An Interview With Fotis Georgiadis
Perform better: An inclusive organization is more likely to exceed financial targets, be high-performing, be agile and innovative, and overall, achieve better business outcomes.
As a part of our series about “How Diversity Can Increase a Company’s Bottom Line”, I had the pleasure of interviewing Sheree Atcheson.
Sheree Atcheson is the Group Vice President of Diversity & Inclusion at Valtech. She is a multi-award winner for her services to the D&I industry and was named one of the UK’s Top Most Influential Women in Tech. In 2013, she founded and currently serves as an Advisory Board Member of the U.K. expansion of Women Who Code, the world’s largest non-profit dedicated to gaining and retaining women in tech. Additionally, Sheree is the author of Demanding More — a book that aims to teach readers about how deliberate exclusion has been in systems and society, and how we must be purposefully and deliberately inclusive moving forward. For 10 years, Sheree has held global senior roles in diversity, equity, & inclusion for multiple companies, including Peakon, Monzo, and Deloitte.
Thank you so much for doing this with us! Before we dive into the main part of our interview, our readers would love to “get to know you” a bit more. Can you share a bit of your “backstory” with us?
Definitely! Let’s start way back. When I was three weeks old, I was adopted from Sri Lanka by an Irish family. I grew up in County Tyrone, Ireland, and I’ve openly shared what it was like being a child of color in a very white space, which has become an avenue for me to expand on the ability of being both underrepresented and privileged.
After receiving a bachelor’s degree in Computer Science from Queen’s University Belfast, I started my career as a software engineer at Kainos — a digital services provider in Northern Ireland. I worked on lots of different projects there, my favorite probably being a developer on government projects like the online Register to Vote application.
This technical background has significantly influenced my roles in the diversity, equity, and inclusion industry. For the last 10 years, I’ve been developing D&I strategies like I would approach developing a technology solution — using agile and embedding data in success/failure measures. I firmly believe this is the best approach, and something I write a lot about on Forbes. Simply put, data equals accountability, which equals action. Ones and zeros don’t lie, and it’s hard to disagree with what data is telling you. And when working with technology-rooted companies like Valtech, this approach resounds much better than if I was someone coming from an HR background without an understanding of how they develop their projects, see ideas, and bring them from ideation to execution.
My leadership roles in D&I over the past decade include Head of Consulting Inclusion at Deloitte UK, Global Head of D&I at Monzo Bank, Global Director of DE&I at Peakon, and now, Group Vice President of D&I at Valtech.
Can you share the funniest or most interesting story that happened to you since you started your career? Can you tell us the lesson or take away, you took out of that story?
I think probably the most interesting story is being adopted and going back to Sri Lanka to find my biological mother. Whilst it isn’t something I’d do again if I could turn back time, it was still eye opening and it very much changed how I see things as a whole. The fun part of that was during my time there, lots of students posted about me as their inspiration, which was really humbling and kind. One group of university students even recorded my story, with their own actors! You can watch it here.
Can you please give us your favorite “Life Lesson Quote”? Can you tell us a story about how that was relevant in your own life?
Don’t turn down good opportunities, because you never know where they’ll lead to. I know this is easier said than done, but where and when you can, if you have the energy or time to take on something new, do it. For me, that’s largely been the reason my career accelerated so quickly.
None of us are able to achieve success without some help along the way. Is there a particular person who you are grateful towards who helped get you to where you are?
My answer is always the same. Jackie Henry, who I worked with at Deloitte and who paved the way for me by creating brand new, historic roles for me at the firm to allow me to make D&I my full-time role. She consistently opened doors for me, and let me find my own way, never forcing me down the paths she may have chosen, but letting me find my own leadership style and goals. We’re now more close friends and sit as colleagues, both working in senior leadership roles. I’m always very thankful to have met her.
What do you think makes your company stand out? Can you share a story?
One of Valtech’s key differentiators is its size, which allows the company to collaborate on D&I strategies and implement them quickly. Most organizations can’t do this unless they’re smaller in size.
At Valtech, we take a regional/local perspective to implementation. This is different from trying to whitewash the same strategy across an entire global company, which I still see all the time with other organizations today. For example, after the murder of George Floyd, I saw several companies take a North American approach to ethnicity and inclusion, even in EMEA, which doesn’t translate or make sense. The reality is there are significant differences across markets, and it’s essential for companies to have conversations about D&I that are relevant to each region, even if you’re unable to collect data there. Valtech strongly follows this approach, enabling and empowering its regions to do what’s best for their area, while keeping me in the loop so I can help guide them in the right direction.
Are you working on any new or exciting projects now? How do you think that might help people?
Absolutely! One of my passions is being an advocate for gaining and retaining women in the technology industry. In 2013, I launched the award-winning U.K. expansion of Women Who Code and now serve as the organization’s Advisory Board Member. As part of our mission, we aim to create a local haven for women to learn about technology and the IT industry together, and feel confident as they grow their careers. We offer monthly tech talks, career trainings, hack nights, and more. WWCode is now the world’s largest non-profit globally dedicated to women in technology.
This experience inspired me to support a similar project founded at Valtech many years ago: tech_Girl, which is our initiative to empower and encourage the next generation of women in tech by showcasing inspiring role models and careers in the industry to young girls. Over 800 girls have been impacted globally from the initiative to date, and we run events in our offices worldwide.
For example, in partnership with VentureKids Canada, we hosted our first-ever ‘tech_Girl’ coding program in 2020 for young girls living in underserved communities. We designed the free program to teach young girls coding and entrepreneurship fundamentals and introduce them to diverse leaders working in Canada’s tech field.
How have you used your success to bring goodness to the world?
As a global senior executive at various companies, I’ve worked in many regions and developed tailored, data-driven DE&I strategies, defining clear goals and accountability to embed success and inclusion that scales and lasts. Additionally, I’ve spoken at many global events, conferences, and leadership sessions and delivered countless trainings and workshops on allyship, privilege awareness, unconscious bias, becoming a D&I ambassador, empowering yourself to empower others, and much more.
At Valtech, I oversee, create, and lead the development and implementation of the company’s group D&I strategy — including the best practices, frameworks, and solutions for all their 20+ regions. I ensure they collaborate globally and build a sense of accountability, guidance, and advisory. Under my leadership, we’ve adopted several changes, including a reworked hiring process that’s trained on inclusivity, leadership programs to help underrepresented talent, and data-backed decision-making on D&I initiatives.
Ok. Thank you for that. Let’s now jump to the main part of our interview. This may be obvious to you, but it is not intuitive to many people. Can you articulate to our readers five ways that increased diversity can help a company’s bottom line.
- Do the right thing: No further explanation needed.
- Perform better: An inclusive organization is more likely to exceed financial targets, be high-performing, be agile and innovative, and overall, achieve better business outcomes.
- Improve your offerings: When developing products or services, people typically don’t prioritize the inclusion that they don’t personally identify with, and considerations like standard mobility issues, speech impediments, and more can be left out. A proper D&I strategy embeds inclusion into technology processes from the start and offers checks and balances at every stage, including development, user testing, deployment, and support.
- Retain employees: The Great Resignation during the pandemic left many companies scrambling to fill in the gaps. A recent survey of over 800 recruiters revealed more than one-third of candidates (44%) turned down a job offer or even an interview due to lack of diversity in the company’s workforce. And this trend runs true with the next working generation as well. To keep current talent and attract new employees, it’s clear that companies must prioritize D&I.
- Friction before decision-making: All too often, we make decisions in echo-chambers that are riddled with assumptions and bias, largely because they’re not challenged. Having more diversity within our leadership rooms means we have friction before we make decisions that can affect 10s, 100s, or even 1000s of people.
What advice would you give to other business leaders to help their employees to thrive?
It’s essential to implement a D&I strategy that’s effective. To do so, I encourage following a 3-step approach:
- Listening — too often, organizations go straight into action instead of understanding what employees want and are missing. For smaller companies, this might entail facilitated sessions or small surveys. For larger organizations, I recommend using an engagement platform like Peakon.
- Communication — be sure to share back what you learned from these sessions. It’s one of the best ways to engage people and makes them feel involved and listened to.
- Action — don’t build a massive strategy from the takeaways or try to fix everything at once. It’s easy to become passionate and rush ahead, but this steam can run out very quickly if you’re not seeing the desired changes, which could stem from being spread too thin or lacking resources. Instead, I recommend choosing one thing per quarter that you think you can do successfully and providing specific, regular updates as you move forward.
What advice would you give to other business leaders about how to manage a large team?
As mentioned before, one of the most important things for business leaders to focus on is nuances across regions. Regulation is in place to guide and provide a structure for D&I strategies, but that’s like having the title of a book but no chapters. What use is that unless you bring it to life? There are far too many scenarios today in D&I where companies don’t individualize their strategies based on their industry, the size of their company, and its global regions. Unfortunately, this unearths major problems like diversity gaps that take longer to fix due to the nuances not being addressed in the initial planning.
Additionally, it’s vital for businesses to prioritize embedding trust first and making sure people feel comfortable with sharing their thoughts. When you capture data, you’re asking people to share something they may not want to — even if it’s anonymous and aggregated. Be transparent about what you plan to do with the data, including initiatives you’re aiming to launch. It’s also important not to ask all your questions at once, as this typically leads to bad disclosure rates, and it takes longer to embed trust. Try starting with 2–3 focus points depending on the region.
Outside of collecting data and developing strategies, I recommend you implement mandated interview training that identifies the top six biases with hiring and provides guidance on how to disrupt them at each stage of the process.
We are very blessed that some of the biggest names in Business, VC funding, Sports, and Entertainment read this column. Is there a person in the world, or in the US whom you would love to have a private breakfast or lunch with, and why? He or she might just see this 🙂
Jacinda Ardern for her leadership, empathy, and directness.
How can our readers further follow your work online?
I’m very active on LinkedIn and on my personal website. I’m also a Forbes contributor, where I frequently share stories on diversity, equity, and inclusion.
Thank you for these excellent insights. We wish you continued success in your great work.
Sheree Atcheson Of Valtech On How Diversity Can Increase a Company’s Bottom Line was originally published in Authority Magazine on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.
