No matter how tumultuous are the current events of the day, an organization is only as strong and resilient as the culture it fosters for its employees.
In our video above, produced in association with CEO Action for Diversity and Inclusion, Cherise Slover shows how she acted to create programs that foster a culture of inclusion for the LGBTQIA community at Intuit.
During her time as a senior CX specialist for Intuit, Slover realized that she wanted to start a family with her partner, but, due to the limitations of Intuit’s parental leave policy at the time, she learned that she didn’t qualify for any benefits or time off.
“Non-same-sex couples get to take six months off to spend with their new child, and I get to get my two weeks of vacation time,” she says.
It was nearly a deal-breaker for her, but rather than leave the company, Slover decided to create the culture she wanted to see, and she found that senior leadership was more than willing to support her.
“We always talk about diversity as a fact, but inclusion is a choice,” Sasan Goodarzi, Intuit’s CEO says. “If anyone ever has the courage to come into my office and say, ‘I want to drive change,’ my job is to make sure they have everything at their fingertips, because you can’t just say you want to create an inclusive environment and make it so.”
“Coming from the bottom up and trying to drive that change from the top down was very, very scary,” Slover says, but now, as the global pride chair for Intuit, she has turned trepidation into action by building a network that includes programs such as the Ally program, a multi-level inclusion training that teaches team members how to provide safe spaces so that everyone feels empowered to bring their full selves to work. And to Slover’s surprise, it “spread like wildfire.”
“I just wanted to make a change for our company and our community,” Slover says. “I didn’t realize it would have a complete ripple effect across the entire industry.”
Watch the video above to see how Goodarzi, Slover and the rest of Intuit worked together to create a company culture for good.
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PwC’s new series, “Act On Change,” produced in association with the CEO Action for Diversity & Inclusion™, highlights the many ways companies and their leaders are affecting change for a more diverse, inclusive and better future. With more than 1000 CEOs that have taken the pledge, CEO Action is the largest CEO-led business coalition focused on advancing diversity and inclusion in the U.S. To learn more, visit CEOAction.com.
This article was paid for by PwC and co-created by RYOT Studio. HuffPost editorial staff did not participate in the creation of this content.
