Rhodora Palomar-Fresnedi - Singapore

Profile

"How long have I been doing diversity? All my life!" says Rhodora Palomar-Fresnedi.

Rhodora's life and career are diversity personified, and just like her name, she describes herself as hyphenated. She has lived and worked in Asia, North America and Europe. Her educational background includes a degree in mass communications, complemented by graduate courses in accounting, finance, linguistics, communications research and a Masters in Management. She has reinvented herself every step of the way in her career, from time spent as a teacher, to an accountant, a financial controller, an independent consultant and a general manager. She says she manages to incorporate all this experience in her current work.

Rhodora joined Unilever Philippines in 1994, becoming HR Director after three years. In 2000 she moved to London to head the London office of Unilever's East Asia Pacific and China business groups. When the office moved to Singapore, Rhodora elected to stay in London and seized the chance to lead a new approach to diversity, becoming the company's first Global Vice President for Diversity in 2001. She has since taken on other global and regional responsibilities in the human resource and communications departments, but has always been connected to and has helped to drive Unilever's global diversity agenda.

Improving diversity

As Global Vice President for Diversity she worked with the Unilever Executive Committee who defined diversity in terms of inclusion, embracing differences, creating possibilities and growing together. She was challenged to set up a global strategy and framework to champion this vision across the business.

Her impact to date is obvious from the central role diversity plays in the business and the fact that it remains a priority despite leadership and organisational changes.

Such progress may be partly due to her passion for, and commitment to, diversity. Rhodora says: "For me it's personal. I truly believe in it. I think Unilever is one of the very few companies with the potential to make it a real competitive advantage. We have a good foundation: the Code of Business Principles and a belief in diversity. We also have the raw materials: we are a multi-local multinational so in many ways are already diverse, but we are just not leveraging it enough."

Rhodora's work started at the top and continues with Unilever's leadership. In her view, the key to Unilever's 174 000 employees is through the seven Unilever Executive (UEX) members. From her time under Unilever's two-Chairman and five-member Executive Committee (ExCo), to the current UEX, she believes that effective change is ensured through truly committed individuals at the top - for example, leaders committing to specific personal achievements such as mentoring senior women employees.

Rhodora credits the freedom and support she received from the Executive Committee and the current Executive as the biggest boosts to progress on diversity to date. "Their commitment was there from the start. With a compelling and inspiring vision to go with their commitment, we are on our way," she explains.

Top-down and bottom-up approach

Even though diversity is an integral part of succession planning and talent management worldwide, much remains to be done. This is best addressed through a combined top-down and bottom-up approach.

The top-down work is driven by Unilever's CEO, Paul Polman, who took over leadership of the Global Diversity Board as part of his normal responsibilities. The Board sets the strategic agenda and meets regularly to monitor global progress.  

Bottom-up work involves employee networks and volunteers. For Rhodora, it's about every Unilever person getting involved, whether guided by on-line diversity toolkits or supported by affinity networks like diversity business councils in the US or the Unilever Women's International Network (U-WIN), which was formally launched in 2008 and aims to align all existing women's networks across the business.

She adds: "Increasing numbers of women's networks are evidence of the growing interest and progress being made independently by Unilever businesses. Unilever people are making it happen themselves. I am here to encourage, support and connect them. We now have hundreds of diversity champions in the business and we intend to build on this base."

But this is just the beginning. Rhodora continues: "To succeed further, we have to look at everything we say and do through a diversity lens. This means applying a more inclusive approach to all parts of the business: from recruitment and people development; how we operate in meetings; our approach to marketing, advertising and even corporate responsibility - like Dove's global campaign for real beauty, which promotes beauty in every shape, size and age but has to be communicated and executed sensitively to respect local cultures.

"There are many more examples that demonstrate our belief in diversity. Empowerment of women is reflected not just in our efforts to increase diversity inside the company, but also in our efforts to provide employment to women outside the company, like Project Shakti in India, Pakistan and Bangladesh."

While Rhodora emphasises that diversity is about more than just gender equality, the focus on gender remains. She believes that focusing on the biggest diversity challenge gives Unilever the capabilities to address other diversity challenges.

"One More"

Rhodora has begun to focus on improving diversity in Unilever's top 100 teams. "Diversity is always about groups of people," she explains, "and in this context we developed 'One More' - both a programme and measure designed to increase team diversity, one appointment at a time.  For most teams it means gender diversity, but it is also about bringing in people from developing and emerging markets or different backgrounds.

"The results are clear. With every change in leadership there is evidence of increasing diversity. The current Unilever Board and the Unilever Executive are more diverse than their predecessors and the next Board promises to be even more diverse than the current one."

None of this looked possible ten years ago. From the quiet one-on-one work that she has done with Unilever's top leaders, to her more public engagement and mobilisation of volunteers, Rhodora has clearly made a big difference.

The Future

Rhodora believes that whatever she does in the future, she will find herself integrating diversity in her work, "Global inclusion and diversity is my passion. I believe that every person should be able to say – 'I am valued, I belong, I make a difference'.  I am both driven and inspired to help in any way I can to achieve that."