Baker McKenzie's Global Chair, Milton Cheng has reinforced the global law firm's commitment to Catalyst's mission to elevate women in leadership roles. Catalyst CEO Champions For Change continue to advance women in their organizations at every level across leadership, particularly in the executive ranks, demonstrating their commitment to inclusion and diversity particularly in light of the global pandemic and economic uncertainty.
According to the newly released report: Prioritizing Equity at a Pivotal Moment: The Catalyst CEO Champions For Change, women represent 27.9% of executives at Champion companies, compared to 23% among their global peers. Milton Cheng and more than 70 other Champion CEOs pledge to advance women across ethnic and racial groups into leadership roles. For the first time since the initiative was launched in 2017, a subset of Champion companies provided metrics on promotions, revealing that in 2020, these companies promoted women at nearly equal rates to men. In fact, the group promoted women at slightly higher proportions than men into senior leadership positions.
The report highlights actions companies can take, including:
• Pinpointing their organization’s greatest areas of opportunity to advance women, particularly women identifying with underrepresented ethnic or racial groups.
• Creating customized solutions to foster equitable advancement, such as flexible work options and sponsorship programs.
• Tracking and measuring progress against defined goals.
Global Chair, Milton Cheng commented, "At Baker McKenzie we understand the importance of closing the gender gap and elevating women into leadership roles. It is something we are continuously working towards, including our global gender aspirational targets of 40% women, 40% men and 20% flexible (women, men or non-binary persons)."
Anna Brown, Baker McKenzie's Chief Inclusion & Diversity Officer, added, "Across the firm we are outcome-driven, we are intensely focused on driving inclusive representation at all levels, strengthening the experiences of our people, and promoting efforts to advance women into leadership roles. There is still much work to be done and we are pleased that progress is being made"
Catalyst President & CEO Lorraine Hariton also commented, “We applaud Milton Cheng and Baker McKenzie, along with the other Catalyst Champion CEOs and their organizations for their continued commitment to diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) initiatives through the challenges of the pandemic. It’s critical that we continue to develop the leadership pipeline for women, particularly women of color, if we’re going to see significant gains to build equitable and inclusive workplaces for women.”
Read the report, and learn more about Catalyst CEO Champions for Change at catalyst.org/champions.