Fortude D&I Forum Empowers Women in It

Last week was International Women’s Week 2018! In the spirit of gender equality, Fortude teamed up with the Association of Human Resource Professionals and Diversity Collective to host the “Diversity & Inclusion” (D&I) forum. We had a full crowd with folks represented from diverse industries and professional tiers, all eager to discover how they could make a difference with D&I.

When an organization commits to diversity and inclusion practices in the workplace, it’s doing more than just the right thing. It’s also doing the smart thing, as talent and employee ROI can result in big returns from a business standpoint. So, everybody wins!

Carmen Niethammer, Program Manager of Sri Lanka’s Women in Work Program, gave the keynote speech on the importance of D&I. She talked about the lack of talented women in the workplace, and offered excellent tips on how to attract and retain a diverse workforce.

Fortude’s CEO Arjuna Sirinanda spoke about his passion in recruiting and retaining a talented, diverse team. His life experiences have inspired him to think big beyond borders, and this plays into his inclusive management philosophy.

Chinthi Weerasinghe, President of Diversity Collective, talked about why women leave the workplace and provided insightful ways of bridging gender division. As she spearheads Diversity Collective, she is fully committed to driving necessary change across the board.

Following these thoughtful talks was a panel discussion moderated by Kavitha Gunasekara, Group Manager – Learning & Development at WNS Global Services. The panel fielded great questions about some of the biggest challenges in D&I initiatives, and obstacles that women encounter, such as the need to be “perfect” or “wonder women” in order for D&I to be “successful”.

In addition, the panel asserted that it was critical that male professionals and other well-represented demographics do their part to support D&I initiatives, since this benefits everyone.

It is! And as a company, Fortude is passionate about implementing the values of diversity and inclusion promoted by the forum within our own corporate culture.

Our CEO, Arjuna Sirinanda, believes that talent manifests across age, ethnicity, religion, and gender, and he emphasized his commitment to ensuring equal representation at Fortude. For example, since 2012, Fortude has made tremendous strides in increasing the number of talented women professionals within our teams – an incredible feat in the IT space. But we’re not stopping there. Arjuna declared that Fortude will aim to reach a 40/60 gender distribution by 2020. That is a Diversity and inclusion WIN!