 Welcome to another episode of Wynn Talk, our Diversity and Inclusion talk show hosted by our Women's Inclusion Network at Hydrig & Struggles. Wynn's objective is to inspire and help not only our female colleagues but women around the world unlock their full career potential. I'm Jie Hui, Wynn member from our Singapore office and a member of the Financial Services practice. I'm personally passionate about people and talent development so I'm really excited that we have Samantha Guiotti with us today for this episode. Samantha is a woman of many talents and wears many hats as an entrepreneur, investor, executive, board member and mother of two wonderful daughters. With over 20 years of global experience, she is well-versed in building relationships with global investors, leading startups and growth organisations and managing complex boards. She ran SingLife in Singapore, an insure tech company. Previously, she spent a decade as a partner of London-based Anthemist Group, one of the most active venture investors in FinTech and worked in various operating roles with large financial institutions, building digital businesses and helping transform organisations such as American Express. She currently serves as a non-executive director at Bridgetown 3, a spec sponsored by Richard Lee and Peter Thieu and is about to launch her next exciting venture. Thank you, Sam, for taking time out from your busy schedule to join us on Wynn Top. DNI is a very popular topic right now within the business community. What exactly do we mean by DNI? So first of all, DNI is a concept that has many, many interpretation, many variations on the themes and sometimes you see different interpretations in different geographies and even within different companies within the same geography. So in other words, it's a concept that I think is still evolving. And when I think about that evolution, it's largely because it's a reasonably new organisational construct and as such it's obviously embedded in much wider social context and in turn into a much broader historical reality. So for example, organisations that employ individuals that might have been affected directly by the Me Too movement or the Black Lives Matter movement, I think those organisations would employ those individuals and those individuals as part of their day-to-day life within the broader organisation would probably bring those novel concepts, those new desires. And so I would expect in organisations like that, for example the definition of DNI to take a connotation that tend to be for more indexed towards, say, ethnicity. So in a broader context when I think about DNI, I think about it as a value system where I guess the participation, the perspective of individuals regardless of their gender, regardless of their political or religious affiliations, regardless of their social preferences and also quite importantly regardless also of their cognitive skills, all of this diversity is valued and is included within, I guess, the organisation. So yes, the concept of DNI is evolving is certainly much broader than just being a women topic and this particular women on board topic and I certainly see there are today and I think there will continue to be some meaningful differences across geographies. Sam, those are all great points that you made. H&S actually did a survey on DNI in 2019. We have found that a lot of the Asian businesses and leaders acknowledge that there's a strong tie between having a more diverse workforce and impact on financial performance. With COVID and the financial pressures, especially on listed companies, to deliver top line and bottom line, do you think that DNI has been deprioritised as a result over financial performance? It's probably a little early to say and I think most organisations in the world are still trying to reset themselves as a result of the implications of COVID. One thing that I certainly noticed is if you take society as a whole, it's probably undeniable that the less privileged parts of our society, of our communities, have been hardest hit by COVID. If you look in the US, for example, the unemployment rates in minorities, in women, particularly women with young children, those percentages have shot up and that suggests that many organisations, when they try to reset their businesses to respond to COVID, have probably opted for the easy way out, which is to, I guess, reduce workforce, particularly where it's easier to do so. And I hope that we will also see examples of organisations that have taken a very different stance and have actually used this as an opportunity to double down or triple down on diversity and inclusion because if there is one moment in time where diversity and inclusion is so important, certainly it's now where the COVID impact has certainly unleashed a global consciousness around the biggest challenges that humanity is facing from climate change to income inequality from financial stability. And so in order to tackle those massive challenges as people, surely we need to be in a position where a broader swath of perspectives and of skills are taken into account. I've spoken to a lot of my colleagues with regards to COVID and work from home and how it impacts them. I actually think that this might be a game changer in the long run for diversity and inclusion. It levels the playing field between males and females. Work from home is no longer the domain for the less ambitious. It doesn't carry that stigma anymore. And it's been proven that you can be working from home and be 100% efficient as well. I personally have experienced that and I also know that female colleagues in my office who have young kids and have to do long commutes between home and office find that it's a very refreshing change. They are able to commit and work till 6pm and then immediately switch from being an executive at work to being a mother at home without having to sit on the trains for like an hour just to get home to be the mother. So I'm hopeful that in time to come there would be positive impact of COVID on DNI. Sam, you are very experienced in the financial services industry. I'm sure you have lots of observations that you can share about women representation in the segment. Yes indeed, I have been on several boards and I can say that the DNI topic is on fire. I cannot recall a different period of time where this particular topic was so front and centre, not just in boardroom conversations but in strategy session, in discussions about succession plans and recruitment and strategy. But having said that, I think that there is still a lot of road to go and a lot of improvements to be made. And so tell me Jiat, you've been in this industry for a long time as well with lots of experience both on the recruitment side but also as an industry practitioner. So you must have seen your fair share of diversity and inclusion challenges. Indeed, so when I started in banking at the entry level to maybe the mid levels you definitely see a lot of female representation but it's a reality that it sort of topped up as you go closer to the more senior levels and basically if you look at the MD population they are largely men. That said, D&I wasn't a big topic or popular topic at all when I was in banking and for some reason you sort of accept the fact that that's just the nature that it was until 10 years ago where it starts being a big focus and I think that's great because there is finally realisation that a female leader actually brings a different perspective to the business. It sort of removes group think as well where you have the business that has been run by the same set of people who look the same for many years having a different perspective introduce new challenges as well which makes people rethink the business model, rethink the governance, rethink processes as well. All in all I'm very happy to see where financial services have progressed in terms of D&I. There's definitely still a long way to go particularly in segments like trading like transaction banking, investment banking I think these segments are still less gender diverse than I would like to see but I observe now that a lot of the organisations that I've worked with are increasingly moving in the right direction in trying to really genuinely move the needle in terms of D&I. That's great to hear and it seems that the participation and representation of women seems to decay as the level of seniority increases and so I think motherhood is a particular difficult time for us women when we try and sort of progress and continue our professional development because a lot of work environments just aren't very friendly to being a mother particularly a young mother. So I've experienced it on my own skin and I think it's really important that organisations begin to think a little bit differently particularly when it comes to inclusion as to how their work practices, their norms and their values really need to be more conducive for people that just go through different stages of their lives. Sam, what advice would you give to the next generation? They're extraordinarily conscious of the topic of diversity and inclusion they have access to information to points of view to perspective. Some of us have also had the opportunity to travelling and moving internationally so I think that the topic of diversity comes almost native to the younger generation and that's such an encouraging thought. Therefore, we would expect the younger coming into the workforce to expect D&I as part of the normal set of value systems within the organisations that they join. In fact, I suspect that for many of them would be a cynical condition for them to be even wanting to join an organisation. So if there was probably one single advice that I would give is to continue to do what they're doing because they're doing such a great job and continue to be authentic, continue to raise your voice, continue to manifest your opinions because ultimately diversity and inclusion is a change initiative and it's a change initiative within organisations and within society and so in my opinion diversity comes with courage and with the ability of expressing your descent. That's really great to hear as well that the younger generation needs no encouragement. I think it took a long time for us and for a lot of people to learn how to ask for what they want. I don't think the younger generations have a problem with that these days. I think that puts them with a strong foot forward as they enter the workforce and with of course all the increased publicity, increased focus and initiative on D&I. I'm hoping that we will see that ingrained in the future generation and our topic would be talking about diversity and inclusion from a totally different perspective than just a gender diversity issue. I agree. Thank you Sam for your time and for sharing such wonderful insights on this very important topic.