<< Back
Hartford HealthCare, 4 Other State Companies Join Gender Parity, Racial Equity Effort
March 08, 2022
As part of our diversity, equity, inclusion and belonging efforts, Hartford HealthCare recently joined more than 140 companies in a coalition created to expand gender parity and racial equity in corporate leadership by 2030.
At a March 8 press conference, Hartford HealthCare was one of five local companies to officially signed onto the effort. Others were The Jackson Laboratory, Pfizer, Trinity Health of New England and Yale New Haven Health.
President and CEO Jeffrey Flaks signed a statement of support of Paradigm for Parity (P4P), formed in 2015 by 47 female CEOs and executives frustrated with the barriers they saw to female success and the lack of progress being made toward eliminating them. Today, the coalition affects more than 6.4 million employees across 28 industries worldwide.
“We are excited to join Paradigm for Parity as our goals here at Hartford HealthCare mesh perfectly with the coalition’s plan,” said Sarah Lewis, vice president of health equity, diversity and inclusion at Hartford HealthCare. “Making Hartford Healthcare an equitable and inclusive place for women of all backgrounds and identities to start and advance their careers requires innovative, thoughtful, system-wide strategies and tactics.
“Our commitment to Paradigm for Parity provides us with exactly that – data-driven best practices from leading organizations across industries, opportunities to convene with and work alongside leaders in peer institutions, and benchmarks against which we can measure our success. Paradigm for Parity’s framework to achieve gender parity with racial equity also fully aligns with our fifth core value of Equity.”
P4P devised a list of best practices to reach its goal of gender parity for all races, cultures and backgrounds in corporate leadership, and a toolbox to guide member organizations. The best practices include:
- Facilitate open dialogue and courageous conversations led by company leaders.
- Support women in balancing caregiving duties with their work.
- Review hiring practices.
- Seek diverse suppliers and partners.
- Provide employees diversity and inclusion resources and training.
- Facilitate professional development and relationship building for women and people of color.
- Establish regular company-wide internal communications.
“We know the saying, ‘If you can see it, you can be it,’” Lewis said during the press conference. “That’s one of the things that draws us to this initiative because we know that our little girls need to be able to see themselves in every single role that they can.”