 I was in my mum's car on my way to my first proper job interview. It was an assessment centre, maybe you've been there. So I'm driving, I pull into the car park, it's busy, and I get out of the car. There's people filing into the venue, I file into the venue. As I get inside, it's really busy. They're running multiple assessment centres today. I look around the room. There's people milling about, nervously chatting, having a cup of coffee. Something doesn't feel quite right to me. I don't know what it is. I put it to the back of my mind. After all, I am really nervous. It's really important to me. I notice a cue. I wander over. I join this cue. It looks like it's for registration. I'm at the back of the cue. I look over and I can see people seem to be giving their name, standing, having a photo, taking a badge. Then I assume walking into their assessment. I wait my turn. I'm getting closer to the front. Closer to the front. Finally, it's my turn. I step up to the desk. I say, hi, I'm Jessica. I stand there ready to have my photo taken. The person behind the desk says to me, we know who you are, don't worry, you don't need a photo. You're the only girl here today. Right. So I take my badge, kind of a little disorientated, not going to lie. I think, okay, fine, let's go. So I take the badge and I walk off, find the assessment centre. I open the door. I step inside. And sure enough, I am the only woman in a sea of men. Now, that for me was the first of many similar experiences in my career. And it was the spark that led to me to the journey that I've been on to become a really passionate advocate for diversity and inclusion. And what I've learnt on that journey is there is far more power in diversity and inclusion than there is risk. Now, I'm fortunate to work at Just Eat Takeaway where diversity and inclusion is really valued. And in my role as Chief Product Officer, I get to lead our efforts in inclusion through our technology and products for customers and for employees. And that's not just in the UK, because you might all know Just Eat, and I hope you've ordered a pizza recently. But if not, look us up. It's not just in the UK. We are serving 94 million customers worldwide. We're operating in 20 markets all the way from Auckland to Vancouver. We have 680,000 restaurant and grocery partners in our network. Thousands of careers and 15,000 awesome employees who power our business. And I know and we know that diversity and inclusion is a key part of driving innovation and a key part of our business success. So today my job is to help you unleash the power of inclusion. You're going to walk away from here with my top tips. But what do I mean by inclusion? Well, at the heart of inclusion is a sense of belonging. We want to belong. What does belonging mean? The heart of belonging is connection. So it's the end of the day. And it's a bit cheesy, but we're going to do some audience participation. So get ready. I want you all to feel connected. Also those of you watching at home, please take part as well. I want you to feel connected. I want us to speak with one voice. So I would like to ask you please to stand up. And I know for those of you at the top it's quite high, but please join us. So I want us to get connected. And what I mean by that is I want us to speak with one voice. I want that voice to be heard. So we're going to have a practice. I'm going to count to three. And on the count of three, I want you to shout out, we belong. I did tell you it was cheesy. So ready practice run. Let's go. One, two, three, we belong. Actually, that was not bad. I was ready for that to be not the best, but that was pretty good. Okay, but we can do better. We can do better because you know inclusion takes practice. Connecting is a constant. So we're going to do it one more time. Please give me everything you've got. Are you ready? One, two, three, we belong. How nice is it to feel connected, to feel like you are connected and talking in one voice? Have a seat. Okay, so I promised you I would help you unleash the power of inclusion. It's all about unlocking that untapped potential. And you are going to walk away from here today with my three tried and tested steps. These are things that I have implemented in many teams and many businesses over the years. And I believe are the heart of actually really achieving that power, really unlocking that potential rather than just talking about it. So what are those steps? It makes business sense, prioritise it. It has to be lived to succeed. And it has to be recognised. These are my three tips and I'm going to talk to you about them now. It makes business sense, prioritise it. I've got some stats for you. There are hundreds of studies that have been done on diversity, inclusion, belonging and related topics. And there is consensus among all of those. There is a consensus that diverse teams and inclusive cultures are good for business. There's a few stats on this slide, but there are hundreds and hundreds of others that say exactly the same thing. It's not rocket science. If you bring a variety of perspectives to the table, if you create an inclusive culture where everybody's voice is valued and you can raise your voice and you can give that perspective, then you are going to bring creativity to your organisation. And creativity is what helps us to really drive innovation. Be that on a small scale or be that on a big scale. But we all know innovation, that's at the heart of the product breakthroughs that we really want to achieve. That's where we build success. So yes, the financials are there, but it comes from that culture and from that innovation that you can drive within your organisation. It's not only about innovation, it's also about opening up to wider customer bases. Once you start thinking about how you serve broader customers because you have different perspectives within your organisation because you're opening yourselves up to other ways of thinking, then you develop products that have a wider use case. A really great example of this is closed caption subtitles on video streaming platforms. Developed for the deaf community, but loads of other uses that weren't foreseen, people listening in busy environments for example. In my case, it was soothing, a very grumpy baby back to sleep in the middle of the night. And those subtitles really helped me stay awake. So you're opening up to a broader customer base and there are lots and lots of examples of that. So it's not just about innovation and creativity, but it's also about all of the people that you could reach that you're not reaching today. Now, we understand that, right? It's good for business. But this can't be a side of desk thing. This can't be Jess's little passion project that she sometimes does when she hasn't got a million other things to do because I don't know about you, but I always have a million things to do. The passion projects and the side of desk things don't tend to get the priority that we maybe like them to have. So you've got to prioritise this. You've got to make this part of your strategy. The most successful companies and businesses and products of the future will be the ones that prioritise this. In my team, what does that look like? We have a dedicated team of product inclusion specialists. They work across our department to upskill our product managers and to introduce guidelines and changes to make our products truly inclusive. Whether they're customer-facing, whether they're for our employees, it's all part of the same piece. For me, that's really important. We have full-time employees who are developing this. That is very clear. That is showing our intention of what we want from this and how important it is to us. So it makes business sense to prioritise it. It has to be lived to succeed. OK. We can get a diverse team. We can get all sorts of different people around a table. That is the start. We need that. But if you don't create an inclusive culture where everybody feels that their voice can be heard, then you will never get the potential from that group. You will never unleash the power that is there within your team. Not only that, we can consider ourselves to be diverse. My story that I told, I was the only woman there. But I'm still white. So there are other perspectives that I can learn about, despite the fact I might be different from other people. So we need to open our eyes and experience different perspectives. We need to challenge ourselves, because it's natural as human beings to make quick judgments. It's just in us. It's innate. And there's a good reason for that in our biology, but we don't need that now, and that's not what our job is. We need to get uncomfortable. We need to ask ourselves a question. Are these long-held beliefs still true? Are these things that society told me true? Are we making assumptions about people because of the context we see them in, or the way that society views people? Have you ever been to a networking event or maybe like a gala dinner for work and you turned up with your employee, your male employee, and people assumed that you were his wife? More than once. And I'm sure that you've got your own examples. So we've got to challenge that. Maybe you know this. Einstein, pretty famous, pretty revolutionary in the world of science, graduated bottom of his class at university, couldn't speak at the age of five. Demonstrated traits that today we might consider neurodiverse. We need to ask ourselves, what are the stereotypes that we believe and are they right? And are we getting close to that? And no matter what our position is, we've got to get uncomfortable with that. A great way of doing that is by getting close to your customers or your potential customers. And I absolutely love that. It's one of my favourite things to do. Only last week I was at one of our customer service centres up in Sunderland, talking to customers, hearing their complaints, hearing their feedback, doing chat, talking to colleagues. It's really invigorating. If you live in London and you're really, really lucky, then you might find me on your doorstep, fully in the Just Eat takeaway orange with a pizza or whatever your takeaway of choice is, because I love to get on the bike, get out there, experience the product. Yes, that is me, Burger King Leicester Square. Thank you for having me. I did a whole shift there and I learnt so much. And I really, really encouraged you all to do the same. In fact, this is so important to me that within Just Eat takeaway we have developed a programme called Jet Meats. And that enables every single person in product and engineering to go out on these types of visits and to share their learnings. And we are seeing great feedback from this and people are learning a lot. It's challenging their perceptions. It's sparking seeds of creativity and we're seeing accelerated change as a result of it. You've got to live this. And this becomes even more important the more senior you get. Harvard Business Review did a study and what they found is that empathy reduces as rank increases. So as you take on more senior roles in your businesses, your empathy decreases. Take a moment to think about that. You've got to lean into it. You've got to be aware of these things and that's why going out meeting people is so important. It has to be recognised. We're all product people here. One thing we know about products is we're always searching to create that habit, the habit that makes people come back, the habit that makes people want to use our product, the habit. If we want to affect that change in our culture, if we want inclusion to be something that just happens rather than a project or a special focus, then we've got to recognise it. Now, that can take many forms. It can be metrics, you know, measure what matters, that changes behaviour. But also just recognising it. I talked about our jet meets. When our colleagues go on the jet meets, they come back, they do blog posts, they talk to their teams, they do talks for the department to share what they've learnt. And we love that because we love celebrating the fact that people are taking the time to go and do that. We recognise when people are going above and beyond. We recognise when people are making great inclusive decisions. We recognise when people are building inclusive culture within their teams. Because we're trying to build something that is part of our ways of working without even thinking about it. That becomes part of our processes as a result of that. Because only then can we really unleash the power, which is what we're all searching for. Only then can we really access all of that potential. Because if we're not doing those things, if it's not part of our culture, then really we don't have the engagement we want. The voices aren't heard, and we all start to think the same way and do the same things. So it has to be recognised. Another thing we do in our team to help with recognising this is we have a monthly focus on different topics within the diversity and inclusion space, especially with my leadership team and my broader leadership team. That just creates that front-of-mind thinking. There's nothing stopping you from doing this on a small scale in your team right up to a leadership level. Because it's front-of-mind then. It's a topic that we keep coming back to. It's part of our agenda. It's not something that we only do every now and then, or when a particular incident happens and we think, oh my goodness, I'm going to do something about this. No, it's there all the time. So, three steps. None of them are difficult, really. None of them are rocket science. But these are the learnings of my time as a leader. And these are the things that make the difference. So remember, it makes business sense but you've got to prioritise it. It has to be lived to succeed. Hear those voices. It has to be recognised. Make it a way of working. Make it a habit. Successful companies of the future. Successful products of the future. Successful leaders of the future. No. That diversity and inclusive culture and a sense of belonging are critical. They are the strategic building blocks of success and they are becoming ever more important. The world is becoming more diverse and so must we. Thank you.