Get the Future you want is the tagline that underlines Capgemini’s global values. It is hard to imagine how that can be realised in numerous countries across the globe and how this is driving diversity & inclusion to new levels here in Australia, so we asked the team.

It is underpinned by the Global Gender equity Index a measure which provides a baseline for Capgemini to overachieve against. It enables each country to measure up to the standards required within the country and provides a roadmap of what needs to be worked on and changed. For instance, when first introduced in Australia the Capgemini standard of equal pay was evident but not embedded in all the relevant policies and procedures.

The vision of getting the future you want means that each employee is responsible for driving their own career. At any stage, they can submit a business case for promotion. One of the gender issues that was highlighted was that women do not go for promotions unless they tick all the boxes, this meant that many were holding back. To overcome this the company-initiated training & support to encourage women to “lean-in to discomfort and take risks”. Today, this has seen a vast improvement in the number of women progressing.

Janani D’ Silva, who has been with Capgemini for thirteen years and the tech industry for 22 years has seen the evolution within the company. She is Head of Culture, Engagement, and Early Careers. She fell into her current role through the work and results she was achieving, but she says had it been advertised with a full description online, she wouldn’t have applied, thinking she wouldn’t be able to do it because she has a young family. With encouragement and role models such as her manager, the HR Director for AUNZ – Maria Dimopoulos, and the AUNZ MD, Kaylene O’Brien, she took the job and thrives in this space, despite her initial concerns. Today she is an amazing role model for flexibility and getting the future you want. Working hybrid with no stipulation on mandatory days in the office, she’s able to work the needs of her work and family’s needs, delivering to the demands of her multifaceted role. She says women can indeed have it all, it comes down to letting your feet do the talking and finding an employer that is truly committed to breaking systemic constructs of what a workplace needs to be like and relegating the ‘9-5 in the office’ workday to the past.

Another benefit of getting the future you want is the company’s attitude to flexibility and family allowing many team members to work from home or work compressed hours to maintain the balance they want.  Caitlin Spence who leads the Women at Capgemini groups works a 4-day week; it is compressed to allow her the time to look after her family.

Capgemini is like other tech-based businesses facing an ongoing shortage of training women. In an effort to improve this, the company has developed an initiative, Relaunch, to help women, women with a trans experience and nonbinary people who wish to transition into Technology Consulting or are returning from a Career Break. If they have any skills even up to 10 years in the past, they will be eligible. It is an intense 3 months of upskilling in new technology & business processes; followed by a week of shadowing. To date, 17 women have completed the program and have been employed back into similar roles. One candidate almost did not apply because “I felt obsolete after just one year out of the tech industry, so I think my biggest challenge was the fear that even if I re-skilled I would still be considered unemployable.”

They offer an award-winning graduate program that is known for recruiting a gender-balanced intake. When asked, Janani D’Silva explains that they do not use a quota system mandating a certain number of female hires, instead, they have ‘targets with bite’, provide unconscious bias training, ensure a gender-balanced interview panel, and education for interviewers to not look for culture fit, but for culture add, challenge their beliefs on what ‘good’ looks like and know that diversity of thinking and backgrounds is critical to the successful tech solutions they as teams co-create with clients.

To help individuals have the working environment they need the team at Capgemini is thinking of everything. They want all their team members to feel safe, valued and respected. What does this really mean? Most offices offer a combination of non-gender bathrooms, breastfeeding rooms and faith rooms. To accommodate the new hybrid work they have collaboration spaces and quiet workspaces, private offices and open areas.

For those individuals going through a gender change, they are given additional leave to allow them time off,  their team members are trained to be respectful and they are gifted $2000 to spend on a new wardrobe.

It would seem like they have all bases covered. However, the team see it as a work in progress with baby steps to try out new initiatives to ensure the whole team feel safe and respected. They still need to drive gender equity to balance the number of female mid-level leaders but with the Gender Equity Index data, their vision and processes, there is no doubt that they are well on their way to success.

If you would like to learn more about the other finalists then click this link.

All too often, when you hear about inspirational leadership, you mostly hear from those naturally comfortable with shining a spotlight on their achievements.

Not so with Salesforce’s Angelica Veness, a Manager of Solution Engineering and recently a finalist in the Business in Heels Gender Equity Awards. Angelica is well-known for striving to ensure her team is clearly heard and widely recognised for their united and individual achievements.

Not content to support only the individual, she takes a holistic approach to management by identifying knowledge gaps or ideas that would benefit the entire team.

Angelica believes building your brand is essential to career development and progression. But not long ago, she discovered that several women in her team were uncomfortable with seeing themselves as a ‘brand’, believing it to mean they needed to shout from the rooftops about the great work they were doing. Instead, Angelica reframed it as being about being more intentional and knowing how best to influence and lead.

This discovery motivated Angelica to design and organise a bespoke training workshop called “Brand Building. What’s your brand, why is it important, and how do you build it?” Through this course and Angelica’s leadership, individuals could clearly understand the benefits of seeing themselves as a brand to improve their reputation and learn tangible ways they could start to build it.

Angelica has been in the technology industry for the last two decades, and in that time, she has been one of the few, if not only, women in the room. Today she loves her job at Salesforce. It’s the first time she’s worked for a female CEO, with Pip Marlow as the CEO of ANZ and ASEAN at Salesforce, and for a company that actively strives to give women a place and voice at the table. Angelica says, “It’s incredibly motivating and inspiring to see women at all levels within Salesforce, as it gives me the courage and belief that someday I could be there too.”

Salesforce believes everyone should feel comfortable bringing their authentic selves to work. To support this, Salesforce employees have built several internal equality groups centred around shared life experiences or backgrounds and their allies. Their mission is to make equality a reality inside Salesforce and in the communities where we live and work.

One of these groups is the Salesforce Women’s Network (SWN), of which Angelica is a dedicated member. SWN’s mission is to build gender equality and foster inclusion in the workplace and beyond through empowering, supporting, and investing in Salesforce’s global community for women and their allies. Through SWN, Angelica mentors emerging leaders: “I find it incredibly rewarding to give back to the community, particularly through internal career mentoring and some of our not-for-profit partners such as Thread Together, Dress for Success and Good 360.”

In addition to her involvement with SWN, Angelica leads the Women in Solution Engineering (WISE) group, a specialised community of women in solutions and their allies to inspire diverse perspectives that attract and amplify talent, incubate ideas, and create opportunities. With WISE, she’s coordinated several Salesforce employee volunteering days (Salesforce offers employees an above-average VTO benefit of seven business days each year.)  Recently, Angelica’s team supported Thread Together, a not-for-profit that saves last season, new clothing from large retailers which would otherwise go to landfill and provides it to people in need.

A big focus of Salesforce is education for underserved communities. Salesforce is a longtime partner of Schools Plus, an organisation that supports teachers in delivering programs to help children facing disadvantaged success at school. It’s also a partner of CareerTrackers, an organisation that creates pathways for Indigenous young Australian adults to attend and graduate from university and gain industry experience. In addition to financial support for these organisations, Salesforce leaders like Angelica volunteer to run programs, such as Design Thinking, in a fun and entertaining way (think Zombie Apocalypse scenario games!).

Angelica has drawn a great deal of inspiration from Pip Marlow’s leadership. One of Pip’s core leadership goals is to create a space of psychological safety so people feel they can speak up and ask her absolutely anything without fear. Angelica is passionate about bringing this energy to her team, and for her, it all starts with open communication. The team sits down regularly to discuss what they want to start, stop and continue, which then becomes a social contract outlining the best way to thrive as a team.

As our conversation draws to a close, one message Angelica wants to ensure others hear is the value of your tribe. For Angelica, this means finding mentors you can trust and talk openly to. Gone are the days of women needing to compete for only one spot at the table. We need to be working harder to lift each other up.

If you would like to learn more about the other finalists then click this link.

Divya Pasupuleti, Executive Manager at nbn, has been working extensively throughout her career to champion gender equity across countries. As a female from a culturally and linguistically diverse background, she is extremely passionate about creating equal opportunities for women in the Australian workforce. So, it comes as no surprise then that she was a finalist in the Gender Equity Awards – Recalibrate.

For Divya, it all started in India with her father, a doctor, who instilled the value of giving back to the community. He was known for providing support to those less fortunate and in need, through free medical camps. With such a great role model in her life, it was only natural that Divya would want to contribute too. While at school, she took the initiative to work for ‘Divya Disha’, a Not-for-Profit organisation (NFP) with UNICEF, that championed women’s and children’s rights, especially those from socio-economically diverse backgrounds. Despite her young age, it was not long before she became president of the South India chapter.

“Back in my home country, India, I was very fortunate to be brought up in an environment where equality and diversity was celebrated, and I was actively encouraged by my parents to challenge biases, call out discrimination and practice active inclusion,” says Divya. However, she quickly realised that most of her childhood peers did not have the same liberal upbringing, many of whom were encouraged to marry at a young age or deprioritise higher education and a career to meet societal expectations. At a young age, Divya recognised the need for gender equality in society and the workplace and the importance of advocating through equity. For the past two decades, this has been her driver and she has worked extensively to champion gender equity across countries.

In Australia, her early career was with a leading telecommunications organisation, where she was often in a male dominated environment and the only female in the room. When faced with challenging situations and inappropriate behaviours coming with inequity and biases, she recalls some of the early advice she was given at the time was ‘learning to deal with it’. Whilst this advice did help her build the courage and confidence to manage situations as they occurred, she says “it requires much more than women ‘dealing with it’ to fix the problem – it needs colleagues and managers calling out biases, it needs education and awareness, and efforts of the entire work ecosystem”. Divya notes that whilst, these days, there is much more awareness and support in the workplace, there is still a lot more to be done to ensure a fair, respectful, and inclusive playing field for women across all organisations and industries.

Divya has had a stellar career to become an Executive Manager at nbn with responsibility for Strategy, Performance and Operations for Business Segment. She reflects that she sometimes has faced imposter syndrome, wondering if she deserves the professional success and achievements she has experienced, or if she just happened to be ‘in the right place at the right time’. She notes that her imposter syndrome doesn’t stem from a lack of confidence in her abilities but rather from years of exposure to systemic practices and conditioning. “When you don’t often see culturally and linguistically diverse women like yourself thriving or succeeding in a career path you’re on, you tend to question if you belong there,” says Divya. This is why she strongly believes in the power of role modelling, mentoring and hearing the stories of other women who have faced similar challenges. Today, she feels more confident in her ‘skin’, but it has taken several years to achieve this.

For many women of diverse cultural backgrounds, she notes there is often a ‘double-glazed glass ceiling’ in the workplace, which can be doubly hard to crack. For this reason, she actively works to champion diversity and mentors to build confidence in other women. At nbn, Divya leads the Events & Opportunities pillar for nbn Equals, a committee sponsored by Executive leaders to support gender strategy and equity in the workplace. Divya has delivered multiple events within nbn, supporting employees on critical topics including career progression, mentoring, and support at important life stages, such as parental leave and busting the stigma around it. She is very proud of the ‘When She Talks’ program she started that shares unfiltered stories of women’s career journeys, which she personally finds enlightening and uplifting.

With a mission to give back to her community, Divya lobbied on the board of the not-for-profit organisation, Arts Assist, with the goal to make it more diverse. It was largely a homogenous group when she joined, with less than a quarter female representation. She soon became Secretary of the Board and has been responsible for leading the strategic direction of the organisation. Divya spearheaded several initiatives, but closest to her heart is the one to diversify the board, resulting in more than 50% gender representation. She is very proud that the current board is not just gender diverse but includes diverse industry experience, cultural backgrounds and lived experiences. “It definitely was not easy and required having many challenging conversations over the last four years,” she says. Having a diverse board has enabled Arts Assist to access and disburse grants to local artists and community groups, ensuring multicultural groups are represented.

Divya continued to take on more board and advisory roles.  As the Non-Executive Director for Project Management Institute (PMI Melbourne), she is very proud of the initiative she delivered in 2021, where project managers were connected to charities and NFPs in Victoria, on a pro-bono basis to deliver community critical projects. More than 1,500 hours of volunteering were allocated to the amazing work of charities such as Wildlife Victoria, Leprosy Mission, Humour Foundation and Cultural Infusion, resulting in enormous community benefits. In her role as an Advisory Committee Member for the National Association of Women in Operations (NAWO), she provides advice to the Board and Executive team on strategy, especially from an intersectionality lens.

When asked what is next, Divya is excited to be playing a pivotal role in leading and governing the 2022-2025 Gender Equity Strategy for nbn. She is a strong advocate of the culture nbn has built to foster a diverse, equitable and inclusive workplace that helps its people bring their whole selves to work. She is proud of the work nbn is doing to be a leader in the Australian landscape for Diversity, Equity and Inclusion in the workplace.

There is no doubt that Divya will seek out more community involvement, as clearly the power of giving back is what motivates her. Her advice to others who want to make a difference? “Don’t try to fit in, be proud of being different and own it.”

If you would like to learn more about the other finalists then click this link.