AN INTERVIEW WITH ROCHELLE ROSATO, DIRECTOR, GLOBAL ENGAGEMENT AND BELONGING & DIVERSITY, CPCC, HER/SHE
As the first industry consortium working to accelerate systemic change, what will lead the Collaborative to measurable positive outcomes?
What will lead us to success is the recognition of where each of us are in the journey, including our employee programs like males as allies, women of color, hiring and development initiatives, and scorecard metrics attached to total rewards. We slotted roadmaps through 2020 based upon where we are in the above mentioned goals and highlighted milestones of progress and accountability for the journey ahead. What will lead us to measurable positive outcomes is commitment from senior leaders to make the necessary changes and hold leadership accountable by ensuring the proper processes, tools and operating models are set in place to monitor according to our set schedule.
Of what current company gender parity initiative are you most proud?
We are extremely proud of the programs that align directly to our diversity and belonging goals and our women of color. For example, we sent over 70 (out of ~300) African American employees to Black Enterprise’s Women of Power Summit and the Executive Leadership Council Mid-level Manager Symposium, in addition to other related conferences. We’re excited to see our initiatives generating buzz and awareness for our women of color as we have instituted both event recaps and “teach backs” to the respective business resource groups (BRGs) to share learnings and engage the employee base further.
What makes this consortium unique compared to other initiatives/investments happening in your own organization?
What has been unique about this consortium experience is that each of the participating companies has shown up to the two-day summit meetings with executive representation and thought leadership. We’ve been able to learn a great deal from each other in terms of the problem statements, the internal policies and challenges that have prevented each of us from moving the needle in the various discussed categories and the opportunity areas to make an impact. In a relatively short amount of time, we’ve been provided a structure by which to draft actions and make commitments to take back to our leadership teams. We’ve also created a forum by which we can challenge each other and push for high levels of clarity and accountability measures to collectively agree we will proceed with. We don’t always agree on the approach however the design thinking format allows for idea generation and vetting of priorities to result in final consensus.
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