Name: Why transparency is key to boosting diversity and inclusion
Uploaded: 2021-12-22
Duration: 5 min 14 s
Description: Maria Castañón Moats of PWC shares her story.

Maria Castañón Moats of PWC shares her story.

Why transparency is key to boosting diversity and inclusion

Leadership

at PWC. We decided years ago and we've been on our diversity journey for a very long time that we wanted to be transparent about our strategy around diversity and inclusion. We wanted to hold ourselves accountable and to do that. We would eventually put forth our report In 2020, we issued our first transparency report where we talked about exactly what I just said. What's our strategy and why? How do we look? Where is the work that needs to be done and how are we gonna hold ourselves accountable? We've issued it publicly. We did our second version because we said we're going to do this on an annual basis. We call our purpose report. We aligned everything we're talking about over on diversity inclusion also with purpose right and values. And so we're holding ourselves accountable. I would tell you specifically, one of the key things that I think really helped us accelerate our diversity progress was we decided to be open about the fact that we all have blind spots. That means unconscious bias. We are very, very public about what we're doing because we know the transparency is key so that we can gain the trust of our stakeholders. My diversity journey started when I left my hometown in el paso texas and made my way to Dallas texas and then to new york taking on these roles that not only made me travel all over the country to see where everybody is different, right and approaches things in a different way, but globally as well. I started my career in 1994 with PVC And 10 years later I was admitted as a partner in the firm, which is a huge deal fast forward. Five years after I had been serving clients primarily in consumer markets, industrial products, I get a phone call to come up to the new york area out of the blue, this is the way things happen. And I get asked to come to our national office for the audit practice fast forward a couple of years and I get a call and it's our senior partner bob Morris And our CEO essentially. And he asked me to come on 15 the leadership team of the firm of PWC and lead diversity and inclusion for the firm. Now as an audit partner that has been serving clients signing audit opinions. This was a different role in a real stretch for me because while I'm hispanic, mexican american, honestly, I was not a diversity expert. I felt a great deal at first frankly can I really do this so doubt about my ability to really step into a very important leadership role representing the But then I started thinking about why are they asking me to do this? And I felt that responsibility to really lean in and and take that opportunity. I knew it would be hard, but I also had assurances from that CEO and senior partner that we would go through this together. Now I know he was looking to sponsor a diverse, talented partner into leadership and he was thinking about what other roles can I have right in the firm. He was really working on succession planning, which is so important when you think about what ceo do every day and what boards also look at now. So what I know from the work I did in leading diversity from my firm is that while it's a lot of work to diversify you, name it a leadership team aboard a company. The real work comes in with the inclusion. That's the heavy lift. It's kind of like we're all at the middle school dance, but somebody needs to ask you to dance. So the inclusion part is how are companies? Let's stay with the board of directors. Really working to make sure that those new directors that are diverse, either gender or race, really feel comfortable knowing that their voice matters. So I think boards by holding management more accountable companies being more transparent about their strategy and in particular strategies around the environment and social issues as well as the governance part. I think that what will happen is that the individual consumer, right, a customer will better understand what happens in the leadership boardroom. It seems opaque. The normal person can't really tell you what a board of directors does. But I think with all the work that's being done, it will be good to be more transparent. It will be good for board of directors to know that people understand the role that is so important. Border directors do great work and they need to get credit for that.