Celebrating March - Happy International Women's Day Month!
International Women's Day (IWD) Month saw a lot of great events in Hong Kong to celebrate women, diversity, inclusion and to promote equality.
The theme of this year's International Women's Day Month was #BalanceForBetter and it is wonderful to see how many companies are doing more and more to promote a balanced work environment. We have come a long way, but there are still a lot of things than need to be done to support full equality in every level.
FELIZ Consulting was honoured to be invited to the Herbert Smith Freehills (HSF) "Pushing the Boundaries in Law: an Audience with the Secretary for Justice" with speaker Teresa Cheng, Secretary for Justice, and Justin D'Agostino, Global Head of Dispute Resolution and Regional Managing Partner for Asia HSF as moderator. A great event at the China Club on 8 March 2019 that raised a lot of good conversations on equality, biases, the need to push the boundaries and some personal stories from Teresa Cheng on how to deal with obstacles and overcome it.
In conjunction with International Women’s Day (IWD) month, the Nomura AEJ LGBT+ Network, in partnership with Women In Nomura (WIN) network and the Hong Kong LGBT+ Attorneys Association (HKGALA), also hosted “The Triple Glass Ceiling” event, which focused on the obvious and less obvious (but no less insidious) glass ceilings which women continue to face, simply by being i) a woman; (ii) a woman who is Asian, and iii) an Asian woman who self-identifies as LGBT+. This was an amazing event with rich conversations and discussions, and a diverse group as part of the panel.
As big supporters of The Hong Kong LGBT+ Attorneys Network (“HKGALA”), in partnership with Legal Beagle and FELIZ Consulting, our Managing Director MônicaZionede Hall delivered a great professional skills workshop to over 70 attendees! We were delighted to run this professional development skills lunch & learn session, hosted by Davis Polk & Wardwell Hong Kong Solicitors. The workshop focused on sharpening communication and presentation skills: from developing executive presence, making the right first impression, improving personal branding and strengthening communication skills. It was a great success and FELIZ Consulting is grateful once again for the opportunity.
FELIZ Consulting was also honoured to be invited to the Equal Opportunities Commission (EOC) Racial Diversity & Inclusion Charter Ceremony held on 29 March 2019 at the HSBC headquarters in Central, with panel discussions and great speakers such as Dr Allan Zeman, Mr Andy Chan and Ms Helen Wong and a variety of backgrounds participants in the panel. We particularly loved seeing Bakar Fariha Salma Deiya speak from her personal experience facing different biases as an ethnic minority professional, what she has done to overcome it. The event emphasised the importance of diversity & inclusion/ unconscious bias training in any organisation, leadership support and community awareness. You can find out more about the panel discussions and the wonderful lineup of speakers here.
To end this brief blog entry and update, we leave you with a quote:
“We all should know that diversity makes for a rich tapestry, and we must understand that all the threads of the tapestry are equal in value no matter what their colour.”
Maya Angelou
The "beautiful tapestry" that is our world... we must remember that all the races, colours, gender, abilities or disabilities, social economic positions, preferences and more... all the "threads" are equal in value and make for a more inclusive, rich and beautiful world.