Diverse perspectives on diversity networks: how to increase their influence and to make them a creative force

15 May 2017

Round table on March 22nd: Interview with Emmanuelle Scelles, Events Management VP, and Evguenia Rouault, Corporate Partnerships Development VP, co-organizers of the event.

PWN Paris Newsletter: Hello, on March 22nd, with PWN Paris partners, you organized a round table on diversity networks and how to have them more influential. Was it a first? 


Emmanuelle Scelles: Yes indeed. For many years now, on the occasion of the International Day for Women’s rights, we wanted to organize an event to open our network. This year we asked our Corporate partners if they would be ready to do it with us. They responded very positively.

Evguenia Rouault : We proposed them to share their perspectives and to guide us to build together activities reinforcing our common actions within all our different networks. Our main partners participated to the event. Were present:

Mrs. Roxane Adle, Diversity Director, Orange
Mrs. Odile de Damas Nottin, President of the Twice network, Total
Mr. Boris Martor, Partner, in charge of Diversity, Eversheds Sutherland
Mrs. Cécile Monthiers, Talent Development Director, TF1
Mrs. Mandy Schreuder, Leader Diversity & Inclusion, Europe, Mercer

Valérie Rocoplan, President of Talentis, also a partner, led the round table.

ES : Beforehand, we sent them a questionnaire to collect the most important questions and remarks in order to bring more added value to the round table. Some networks, such as Total’s and Orange’s, go back more than 10 years when others, such as TF1’s, are only 18 months old.
 
The main issues that emerged were : the impact of the feminization of executive managers and directors on performance, the women’s media visibility, men’s involvement, etc.


PWN NL: Your partners were not the only ones participating. You also invited female politicians to share their views on the subject.

ER: This was actually an initiative of our co-presidents, Cécile Berheim and Françoise Derolez. We had the pleasure of the exceptional presence of representatives of candidates in the French presidential elections:

Mrs. Anne Boissel, Vice-President of Debout la France and member of the group Debout les femmes
Mrs. Frédérique Dumas, Regional Councilor at Ile de France, member of the team En Marche
Mrs. Chantal Jouanno, UDI senator
Mrs. Laura Slimani, in charge of gender equality in the Hamon 2017 team
Mrs. Marie-Jo Zimmerman, Moselle MP, representative of Mr. Fillon.

We noticed that, regardless of the political party they represented, they fought with one voice for gender equality.

ES: The presence and the answers of politicians were also interesting. These women who entered active politics are impressive and the public / private debates are rare enough to be enjoyed. Some consensus was reached.

PWN NL: We had a full house with 84 attendees! Quite a success for the first evening meeting with all our partners! 

ER: Indeed, a great attendance. Other partners and a lot of prospects were there. We take advantage of this opportunity to again thank all the participants for the quality and the content of our exchanges, so well directed by Valérie Rocoplan. With their support, this is going to help PWN in its actions and the fulfillment of its objectives, for equality and women’s  professional promotion. 

ES: Many thanks too to Eversheds Sutherland for their welcome, to our teams for the organization and the logistic support and to the other VPs for their presence, helping hand and support. 


PWN NL: There are results, some progress was made. But there is still a long way to go to achieve sustained improvements, isn’t there?

ER : Yes, absolutely, and we must sustain our current efforts over the long term as the current estimate to reach gender equality is of 170 years should no variable changes. That potentially means that it could take much longer or be endlessly.

ES : We discussed a lot about the involvement of men / male managers, to make progress in this collective awareness.

ER: We also took advantage of this event to announce the upcoming launch of the pilot men/women mentoring program with our partners…

ES: … and to remind everybody to sign the  Manifesto and to watch again and again the  "Women & Money : parlons d'argent cartes sur table" film (available on our website), prize winner of the Prix Egalité professionnelle by the French Ministry for Women’s Rights http://www.pwnparis.net/  et https://www.pwnglobal.net/)


Emmanuelle Scelles
Board Member of PWN Paris & Head of CSR at Group Human Resources at BNP Paribas

Evguenia Rouault
Board member of PWN Paris & Founder of Kerlyng => Helping companies leverage the power of open innovation with the help of Agorize.

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