Catalyst CEO Champions for Change

Meritocratic systems have long sought to reward talent and hard work. Yet opportunity gaps persist, threatening those meritocracies from functioning consistently and fairly. Catalyst has researched these gaps for decades and has seen how executive voices foster fairer and more inclusive workplaces.

Catalyst CEO Champions for Change was born on International Women’s Day in 2017 and brings together the world’s most powerful chief executives and their organizations from our global Catalyst supporter community. This group of CEOs are committed to reducing biases, ensuring fair pay, and closing talent gaps across the leadership pipeline. These organizations share data related to talent, inclusion, and pay equity trends with Catalyst through our Champion Insights research. Our anonymized approach is a key differentiator to other surveys and tracks, analyzes, and reports collective progress in closing gender gaps. Catalyst also provides opportunities for chief executives and others committed to leading-edge measurement strategies to convene, to amplify c-suite perspectives on the importance of inclusion, and to leverage Catalyst’s thought leadership and tangible solutions to accelerate change.

As business leaders we know that making room for everyone to succeed at work is not only the right thing to do; it’s the smart thing. Inclusion improves innovation and employee retention, boosts corporate performance, and energizes the engagement of all individuals, regardless of gender, from the frontline to the C-suite.¹

Progress to close talent and pay gaps has been made, but there is still much to do. Bias and exclusion threaten meritocratic systems of talent development and advancement. It’s time for more rapid change and that requires taking a bold stand to accelerate action.

CEO Champion Actions

As a leader, I personally strive to:

• Continue to build an inclusive workplace culture by role modeling inclusive leadership behaviors internally and externally through my words and actions.
• Drive and embed inclusive team norms as part of my organization’s culture.
• Visibly hold myself and the leaders in my organization accountable for progress toward closing talent opportunity gaps.

My organization will:

• Support metrics, policies, and practices toward fair outcomes.
• Identify and reduce any structural barriers ; exclusionary behavior; decisions not based on merit; and thinking/beliefs rooted in stereotypes.
• Strengthen the talent pipeline through an annual review of internal diagnostics and leverage leading practices to address opportunity gaps.
• Share key talent practices and metrics (where applicable) with Catalyst for anonymized reporting of our collective aggregate progress.

We will promote these actions with Catalyst, a global thought leader and partner in the advancement of equality of opportunity for 60+ years, so we can continue to learn, improve, and advocate for inclusive workplace experiences and outcomes for everyone.

This community is made up of 80+ high-profile CEOs whose companies represent nearly 11 million employees and over $3T USD in annual revenue globally. For more information, please contact [email protected].

To join this community:

• The company must be a Catalyst Supporter.
• The signatory must be the global CEO or Chair of the company.
• The company must share with Catalyst select data related to talent, inclusion, and fairness trends in support of an annual report highlighting the anonymized, aggregate progress of the Champions community.
• The company must demonstrate maturity and/or progress in inclusion initiatives.

A Catalyst Supporter is an organization that donates to Catalyst and receives benefits such as Supporter-only trainings, insights, and outcomes-based tools.

You can verify your organization’s Supporter status in our database.