Series One, Episode Four: Role models vs Real models

Julia: Hello. My name is Julia Streets, and welcome to DiverCity™ Podcast. Today I’m joined by two highly-esteemed guests. The first is Bindi Karia, who joins us with an impressive career in the world of early-stage and growth technology companies. Not only has Bindi worked with early-stage firms themselves, but has also run a number of innovation business units, including Microsoft’s Startup business, which in itself included the Microsoft Accelerator and Microsoft Ventures;  and then also at Silicon Valley Bank.

Today, Bindi sits on a range of advisory boards and understands the world of venture funding and entrepreneurship like few others. It is no surprise that the accolades come thick and fast. Bindi is regularly named an influential women in technology and on the Fintech lists. The Institute of Directors noted her as one of the six most-connected women, and she’s been a finalist in the Asian Business Woman of the Year Awards. Bindi, welcome. Thank you for joining us.

Bindi: Thank you.

Julia: Our second guest is Asif Sadiq, MBE. Asif is the head of Diversity and Inclusion for EY (Ernst & Young), in their Financial Services UK business. Before joining in 2016, Asif was head of the Equality, Diversity, and Human Rights Unit of the City of London Police. He was also former president of the National Association of Muslim Police. He too has earned many, many awards, notably for his work in the community and twice Asif was a finalist of the Police Officer of the Year Award. This year, Asif was awarded the MBE for Services to Policing and Community in the Queen’s Birthday Honours list, and his is also a Freeman of the city of London. Asif, thank you so much for joining us.

Asif: Thank you.

Julia: Out of consideration for that fact that you’ve given your time so generously to join us, we allow all our guests 60 seconds to talk about your own initiatives and your own organisations. Then, after that, we open up the discussion. Asif, let me start with you, your 60 seconds to talk about life at EY.

Asif: Yeah, sure. Thank you. I guess, for me, the key thing is centred around the diversity and inclusion piece at EY. As you’ve mentioned, kindly, I head up the D&I department for Financial Services. I think it’s important just to highlight some of the work that EY is doing in this area. At EY, we’ve run a number of different programs targeting all sorts of different elements of diversity and inclusion. But I think it’s really important to mention the fact that, for us, the key focus at the moment is around inclusion because we honestly believe that we’ve tackled diversity – we’ve understood that people are different. We now want to create a truly inclusive environment where everyone has a sense of belonging and can bring their true, authentic self to work.

Julia: In large organisations, that’s no mean feat, so we’ll definitely be exploring much of that, so thank you. Bindi, you are a very busy woman. We’re lucky to get you, you’re usually on a plane! Tell us about what you’re up to and why diversity and inclusion matters.

Bindi: After many years at Microsoft and Silicon Valley Bank, I left about two years ago to launch my own boutique advisory firm. Just to give you a small pitch about my firm, I look at four pillars of innovation. I look at corporate innovation teams, I look at startups, I look at investors, and I actually look at government and policy. For me, it’s about connecting between each of these four pillars to create commercial success. If an innovation team is building an innovation program or a business unit, like I did in my former job, I’ll help them with that. Startups, I’m joining advisory boards. Investors, I send them good companies and a good deal flow, so really helping make that connection. Government, I sit on two very interesting EU advisory boards, one is the European Innovation Council. Despite Brexit, they do have two British people on there because innovation is so important in this country, and the Startup Europe Advisory Board.

For me, each of those pillars needs to work with the other to create commercial success. In the early days, you’re in the fun throes of entrepreneurship, riding the ups and downs, but I think the one other thing I’ll say is that diversity is hugely important to me. I sat on the Microsoft UK Diversity & Inclusion Board for two years. It was run by the UK MD and his executive team. It’s always been very important to me.

I put my money where my mouth is, so I’m actually sitting on the advisory boards of seven women-founded businesses and counting. I firmly believe that we’ve got to help each other. Then, finally, I’m starting to experiment a bit, where I’m starting to work with high-growth tech startups which are female-founded. We’re doing an experiment where I’m calling myself a ‘tiger advisor’, a bit like a ‘tiger mama’, where I’m helping these companies as they go on the path to Series A and their first financing, so a really important coaching and mentoring role. For me, it’s part of who I am and part of how I structure my business.

Julia: I think, whether you’re from a large organisation like Asif and, particularly, with your sort of policing background as well, or in a smaller organisation trying to interact with those other pillars, if you like, whether that’s policy, funding, and also corporates, is it’s all about success. What drives changes is commercial success. I’m very interested, actually, from your perspective, Asif, to start with, from having come from the world of policing into the corporate world.  What’s particularly impressed you, and where do you think there are shortcomings?

Asif: I think, for me, one of the biggest things is the buy-in in the corporate world around diversity and inclusion. It’s massive. I think that’s largely based on the fact that a lot of large organisations understand the commercial benefits of diversity and inclusion. Whereas, I think, within policing, there were some barriers around understanding how that can be beneficial, although we all know that the communities are very diverse, and we need police forces that reflect that. However, it’s very difficult to put money onto that or how much it’s going to make for the police service, whereas, in the corporate world, there’s a clear direction that, actually, we need to be diverse because it will generate more income for us, and actually, our clients want diversity.

I think the buy-in is very impressive…..that people understand the importance of it. It’s a genuine buy-in as well, so it’s not just that it makes financial sense, but I think that’s a really, really good buy-in to get everyone on board. Then it’s understanding and seeing how they’re going to address the challenges is very, very positive; people are willing to look at how ….. and are willing to listen, which is really encouraging.

Julia: There are two parts to that. One is the corporate appreciation of the value, but the other … you mentioned about the clients are paying attention to this. Bindi, when you work across those four pillars, there’s always a push and there’s a pull for change, so part of it is around organisations saying themselves, “We need to be more diverse.” Is there a drive? Are you seeing the VC world saying…

Bindi: …Absolutely. I think it’s really interesting. I can call out the VCs, and what I’m seeing is you’ve clearly, probably, heard some of the scandals that have been happening in the VC community recently. A lot of it has been around harassment from male partners to younger female founders. What I’m seeing is a lot of VCs, absolutely in the UK community and European community, setting up a code of conduct. They’ve openly published it, and I’ll happily share some of those links with you afterwards, Julia.

Julia: Please, we will put those on the website.

Bindi: Yeah, Forward Partners has actually published it. What they’re saying is we invest in diversity. Diversity is very much a core part of it. I hear anecdotes of male VCs saying, “Actually, Bindi, 40% of our overall portfolio are female-founded businesses. We believe firmly in diversity.” Actually, recruitment now, it’s really interesting where a lot of the VCs that are recruiting younger associates and Padawans, as they say, they’re saying, “We need females. We need more women.” There’s a really proactive approach to VCs recruiting inwards and investing in … I’m seeing that more and more and more, particularly in the last year.

This scandal, in a way, has made the industry step up and create a code of conduct, and more and more … In Silicon Valley that’s happening and absolutely in London. I’ll share some of the open blogs that I’ve seen around that. But it’s happening. Ditto, more and more women are funding businesses just because there’s more of a … There are all-women type of angel groups, such as Angel Academy, or you look at AllBright, which is, I guess, a scheme where they invest in women, and mentor women, and focus on women-founded businesses. I’m seeing that as a trend as well.

Julia: We were talking about this in one of the previous shows in the podcast series and there’s an interesting dynamic.  Are you seeing the talents come through the pipeline? Are you seeing that, actually, in this appetite for change, that, the talent is coming through? Asif, from your perspective of working with some of the younger employees coming through, could you shed some light on how raising the game, generally, on talent is a priority, or not?

Asif: Sure, definitely. Just one last thing on the importance of diversity. When I talked about the commercial business sense, one of the key things, as well, is it’s the different ideas. That’s one of the big buy-ins, that if we have teams which all look the same, are the same gender, same age bracket, we’re not going to have innovative ideas, and that’s going to hold us back as a business. I think that’s really, really important in the commercial side of what we do around D&I.

With talent, we’re seeing that diversity coming in. Within a lot of companies, they’re recruiting a lot of diversity. We’re recruiting different generations, people who want to work differently as well, which is a really interesting piece. So when you look at flexible working, we’re getting these younger people joining who don’t want to work the traditional 9-5, Monday to Friday. It’s about how do we create an environment where they can work the hours they want to work but still we can measure them on output? That’s a really interesting thing because someone like myself, who’s probably of an older generation, I’m still used to the nine to five. It’s about challenging ourselves to give that opportunity to the people who are coming in and want to think differently and work differently.

The talent’s coming in, which is great, and it’s going into a lot of organisations, but I think the key thing now is how do we ensure that talent stays, thrives in that business environment, and progresses? That’s around challenging ourselves as organisations to create an environment where they can be themselves. That goes not just from what I mentioned around flexible working, but it’s about ways of working as well. It’s things like how do they approach emails, which is a very basic thing, but usually when you go into an organisation, there’s a structure around emails. Is that really right? If our clients are changing, our employees are changing, we should allow people to be themselves. Of course, there’s certain skill sets which people will require, and those can’t be taken away. That’s what gives us that edge.

Julia: I’m going to push back slightly, because that’s all good on paper. We hear a lot of people talking about the need for flexible working, the appetite for millennial talent and younger talent to come through, returners to work needing more flexible schemes, et cetera. But for an organisation to actually change its practices requires inspiration from the top, but there’s a middle management layer of people who go, “I’ve been in this business for 20-odd years. It’s my job to deliver performance, and I need to have my team present around me because that’s the way I’ve always worked.” How are you helping that middle management think differently?

Asif: That’s really interesting. I’ll give you just one example around flexible working. One of the things I believe is really important is to encourage men to work flexibly, to create that culture that everyone can take on board and work flexibly because, otherwise, as you rightly said, the problem is that it’s great on paper, but then people come in and they find the environment is of such that they’ll be different if they work flexibly or want to work different hours. If we encourage the majority and the middle management to understand the benefits of this, then we’ll see that change. The other side is…

Julia: How do you do that? Do you say to everybody, “Nobody’s coming into the office this Thursday and Friday. You’ve all got to work remotely, and you’ll see how effective you can be”? What drives that change?

Asif: For us, we need people to work flexibly, firstly, because of how many … We have a hot desk policy, right? We don’t have that many desks for everyone to turn up into the office. Secondly, we work with a lot of clients, but it’s ensuring that, even when people are working with clients, that our clients understand that we work flexibly. It’s having those discussions from the beginning all the way to the end.

Now, from my experience, it works quite well as long as we ensure, within the organisation, that we have that culture going through. We make sure our senior partners work flexibly. We make sure our leadership team works flexibly. Then it’s comfortable for everyone to ask for that flexible working. Now, that can vary from organisation to organisation. I guess my experiences have been the ones that I’ve seen. My previous organisation where I worked, flexible working was introduced, but it was a real barrier.

Bindi: I would counter a lot of that. That’s great, that’s idealistic. I totally agree with you, but in financial services organisations, I think we have a long way to go. I think face time is really important, I think hours are still really important. I think mothers who step out on ‘mat’ leave find it very hard to come back because, quite often, their job, which is legally supposed to be on hold for them, they come back to find it’s a very different job. I think there’s a long way to go. Financial services, I would call out. I don’t have the right stats, but I’m just hearing this anecdotally from a lot of returning mothers.

Interestingly enough, in early October, I was watching BBC News in the morning, the Victoria Derbyshire Show, and there was a whole segment on women returning to work. I can’t quote the exact statistics. I’m sure Julia will pick them up from the recording.

Julia: We’ll try our best.

Bindi: It’s saying that, actually, the number of working women returning to work is decreasing in the last year, and SMBs are struggling because of the costs associated with keeping those jobs open. When you have 6, 8, 10, 12 people in the business, every single role counts. I think there’s still a long way to go. I’m not trying to be negative, what I am saying is there’s an idealism and, absolutely, it has to come from the top, but I do believe there’s a way to go.

Julia: And are you seeing some examples of good practice? Because the great thing about innovation and early-stage businesses is they can immediately think differently.

Bindi: Well, I can call out a couple of great examples of good practice. I’ve got a friend who’s an MD at Accenture, and he took six months paternity leave because he knew his wife really wanted to get back in, so they split the 12 months paternal and maternal leave – six month him, six months her. Accenture was super open to it, and he came back. That, for me, was really interesting, that they’re splitting it between the male and female.

When I was at Microsoft, there were a lot of interesting job shares going on where mothers who were coming back to work were doing two-and-a-half days per week each in a job share, so it involved a lot of coordination, but they’re actually sharing one job 50/50. They were managing teams, so it was difficult, but the team at Microsoft was very, very open to that. So from a corporate perspective, absolutely, I’m seeing that.

Asif: I think a lot of that’s reflecting around a lot of corporates where that’s in place, and interesting you talked about the shared parental leave. I think it’s really important that more men are seen to be taking shared parental leave, but it’s how does the organisation actually encourage that? Interestingly, I’ve got a baby on the way, and I put in for paternity leave because you have to put that in. The next email I got back said, “Have you considered shared parental leave and all the benefits of it?” I thought that was really positive…

Bindi: That’s great.

Asif: … that that’s being encouraged … I’ve only put in for the basic, but you’ve encouraged me, then, to look at this. I’m actually taking shared parental leave now as well. Why I say it’s interesting is because the more men that take it, the more we can make that-

Bindi: Normal.

Asif: Normal, exactly. And then everyone feels comfortable. Then it’s not felt that you can’t take this and it’s going to [negatively] impact your career. Interestingly, even with your example, one of the partners that we have, he’s taken shared parental leave as well. But it’s encouraging because then everyone else … Other men can feel comfortable taking it, but then even women within the organisation can and feel that, “Actually, you know, I can take maternity leave and come back, and it’s not going to have an impact on my career.” But it’s that cultural change that needs to be seen, so I totally agree that there’s a long way to go, but it’s that culture, the day-to-day behaviours, and ensuring that’s embedded into what we do on a daily basis.

Bindi: Well, we’re talking about it now, and I think that’s a start. These kind of podcasts, I’m not sure they would have existed five years ago, so it’s great that we have it out in the open. The other comment I’d make is we’re talking about diversity as gender, but let’s not forget age, LGBT, disability, race. There’s so much to diversity, and we can’t forget that. I think age discrimination is there, and it’s out there.

Julia: Now, our next podcast is going to be looking at LGBT. Then, after that, we’re going to be looking at age as well, which is important.

There are a few things that bubble up from that conversation for me, one of them is culture, you had talked about the culture of the organisation. I spend a lot of time with early-stage businesses talking to entrepreneurs about, “Think about this stuff really early. What kind of culture do you want to have as you grow?” because that’s a really important dynamic to success.

Then the other, actually, is around role modeling, which is, as you say, if you can encourage men to take paternity. I hear a lot of people talk about the value of strong role modeling, but does that not just run a risk of showcasing a small segment of an organisation as the heroes of the company, the role models to pursue, when on the other end of the spectrum, it should be right across the organisation?

Bindi: It has to come from the top. In my view, you’ve got to set the example from the top. It doesn’t matter if you’re the CEO of a five-person business or you’re the CEO of a 150,000-person business. It has to come from the top.

Asif: For me, I’m not sure about role models, I think we need real models. More than that, we actually need to create a space where employees can feel they can fit in regardless of whatever they bring and whatever’s important to them. What I mean by that is-

Julia: Could we just go back to the real model versus the role model? How do you describe that difference?

Asif: Sure. For me, a real model is someone who I can align myself to. It doesn’t have to be someone who looks like me or has the same background as me, because I think that’s dangerous. The reason I say that is that just because someone has the same sort of diversity characteristic as me, doesn’t mean we think the same, doesn’t mean we have the same ambitions, doesn’t mean we’re going to have the same career journey. What’s really important is having real models who I can align myself to who I feel comfortable with. I think that’s the important thing, because I found, unfortunately, in the past, people will look at someone who looks like you and say, “Oh, well, that’s a great role model for you,” because he’s of the same ethnic background. He’s of the-

Bindi: That’s so cliché, isn’t it? It’s ridiculous.

Asif: It is.

Bindi: Yeah. It should be about skill sets…

Asif: Exactly.

Bindi: … and growing in your career. It doesn’t matter who that role model is.

Asif: I think that role model could be a middle-aged white man for me. We could have the same things that I align to which I feel strongly about.

Bindi: Some of my role models have been middle-aged white men.

Asif: But it’s that risk of when people align someone who looks like you as being your role model, I think, is one of the…..

Bindi: Well, I’m going to call out something slightly controversial here, but here we go. This is the quote of the day, right? Sisterhood is not a zero-sum game. What I mean by that is I find, quite often, when women get to the top of an organisation, they pull the ladder up and they do not help other women. It’s partially because they had such a battle themselves to get there, they’re like, “I’m exhausted. I don’t want to help anyone else, and so I’m pulling the ladder up.”

Asif: I think that’s interesting, even from a sort of ethnicity perspective. I think I’ve seen that myself. I’ve witnessed that where…..

Bindi: The competition is unnecessary.

Asif: Yeah, and especially when certain, I’m not saying everyone, but certain BAME, BME individuals reach the top, you find they pull the ladder up. Or it’s more difficult to … I’ve sat in boards where there’s someone who looks like me who’s made it really challenging for me-

Bindi: Absolutely.

Asif: … because the feeling is that, “Well, I’ve gone through this really difficult journey…”

Bindi: ……So should you.

Asif: Yeah, exactly. That’s dangerous in itself.

Bindi: That’s why I keep saying it’s not a zero-sum game. There’s lots of room for lots of us everywhere up top.

Asif: Just on that point, and it’s about being yourself. These people who have made it there, they should display the skillsets of being individuals and being themselves. Because if they’ve programmed themselves to be like everyone else who’s up there, then it doesn’t really create that environment where I think, “Well, actually, I can be there as well,” because it’s not true diversity. For diversity to flourish, you need people who are their authentic selves.

Bindi: Well, it’s interesting because I was reading, over the weekend, Satya Nadella from Microsoft. I can’t get the exact quote, so Julia, you’ll have to look it up, but it was something about raining the rose petals from the leadership to the middle management and the people below because, historically, Microsoft had a dog-eat-dog culture, and Satya’s done a great job trying to transform it. I left before he joined as CEO, but it was a really incredible quote where he’s trying to perpetuate that this competition thing doesn’t make sense and the rose petals need to be shared amongst everyone equally.

Julia: It’s a perfect moment to take a pause there, because we like to look out externally to industry research and insights. At this point, I’m going to turn over to Robert Pinto-Fernandes and Cynthia Akinsanya with some research that they’ve found.

Cynthia: Earlier this year, the website workingmums.com carried out research of more than 2,000 working mothers. Over 40% of respondents said that they would not take shared parental leave because it made no financial sense for their families. The study also suggested nearly half of those responded thought flexible working had a negative impact on their ability to progress in their career.

Robert: The Working Moms survey also reported that many women in senior roles had to take pay cuts to achieve flexible working arrangements. Whilst 27% of working mothers are now earning more than they did before they had children, 44% of respondents said that they now earn less.

Cynthia: The issue of sexual harassment has received a lot of media attention in recent months, particularly in the film industry and politics, but what about financial services?

Robert: Financial News recently carried out a survey of 180 staff working in the city. They found that nearly three-quarters of women have endured inappropriate behavior in the office, with a large number saying they felt that they had to leave their company as a result. The proportion was even higher for women working in investment banking and trading.

Cynthia: It’s definitely time to call out those who do not call out sexual harassment.

Julia: Cynthia and Robert, thank you very much for that. Looking ahead, where do you see the future challenges?

Asif: I think one of the challenges which keeps on emerging, and there’s a number of articles on this, around what’s the next big challenge for D&I, I think it is around faith and belief. Just looking at the world around us, the way things are changing, I think we really need to start looking from a diversity perspective at faith inclusion in the workplace as well. What I mean by this is it’s not your traditional “are we going to have dietary requirements covered and are we going to have chaplains and prayer rooms?” I think a lot of organisations have done that.

What we really need to start focusing on is treating people as individuals and looking at their needs, as we do with anything else or any other characteristic that an individual might have. But we have to acknowledge that inclusion and faith inclusion is becoming an important piece of work, and how do we start treating people as individuals? Because, again, we run the risk that people are grouped into various different groups because they represent a faith or a group. We just need to move away from that because if we’re going to be truly inclusive, we need to start treating individuals for what they are. Faith is an individual thing to every single person, so how can we assume that a person of a certain faith must … this must be their needs?

Julia: In this appetite for authenticity, that’s a singular most important thing. Bindi, from your perspective, let’s bring it back to the world of financial services and fintech. Where do you see the biggest challenges?

Bindi: I still think we need to get more women. I think we’re getting there. I think organisations such as Innovate Finance have a great diversity focus. I’m an ambassador for Innovate Finance, which is the UK fintech association. I know one of the tech journalists put a note out the other day or a Tweet out the other day going, “How many female founders of fintechs are there?” I think they came back with a number as low as 21 out of their 300-plus members were founders of co-founders of fintech companies. I think we have a way to go before we continue to get more females founding businesses. Then, obviously, anecdotally, hearing from women still working in the city, there continues to be challenges. It’s better, but it’s still a challenge, particularly around the maternity leave situation when face time and working the long hours still absolutely count towards success. So we’ve got a way to go.

Julia: Well, we’re certainly going to be keeping a keen lookout for any articles that we see in the industry to support some of these arguments and any evidence of change that comes through. We’d love to have you back on again to see if the world has shifted. You’re both incredibly busy people and I’m immensely grateful for you spending the time. Asif, Bindi, thank you very much.

Kieron: This episode of DiverCity™ Podcast was produced by me, Kieron Yates, on behalf of Julia Streets Productions. Thanks to Cynthia Akinsanya and Robert Pinto-Fernandes for their insights. You can find out more about the guests on this week’s show on our website divercitypodcast.com. Whilst you’re there, you can also sign up to our newsletter for all our latest updates.

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