Supriya Jha, Chief Diversity and Inclusion Officer at SAP, recently delivered a highly engaging and informative guest lecture to Steve Safier's and Tanea Ellis' Integrated Talent Management Strategies class.
Among her key points:
- We need to be completely comfortable in our own skin. Bring your full self to work. Show your true self; it leads others to trust in you.
- DEI is one of the most important business imperatives of the future as it becomes better understood, from gender and race to neurodiversity, cultural, and social backgrounds.
- At SAP, we have a diverse workforce that can understand and support our customer needs. With the help of employees who contribute rich and varying perspectives, we are able to include a D&I lens in our product development and support our clients to also deliver on their D&I priorities. Products like SAP SuccessFactors, have many features which help clients understand the diversity of their workforce and also help them make decisions that are unbiased and free of unconscious bias.
- Keep the definition of diversity as broad as possible. This is an area that keeps evolving.
We also asked Supriya for career advice. Her recommendations? Be entrepreneurial; take on more assignments and take some personal risk. This will lead to our learning and career growth.
Thank you, Supriya, for sharing your broad perspectives and for your wonderfully enthusiastic teaching!
