Jacobs hosts Male Champion of Change founder Elizabeth Broderick

During our second annual Inclusion Week, we hosted founder of the Male Champions of Change (MCC) and former Sex Discrimination Commissioner Elizabeth Broderick.

Elizabeth is a powerful and influential voice in the struggle for gender equality, enlisting both women and men as agents of change. In addition to establishing and convening the globally recognised ‘Male Champions of Change’ strategy, she was also Australia’s longest serving Sex Discrimination Commissioner (2007-2015).

Aiming to enhance awareness of inclusion and diversity, this year’s Jacobs Inclusion Week events and activities celebrated the theme, “Everyday Inclusion.”

Jacobs Chair and CEO Steve Demetriou, and People & Places Solutions Senior Vice President of Operations Patrick Hill – both Male Champions of Change - welcomed Elizabeth to our Sydney, Australia office, to share global insights and impactful stories about gender equality, the MCC and the importance of engaging men as well as women to drive greater gender balance.

Currently, Elizabeth is working as one of the United Nation’s Independent Experts on Discrimination against Women and Girls. In this role, she undertakes country visits to help the UN better understand the status of women and girls across the world.

At Jacobs, inclusion is one of our global values and an important part of our Culture of Caring.

We put people at the heart of our business.

We have an unparalleled focus on inclusion, with a diverse team of visionaries, thinkers and doers.

We embrace all perspectives, collaborating to make a positive impact.

That’s why we recently launched TogetherBeyond, our companywide approach to living inclusion every day.

In the past few years, we’ve implemented several initiatives to drive greater gender equality across our business. These include appointing the most diverse board in the company’s history, increasing the number of women on the Executive Leadership Team, embedding inclusion and diversity into performance metrics and touchpoints and rolling out conscious inclusion training across the globe.

In 2019, we received honors from the 2020 Women on Boards for our commitment to Board diversity, achieving 27% women and 45% overall diversity in our board of directors. And in Australia, we’ve also been recognized for four consecutive years as the Employer of Choice for Gender Equality – particularly in recognition of the significant leadership commitment and prioritization around gender balance. The focus on inclusion at Jacobs is a collective and collaborative effort between employee networks located and connected across the globe, an Executive Inclusion Council and accountable leadership teams charged with identifying and implementing specific inclusion interventions to address areas of inequity and exclusion.

Both Steve and Patrick are passionate advocates for driving greater inclusion across our global operations which span more than 40 countries and 52,000 diverse employees.

Steve is a Catalyst CEO Champions For Change and a member of the Male Champions of Change, Global Technology Group, formed through a partnership of AccelerateHER and the Male Champions of Change Institute. Patrick chairs the MCC Australia cohort. As MCC’s, they partner with peer organizations to effect greater change in the industry.

Explore more of our proudest achievements at https://www.jacobs.com/about/inclusion-and-diversity.