From boardroom diversity to DEI: Aurora50 spreads its wings

Aurora50 expanded its remit this year beyond gender balance in the boardroom, to look at wider equity, diversity and inclusion (EDI). We introduced AIM, our accelerator for internal management to grow businesses’ pipeline of talented women from the ground up.

In a speech co-founder I gave to a very special triple graduation ceremony for Hult International Business School in Dubai (classes of 2020, 2021 and 2022), I explain.

Read the full story on LinkedIn.

Excerpt follows:

Life doesn’t usually follow the plans you lay out for yourself. You will all experience the highs and lows of life, the best and the worst.

Your true success will be defined by how you handle both the good times and the bad times. Remember that not every storm is sent to test you. Some storms clear the path for you to see a better way forward.

Pathway20, our first accelerator, opened a new challenge for us. Some of our partners didn’t have enough women who were board-ready, for us to scale our impact.

They came to us and asked for help building their pipelines and so we created AIM, our accelerator for internal management, and I am pleased to say that we are now also championing gender balance in executive leadership teams.

It took me a while to see that Aurora50 would need to be a company that fosters inclusion, not just gender balance, for us to really help women.

We always knew the problem could not be fixed without the support of men but we really need to change the environment for everyone’s voice to count.

Read the full story on LinkedIn.

[Related: Social capital and authentic connection bring joy to your career, says Aurora50 co-founder Diana Wilde in Hult speech.]