This edition of the HR Forum will be a practical discussion on concrete steps that HR can take to increase the presence of women in senior leadership positions.
In the last 10 years there has been great progress in female representation on boards in the UK and Spain (33% in FTSE100 and 34% in IBEX35) , but executive committees lag behind (24% in FTSE100 https://bit.ly/3thKX9o and 18% in IBEX35 https://bit.ly/3mgiYDd) . Many studies show that companies with more women in the C-suite outperform rivals (https://mck.co/3Q4TgPN ), whilst others challenge this simplistic business case and argue that a wider culture change is needed (https://bit.ly/3au3VTR). On June 9th we will debate: what are the stumbling blocks for getting more women into the C-suite and what can HR do?
Monica Hernanz as the Forum’s Chairwoman will moderate the debate among our two fantastic speakers and the forum members:
– Raquel Barrera, Founder of the Diversitas Institute, Diversity, Equity and Inclusion consultant and Board member of the Spanish Chamber, will give us a roadmap for HR to consider in order to promote gender equity in positions of leadership.
– Ana Irusta, Global Director of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion at Santander, has 20 years experience working in diversity initiatives for Santander. She will present Santander’s case study for promoting gender equity and female leadership. Santander has the highest score in the financial sector for Bloomberg Global Gender-Equality Index and the second highest score of all the 418 companies on the index. Gender diversity is one of the initiatives directly supported by the Executive Chair Ana Botín.
The agenda for the meeting will be as follows:
10:30-10:45 Attendee welcome, virtual coffee and introduction to the session and the topic
10:45-11:30 Panel presentations
11:30-12:00 Forum member discussion
Speaker’s biographies:
Raquel Barrera. Born in Barcelona and Londoner at heart, Raquel is an Equity, Diversity and Inclusion Consultant and founder of diversitas institute. Raquel has an Engineering BSc in Telecommunications and a background as Independent Consultant with more than 15 years of experience. She is a leader in Equity, Diversity & Inclusion (EDI) from a Gender perspective, designing and carrying out EDI Plans. This involves an assessment of the organisation’s EDI approach through quantitative and qualitative data, the definition of strategic plans with goals and kpis, the setting up of policies and procedures and the provision of specific training. https://www.linkedin.com/in/raquel-diversitasinstitute/?originalSubdomain=uk
Ana Irusta has 25 years of experience in Santander Group, initially in the branch network for 4 years, followed by 21 years in HR roles as HRBP and Head of HRBPs. She is an economics graduate with a PDD Senior Management Program from IESE Business School. Ana started to work in DEI in 2002, with an initial focus on equal opportunities and work-life balance, when in Spain it wasn’t yet a hot topic and was difficult to get buy-in. Since then, Ana has been linked in one way or another to diversity work and in Feb 2022 she was appointed to the newly created position of Global Head of DEI. https://www.linkedin.com/in/ana-irusta-a6b42825/
Platform: Zoom
