Cargill was one of the founding members of Paradigm for Parity in 2015. Can you tell us more about your commitment to gender parity?
We looked at women in leadership. It was a tough but necessary reality check. We saw that we weren’t making meaningful progress and it needed to change. We understood that improvements and advancements wouldn’t be made unless we held ourselves accountable. From that point, we have taken intentional steps to create fairness and equity in leadership. We continually focus on issues like work-life balance and supporting female college graduates to join the leadership pipeline.
By emphasizing diversity, equity and inclusion, we create an environment that allows our colleagues to put customers first.
Among your Business Resource Groups (BRGs) is the Cargill Women’s Network. How does the group support women’s professional development?
Cargill Women’s Network (CWN) has chapters all around the world with the purpose of empowering women by removing barriers, bias and enabling women to thrive. Our strategic focus has three pillars: engagement, education, and impact.
We work to activate allyship through education on the value that parity creates in business results and employee engagement. We partner with external organizations to secure diverse talent. We provide professional opportunities through programs like EY’s POWER Up, Google’s #IamRemarkable and others giving women an opportunity for networking, mentorship and skill development. We enrich communities with clothing drives, STEM programs, Breast Cancer awareness initiatives, and other activities.
We have nine different chapters of the women’s groups and there are many rich intersections between women and our different identities. Cargill has multiple groups to represent a few of those different intersectional ties, including BRGs for working mothers, black women and the LGBTQ community.
We looked at every one of our people programs through a DEI lens with the resolve to remove bias – including job descriptions, succession planning, and development initiatives.
In light of Cargill’s support for the Women in Power Systems community, what opportunities does the company offer to energy-oriented women?
We want more women to have a chance to shine in leadership roles. It is important for us to support women in broadening their career horizons beyond the traditionally female- held positions. For example, this industry will benefit from the voices of strong, smart women stepping into technical engineering roles.
But we have opportunities in all types of areas on our team. Women in power systems can step into varied departments including Business Management, Finance, HR, Supply Chain, Marketing and Customer Service.
Cargill as a whole works to give women the opportunity to lead and influence in all areas of the Bioindustrial market.
