEI started earlier in life than many of my guests. He grew up in a small town in the Northwest of England in a multi-ethnic, multi-faith household with his White Irish Catholic Scouse mother and his Arab Muslim Tunisian father. Diversity was always present and obvious in Sámi’s life, and this was only accentuated by Sámi going to university in America when he was 18 and feeling a lack of inclusion.

After spending some time exploring how these experiences have shaped Sámi’s view of what DEI should be - which is that of a holistic approach - the conversation moves to the importance of broadening horizons and actively trying to reduce the echo chambers we find ourselves in. These echo chambers are often restrictive and impact on our ability to debate and consider other viewpoints.

In times of global crisis, it often seems that people’s survival instincts take over and individual preservation is prioritised over helping out the group or wider society. This can often affect how people engage with DEI and undergo perspective taking. Indeed, we then discuss the power of perspective taking and understanding how lived experience impacts upon the viewpoints we develop.

We bring the episode to a close by discussing the importance of diversifying talent pools through the recruitment process. One of Sámi’s mantras is “Talent is everywhere, but opportunity is not” and Wood certainly lives by this mantra too. Sámi talks us through all the brilliant actions that are being undertaken by Wood to ensure that the next generation of talent globally is diverse and included.

Links:

Sámi can be found on LinkedIn as: Sámi Ben-Ali

For more from Wood, you can visit their website at: https://www.woodplc.com/

To hear Why Care? episodes first, sign up to our newsletter here, and you can find more from us at Avenir via our LinkTree here.

“When it comes to creating that inclusive culture, frankly you’re either leading the way or getting in the way – because neutral doesn’t exist”

In Episode 25 I am joined by Devi Virdi, Group Head of Diversity & Inclusion at Centrica, to discuss how cultural intelligence is key to inclusive leadership, the importance of collecting employee data, and ‘the power of truth’.

Devi’s DEI journey is one flavoured by many different cultures, and journey is definitely an appropriate word. Devi has worked for most of her career in the travel and hospitality sector, working across various sectors and functions including HR, sales, marketing and operations. It was during a leadership role that Devi looked around the room and realised – no one else looked like her.

It was this feeling of ‘onlyness’ that initially empowered her to stand up and make a difference. We speak on what it is like to experience these complex feelings of being the only, and why it inspired Devi to become a change agent. She realised that many of their teams didn’t resonate with the cultures they operated in, and this highlighted the need for greater cultural intelligence.

Devi has a great passion for cultural intelligence (or ‘CQ’), and she elaborates on why she thinks it’s so crucial for leaders to understand, and why it is a key trait (along with many others) needed for inclusive leadership. She brought this passion to her role at Centrica and it led to establishing a ‘Shadow Board’ - providing diverse mirrors to the Centrica Board to help them better understand the diversity present in the company so they can strive for better inclusion in their decision making.

Part of understanding the employees at Centrica better includes regular data collection on their characteristics and experiences. Devi shares that asking the right questions is crucial to understanding what your employees need, and investing to meet this. We then talk about how to create the right environment to allow employees the safety to be able to answer these questions fully and honestly.

To finish our conversation I ask Devi what she thinks DEI will look like in 20 years’ time, and she answers that she believes it will lie greatly with further advances in technology allowing for greater inclusion, but only if these technologies are made with inclusive thought and voices.

Links:

Devi can be found on LinkedIn as Devi Virdi

More from Centrica can be found on https://www.centrica.com/

To hear Why Care? episodes first, sign up to our newsletter here, and you can find more from us at Avenir via our LinkTree here.

“Everyone has their personal passion points, and [DEI] conversation[s are] often looked at from a personal viewpoint. So it’s not really looked at as a business driver or a business conversation, it’s looked at as ‘I care about gender’, ‘I care about race’, ‘I care about disability because my child has a disability’ and you have to encourage the leaders to go outside the scope of their personal passion”

In Episode 24 I am joined by Geoffrey Williams, Vice President / Global Head Diversity Equity & Inclusion at Burberry, to discuss empowering the next generation of workers, the toxic cycle of “paying your dues”, and the cultural nuances in global DEI strategy.

As with many DEI professionals, Geoffrey didn’t start out in the field – in fact he hesitated to work in DEI when he was given the first opportunity so as not to be stereotyped. Starting out in the music and entertainment business, his increasing work with people led him to move over into Learning & Development in HR. It was during this role he bore witness to an unfair scenario that led him speaking up to the CEO. This culminated in Geoffrey being offered a DEI role to help rectify the situation, and after much research he realised DEI work was more than just giving speeches about discrimination.

After talking about growing up as a Black boy in the UK in the 80s and the role of his parents in teaching how to navigate this, we talk about Geoffrey’s current work with Rocking Ur Teams in empowering and educating the youth of today and making their career aspirations accessible. This progresses into a discussion over how the expectations of the current youth entering the workforce are different to previous generations, and how organisations desperately need to adapt if they want the best talent.

This adaption includes how organisations and leaders must break the cycle of “paying your dues” with entry level employees committing overtime, free labour and demeaning tasks because that’s what the leaders had to do. Geoffrey shares how leaders must be engaged with DEI beyond their own pet passion projects or characteristics relevant to them - he calls this leaders being “bubble bound” to their own social bubble and worldview.

As we bring the conversation to a close, we discuss the common response of “oh well that doesn’t happen here” that we both hear when talking about racism or other discrimination. Many people believe that discrimination problems in other countries don’t happen in their own country due to it manifesting in different ways. Geoffrey explains how this is a cultural nuance that must be adapted to by global organisations, but western leaders should be careful to do it sensitively and not prioritise their own western views.

Links:

Geoffrey can be found on:

· LinkedIn at Geoffrey O. Williams

· Instagram at @geoffrey.o.williams

· Twitter at @GWEntertainment

Geoffrey can also be found on his website at: https://geoffreyowilliams.com/

For more from Rocking Ur Teams, visit: http://rockingurteens.com/

For Geoffrey’s Ted X talk on ‘The Pressure on Young Shoulders’ visit: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bl0tGp3eRIs&ab_channel=TEDxTalks

To hear Why Care? episodes first, sign up to our newsletter here, and you can find more from us at Avenir via our LinkTree here.

“When you start defining diversity in a broader sense, usually you will find a lot of people who are passionate about one element. Maybe they have experienced exclusion because they are a certain age, or have a certain number of years at the company, and they don’t feel like they’re taken seriously or listened too. Getting people engaged in one element is important, and that’s where the wave starts coming and the train leaves the station and can’t go back.”

In Episode 23 I am joined by Kristen Anderson, Vice Chair of European Women on Boards, to discuss the myth of meritocracy, how organisations can start their DEI journey, and how to gather buy-in from employees who may not immediately understand the need for DEI.

Kristen’s background is in Chemical Engineering, spending a lot of her career in the technical side of the food industry, working all over the world for big companies such as Kraft and Coca Cola, leaving her native USA to work in Australia, Germany, and China before settling in Italy. Working for Barilla in Italy, Kristen started her official DEI journey, joining their maiden DEI Board before eventually becoming their Chief Diversity and Inclusion Officer.

We start our conversation with Kristen offering career advice on how to join the DEI field and make progress. She then offers advice for any organisation on how to start their DEI journey, emphasising to walk before they run. This includes advice on how to get that sought after buy-in from employees who may show hesitance towards DEI initially, by making it clear how inclusion is relevant and beneficial to everyone. Getting people interested in one element of inclusion, whether age, gender or race etc., is the first step to getting them to have a broader understanding.

Since her role at Barilla, Kristen has retired from the food industry and is now the Vice Chair of European Women on Boards – a non-profit focusing on gender diversity in decision making in Europe. We talk about the crucial work that EWoB does, including how they work with men as allies and believe including everyone is key to improving gender diversity.

Meritocracy is a concept Kristen and I both come across regularly in our work. We discuss the ‘myth of meritocracy’ and Kristen shares her idea of ‘mirrortocracy’ instead, how people reflect their biases and social bubbles instead of purely basing decisions solely in merit. Bias isn’t just something external though, Kristen shares her experiences of the female leaders she works with having internal biases against themselves where they often don’t realise their full capabilities.

We close the episode by discussing what organisations can do to increase their gender diversity and support female leaders, including the support EWoB provides leaders and organisations.

Links

Kristen can be found on Linkedin as: Kristen Anderson

More from European Women on Boards can be found at their website at: https://europeanwomenonboards.eu/

The EWOB 2021 Gender Diversity Index Report can be found at: https://europeanwomenonboards.eu/portfolio/gender-diversity-index-2021/

More on Barilla can be found on their website at: https://www.barilla.com/

To hear Why Care? episodes first, sign up to our newsletter here, and you can find more from us at Avenir via our LinkTree here.

“Often if some organisations or people feel that something is a ‘tick box’- it fails. We see that time and time again. So if you can, through passion and collaboration, create momentum, then that’s what’s gonna keep things going.”

In Episode 22 I am joined by Nina Goswami, Creative Diversity Lead for the BBC, to discuss the importance of inclusive storytelling, representation in the media, and the BBC's impactful 50:50 Equality Project.

Nina’s journey is one many journalists will be inspired by, climbing the ladder from reporter, to producer, to editor and then to her current role of creative diversity lead. She shares her story of why representation matters and how important it was to her as a young girl to see Moira Stuart, the UK's first female Black newsreader, on TV – feeling inspired by seeing a woman of colour reading her the news….”You can’t be what you can’t see”.

Nina’s interest in inclusive storytelling within the news-cycle grew as she discusses the failures in reporting with Grenfell and the initial COVID coverage. Ultimately this interest got Nina involved in the 50:50 Project, quickly becoming the project lead. The 50:50 Project focuses on making the BBC more representative of the population, starting with coverage reflecting the 50:50 split between males and females in the UK. Nina explains the data-led nature of this as well as it’s methodology.

Within the BBC, 750 teams have signed up to the 50:50 Project, with around 150 external partner organisations also taking the pledge. We discuss the different methodologies shown within these organisations, and how merely counting the data is not enough, it must also be shared and actioned.

Finishing our conversation, we turn to the future of the 50:50 Project. Nina shares that it is currently well into trial runs for both ethnicity and disability monitoring. The BBC as a whole follows a 50/20/12 model, striving for 50% women, 20% BAME and 12% disabled visibility, following national population distribution, but regional BBC teams will work towards proportions accurate to their regions.

Links

Nina can be found on LinkedIn at: Nina Goswami

For more from the 50:50 Project, visit: www.bbc.co.uk/5050

The BBC Impact Report 2022 can be found here: www.bbc.com/5050/impact2022

More information on Moira Stuart, the UK’s first female Black Newsreader.

To hear Why Care? episodes first, sign up to our newsletter here, and you can find more from us at Avenir via our LinkTree here.

“I asked the team – Where should I go? What should I read? What should I look at? I had conversations with my own team members around certain areas that genuinely I didn’t quite understand…..I would have been the first person in the world to say ‘I do not see colour, I do not see gender’…..and it’s the most cliched, most inaccurate thing someone in my position could ever say”

In the first episode of Season 3, I am joined by Pat Phelan, Chief Customer Officer at GoCardless. As well as being our Season 3 premiere, this episode is a special one as unlike the majority of my guests, Pat isn’t a DEI professional, but rather a business leader who ‘gets it’ and truly role models inclusive leadership. During the episode Pat talks about the stages of self-awareness and reflection he went through to acknowledge his privileges. It’s a journey from self-admitted ignorance to inclusion, and why he thinks there is no single definition of a good leader.

We open the episode by discussing Pat’s life journey. He describes his early years as being quite unplanned, drifting where the winds took him – which included all the way over to Dubai to sell carpets! Eventually returning to London, he often found himself doing ‘leadership things in non-leadership roles’ as many leadership skills came naturally to him. This eventually evolved into actual leadership roles, putting him on the path to his current position.

Pat then acknowledges that on reflection, being able to move into a leadership position without really planning to, was a large example of privilege. Pat goes on to talk about his journey from being rather ignorant about DEI related topics, including the infamous “I don’t see colour” line, to becoming an inclusive leader. He describes GoCardless’s courageous response and conversations following the Black Lives Matter movement in 2020 were a real catalyst for this growth.

The final section of our conversation, Pat explains what he feels it means to be a good and inclusive leader. Pat shares that he believes there is no one single defined way to be a good leader, but he outlines a collection of qualities that are important to good leadership. These include: self-reflection and introspection, normalising failure, self accountability, respectfulness and putting in the energy.

Links:

Pat can be found on LinkedIn at Pat Phelan

For more from GoCardless visit their website at: https://gocardless.com

To hear Why Care? episodes first, sign up to our newsletter here, and you can find more from us at Avenir via our LinkTree here.

“There was definitely a level of expectation that you felt, I use the word pressure because that’s exactly what it felt like at the time. Some people thrive upon that and go forward, I rebelled – I did the exact opposite. My rebellious bit was to go ‘I don’t want to pursue academia anymore, I want to go and work, I want my own financial independence’ and not to choose the cookie cutter path.”

In this very special bonus episode of the ‘Why Care?’ podcast, I am joined by Elvin Nagamootoo, Head of Product at Shell Energy, and my cousin! Elvin discusses his spectacular career journey, success outside of academia, and how being labelled as a ‘problem child’ during education affected his life.

Elvin opens the episode by talking about his troubles during schooling due to being labelled as ‘disruptive’, his struggle with certain subjects and feelings of being misunderstood. His different way of thinking, approach to learning and interpreting the world was much later explained through his dyslexia.

But why persist to follow an academic path when the system just wasn’t designed for someone like him? Despite the pressure of his family, culture and society to succeed via an academic route, he decided to forge his own path and pursue the world of work rather than university.

His career path is one of the most unique I’ve seen, and he walks us through his various jobs like being a Christmas Elf, before finding one that clicked – being a British Gas Engineer. From here he has had a long and illustrious career, including being part of the initial team involved in setting up Centrica’s Hive business, before becoming its Global Head of Product, and now his similar role at Shell Energy.

This leads us to discuss his experiences of ‘onlyness’, both because of his diversity characteristics, and when he first joined an office-based role, after many successful years ‘in the field’ as an engineer, and feeling like misplaced. He talks about how these feelings made him second-guess his career choices before he gained confidence in himself. These ‘sliding doors’ moments continue to impact his life and shape who he is.

We then talk about how his intersectional experiences of his identity and career path have affected his leadership style to become one that is inclusive, empowering and understanding of his colleagues. We then close the episode by discussing our hopes for our children’s experiences of working in the future.

Links:

Elvin can be found on LinkedIn here.

For more on Shell Energy, visit their website at: https://www.shellenergy.co.uk/

For more on Hive, visit their website at: https://www.hivehome.com/

For information and resources on Dyslexia, visit: https://www.dyslexia.uk.net/

To hear Why Care? episodes first, sign up to our newsletter here, and you can find more from us at Avenir via our LinkTree here.

“2020, the year that changed everything in all of our lives around the globe. Whether it was the global health crisis and pandemic of COVID, or looking at everyone working under quarantine, or looking at some of the social-racial unrest that has happened around the globe. We started to go from diversity, to diversity and inclusion, to that year - we started talking about belonging, intersectionality and equity.”

In Episode 20 and the Season 2 finale of ‘Why Care?’, I am joined by a phenomenal leader, Shawna Ferguson, Senior Managing Director & Director of Global DEI at Wellington Management. Shawna joins me to talk about how to respond to backlash to inclusion programmes, DEI education programmes, talent retention, and why her word of 2022 is “courage”.

Shawna started her career in HR and it was whilst in this role that she noticed the ‘untapped talent pool’ – the people who were the lifeblood of her organisations but rarely got any official recognition for it. It was when she was working for a biotech firm, focussing on talent attraction at universities, that DEI started to grow in her consciousness. Crediting the talks she had with students, Shawna decided to pitch to her organisation a proposal to fold DEI practice into her university talent attraction, and her DEI journey was born.

Shawna shares her adoption of the acronym DEBI, bringing belonging into our common acronym in this field, and expanding the ‘I’ to also stand for intersectionality. Shawna explains her drivers for this and how promoting belonging is perhaps the most important part of her practice. Shawna also explains the rest of the acronym, particularly her thoughts on equity.

We then discuss Wellington’s incredible ‘Groundbreakers Academy’ programme (which I am proud to be part of), which was created out of Shawna’s internal research demonstrating a need to nurture and develop their employee’s skills, particularly for those in their ‘mid-career’ as there was a lapse in support compared to early-career development. This programme also nurtures minority employees at Wellington, and Shawna shares how this can sometimes cause backlash from majority groups, but then shares her tips on how she’s learnt to neutralise it.

We close the episode by discussing what Shawna believes the 3 focus areas of DEI should be for 2022:

1. Shifting mindsets towards seeing people as equal

2. Promoting accountability and assessing the outputs of DEI programmes

3. Investing in small businesses owned by ‘untapped talent’ to give these business leaders their “piece of the pizza”.

Links

Shawna can be found on LinkedIn at Shawna Ferguson

For more from Wellington Management visit their website at https://www.wellington.com/en/

Wellington Management’s 2020 Sustainability Report

The Wellington 2021 GDEI Report

To hear Why Care? episodes first, sign up to our newsletter here, and you can find more from us at Avenir via our LinkTree here.