Discussing Diversity & Gender Equality with Citi Executives
From your perspective, how does Diversity drive business outcomes?
JC: Our business is about opportunity and risk. And the only way we can strike a rational balance between those two elements of our decision-making is to create more diversity of perspective in our work force. We get closer to that goal by building more diverse teams composed of people with different experiences, genders, nationalities, religions, ethnicities, economic backgrounds and sexual orientations. Effectively harnessing that diversity of perspectives will help us truly explore and realize the full potential of what Citi can offer our colleagues and clients.
TW: We know from research that we need to have at least a 30% cohort of women in the room for our voice to be heard. My commitment is to model the way for others and to demonstrate that when we have diverse and gender-balanced leadership teams, we have better business outcomes. In my business in Citi Private Bank North America, my Leadership Team is 38% women, and we have grown our business year-over-year in the past three years to record highs.
How is Citi working towards enabling economic growth and progress for females?
JC: Our existing Citi Women networks and programs are designed to improve opportunities for women and have contributed greatly to driving our diversity agenda. Still, we have much work to do before we can say that we have meaningfully increased female representation at the firm, especially in senior roles. There are a number of actions we can take that will help us make progress in increasing female representation in senior roles and help us to become the company of choice for talented women interested in building careers in the financial services industry.
TW: It's also very important to have our executive team leading the way in setting the tone at the top. Especially for the Citi Women affinity group, having a man and a woman leading it collaboratively is very powerful! We need more men to actively engage in the conversation, to help design the strategy, and we need to have all Citi Leaders be accountable for achieving our goals. Our business leaders need to keep actively inspiring young women to aspire to senior leadership roles. As we energize more young women to see their unlimited potential for personal and professional growth here, our pipeline for leadership positions will exponentially grow. One of our primary goals is to prepare more women to rise to senior leadership opportunities as they arise in their own career paths.
This year's International Women's Day theme for Citi was "It Takes All of Us." Why is this theme important for you? Why do you support it?
JC: We'll only be successful in reaching our goals if we have total engagement at every level of the organization. For example, the majority of our senior managers are men, so it's going to take leadership from all genders to help us advance our diversity goals. Our leadership team's broad commitment to driving diversity has clarified the degree to which diversity is critical to the overall achievement of our financial targets, and to building a culture that will make us the most respected company in our industry and the most important bank for our clients.
TW: I've been in the corporate world since 1984 and have lived through many interesting and challenging experiences … often as the only woman in the room. Over time, I've learned to use humor, to try to always be my authentic self, to focus on not just meeting but exceeding business goals, and to over the long term build my credibility and persevere. For Citi Women, I hope to take all of the great foundational work we've done since 2006 to create more positive and measurable impact on our support of women and to create better balanced leadership teams. Citi's mission to "enable growth and progress" asks us to become individually and collectively a model of a powerful global company that maintains a strong and unwavering focus on diversity and inclusion as a means of achieving business goals.