Celebrating International Women's Day

Employees from around the Imperial Brands business are taking part in a series of online activities today to celebrate International Women’s Day (IWD).

The event aims to highlight the significant benefits of gender balance to society and to the business and –  in light of this year’s IWD theme of #choosetochallenge – promote the acts we can take as individuals to call out gender bias.

The programme of events been arranged by a group of employees from various parts of the Imperial business, and builds on a range of country-specific activities held in recent years.  

Attendees will hear presentations and stories from senior female leaders in the business, including Chief People & Culture Officer Alison Clarke, and a number of external speakers. Among the attendees will be Imperial Brands Chair, Therese Esperdy, and Chief Executive Stefan Bomhard, who will make an opening address.

Stefan will tell employees: "This year the theme of International Women’s Day is ‘Choose To Challenge‘. This is the culture we want to build at Imperial: a culture of individuals that think for themselves and bring their best game every day because they feel they belong and are included.

"We are building a company with a challenger mindset and that means having a diverse population of employees who are open to change and new ideas."

As a business, we are committed to increasing female representation with senior management roles to 30 per cent by 2023. Last year we conducted a global diversity and inclusion study and the results will help shape our new culture and ways of working in support of our new strategy.

For more information on our approach to diversity, inclusion and belonging please see Responsible People and Operations and Diversity, Inclusion and Belonging.