Why Care?

Why Care?

By Nadia NagamootooBusiness
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Why Care? episodes

  • 32. Belonging with Sue Unerman

    “I think this is a question for the world of work overall, which is challenge versus consensus. I think it is something you have to acknowledge as a leader which is that you might have three points of view in the room. If you go for consensus, you might be getting half good of all three of them. How do you get the very best? because if you’ve got those three opinions, everybody’s worked quite hard to build their case, what you need is for everyone to understand that the competition is outside the company, not within the company and that you want to get the best answer.”

     

    In Episode 32, I am joined by Sue Unerman, Chief Transformation Officer and Global head of Relevance at EssenceMediacomX

    (EMX), to discuss the consequences of diversity fatigue, the significance of cultivating belonging, and the value of cognitive and demographic diversity.

    Sue’s interest in DEI is evident in her career journey, which has spanned over three decades in digital, media, marketing, strategy, belonging and inclusion, client service, and diversifying revenue streams. She is an expert in solving business challenges, driving growth, value, and continuous improvement through times of change and digital transformation. She is a long-standing ExCo board member, a fellow of the IPA, and has a regular blog for Campaign magazine. Her sincere dedication to DEI has led to successes as the winner of the Cannes Lions 2022 competition, listed in HERoes as Champions of Women in Business 2022 and Female Lead’s 20 in data and tech, and the co-author of 3 best-selling books: Belonging, The Glass Wall and Tell the Truth. She has used her platform to challenge stereotypes as an advocate for gender diversity at work, create real change in DEI, and to promote authenticity in marketing.

    In our conversation, Sue shares her motivations behind writing ‘Belonging’, particularly, her desire to offer a point of view that emphasised with everyone, and pragmatic ways to overcome the barriers to an equitable and fair workplace. Her mission was to write a book that would help everybody become a champion of belonging. She explores diversity fatigue and its impact on those in the minority and those in the majority:

    1)     It affects the people who it is meant to help, who are tired of being invited as a poster person and are frustrated by the lack of real change in DEI.

     2)    It affects the majority who are in power, who are tired of constantly being accused and are afraid of making a mistake.

    She speaks on the importance of cultivating belonging at work, and that this must be communicated through the vision, behaviour, and culture set by the leaders. As she explains, diversity in thinking and support from leaders is needed for everyone to embrace this. She explores the significance of organisations embracing adult-to-adult interactions, where we can all lead from our seats and

    make a difference, it is not about being bystanders but action-takers. The key here is that leaders need to make sure everybody is recognised, heard, and their opinion is valued, it is not necessarily that everybody gets to win, but that we are all trying to win as an organisation.

    Sue explains that there is real power in diversity, and this can be activated by adopting a growth mindset. It is not about a zero-sum game but an additional game - it is about adding value, not just numbers, to your organisation. Lastly, she speaks on the conflict between challenge and consensus that leaders face when making a decision, and that to bypass this, it is important to establish that competition is outside the company and collaboration is within the company.


    Links:

    Sue can be found on:

    -       LinkedIn

    -       Twitter

    -       Website

     

    For more from Essence Media, you can visit their website at: https://www.essencemediacom.com/

    Additional links to her books are on her website above.

    45 min
  • 31. How to be An Inclusive Leader? with Jennifer Brown

    “I want to challenge the comfortable in all of us and in myself. I want to invite us to walk that path together because the comfortable amongst us is needed in the change equation so desperately for change to be sustainable, to be at scale, to be accelerated, to address the real pain and inequities in our society.”

    In Episode 31, I am joined by Jennifer Brown, Founder and CEO of Jennifer Brown Consulting (JBC), to discuss the challenges of being an inclusive leader, how to overcome these challenges, and what inclusive leadership means.

    Jennifer’s DEI journey has spanned for over 15 years in public speaking, entrepreneurship, consulting, thought leadership, and writing. She is an acclaimed keynoter and podcaster, with her podcast The Will to Change, which has 15,000 listeners per month.

    She has received several recognitions, having been named Woman of the Year, Social Entrepreneur of the Year, one of the Top 40 Outstanding Women and so much more. Her sincere commitment and determination to DEI have led to her numerous successes as a
    best-selling author of two books, a shortlist winner of the O.W.L. Award, and a winner of the 2019 Nautilus Book Awards' Business & Leadership category. These achievements drawback to her mission of creating inclusive organisations where all of us can thrive, and, encouraging leadership and allyship at all levels with concrete behaviours and actions.

    Jennifer offers insight into her DEI journey, and her shift from focusing on DEI representation to ensuring that diverse individuals are respected, understood, hired, and retained in their respective organisations. She shares her personal story, and delves into the importance of this, as an authority figure and as an LGBTQ woman advocating for her community. As she explains, there is an ease in hiding, and seeking what is comfortable but what we actually need is to challenge what is comfortable. Setting that tone and creating psychological safety will normalise open conversations about things that frighten us and are not so often spoken about. These include questions about privileges and invisibility, and the significance of utilising that as a way of fuelling our allyship with others.

    Lastly, she speaks about the inclusive leadership continuum, which features in her book – How to be an Inclusive

    Leader. She describes that leaders tend to get stuck at each transition stage:

    1) Phase 1 and 2, that is between ‘I don’t know what I don’t know’ and ‘now I know what I don’t know’. This is complex as they have to overcome resistance, apathy, cynicism, and skepticism..

    2) Phase 2 and 3, from the ‘I know what I don’t know’ to ‘deepening my knowledge’. They will have to experiment and fail a lot to learn, which is quite overwhelming, and shame and guilt-inducing for leaders.

    3) Phase 3 and 4, here the issue is being stuck in the perfectionism trap between aware and active ‘not knowing’ and ‘not having mastering of how things will turn out’. Leaders will find that they are more vulnerable, they will hold themselves accountable and train themselves to notice bias around them and speak up.

    In Phase 4, leaders are advocates and that can be difficult to achieve. As such, leaders require support, patience, flexibility, resilience, forgiveness, and graciousness. It's not about having a short-term focus on calling people out and canceling them when they make mistakes, but about having a long-term view of nurturing the journey of others. This holds more power than pushing people out from contributing to the DEI conversation because of their privileges.


    Links:

    Jennifer can be found on:

    -       Instagram

    -       LinkedIn

    -       Linktree

    For more from Jennifer Brown Consulting, you can visit their website at: https://jenniferbrownconsulting.com/

    52 min
  • 30. Fixing the Broken Rung for Multicultural Women with Bonnie St. John

    ‘With multicultural women, we see that most of the time they are like, I will be just like everyone else, I will be talented and work hard and my work will speak for myself. It’s not easy for these women to deal with these issues. Being intentional about getting the assistance you need, setting your goals and moving up .. How do you use your difference as an asset and leverage it as an advantage for your company?’ 

    In Episode 30, I am joined by Bonnie St. John, CEO of Blue Circle Leadership Institute, to discuss the specific barriers and challenges that multicultural women face in climbing up the corporate ladder, building trust across multicultural differences, and engaging leaders to support them. Bonnie’s interest in DEI has been shaped by her life experiences as a Paralympic athlete, a Rhodes Scholar, a best-selling author, a White House Official and an entrepreneurial businesswoman. For over twenty years, Bonnie has led seminars, workshops and executive coaching, and has circled the globe as a keynote speaker and Fortune 500 leadership consultant. Her desire to lead with the sincere intention to make a difference is evident through her journey to find her strengths and overcome prejudices. She was the first African-American ever to win medals in Winter Olympic competition, taking home a silver and two bronze medals in downhill skiing. Through her work as the CEO of Blue Circle, she has worked to deeply understand the barriers faced by multicultural women, designing a powerful development program that gets to the heart of a much-needed conversation. We explore five core components of the Blue Circle Leadership program that support women to overcome these barriers: 

    - Trust and informal networking: navigating across differences to create a sense of trust and comfort that doesn’t come as naturally between a senior white male and junior multicultural woman. - Telling and selling your value: cultural differences for multicultural women mean that they don’t feel comfortable ‘bragging’. - Sponsorship: addressing the informal network issue, and ensuring multicultural women can equip others to speak out for them, making it easier for others to help them out. - Strategic networking: moving multicultural women to the next level by equipping them with mentors, sponsors, who can make an introduction and open the door for them. - Authentic Leadership: how multicultural women can understand what is unique about them and leverage it for their organisation. 

    We discuss her book and the importance of using science to help teams be more resilient. The focus here is on the little things that we do that makes us more resilient immediately. As Bonnie shares, discomfort doesn’t only occur for white leaders who want to sponsor multicultural women, it happens both ways, even those who are from similar cultures feel uncomfortable due to expectations to stand in line and to adhere to cultural norms, almost more than the white male. As such, leaders need to move beyond discomfort and be intentional about providing support for multicultural women and working towards building an inclusive environment. 

    Lastly, Bonnie speaks on the internal struggles she faced when she made the decision to specialise in helping multicultural women become leaders. This was primarily based on her desire as a businesswoman to succeed on a broader stage, and not on a small market that focuses on multicultural women. Despite this, her sincere determination to help those like her is evident through her work, helping forge the path for multicultural women who are stuck at the entry rungs in their career due to their ethnicity and gender.

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

    43 min
  • 29. DEI Mythbusters with Paolo Gaudiano

    “Let’s not focus on just the number of representations, let’s focus on creating an environment where everyone has an equal chance to succeed, the numbers will then work themselves out. We would truly have the best people in the best positions instead of advantaged privileged white men who might have advanced in their career because of privilege they didn’t even see, and that leads to the disparities that we see.” 

    In Episode 29, I am joined by Paolo Gaudiano, Co-Founder and President at Aleria Research Corporation, and Chief Scientist at Aleria, to debunk the myths commonly associated with DEI. He is on a mission to help organisations become more inclusive, diverse, equitable, and successful. Notwithstanding, he is Chair and co-organizer of the annual Diversity and Inclusion Research Conference, and also writes about DEI on Forbes. Paolo shares the sophisticated simulation he has designed to capture the complex scenarios of organisational life and how bias leads to some inevitable outcomes. We explore the common DEI myths and backlash from majority groups and he explains why the support and investment of leadership is so critical to DEI success. 

    Paolo’s interest in DEI is evident in his career journey, which has spanned over three decades in interdisciplinary research, teaching, entrepreneurship, consulting, public speaking, and writing. Through his work, he noticed that there was a huge gap between the experiences that people described based on their diverse identities and the solutions. Paolo’s passion for DEI is based on his desire to change the way people think of DEI, quantifying the links between individual behaviour and organisational outcomes. Through his research on measuring inclusion, Paolo identified two universal themes: 

    • Respect or the lack thereof is by far the most common issue that causes people to feel uncomfortable and excluded at work. 

    • Women, in all the different types of organisations (global, domestic, small or large) feel more exclusion than men. And this leads to a greater turnover of women and a tendency to ‘truncate their career’. 

    Later in our discussion, he explains, the ‘zero-sum’ mindset gives rise to sentiments whereby the white majority feel that they are being pushed out. Particularly, he advises organisations to steer clear of the obsessive focus on increasing numerical representation of diverse individuals as those individuals will end up leaving when they feel excluded. Instead, there should be a focus on creating an inclusive environment where everyone has an equal chance to succeed. 

    On this basis, he offers advice on why leaders should treat DEI as their number one priority. As he rightly explains, leaders should focus on understanding the impact of diversifying their human assets, they should know how to optimise it to get more efficiency out of it, as they do other assets in their company, such as financial and marketing assets. Lastly, Paolo speaks on the unique discomfort he faces when trying to balance the viewpoints of those who share similar diversity characteristics to him but have different views on DEI, to those who aren’t but are being faced with injustice. He explains trying to ensure that he addresses the issue in a way that will acknowledge the difficulties of each side, but also making them aware of the other perspective in a way that is not shaming or challenging their beliefs. 


    Links:

    Paolo can be found on LinkedIn at Paolo Gaudiano.


    For more from Aleria, visit their website at: https://www.aleria.tech 

    For more from Aleria Research Corporation, visit their website at: https://www.aleriaresearch.org 



    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.

    46 min
  • 28: DEI and the Art of Localisation with Claire Brody

    “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.

    36 min
  • 27. The Inner Work of Inclusive Leadership with Rose Cartolari

    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.

    39 min
  • 26. Silencing the Echo Chambers with Sámi Ben-Ali

    “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.

    44 min
  • 25. The Power of Truth with Devi Virdi

    “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.

    39 min
  • 24. DEI: Creating a Holistic Narrative with Geoffrey Williams

    “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.

    44 min
  • 23. Meritocracy or Mirrortocracy? with Kristen Anderson

    “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.

    44 min

About Why Care?

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If you have any form of Inclusion, Diversity and Belonging remit then this is the show for you. From thought-provoking conversations about parenting, gender stereotypes and racial inequality through…