31 - Yemi Akisanya (Global Head of Diversity, Equity & Inclusion, Groupon) on why DEI needs to be a leadership competency

Yemi Akisanya, Global Head of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion at Groupon, joined us on The Modern People Leader. This episode is filled with nuggets of gold. Yemi talks about why DEI needs to be a competency that every leader has, why your company needs to build a business case for DEI, and why you should focus on building a strategy instead of racking up a couple of quick wins. Timestamps: defining diversity, equity, and inclusion (20:50), the question you need to answer: why DEI now? (28:35), building a business case for DEI and making it more than a moral case (30:07), executives need to build the leadership competencies related to DEI (38:24), DEI programming CANNOT be effective if the CEO doesn’t have the competency to drive it (43:23), DEI is a cultural transformation (48:27), socializing your DEI data as a corporation (51:53), building an actual DEI strategy > quick wins (53:23), and shifting DEI from programming to leadership competencies (58:50). If you have any feedback for the MPL podcast or would like to connect, don't hesitate to reach out on LinkedIn: Daniel Huerta and Stephen Huerta