Diversity Matters
Inclusion and diversity are acutely important to our company, as they are to our clients, the financial services industry, and society more broadly.
Today, our own team is diverse, made up of men and women of varying ages and backgrounds. Our Founding Director, Caroline Keetch, is a long-standing and active Ambassador for the Diversity Project, a significant investment industry initiative whose purpose is to accelerate progress towards an inclusive culture in the investment and savings industry. ‘I Before D Is The Way It Must Be…’ is an in-depth report written by our Founding Director, Caroline Keetch, which was published by the Diversity Project in 2021. The report explores what inclusion means to the investment and savings industry and outlines ways in which we can encourage an inclusive culture at work.
“If diversity is the desired outcome, inclusion must be the act. At its core, achieving greater diversity by addressing under-representation across a range of factors is simply the right thing to do, both morally and ethically. However, there is also, helpfully, a business imperative that is increasingly hard to ignore.”
General Counsel, AIM-listed Wealth Management / Fintech Firm
We are also supporters of Women On Boards, which actively supports increased female board membership across British industry, and Investment2020, an initiative supported by The Investment Association aimed at bringing a more diverse range of talent into the sector at entry-level. Our firm is a founding member of the Diversity Project Charity, established in early 2020, and we are early signatories of the Change the Race:Ratio campaign launched in late 2020 by the Confederation of British Industry (CBI).
We strongly believe in the importance of cognitive diversity to our clients’ success and responsible stewardship, and we ensure this is reflected through our detailed talent mapping, our research and our methodology in general. We keep clients closely informed on relevant developments during every assignment and produce a detailed post-search diversity review after every mandate completed to clarify related findings and clearly outline how the eventual hiring outcome was reached. The Halsey Keetch Book Club actively seeks out titles relating to the importance of diversity, inclusion, equality and kindness and their application in business, including ‘Rebel Ideas’ by Matthew Syed and ‘Humankind’ by Rutger Bregman. Our in-house annual publication, ‘In Conversation’, collates thought leadership pieces and Q&As with industry figures in which inclusion, diversity and related topics feature heavily. We also contribute to progress via our roundtable events, inclusion and diversity focussed webinars, and by speaking at external events.
