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Liana Cafolla

Champion for the Advancement of Women
American investment banking firm Goldman Sachs has a reputation for innovative thinking. It is not surprising, then, to find that when it comes to diversity and inclusion, the firm operates hundreds of programmes to encourage the inclusion of its 34,000 or so employees around the globe.
In Asia-Pacific, the programme  is led by Stephen Golden, head of global leadership and diversity in  the region. 
Golden's career in the field of diversity  and inclusion started almost by accident. When he was at school, he worked part-time in fast-food restaurant McDonald's, where he was assigned, along with all the other male employees, to work on the grill. The cash desk, he was told, was 'a woman's job'.
'I was very frustrated by that,' recalls Golden, who later succeeded in persuading the management to allow men to man the cash desks and women to flip the burgers.
It was a good start to a career where personal conviction, perseverance and dedication to instilling change from the top down would be invaluable. These days,  Golden's tussles are fought  in Goldman Sachs' Hong Kong offices, but his enthusiasm about the subject is as apparent as in his McDonald's days. 
 Golden says he is driven by a desire to effect change. 'I'm just passionate, as opposed to an expert, but what I soon discovered is that expertise can be learned, and passion is probably one of the  most important parts and that's often innate.' 
He says one way to promote women in the workplace is through the firm's inclusion and diversity programmes, such as the Women's Network, an opportunity for women to gain the advantages from networking that men often find easily on the golf course or in the bar. The network holds regular meetings and events throughout  the year. 
At Goldman Sachs, the network differs by allowing and encouraging the participation of men. It took some of the women by surprise,  Golden says, but feedback is now largely positive.
'A group can't necessarily just take care of itself. The majority needs to help the minorities in order to help them succeed, so it's very important for us that men be part of the women's network,' he  says. '[There's] a lot of men who can learn from women in the women's network as well.'
Goldman Sachs also runs a paid internship programme called the Returnship programme. The idea resulted from the recognition that a valuable pool of talent lay in the shadows of the banking world peopled by those who had left their jobs, perhaps to further their education or bring up a family. They might welcome a return to the fold, but often that was not easy to achieve,  Golden says. He adds: 'It allows them to come back into a  real job for 10 weeks. We give them training to help build their skills, to rebuild their confidence, to build their network within the company ... but also, at the same time, they're doing on-the-job work, so they're seeing what it [is] really like to  be back.'
Working women with families have particular challenges when it comes to integrating their work and home lives. When mid-level career women start to have children, integrating domestic responsibilities with a demanding job can often lead to a crisis.  
'Many of these women think they don't have options, and if they can't do both, they'll have to quit their job because they cannot quit their family responsibilities,' Golden says. 'We have a programme for female associates - WCSI, or Women's Career Strategies Initiative, which helps women understand they do have choices and they do have role models they can learn from ... Mostly it's about exposing them to other women  who have been in that same situation.'
Another initiative is the sponsor programme, which assigns two sponsors, either male or female, to high-performing women. The sponsors' role is get to know the women and recommend them when appropriate opportunities arise, and help the women identify any weaknesses and push them to work on improving those areas,  Golden says. 
As with all the best diversity and inclusion programmes, Golden's work is backed up by his firm at the highest level. 
'Diversity is at the very core of our ability to serve our clients well and to maximise return for our shareholders,' says Lloyd Blankfein,  the bank's chairman and  CEO, on the firm's website. 'Diversity supports and strengthens the firm's culture, and it reinforces our reputation as the employer of  choice in our industry and beyond.' 
Golden says diversity is important for the firm, its employees and its clients. 'We honestly believe that if we're going to be the best company, and we're going to provide the best solutions for our clients, we need a diverse group of people who are focusing on coming up with those solutions,' he says, adding that the more diverse your own story, the better the odds that you will come up with more creative and innovative solutions.
His advice to companies seeking to build a diversity and inclusion programme is to make it a business priority. One way to do that is by making a senior person within the organisation the diversity champion. 
'If the message doesn't come from senior leadership, if it doesn't come from the top, then people don't take it as seriously,' Golden says. 'Don't say this is a women's issue and delegate it to women to solve - both men and women need to be engaged in the discussions of how to solve the diversity challenges that we have.'
What the judges say
Stephen is a person very familiar to anyone engaged in diversity and inclusion in Asia-Pacific. He left his prior career as project manager in the technology and compliance field in 2005 to start a full-time diversity role. Since then, he has not only developed and launched diversity initiatives and programmes that are  highly innovative for his own company, Goldman Sachs,  he has also shared his thoughts and concepts freely in conferences and in the relevant professional circles. And that is at a time  when many other organisations - be  they multinationals or small ones -  hadn't even started to think about the topic. He has  given  inspiration to many others to move ahead with the diversity programmes in their companies, and has made a sizeable contribution in Hong Kong and the region, leading to gender diversity among senior executive levels gaining wider acceptance today. Goldman Sachs now has the highest percentage of women at the vice-president and managing director levels than it has ever had, and Asia has the highest female representation in the company globally.



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Goldman Sachs

Driven by a desire for change