M&IT 09-21 - Gabby Austen Browne | Meetings & Incentive Travel

Gabby Austen-Browne is a diversity and inclusion expert, delivering consultancy, education and training to the events sector in her role at Diversity Ally, which she co-founded with Ashanti Bentil-Dhue in 2020. She is also a BAME Ambassador at Fast Forward 15.

Ashanti and I launched Diversity Ally in response to the Black Lives Matter protests and the fact that systemic inequality and racism still exist in our society. What we noticed was the events industry was not really engaging with that very much. And we wanted to try and find out why.

Is it a lack of education? Is it a lack of confidence in talking about a subject matter? Was it people just didn't really care? We made it our mission to find out. And that's how we realised that actually, the industry needs support with this, and there does need to be some education and training to build confidence in what the issues are.

Everyone has biases, we just do. It’s making sure that those biases don't creep into decision making, and educating ourselves around where these biases come from. We need to learn how to talk about the issues openly without feeling embarrassed or awkward. How do we develop minority groups to actually progress through companies and get into those leadership roles and get into those boardrooms?

My background is as a professional dancer. I spent 15 years dancing on stage, TV, film - the lot. Then I decided the events industry would be the place for me, because I was kind of in events anyway, I felt like I knew the environment. Also, I’m bossy and I really like organising stuff.

We need to make our industry more attractive to lots of people from different groups

Inclusion has always been a part of my background and my life everywhere. All through my events career, for six years, up until last year, when I was made redundant because of Covid. I joined an event apprenticeship committee, and it was all about how to get more diverse groups of people to apply for apprenticeship programmes. And then how do we support employers to support those diverse apprentices?

The first year has been good. Considering we're in a pandemic! Clients are working through workshops with us, education and consultancy, and some are working towards their Diversity Ally mark of approval. They do training with us, and then they commit to whatever goals they decide that they want to achieve. We revisit them in a year and if they've not done anything towards their goals, then they lose their mark of approval.

The Black Lives Matter protests opened people's eyes. And then they were like, right, I want to do something about it. Most of time when we connect with businesses, they're like, "We're not very diverse, our business is very white, our leadership team is very white, and male". And they want to diversify the teams in their workplace, and make sure that their clients can see that they're doing that.

A lot of agencies are being asked about diversity at the pitch stage now. How diverse is your team? What's your D&I policy? How do you make sure the content is diverse? And they unfortunately don't have the knowledge around that, so that's where we come in.

This isn't just a nice to have, this is about business revenue. If you want to be future proofing your business, you have to think about the next generation. For them, this is second nature. And if they can see businesses are not living up to their expectations with regards to sustainability, diversity, inclusion, they're not going to want to work for that business.

If you’re a business leader, you need to demonstrate that you care about this. It's not that you have to be pushy with the initiatives, but you have to allow space and opportunity for the rest of your team to instigate strategies and then work towards actually implementing these strategies. So they become embedded, and they become processes that you don't even think about anymore. All you need to do is show that you care about it, and then everyone else will follow.

We need to make our industry more attractive to lots of people from different groups. People with disabilities, the LGBTQ community, ethnic minorities. Top and bottom, grassroots and leadership is where we need to come from. We need to offer more opportunities at the grassroots level, but then also, we need to come in at the top as well to have more representation. So that is about working and collaborating with associations and other leaders on how we can develop people to come into these leadership positions.

Processes are quite easy to change, but mindsets are a bit harder. A lot of the time the mindset stuff has to come first and then once people get it, they're on it. But if they don't get it, nothing's going to happen.

Getting a job can't just be about who you know. There needs to be a proper process around how we're selecting. That's why our industry is really not very representative. We're not getting new people in, we’re just referring each other around. This is why the grass roots stuff is really important as well, because, okay, we've got 3.5 per cent black and brown people in our industry at the moment. But all we're doing is then passing that 3.5 per cent around different agencies and businesses! We need to increase that representation.

I'm never against white people talking about this

It's all positive that so many companies have now got these working groups based around diversity and inclusion. But if these working groups are not feeling like they're making a difference and being successful, they're going to drop away. And then we've lost a big opportunity to bring about change. So there needs to be more support for committees and working groups and things like that. There are peaks and troughs, and we do get diversity fatigue.

I'm never against white people talking about this. It doesn't matter what your experience is, you've got something to say. And it's not harmful. I'm not like, “Oh, you shouldn't talk about this, because you're an old white guy.” That's just ridiculous. I take support from anywhere.

I think we're going to get to sustainability levels with it. The way people talk about sustainability now and integrate that into their businesses and their corporate social responsibility and things like that. I think we're going to get that with diversity and inclusion.

I think there are enough people within our industry who are really on board with this. And once others see that it's successful, they will follow. It's creating a better sector and environment for us all.