These CEO champions continue to advance women in their organisations at every level across the leadership pipeline, particularly in the executive ranks—demonstrating their commitment to doubling down on diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) in the midst of a global pandemic and turbulent economy.
A new report called Prioritizing Equity at a Pivotal Moment: The Catalyst CEO Champions For Change report says women represent 27.9% of executives at champion companies, compared to 23% among their global peers.
The document highlights actions companies can take, such as pinpointing their organisation’s greatest areas of opportunity to advance women, particularly women identifying with under represented ethnic or racial groups.
Other actions include creating customised solutions to foster equitable advancement, such as flexible work options and sponsorship programmes and tracking and measuring progress against defined goals.
Granite CEO Kyle Larkin and more than 70 other Champion CEOs pledge to advance women across ethnic and racial groups into leadership roles. A subset of champion companies provided metrics on promotions, revealing that these companies promoted women at nearly equal rates to men in 2020. Furthermore, the group promoted women at slightly higher proportions than men into senior leadership positions.
Larkin says: “Granite is dedicated to ensuring that women have opportunities to lead, and we believe that the more we can do to include women in leadership, the stronger our company will be. The goals of Catalyst CEO Champions for Change align with our internal goal to increase women in leadership at Granite and in our industry.”
Catalyst president & CEO Lorraine Hariton says: “We applaud Granite and Kyle, along with the other Catalyst Champion CEOs and their organisations for their continued commitment to DEI initiatives through the challenges of the pandemic. It’s critical that we continue to develop the leadership pipeline for women, particularly women of colour, if we’re going to see significant gains to build equitable and inclusive workplaces for women.”
