An inside look at the creation and development of the Imperial Women’s Network, with master’s in management graduate and Deloitte Consultant, Xia Chen. Tim Dhoul reports
‘The ability to have open and honest discussions is one of the key initial steps to understanding and dealing with diversity-related differences together,’ says Xia Chen, a Counsultant at Deloitte and an master’s in management alumna of Imperial College Business School.
For this reason, the Imperial Women’s Network (IWN) isn’t just for female alumni, it also welcomes male advocates for diversity at its events. Xia has been part of the IWN’s Founding Steering Committee since 2016 and, in this interview with Ambition’s Content Editor Tim Dhoul, she outlines how it came into being on the back of feedback relating to what alumni would most like to see from a network.
Xia also describes the network’s mixture of events, in which professional industry-orientated events sit alongside social events that focus purely on bringing people together – all with the overarching aim of helping its members connect to new professional groups and share knowledge, insights and success stories.
What were the motives behind the network’s establishment? Did you feel there was a gap in networks that were already available at the Business School and wider university?
Though there are many initiatives at Imperial College Business School focused on connecting industry with current students, an idea sparked between EMBA alumni, Hardeep Parmar and Mona Habib, for another opportunity centred around how to close the gap between graduates and industry. They had a vision to set up a network to enable women who are approaching or have reached their career ceiling, to connect with others in the alumni community who have successfully made it through this phase.
With the full support of Imperial College Business School, Hardeep, Mona, and an MBA alumna, Andrea Solana, set up an initial launch event at the Business School with a group of invited alumni. At the event they shared their vision of creating a professional network for alumni of all genders, and asked for audience contribution on what key objectives they would like to see this network set out to achieve.
I was very impressed and motivated by the energy at the event. Around 60 alumni were separated into teams to share their ideas of how they would like the network to operate, and I spoke about these on behalf of my team. At the end of the event I was asked me if I wanted to be part of the team running the network and joined the ‘Founding Steering Committee’, from which the IWN was formed. We studied the ideas and comments gathered from the launch event and used these to create our strategy and proposition.
We decided to start by hosting a series of professional events to build the brand and member base and over the following two years, with the active support of the Alumni Relations team at Imperial, we had grown to over 400 members. We also enlisted volunteers that helped us with running these events.
Our network gained momentum, delivering quality events with good feedback and receiving the Dean’s Community Award for Alumni 2018. We have now gone through another round of collating ideas and feedback on what we have done well and what our members would like to see us doing next, and are in the process of exploring ways of increasing our services even further.
Does the network place particular emphasis on industries in which female leaders are notably lacking (e.g. STEM areas)?
The IWN is accessible to alumni from all industry backgrounds. We run around six events a year, three professional events surrounding an annual theme relating to current industry trends, and three social events.
This academic year for example, our theme is ‘innovation’, and we have delivered events on innovation in banking and financial services, innovation in transport, and, in May, innovation in healthcare. These events aim to share knowledge and experience through guest speakers and panellists, including successful business leaders. The social events, meanwhile, help to bring our alumni together to network and celebrate the achievements of our members. In the next academic year, we will deliver three professional events centred around the theme of ‘changes’.
Why is it important to include male ‘advocates for diversity’ in a network dedicated to supporting female alumnae and have you experienced any challenges in this regard?
We believe it will be easier to promote diversity at work if we include all genders in our conversations. The ability to have open and honest discussions is one of the key initial steps to understanding and dealing with diversity-related differences together.
We have numerous examples at the IWN where a member was the only woman sitting in an executive meeting and experienced diversity challenges with her peers. This is why we make it clear in our proposition statement that the IWN welcomes male advocates for diversity to join us, to see past gender differences and value an individual based on their merits, not their gender. At our events, our main focus is on developing industry knowledge as well as professional and leadership skills in our members.
Is mentorship currently among the networking and support facilitated by the network, or is it part of the plan for the near future?
Mentoring is a request that we often receive from our members. In the coming academic year, the IWN is working on launching its first mentoring pilot scheme to understand how to suitably approach and support our members. We are also actively thinking, and open to suggestions, on how to differentiate our mentoring services from other similar organisations and professional companies.
Are there any specific examples of the network’s positive impact (in general terms or on an individual alumna or alumnus) that you can give?
The IWN has found its place in the wider movement of promoting gender equality in the workplace – it’s been a very successful start. In its three years, the IWN has also bridged a connection with other women’s networks in the UK, and held joint events with Johnson & Johnson, EY (Ernst & Young), the NHS, Deloitte and Oracle, enabling members to share knowledge, skills, insights and success stories across previously disconnected professional groups. We are very hopeful we can make more positive contributions to our alumni and different industries.
A good example of the positive impact that the IWN has had is a workshop we delivered on unconscious bias at work and how to deal with it, which had excellent feedback from our members – especially those that work in male-centric cultures.
In addition, after an event held at Deloitte on ‘the future of tech’, we heard from Deloitte representatives who found potential candidates in the audience, and audience members that were able to engage with the keynote speaker and panel participants regarding potential job opportunities. We love hearing these types of stories as they motivate us to continue our work.
What are your hopes for the network in the next five years?
The IWN currently has over 600 members. We have healthy statistics on the number of members who have returned to our events over the years and the number of new members at each of our events. We are also blessed with a diverse group of excellent speakers that share knowledge, and stimulating discussions between panel participants and engaged audience members.
Moving forward, our vision is to continue delivering high-quality events that create the most value to our members, and expand into new services that we can offer to better support our members in achieving their professional goals.
