Our Women in Transformation events found great success and a loyal following which was unfortunately disrupted due to the pandemic. That’s why we wanted to make a splash when it returned. We’ve reached out to our network of inspirational business leaders to form a panel of speakers to help guide our conversations on the day.

Each of them has different backgrounds, perspectives, and experiences to draw on, so you can expect frank and eye-opening discussions on important topics like gender and racial diversity in the workplace and social mobility.

We asked our speakers about their motivations for speaking at Women in Transformation and what they hope people will take away from the event. Keep reading to find out why each of them are so passionate about diversity and inclusion and what they bring to the dialogue.

Anna Fleming – Chief Operating Officer, AXA Retail

Anna has a background as a solicitor, so she has history working and succeeding in a male-dominated field. However, her motivation for pushing for more diversity stems from research showing that diverse teams with different and complementary skills deliver more value. Aside from that, Anna wants the teams she works with to reflect the world around her.

She is particularly passionate about driving diversity forward in industries like insurance and technology, which are still very homogenous at the upper levels. How? Anna believes that it starts with being honest about our own biases and ensuring that enough women and people of colour are coming through the pipeline in the first place. In practice, that means demanding diverse shortlists and not just talking about diversity without taking action. That’s why Anna hopes people will come away from this event with useful insights and practical support.

Pooja Bagga – Technology Director, Royal Mail Group

With over 20 years of experience Pooja has made her mark as a senior leader in technology-driven transformation, working with the likes of Royal Mail, TFL and British Airways. She is known as an influential trusted go-to person by C-Level sponsors & board executives to lead large-scale business and technology transformation.

Pooja leads with a visionary approach embedding next generation solutions continuously contributing to company success and creating high performing teams. Pooja is the Executive Sponsor for the D&I network at Royal Mail moving the dial towards creating a more inclusive and diverse workforce.

Tavier Taylor – CIO | CTO | Board Advisor

Tavier has experienced first-hand the lack of diversity in change and transformation. As she rose the ranks to board level, she noticed that there were fewer and fewer women, and even fewer, or no, people of colour. Although Tavier didn’t let this get in the way of her career, she recognises that action needs to be taken in order to level the playing field.

Within transformation, Tavier believes that it’s harder to deliver change for companies when there is lack of representation. Tavier says it’s harder to motivate employees to embrace change when they don’t see people who look like them representing the change, so representation at the top level is key. She believes that the first step is including people from diverse backgrounds in the conversation and listening to them with an open mind, and she hopes that decision-makers will leave this event with a plan of action.

Sandra Di Vito – Partner, Moorhouse Consulting

Sandra brings over 20 years of consulting experience to this discussion, and she is a firm believer that diversity of experience and perspectives is key to business success. Within consulting, Sandra has noticed a trend that senior people tend to be highly educated white men, attributing this in part to the competitive sales culture of the industry. Therefore, she believes we need to actively challenge these biases in order to encourage more diversity at senior ranks.

Having attended a Women in Transformation event before, she’s keen to keep championing this topic, believing that collaboration is key to helping organisations progress faster. Sandra acknowledges that diversity and inclusion can be quite an overwhelming topic, so she recommends people start with a few small things to build momentum and get others interested.

Trevor Attridge – CIO, Informa Markets

Trevor is a seasoned CIO and has championed diversity and inclusion for a long time because he believes in fairness should be non-negotiable. He’s faced challenges due to bias in his own career, so he can empathise with those whose obstacles he admits must be much harder to surpass than his own.

Trevor wants to use his position to be a champion for change and help bring greater diversity to the technology industry. He’s also got his eye on wider social mobility issues like ageism and wants to challenge the damaging stereotype that older people are less capable than their younger counterparts. Trevor hopes to use this platform to show people that each of us can make a difference if we embody the change we want to see.

We can’t wait to dive into a discussion about diversity and inclusion in the transformation and change space, and what a great team we’ve assembled to help guide us through it. Keep an eye out once the event has taken place, as we’ll be sharing important clips from the day so that you won’t miss out even if you can’t attend.

Why not have a look at some of our roundups of previous events so you know what to expect? We’ve covered toppling the 3 pillars of bias in your organisation, the opportunity gap in transformation, and the moral and performance case for diversity.