Diversity and Inclusion in the Workplace: Gender Equality and Equity

Diversity and inclusion in the workplace is imperative for a sustainable, competitive and innovative company and society at large. Diversity also goes beyond the outward perception of a company – it includes how the internal structures work and signal the value systems of an organization’s management or leadership team.

Diversity and Inclusion in the Workplace: Gender Equality and Equity

In the wake of international women’s day, celebrated on the 8th of March, we will look at how gender is incorporated into diversity metrics. It is important to acknowledge that gender diversity is more than just men and women. Moreover, even though Norway is positioned well with regards to the inclusion of women, there is more to be done here and abroad to include the LGBTQI+ community, minority groups and people of colour.

Once again we will look at both equality and equity. In a previous session we learnt that equality ensures that everyone has the same resources, whereas, equity mandates that resources are distributed based on the needs of the recipients. In this conversation we will look at how a history of gender discrimination requires attention and a conscious allocation of resources so that our gender diverse community is truly included within our workplaces.

Speakers

Astrid Sundberg

Astrid is Chief HR Officer at Shortcut, a fast-growing tech company that produce apps. Given her background in innovative, hyper-growth companies, she’s a pioneer of the employee experience with a particular passion for diversity & inclusion, employer branding, culture and wellbeing.

Starting off her career at BBT, (now integrated into Randstad), she has 25 years experience within the field of human resources and leadership, specialising in STEM sector recruitment. Her biggest strength is being an integrator who helps create and grow workplace communities that cultivate a sense of belonging and purpose.  Astrid is a positive advocate of workplace diversity for understanding, accepting, and valuing differences between people as well as an ally for gender equality. Astrid is a Google certified #IAmRemarkable facilitator – a workshop empowering women and underrepresented groups within the workplace and beyond.

Chisom Udeze

Chisom is an Economist and entrepreneur who holds multiple undergraduate and postgraduate degrees. She is Nigerian and has lived and worked in six countries across three continents. In addition to actively building and driving growth at her companies, Chisom works as a consultant for intergovernmental organizations and SMEs across industry sectors. She is highly skilled in areas such as strategy, research, project design and execution, data analysis, and monetization. She is a fearless advocate for diversity, opportunity, and inclusion across social, economic, political, and professional lines. She believes in accountability and actionable processes, and that our words have no value if our actions contradict them.

Moderator

Hyacinth Walters-Olsen

Hyacinth is a seasoned professional with a wealth of knowledge and experience from her varied roles in senior management positions across several industries, over the past 20+ years. The key focus area of these roles has been in developing customer relationships and people/team/business development. Hyacinth is highly adaptable and has strong interpersonal competence, cognitive flexibility, has great attention to detail and is emotionally intelligent. She is a talented leader whose main passion is developing people.

Chisom Udeze

Founder of Diversify, Diversify Consult, HerSpace & The Annual

Chisom is an Economist, a Diversity, Equity, Inclusion and Belonging (DEIB) Strategist, and a 3 times founder of impact driven companies. She has over 14 years of experience working with organizations like the European Commission, The United Nations, ExxonMobil and The Economist Group. Chisom is analytical and a data enthusiast. She is passionate about interrogating the cross-sectoral relationship between society’s inhabitants, resources, production, technology, distribution and output. She efficiently and effectively unlocks complex systems, interprets data, forecasts socio-economic trends and conducts research.

Having lived and worked in 7 countries across 3 continents, she is highly adaptable to different circumstances and people, and thrives in uncertain environments.

As the founder of Diversify and Diversify Consult, Chisom and her team work with companies, institutions, governments and civil society to develop sustainable DEIB strategies and embed measurable diversity and inclusion initiatives in the workplace and society. In addition, in 2022, Diversify launched the Diversify Nordics Summit, the largest conference in the Nordics that gathers cross-sectoral stakeholders to amplify DEIB in the Nordics and beyond.

In 2020, she founded HerSpace, a diverse and inclusive co-creation community for all genders, with particular focus on women and non-binary people. In 2022, HerSpace launched HerTech, Women in Tech incubator, for women-led companies, with a focus on the inclusion of diverse founders. 

Chisom is a thought-leader in DEIB and a passionate advocate for mental health and wellness. She writes often on DEIB and justice related topics, some of her work is published on Forbes.

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