DEI Emerging Leaders Award Recipient
Why is DE&I important to you?
DE&I is important to me because it’s been the core catalyst of my professional development in finance. It’s also the profound inspiration for my commitment to ensuring diverse voices have a say in both little and big ways. Diverse employees champion diverse hiring, fostering an inclusive environment that in turn powers a more robust and resilient employee base. A lack of diversity and inclusion on a team can lead to groupthink driving corporate behavior, which has shown to increase turnover and contribute to a less enjoyable work environment, which I have experienced firsthand. What’s more, recent studies highlight the positive correlation between diversity in leadership and superior financial outcomes. This stresses the importance for investors and communities to not only empower people that don’t have the same advantages in life and bring experience to new generations, but also the different backgrounds can bring perspectives and insights a homogenous group cannot. Recognizing and expanding diversity in the workplace is not only a social and moral imperative, but it’s also a strategic approach that can cultivate holistic financial success. Finance as a whole is moving towards a deeper understanding of the importance of diversity and entities are taking actions to reflect and improve their own practices. Fortunately, I’m now not only in a position to drive change, but empowered to do so by my employer as we continue to elevate diverse employees and experiences in finance.
What do you wish people would understand when it comes to DE&I work?
DE&I work from all market participants is attempting to take a philosophy and make it concrete through policies, plans and KPIs. So much of DE&I work can be quantified and we can now prove that DE&I actions have positive, quantifiable impacts on employee turnover and financial outcomes amongst other benefits. What all these concrete manifestations of DE&I ideas can’t capture is the day-to-day impact DE&I initiatives can have on people in the current workplace. We cannot quantify the positive impact that feeling included in the workplace, seeing diverse employees in position of power, being given the opportunity to grow and thrive despite your background, can have on the future impact of individuals as they go out into the world and can speak truthfully about their experiences and inspire future generations to participate in this broadened world of advancement opportunities. DE&I work is not linear and in today’s political environment it is not always defended, making the work we are doing all the more important to ensure these benefits continue to be realized.