UKChapter Report

We celebrated International Women’s Day at the LEAD UK Chapter meeting on March 5^th, which was curated and hosted by LEAD gold partner PepsiCo in their Reading offices.

With over 100 attendees, the room was packed with members, many of whom were brand new to LEAD, which gave the room a fantastic energy. Attendees were randomly allocated to tables, each with a PepsiCo host, to encourage diverse discussion and help facilitate networking.

We had a full and varied agenda, including a self-development workshop run by the fantastic Sonia Bate, EDIT Development; a key note speaker Lisa Taylor, CEO of Future of London; and a discussion panel covering questions on the theme of ‘empowerment’ sent in by attendees before the event via the registration but also during, using an app called Slido. The app allowed the audience to not only submit questions (named or anonymously) but also ‘like’ other questions posted, helping the panel facilitator guide the discussion towards the most important issues to the room. A key take-out from the evening was to question oneself on how to stop being a bystander to gender inequality and be an agent for change through everyday actions and behaviours.

We all have a role to play, and we can all make a difference!