Thank you everybody for having me here today. It's an honor to be part of Women in Tech.This presentation is not is going to be more related to, our capabilities as allies or enthusiasts or project managers in terms of diversity, equity, and inclusion initiative projects at our organizations. So the topics that I'm going to share today, is this I really like this title that is from impact to resilience, sustaining day in time of backlash. Sorry. I muted myself. But before starting with our topic, let me quickly introduce myself. My name is Julia Shanti, as you might know. As you might seen, I am based in Buenos Aires, Argentina, and I have been working over fifteen years in private companies, NGOs, and, public, governmental organizations, delivering social impact, and they related, programs, initiatives, and strategies. So in that sense, nowadays, I am leading the effort diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts at DataArt. That is a global software company.

And I'm going to share a little bit with you today, this uncertainty, context that we are living in in terms of, diversity, equity, and inclusion, and hopefully give you some tools and and food for thoughts about the current scenario and the current mode that we are driving through.

So in that sense, as you might see, or you might think or you might have read in some places. Nowadays, we face some of the diversity, equity, and inclusion, initiatives, projects, strategies are growing in terms of scrutiny or, fatigue due to different in different countries and in different context due to political uncertainty, due to global movements. But it's a common thing that nowadays, leaders and managers are being asked to, prioritize and justify more the, the impact they are making in terms of diversity, equity, inclusion, initiatives in their organizations. As you might also see in global media, the, like, many worldwide companies, move from a very visible message and initiatives, in terms of, of diversity with inclusion to, rolling back some, some, goals or making, those statements, not so loud and as they used to be. So the question today is, which which is our challenge? You know? Like, if you ask me five years ago, the challenge was to starting new areas or projects, to to manage diversity, equity, and inclusion in their in their organizations.

Nowadays, from my perspective and many other colleagues, the questions relies on not to start from scratch, diversity, equity, inclusion, initiatives, but to sustain what we have done and, sell through this context of building, backlash or pushback or uncertainty in terms of, Dave.

Not only Dave, but all ESG, related projects. So what changed from, like, five years ago to now? So since 2020, to put a time frame here, we have been the we have seen that many companies made this high visibility, public commitments about, their their dev goals, their, what they did, in terms of day days, like, having awareness, activities, and be high end events throughout both online and, face to face related to some, key dates like women's day, international day of people with disabilities, or or all the day related, dates.

Today, what we see is that some some, pushback or polarization. We have this, this I don't like to use this word, but we have this movement that call this agenda kind of, of, to to that is not going in the in the in the direction the world needs to go. There are priority, pressure. They are budget, pressure, and all the companies and organization are starting to have more questions, about the real business value or relevance of this kind of projects and initiatives. In that sense, as I was saying, for me and for many colleagues, running this kind of problems with impact in our organizations, the key is to sustain the momentum. I really like this word because it shows that having successful, Dave the, diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives is not about only awareness actions.

It's it's about changing, the the culture, changing the processes, changing the solving the real problems the organizations have. So the key thing here is to sustain that momentum and to stick with fewer initiatives, more integrated with business, with the business priorities, and not to have that sense that we are doing something that it has nothing to do with what our organization do. Because, that's the key to engage the key stakeholder here, that is or are the leaders within our organization, the managers that are the multipliers, of what we do and the ideas that we, implement in order to create long lasting change in our organizations. In that sense, I I I put this, like, realistic language instead of performative messaging because that was the that was what happened, like, five years ago. Like, we made very big statements saying that we care. Now we have to show that we really care and what impact do we have with our initiatives. In that sense, measurement is key.

To to to drive through this moment this this stage of of of all ESG and and and diversity with inclusion, initiative measurements and showing real impact is key. So what is the risk that that that we have? Now now the reactions are this I have gone through a little bit, but we we the main risk is that diversity and inclusion, it becomes, like, symbolic instead of having real impact. And we have to I am not going to read all the risk that we have because you you you you can do it yourself. But the main key takeaway that I want to highlight here is that this fatigue or feeling that diversity, equity, inclusion, initiatives are an extra or are not very embed in, our, business makes this, lost credibility and the lost of the our long term impact in term in term of all the initiatives that, we do.

And this, pushback is not only, like, many people think that this pushback, it's mainly political or ideological, but, actually, having unclear expectations or or not having clear a clear goal with measurable, with measurable outcomes, that also creates uncertainty and, and, this kind of fatigue that we might encounter in our organizations.

In that sense, I want to show you a little bit let me go out before showing you the next slide. I want to show you a little bit the path and the and the and what we have done at Datard in this in this sense when the Datard is a global software company. We have more than 6,000 collaborators. And in that sense, we are based in a in a in across, more than 40 places. So that brings a lot of people working together from different backgrounds. And for us, diversity, equity, inclusion is a key part of who we are, because we have people working from all around the world, and we have to make sure that we have equal opportunities for everybody, that everybody feels part, and everybody feels heard and feels comfortable.

So in that sense, we started our journey in, even though, diversity, equity, and inclusion is part of who we are and is part of our main values, one of our main values is people first. Since our creation in 1997, we start formal we started formally this diversity, equity, and inclusion journey, like a more professionalized one with goals, measurement, and outcomes, during mid twenty twenty three, where we assess where we were and we plan accordingly. And during twenty twenty twenty four and 2025, what we did is we created an action plan. We consolidate it, and we reassess it. So we create a common language. We let we we focus more on this, what I called before, awareness part, to make everybody knows that we were here, what we were talking about, what we cared, and we started reviewing our processes, our risks. And at the end of the day, trying to create the baseline to, make a long lasting change. So but in this in this in this path during 2024 and 2025, we we encountered some pushback, some kind of fatigue, seeing like our work is was not core to the business.

So for 2026, we are focusing in making diversity, equity, and inclusion projects and initiatives part of how we operate and not something we say we do, and not something just to create awareness, but to make a long lasting change. So my main key takeaways here is that we need to solve in our organization, we need to solve real problems. Instead of making this, high level statements or projects, we need to solve real problems. Like, if we need to review our recruitment, processes, our HR processes, our policies, create communities within our our organization, make, this topic part of how we operate. It's key to have a sustainable diversity, equity, and inclusion, project and strategy within our organization to move from symbolic or declamational conversations to maybe a less visible part, that is making this long lasting change in, in our operations. So in that sense, I believe I've I strongly believe that, aligning with our, internal leaders is key to make this sustainable, change and long lasting strategy remain and not to stick in this part of the of the big statements, let's say.

So if I may add something else, it would be that pushback or backlash or fatigue or that sense of this encouragement related to diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives in among organizations. It mainly has to do with sticking to this, awareness centric or initiative, specific initiative centric approach, and we should definitely turn into, a more less feasible, but more resilient point of view where we really, really look deep into our organizations, and we make long lasting change, reviewing our processes, reviewing our policies, reviewing what we do, and, most importantly, measuring what we do to move away from this kind of awareness or they, they, diversity, equity, inclusion, awareness campaigns.

So we have three minutes left. I don't know if anybody has a question or or a comment. I can see it in the chat. If not, I can invite you to join me at LinkedIn. I have, I have my, there is my my my profile, my profile in LinkedIn and also join data arts, social media in order to see and to review more things that we are doing in terms of diversity, equity, and inclusion, and also in terms of, of sustainability as well. So