In March of this year, we promised to take tangible steps to make sure that Women in PR is a network that engages, represents and advocates for senior women from all backgrounds. This is the only way we can achieve our mission: to increase the number and diversity of women in leadership positions across our industry.

We set out three Equity, Diversity and Inclusion goals that we believe are central to us doing this:

• to improve the representation of senior women in our network to reflect more lived experiences and backgrounds
• to develop an inclusive culture that creates a community and sense of belonging; and
• to advocate for issues that affect our diverse network

We knew meeting these goals wasn’t going to be a “quick fix” and that it would require time, energy and commitment to make meaningful change.  It was also important for us to seek voices and input from the communities we want to support so we can be effective.

We want to share a full EDI plan with our community at our AGM in January 2025.  This is slightly later than we’d hoped but is purely due to the time required to get this important plan right.

Ahead of then we wanted to share the steps taken so far – and what’s planned for the remaining months of 2024 to hold us true and accountable.

Since March 2024:

• We carried out an audit of WiPR to better understand the experiences of our members. As part of this, we asked our members to voluntarily self-identify and share their diversity data with us.  44% of our current members participated and it confirmed that while as a network we reflect the PR and Comms industry (comparative to the most recent CIPR census), our forums were missing voices from the Black community and would benefit from more representation from the LGBTQIA+ community, those who identify as neurodivergent or living with a disability and those living and working outside London.  This work is helping us prioritise bringing in voices that are underrepresented.
• We have recruited four additional committee members to fill important roles on the committee – Amna Ali, Evadney Campbell MBE, Katie Eborall and Baljit Kaur Gill so we are better representing our members. We did this by reaching out to our wider community and asking those with different perspectives and lived experiences to consider getting involved. Their nominations were voted on by the WiPR membership.
• We launched our most competitive and diverse mentoring programme to date after setting clear, transparent benchmarks for recruiting both new mentors and mentees. We removed any financial barriers (no need to pay-to-play) to ensure we had a broader process for encouraging talent from a diverse range of backgrounds and communities to apply.  As a result, we saw a record number of applications from a diverse range of people.
• We instigated a listening period where we welcomed input from women working in PR and comms. We ran five online forums, employing an external facilitator to gain insights from volunteers across the following communities: race and ethnicity, socio-economic, disability and neurodiversity, and LGBTQIA+.  At the same time, we sought additional opinions one-to-one from a range of industry professionals and organisations.
• We ran a strategy workshop for the WiPR Committee using insights from our listening and our own learning to help us identify the building blocks for a refreshed EDI strategy.

Ahead of our AGM in January 2025, we will be focused on the actions below:

• Commissioning a review of the draft strategy with external experts and advisors* before agreeing a final version to be published on our website and reported against at our AGM.
• Revising the scope of the roles on our committee so we are better placed to fully commit to changes needed on how we operate and show up for our members.
• Relaunching our Shadow Board programme and selecting a diverse cohort for 2025. This means overhauling the process for people applying and going beyond our existing membership to ensure we truly attract and represent a broader spectrum of talent.
• Hosting an event in Manchester to serve our members in other parts of the country, the first of more national events we would like to host.
• Reviewing the formats of some of our activities and events to ensure they are more inclusive.
• Diversifying our committee further through an additional election to be held in December 2024 as current committee members step down.

We look forward to updating you again in January 2025 at our AGM.

In the meantime, any questions or feedback on this work, do please reach out to any of us via info@womeninpr.org.

Thank you,

Women in PR Committee

(Amna, Angela, Baljit, Charlie, Deepa, Evadney, Ginny, Ishtar, Jo, Katie, Kate C, Kate H, Lindsay, Ondine, Roxy, Ruth, Sneha, Victoria)

 * All experts commissioned to support women in PR will be paid for their time