WEQUAL-GLOBAL
17.11.2020 15:44:08 CET | Business Wire | Press release
Twenty-four female executives of leading EMEA companies have been identified as having the leadership traits for top level C-suite positions. The WeQual Awards (www.wequal.com/awards ) identify already successful senior women who are one level below C-suite, and are aimed at tackling the slow progress in appointing women to executive roles.
This press release features multimedia. View the full release here: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20201117005907/en/
A quarter of the winners of previous UK and US WeQual Awards have since been promoted to the executive committees of FTSE and Fortune 500 companies.
“The glass-ceiling concept has been an issue for decades, and the drop-off is steepest just below the C-suite, so I launched WeQual to champion gender equality at the top,” says Katie Litchfield , founder and CEO of WeQual.
The EMEA finalists are from a wide range of sectors and companies, including Orange, Unilever, Schneider Electric, Bayer Consumer Health, ENGIE, KCB Group, Sodexo, Enel Group, L'Oréal, Mondi Group, Bureau Veritas, Standard Chartered, Veolia Environnement, Ericsson, Fresenius Medical Care, AkzoNobel, Ooredoo Qatar, Danone, Aryzta.
The 24 finalists were assessed against seven criteria: Leadership, Cognitive Ability, Integrity, Drive & Resilience, Equality, Knowledge of the Business, and Personal Development. All candidates were assessed blind with no name or company revealed in their application.
Eight executive interviewers will hold 30-minute interviews with the three finalists in their category before each choosing a category winner: Brand Innovation, Commercial Performance, Digital Impact, Finance, Head of Region, People Excellence, Strategy Development, and Transformational Leadership.
The finalists will be announced in December 2020.
Among supporters of the awards are Ann Cairns, Executive Chair of Mastercard and Global Chair of the gender equality campaign group ‘30% Club’; Sir Ian Cheshire, Chairman of Barclays; Dame Inga Beale; and Ron Kalifa OBE of Network International. They are part of a roster of well-known C-suite executives who will now choose eight category winners.
Sir Ian Cheshire says: "These awards are among the first to target women at this level. We believe building awareness of these talented people, as well as connecting them to each other, is an important step in improving diversity at top levels of business.”
This senior group of 24 executives will become members of the WeQual Club and join the existing 72 senior FTSE and Fortune 500 female executives.
(Ends)
Notes to editors
Methodology: The eight assessment questions were developed from a research-based meta-analysis of the factors and characteristics that mark leaders as different from non-leaders (Kirkpatrick and Locke, 1991). They were designed to help the women best describe how they deliver on leadership characteristics and how they are seen by others as a leader, and indeed engage people who see them as fit to lead.
About WeQual
WeQual's mission is to make businesses more inclusive by identifying exceptional women executives and address the gender imbalance across the world's Executive Committees. Katie Litchfield, founder and CEO of WeQual Awards, devised the new platform which calls for women senior executives to build their case as to why they are deserving to be appointed to the Executive Committee.
View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20201117005907/en/
About Business Wire
Subscribe to releases from Business Wire
Subscribe to all the latest releases from Business Wire by registering your e-mail address below. You can unsubscribe at any time.
Latest releases from Business Wire
BeOne Medicines’ BEQALZI™ (sonrotoclax) Approved by U.S. FDA as First and Only BCL2 Inhibitor for R/R Mantle Cell Lymphoma13.5.2026 19:27:00 CEST | Press release
BEQALZI is a foundational BCL2 inhibitor designed for greater potency and selectivity, with potential to improve efficacy, tolerability, and convenience versus others in the classApproval of BEQALZI marks the first new BCL2 inhibitor approved in a decade in the U.S. and the only BCL2 inhibitor approved in MCL, aiming to set a new standard of innovation BeOne Medicines Ltd. (“BeOne”) (Nasdaq: ONC; HKEX: 06160; SSE: 688235), a global oncology company, today announced that the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has granted accelerated approval to BEQALZI™(bee-KAHL-zee; sonrotoclax), a foundational, next-generation BCL2 inhibitor, for the treatment of adult patients with relapsed or refractory (R/R) mantle cell lymphoma (MCL), after at least two lines of systemic therapy, including a Bruton’s tyrosine kinase (BTK) inhibitor. BEQALZI was designed to enhance BCL2 inhibition—with greater potency, selectivity, and a pharmacologic profile with potential to improve efficacy, tolerability, a
Boomi Unveils Innovations That Power the Agentic Enterprise13.5.2026 16:30:00 CEST | Press release
Orchestration capabilities simplify workflows, while advanced agent connectivity and an enhanced context layer activate data and scale AI Boomi, the data activation company for AI, today announced a major expansion of the Boomi Enterprise Platform at Boomi World 2026, introducing new capabilities across orchestrated agentic workflows, agentic engineering, governed agent connectivity, grounded agent context, and localized agent infrastructure. Together, these innovations are designed to power the agentic enterprise — where agents and humans work together to drive action and operationalize AI at scale. This press release features multimedia. View the full release here: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20260513996223/en/ Boomi Unveils Innovations That Power the Agentic Enterprise The enterprise has reached a defining moment as AI becomes the primary interface for work and MCP emerges as the new standard. While the shift toward a headless, agentic enterprise is inevitable, this visio
Boomi and Red Hat Collaborate on Production-Ready Agentic AI13.5.2026 16:30:00 CEST | Press release
Companies team to deliver a unified, enterprise-scale agentic stack to help organizations with managing data sovereignty and optimizing AI costs Boomi, the data activation company for AI, and Red Hat, the world’s leading provider of open source solutions, today announced a strategic collaboration to deliver a single, integrated stack for deploying agentic AI at scale. For many organizations, building production AI today means assembling numerous disconnected vendor choices spanning agent builders, orchestration tools, governance platforms, model providers, integration middleware, and security infrastructure, which can lead to data leaks and unpredictable costs. Boomi and Red Hat are working together to simplify AI innovation for customers by bringing together Boomi’s Agentstudio with the enterprise-grade power of Red Hat AI. This makes it easier for organizations to build agents that solve real business problems while supporting corporate standards for sovereignty, infrastructure flexi
Boomi and Couchbase Partner to Power Enterprise AI Agents with Trusted Recollection, Connectivity, and Governance13.5.2026 16:30:00 CEST | Press release
Partnership enables customers to accelerate AI agents from pilot to production with accuracy, performance, and control by combining Boomi's connectivity, agent runtime, and governance with Couchbase's operational data platform Boomi, the data activation company for AI, and Couchbase, Inc., the operational data platform for AI, today announced a partnership through which the two companies are collaborating closely to accelerate AI pilots to production. The companies will co-engineer solutions that give customers a production-ready foundation for agentic AI, combining Boomi's connectivity, runtime, and governance for AI agents with Couchbase's scalable recollection and vector capabilities. This press release features multimedia. View the full release here: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20260513350337/en/ Enterprises deploying AI agents today face a common challenge: while agents perform well in pilots, they struggle to scale due to inconsistent access to trusted context, recolle
Lenovo Named a Leader and Star Performer in Mid-Market Digital Workplace Solutions Assessment by Everest Group13.5.2026 15:00:00 CEST | Press release
One of only two Star Performers, Lenovo was recognized for helping mid-market CIOs with cost reduction, faster onboarding, productivity gains Lenovo’s ability to help mid‑market organizations reduce IT support costs, accelerate time-to-value, and improve workforce productivity at scale has earned recognition as a Leader and Star Performer in Everest Group’s 2026 Digital Workplace Services PEAK Matrix® Assessment for Mid‑Market Enterprises. Lenovo’s Digital Workplace Solutions (DWS) enable customers to improve speed, cut costs, and elevate employee experiences, helping new employees reach productivity up to 50% faster, increasing employee satisfaction by 30%, lowering end-user support costs by up to 30%, and proactively resolving up to 40% of issues to minimize downtime and business disruption1. Lenovo delivers these results by uniquely integrating device, services, and intelligence into a single, scalable delivery model built for the mid‑market. Through lifecycle services delivered at
In our pressroom you can read all our latest releases, find our press contacts, images, documents and other relevant information about us.
Visit our pressroom