20-first: building gender balanced businesses

Interviewer: Today, I'm interviewing Avivah Wittenberg-Cox who's CEO of 20-first. Let me ask you, first of all, what is it that is your mission? What do you do and how do you do it? Ms. Wittenberg-Cox: That's a big question, thanks Neil. Our mission is to balance business. We usually allow executive teams to define what the priorities of those balance are. We usually go in on gender balance, that's what we are most known for. But the priority as a business today are, at a global level, nationality balance to meet up with globalization, gender balance to meet up with the talent and markets, feminization. Increasingly, the third dimension we're seeing emerge a lot is generational balance at either end. Both to integrate the youngins, of the millennials and to keep the elders before they go. Interviewer: Let's deal with the second part of the question. When you're doing that, what do you actually do? Ms. Wittenberg-Cox: Good question. What we do is we tend to reframe the issue of gender balance, which is often seen as a women's issue run by women, for women and about women and/or as a diversity issue run by diversity and inclusion departments as one of a range of minorities. We try and reframe this as a strategic opportunity for business as it is for countries as well and engage leaders in how to address and embrace the opportunities