On the heels of a 2018 strategic closed-door meeting at Bristol-Myers Squibb, more than 40 senior executives from the newly established industry consortium the Gender Parity Collaborative convened for their first annual spring Solutions Summit, hosted by one of the Collaborative’s founding members and pharmaceutical industry influential Pfizer.
The Spring Solutions Summit focused on selected actionable solutions for immediate impact.
Speakers and experts included Laurie Cooke, HBA’s president and CEO, outside D&I leaders such as Sodexo, and leading subject matter experts such as the Inclusionary Leadership Group (home of the BetterMan Conference), Catalyst and Diversity Best Practices.
These leaders convened to collectively propel the momentum of the Collaborative and used this collective brain trust to:
- Share best practices and real-life challenges in order to accelerate gender parity within their own organizations
- Develop and foster practical, and tactical applications that will work to accelerate gender parity in their companies
- Identify innovative options that will drive greater systemic changes
At this meeting, the Collaborative focused on two identified key opportunities:
- To create environments which develop, sustain and reward male ally-ship that will help accelerate change;
- To ensure increased accountability at all levels of management by connecting gender diversity results with business goals, compensation and recognition.
Collaborative companies have committed to taking immediate actions on these priorities and will reconvene this fall to continue addressing other identified key priorities to move the gender parity needle further faster in the healthcare and life-science industry.
Solutions Summit host Rod MacKenzie, EVP, chief development officer of Pfizer shared:
“While we are been working to drive change, we are not satisfied. Our internal initiatives and efforts aren’t enough at this point. We’re going to challenge ourselves by examining the data, comparing it with our peers and holding each other accountable for making those numbers rise and generating measurable results.”