AN INTERVIEW WITH ADAM DUBOW, SENIOR VICE PRESIDENT, CHIEF COMPLIANCE AND ETHICS OFFICER
Why was it critical for your organization to be involved in the Gender Parity Collaborative?
Bristol-Myers Squibb is committed to fostering diversity and inclusion. One of the ways we show that commitment is through our People and Business Resource Groups (PBRGs). The Bristol-Myers Squibb Network of Women (B-NOW) is our largest PBRG with 5,500 members worldwide, including more than 1,000 men.
B-NOW has a full-time leader dedicated to driving its mission to embrace gender diversity and achieve gender parity. We’ve made this investment because we understand the importance of developing and advancing women, not only because it’s the right thing to do, but also because it makes good business sense. Having diverse perspectives sets us up to meet our business objectives, which ultimately center on bringing important medicines to patients around the world.
Similarly, the Gender Parity Collaborative is a way to accelerate our goal of achieving gender parity within Bristol-Myers Squibb. Through the Collaborative, we’re able to learn from and contribute to a cross-company dialogue on how we can work together to make the changes needed so that women and men have the same opportunities for success and representation at all levels in the workplace.
As one of your organization’s leaders, why are you personally committed to advancing gender parity in the workplace?
My commitment to advancing gender parity is twofold – both personal and professional.
Personally, my wife works full time as a lawyer, and I have two daughters, one in college and one in high school. Anything that I can do to create an equitable environment for them – and for every other woman in the workplace – is critically important. My daughters are confident and outspoken, and when they start their careers, I want to ensure those qualities are as valued, appreciated and respected as they would be in a male colleague.
Professionally, we know that a gender-balanced workforce is good for business. It’s well-documented that companies with the most gender-diverse leadership see higher return on sales, generate greater return on investment and outperform less diverse companies. I want to do everything we can to be successful. Gender parity is an important component of that success.
How does your participation in the Collaborative complement what you are already doing?
The Collaborative complements our current initiatives by giving us a forum to share learnings and come together with other leaders who are struggling with the same issues. The reality is that none of us have all the answers, because if we had all the answers, we would have reached gender parity by now. And yet, we still have a long way to go as an industry.
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