Catalyst Blog

Congratulations to Commonwealth Bank of Australia and Sodexo—the 2012 Catalyst Award winners! These companies’ Award-winning initiatives share a strategic, laser-sharp business focus and lead with strong results.

This year’s winning initiatives reflect the evolution of advancing women from a “nice-to-do,” to a core business practice. Commonwealth Bank and Sodexo have incorporated a culture that values diversity into their brands, which differentiates their businesses from competitors, increases profitability, and better reflects the customers they serve. Their initiatives focus on transforming leadership, workplaces, and lives.

This year, in recognition of Catalyst’s 50th anniversary, the annual Catalyst Awards Conference will be held over two days at The Waldorf=Astoria in New York City. The first day, March 28, 2012, will highlight Catalyst milestones spanning five decades, and on March 29 we’ll honor the Award-winning initiatives, culminating with the Awards Dinner that night. You can find the program and register today by clicking this link. Hope to see you there!

Catalyst turns 50 next year—the big Five-0. Clicking through our multimedia Timeline last week while flying back from the Middle East, I was struck by how we’ve evolved as an organization.

In the beginning, we functioned largely as a career center supporting women one at a time as they tried to advance in the corporate world. In the 1980s, we recognized that the problem wasn’t the women—it was female-unfriendly workplaces. So we shifted our focus from “fixing the women” to “fixing the workplace.”

Over the past decade we have established offices in Silicon Valley, Toronto, and Zurich, and have forged close relationships with organizations in Asia, Latin America, Africa and the Middle East. Catalyst events now span the globe too—from Tel Aviv, to Toronto, to Mumbai, London, Oslo and beyond.

In many ways, Catalyst is now entering a third stage in our evolution. Empowering women is the key to economic growth and sustainable development. So today we’re not just fixing the workplace.

Now, we’re fixing the world!