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35: Leading Global Teams in Fast-Paced Environments with Group Vice President of Diversity & Inclusion at Valtech, Sheree Atcheson

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In the dynamic landscape of global leadership, the significance of Diversity and Inclusion strategies cannot be overstated.

This is such an important episode for all leaders - from D&I strategies to the power of listening and alignment, this episode is filled with indispensable value.

Sheree Atcheson is a multi-award winning diversity and inclusion executive, Group Vice President of Diversity & Inclusion at Valtech, keynote speaker and published author. It’s fair to say that Sheree knows her stuff…

We discussed her experiences of leading global teams, why the discovery process is so critical for new leaders in a business and the significance of alignment and collaboration.

This Episode Covers:

  • Leadership, diversity and inclusion in the tech industry
  • Global diversity and inclusion strategies
  • Collaboration and data-driven approaches in D&I work
  • Leading in a global environment with a focus on listening & empowerment

Episode Highlights:

“I work with mostly tech companies, banks and so on technologies and through everything these days, but the real problem I have with a lot of D&I strategies is that they're in technology companies, but they don't use the principles that the technologists use every day. So people find it harder to connect with, as well as understanding actually how you measure it” 07:41 - Sheree Atcheson
“I joined Valtech, about two and a bit years ago now. And when I joined they didn't have this role. All of the roles that I've held have been first time roles for those companies that have never had that person enrol before as well, which is also different. But it meant that they had so many different DNI strategies, depending on the advancement of the country in relation to the government, for example, on legislation that was enforced, depending on cultural values, and etc. Whereas now we have a consistent strategy across everything. We all lay it against the same maturity index. So even though we are working on regional and local nuances, we can still measure and see how people are doing against our group level strategy.” - 12:48 - Sheree Atcheson
“One of the biggest challenges. I think that or I guess misconceptions is a better word that people have when you move into global roles, especially in inclusion and diversity is that you can just lift and shift what you've done at a local level or regional level, and it maps globally. ” 21:06 - Sheree Atcheson
“One of the biggest challenges is that you're creating something that maps globally, but it has to embrace nuance.” 22:43 - Sheree Atcheson
“One of the things that I noticed after the murder of George Floyd was that we saw a lot of people and companies trying to sort of immediately jumpstart ethnicity inclusion, specifically focusing on black folks, for example. But they did so by hosting a lot of like roundtables that required people to stand there or sit there remotely whatever, and say something, but that's not embracing. psychological safety is also very difficult for some folks to do.” 39:03 - Sheree Atcheson

Links & References:

Constellary: https://www.constellaryhq.com/

Suzan Bond: https://www.linkedin.com/in/suzanbond/

Sheree Atcheson (LinkedIn): https://www.linkedin.com/in/nirushika/

Sheree Atcheson: https://www.shereeatcheson.com/