14. D&I as a Positive Business Strategy with Charlotte Cox and Caroline Nankinga

“I am thoroughly delighted – and feel sad almost when I have a big cheer inside – when on the screen pops up a senior female executive from another organisation. I get a bit giddy. That just shows we’ve come a long way, but how far we’ve got to come.” - Charlotte In a first for Why Care?, I am joined by two guests Charlotte Cox, President EMEA Pentland Brands and Pentland’s D&I Manager, Caroline Nankinga. Pentland Brands specialises in sportswear, with a number of well-known active sports brands underneath it including Speedo, Berghaus, Canterbury, Mitre, Kickers and Lacoste to just name a few! Charlotte and Caroline join me to discuss a range of topics surrounding the internal D&I of a global company, and the external D&I of designing products and marketing campaigns for a diverse and global audience. As always, we open the conversation talking about what D&I means to Charlotte and Caroline and how it has impacted their journey so far. Caroline describes her experience of growing up in a multi-cultural city like London but still feeling very isolated as a minority person at school, university and the early stages of her career. Charlotte shares her own journey as a woman in corporate Britain. When travelling for business, she has often found herself as the only woman in the room. We then discuss how Charlotte and Caroline’s stories, and my own, have a connection of ‘onlyness’ – the alienation of feeling like the only one in the room who has your characteristics. We discuss what it is like to be a female business leader, and how important it is to use your own experiences as a reference when dealing with others. But equally important is gathering different perspectives, as your experiences may not be universal and may not necessarily lead to inclusion. Charlotte continues this conversation to talk about how leaders must learn to recognise privilege and use it to be an ally and uplift others. She goes on to talk about how inclusive leadership requires effort to understand people, and if you make this effort you and your organisation will reap the benefits of an inclusive workforce. We then connect D&I at Pentlands to Covid-19 and how people have had more of a reliance on outdoor activities for their own wellbeing. Charlotte connects this to Pentland’s Positive Business Strategy in taking social responsibility for meeting these new consumer needs. We talk about how brands impact society and how becoming a leading brand means having diverse consumer groups with a variety of characteristics, D&I simply becomes a consumer need. Caroline expands on how this external D&I work by Pentland Brands is supported by internal D&I in the company, for example this year they created a new D&I Squad which contains members from across the company to support Pentland’s D&I roadmap. We go on to discuss the importance of creating bespoke D&I training materials for the organisation. Finally, we close the episode by reflecting on how, despite the negatives of Covid-19, the pandemic has fostered new ways in which we communicate no matter the distance between us, that means global organisations like Pentland Brands now have a greater feeling of unity than ever before. Links You can find Charlotte and Caroline on LinkedIn at: Charlotte Cox | Caroline Nankinga For more from Pentland Brands, visit https://pentlandbrands.com/ or visit their socials below. Pentland’s LinkedIn | Pentland’s Instagram | Pentland’s Twitter