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Keri Gilder, CEO, Colt leads this collaboration project which focuses driving diversity and inclusivity industry to help accelerate industry transformation and underpin its continued success in the digital economy.
DTWS: Colt CEO now leading Forum’s Diversity & Inclusion Council
As the new chair of TM Forum’s Diversity & Inclusion Council, Keri Gilder, CEO, Colt, is leading a global collaboration project focused on making the telecommunications industry the most diverse and inclusive industry in order to help accelerate transformation of the industry and underpin its continued success in the digital economy. Gilder was one of the Headliner keynotes who opened TM Forum’s flagship Digital Transformation World Series on October 7. Speaking on a panel with Shankar Arumugavelu and Microsoft, she noted that embracing diversity and inclusion in and organization needs to “led and believed in from the top.”
“The more we can align our business outcomes to diverse environments … the better off that we are going to be,” she said.
While diversity and inclusion usually find themselves lumped together under one umbrella, Gilder stressed that companies should actually separate diversity from inclusion. “We include those in the same sentence all the time, but they are very different,” she said.
For example, when considering inclusion, Gilder said that a challenge companies will soon face is how to successfully combine a hybrid remote/office workforce to avoid a feeling of “presentee-ism.” This is all-together different than building a workforce to embrace LGBTQ and religion but nevertheless important. “We have to be thinking about things like this going forward,” she said, adding, “Maybe [Covid-19] helped people realize how important inclusion is when we take out gender, when we take out race, religion, LGBTQ … that’s when innovation happens.”
As part of this mission, the Council is collaboratively developing a suite of tools and knowledge, including a new Diversity & Inclusion Maturity Model, which helps guide businesses on improving their diversity practices and provides best practices and benchmarks. In addition, the Council recently released “Inspiring innovative teams through diversity and inclusion,” a research report that takes a close look at the state of diversity and inclusion in the industry. The report features interviews with executives from the member companies that are leading the diversity and The Council has also launched a Rising Stars program that recognizes the industry’s next generation of diverse industry leaders, their professional development and the impact and importance of mentoring. Below are the four Rising Stars announced this week during the Forum’s Digital Transformation World Series:
“Improving diversity and inclusion in the tech and telecom sector is a difficult challenge but one that is vital to the future of our industry,” said Steffen Roehn, Expert Vice President, Bain & Company and TM Forum’s Chairman of the Board of Directors. “The industry will not be able to move forward at the right pace without a culture of innovation that includes diverse mindsets and inclusive practices. I want to thank the Council’s outgoing chair, RacheI Higham, for her hard work and dedication in getting the program off the ground, and I’m delighted to see Keri take the helm of this crucial initiative.”
Added Nik Willetts, CEO, TM Forum, “Diversity and inclusion can no longer be seen as simply a ‘nice to have’ or ‘the right thing to do’. They are critical to our industry remaining relevant and having the creativity to thrive in the years ahead.” Watch the Digital Transformation World Series now, live and on-demand! Not registered for DTWS yet? There’s still time. Join 12,000 of your peers online through November 12. CSPs receive complimentary passes. Sign up here.
