Cognizant's Initiative on Diversity Measures Would Increase Women in Leadership Roles

By: WE Team | Tuesday, 24 November 2020

IT services giant Cognizant’s CEO Brain Humphries has promised to implement diversity goals from 2021. Under this initiative, more women would be given leadership roles and the inclusion of people of different ethnicities would be given priority.

Commenting on the initiative, Brain Humphries says, “We are rolling out in the coming year, diversity targets for an executive committee and their operating rules. We are continuing to add much more EC (executive council) member sponsorship and what we call ERG (employee resource groups) groups. We have added two in the last few months – Pan Asian ERG and Disability Person ERG as well.” He adds, “I am trying to also start by leading by example at the top of the company, with diversity not just in terms of male and female but also sexual orientation, nationalities, and backgrounds.”

Among 2, 83,100-strong global employees of Cognizant, around 1, 00,000 or 35 percent are women but according to Humphries’ own admission, not many possess leadership roles. Thus, this is intending to change the CEO of New Jersey, US-headquartered Company.

However, the company has even appointed Becky Schmitt as Chief people officer, Ursula Morgenstern as president for global growth markets, and Shameka Young as global head, diversity, and inclusion.

The company’s CEO also pointed out that the racial and gender justice movements that dominated headlines in 2020 and had received in change across various companies.

Brain Humphries further states, “I think it’s permanent. Companies, vendors like Cognizant are speaking more openly about it, about their expectations for us to show up as a global company, to show up as a representative of society.”

Other Indian IT and tech companies such as Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) have also declared similar measures. Ritu Anand, chief leadership & diversity officer, TCS says that the software exporter is intending to raise the number of women in leadership roles.