What will your role be?
My role at WiHTL & DiR will see me build on the existing fantastic work that we are doing already as an organisation. I will be supporting the recently-relaunched Inclusion Maturity Curve programme, seeing how we can help even more organisations this year to gather the best quality data to drive and inform their inclusive work practices.

In addition to that, I'll be looking lots at the training we offer to organisations, learning about the existing programmes and making suggestions for new ways to support companies with inclusion, particularly where this relates to wider change management programmes.

Also, there's lots of opportunity here for networking, and that's something that I'm going to be getting involved in — with a focus on trying to find where we can really develop best practice with current Members and those we are not yet partnering with. We are keen to grow our reach and influence and, having seen that over 60 chief executives have now signed up to our inclusive organisations pledge, we are so well placed to help more businesses and leaders to drive change on inclusion.

What are you looking forward to doing most in the role?

What I'm looking forward to most is supporting organisations with their coaching and mentoring programmes. That's one area I really have a deep passion about, so working with individuals and groups to really support them with some of the behavioural, attitudinal and skills-based competencies that we need for EDI — particularly now because it is coming under a lot of challenge and we need to ensure that people are upskilled with the right tools to be able to support their journeys.

Someone who inspires me…

This is a very difficult question for me to pick just one because there are so many people out there in our sector and outside of our sector, who are inspirational! However, I’ll go for Paulo Freire, who wrote a book, The Pedagogy of the Oppressed. He speaks about how we need to really ensure that people from the majority and from the minority — when they start to engage with each other — they both commit to a transformation process.

I really appreciate that because often we can find within the equality, diversity and inclusion agenda that there's a bit of a ‘them and us’ — it's about how other people need to change and I don't need to change. There may be some truth in that because we understand that disadvantaged groups face lots of challenges, and rightly they're looking for the change to come outside from society, from people, from powerful leaders. I believe though that we're all powerful and Paulo Freire argues that same point. He comes from the position that everybody has assets, so everybody has gifts and everybody has skills. So how can we nurture those from a place of equality? And how can we bring about change through that partnership? When I started to read work from Paulo Freire, it really inspired me to think about my approach, and how I can apply this to the work I do.

A fact that might surprise people about me is...

A surprising fact about me is that I'm a bathroom Indian classical singer and I'm a lover of music! So whenever there's an opportunity for me, I want to engage with different music - not only Indian classical - I also grew up with lots of reggae music when I lived in the West Midlands. There's lots of different influences that have had an impact on me on a musical and creative level. People are surprised that I also had an opportunity to sing with a Bob Marley tribute band on a few occasions. But please don't ask me to demonstrate any notes!

What are the top inclusion priorities for organisations?

For me, it's about dealing with the current backlash. How can we use any negative press for EDI practice to better harness best practice? Throughout history, we’ve had to challenge inequalities. If we look for example at women's rights, if we look at race equality, if we look at disability rights or LGBTQ+ - all of these different strands of diversity. We know that diversity means being inclusive of all people, but we know too that the agendas have never been without challenge. It is our job to harness that energy and attention and produce the best products, the best services and the best leadership for people we're engaging with. I see a real opportunity to lean into that and really think about how we can be opportunistic. So, thinking about how we can navigate that conversation — how we build more saliency with people, how we give leadership the opportunity to be real role models for this agenda.

In addition, there's a huge opportunity now to think about intersectionality and the nuances and how different strands connect across each other. I feel that the agenda is about all groups engaging with equity, diversity and inclusion - bringing all voices together to ensure everyone is given an opportunity and safe space to talk - and to benefit from the power of this collective.

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