Celebrating Pride Month with the BoD Advisory Board: Dan Power
Dan Power, Managing Director, Data Governance, Global Markets at State Street, shares how his organization is supporting and celebrating the LGBTQ+ community
What are you doing to celebrate Pride month in your organization?
State Street has a ‘Pride and Friends’ employee network that is hosting a series of events every day in June to educate, inspire, support and celebrate the LGBTQ+ community. The company is also encouraging all employees to take online training on becoming consciously unbiased and a more authentic LGBTQ+ ally.
How have you ensured inclusivity remains at the top of the agenda whilst your organization has been working remotely?
I’ve tried to be supportive of my LGBTQ+ colleagues and to see and hear them as they express their struggles and perspective on where we are today as a company and a society.
In your opinion, what can we do within the wider data and analytics community to attract and then retain top talent from all walks of life?
Companies and hiring managers need to keep working on becoming more unbiased and anti-racist. Discrimination diminishes everyone. Talent is talent, regardless of what labels society puts on someone, and we need to treat each person with respect and dignity.
More organizations than ever before are encouraging their employees to be their authentic selves, how does your organization encourage this?
State Street does a good job encouraging its employees to develop, learn and grow into their best selves. There’s a quiet culture of tolerance and respect that I’ve been very impressed by over the past few years, especially throughout the global pandemic.
Why is celebrating Pride important to you?
I’ve got a lot of friends and family in the LGBTQ+ Community, and it’s important to me that they feel valued, welcome and respected in all of the different communities that I’m part of, both professionally and personally.
Dan Power is a member of the Business of Data Advisory Board. To find out more about how we work with data and analytics leaders from around the globe to champion all voices within the data and analytics community, visit this link.