WeQual: Eight Exceptional Women Executives Honoured in EMEA Diversity Awards
15.12.2020 18:17:00 EET | Business Wire | Press release
Eight businesswomen holding prominent executive roles in leading companies in Europe, the Middle East and Africa have been named as winners in the annual WeQual Awards (www.wequal.com/awards).
This press release features multimedia. View the full release here: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20201215005796/en/
WeQual EMEA 2020 - Winners (Photo: Business Wire)
WeQual identifies and recognises world-class women executives, one level below the group C-suite, and is designed to promote diversity and gender equality within the group executive committees of EMEA’s largest companies.
The eight winners were selected from a shortlist of 24 finalists. The successful award holders are employed in Aryzta, Bayer’s Consumer Health Division, Bureau Veritas, Fresenius Medical Care, Ooredoo Qatar, Sodexo, Standard Chartered Bank and Unilever.
Katie Litchfield, Founder and CEO of WeQual, says: “WeQual identifies already successful senior women who are qualified to be appointed to the group C-suite. Our mission is to tackle the slow progress in appointing diverse women to executive roles and highlight successes where they occur.
“The glass-ceiling concept has been an issue for decades, and the drop-off is steepest just below the group C-suite, so it is important to champion gender equality at the top.”
The awards come at an important time for women in business. The global Covid-19 pandemic is in danger of pushing back opportunities for women to be appointed to the most senior positions. “The fact that we are able to celebrate the achievements of these women in major companies at this time sets a shining example to others,” says Katie Litchfield.
The winners are:
− Bola Adesola: Senior Vice-Chairman, Africa, Standard Chartered Bank, Nigeria. Head of Region Category.
− Dr Cora Koppe-Stahrenberg: Executive Vice President, Global Head of Human Resources, Fresenius Medical Care, Germany. People Excellence Category.
− Munera AL-Dosari: Chief Strategy Officer, Ooredoo Qatar. Strategy Development Category.
− Patricia Amaro: Digital Hub and E-commerce Director, Unilever, Spain. Digital Impact Category.
− Patricia Corsi: Global Chief Marketing and Digital Officer, Bayer’s Consumer Health Division, Switzerland. Brand Innovation Category.
− Nathalie Pousin: Chief Financial Officer, France, Africa, GSIT, Bureau Veritas, France. Finance Category.
− Petra Melander: EMEA Account Director, Sodexo, Finland. Commercial Performance Category.
− Rebeca Navarro: Chief Transformation Officer for Europe and Head of Procurement, Aryzta, Switzerland. Transformational Leadership Category.
The 24 finalists were assessed against seven criteria: Leadership, Cognitive Ability, Integrity, Drive and Resilience, Equality, Knowledge of the Business, and Personal Development. All candidates were assessed blind with no name or company revealed in their application.
To choose the winners, eight executive interviewers held 30-minute interviews with the three finalists in each category before each choosing a category winner. The judges were:
− Sir Ian Cheshire, Chairman, Barclays UK
− Viswas Raghavan, CEO EMEA, J.P. Morgan
− Warren East, CEO, Rolls-Royce
− Dame Inga Beale, Chairperson, Mediclinic
− Chris O'Shea, CEO, Centrica
− Ron Kalifa OBE, Chairman, Network International
− Tamara Box, Managing Partner EME, Reed Smith LLP
− Tulsi Naidu, CEO, Zurich Insurance Company UK
All the 24 award finalists have been given access to a range of WeQual support services and networks designed to help them make the step up to the group executive level. A quarter of WeQual award winners in the UK and USA have since been promoted to the global executive committees of FTSE and Fortune 500 companies. There are now 96 senior women involved with WeQual globally.
(Ends)
Notes to editors
About WeQual
WeQual's mission is to make businesses more inclusive by identifying exceptional women executives and address the gender imbalance across the world's Group Executive Committees. Katie Litchfield, founder and CEO of WeQual Awards, devised the new platform which calls for women senior executives to build their case as to why they deserve to be appointed to the Group Executive Committee.
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/wequal-awards
- Twitter: https://twitter.com/WeQualGlobal
- YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCBpixTLeUsQVjwrivAP9-KA
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/WeQualAwards
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/wequalglobal
To view this piece of content from cts.businesswire.com, please give your consent at the top of this page.
View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20201215005796/en/
Contact information
Katie Litchfield
katie@wequal.com
Mobile: + 44 7796 147466
UK office: +44 20 3290 3389
About Business Wire
For more than 50 years, Business Wire has been the global leader in press release distribution and regulatory disclosure.
Subscribe to releases from Business Wire
Subscribe to all the latest releases from Business Wire by registering your e-mail address below. You can unsubscribe at any time.
Latest releases from Business Wire
MediaCo Appoints Brian Fisher as President21.7.2026 23:15:00 EEST | Press release
MediaCo Holding Inc. (Nasdaq: MDIA) today announced executive leadership appointments that align the Company's leadership structure to support its long-term growth strategy. Effective immediately, Brian Fisher has been appointed President of MediaCo. Albert Rodriguez will continue to serve as Chief Executive Officer, focusing on the Company's long-term strategy, growth initiatives and shareholder value, while Fisher assumes responsibility for leading the Company's day-to-day operations and execution. The Company also announced that Roberto Castro has been appointed Interim Chief Financial Officer and Interim Treasurer, overseeing the Finance organization while a search is conducted for a permanent Chief Financial Officer. "MediaCo has built tremendous momentum, and these leadership appointments position us well for our next phase of growth," said Albert Rodriguez, Chief Executive Officer of MediaCo. "Brian is the right leader to serve as President, and Roberto's financial expertise wil
Footprint Expands Into PE-Free Cups, Bringing a Proven, Recyclable and Home-Compostable Alternative to Plastic-Lined Paper Cups Into Production21.7.2026 19:00:00 EEST | Press release
Footprint, a materials science and technology company focused on eliminating single-use plastics, today announced it has acquired a recyclable, home-compostable, polyethylene (PE)-free hot and cold cup platform from Transcend Packaging, along with next-generation paper lid and straw solutions. Transcend Packaging is a European company focused on innovation in sustainable packaging solutions. Together, the cup, lid, and straw expand Footprint’s portfolio with a proven solution for the global cup market. Footprint will begin scaling its new PE-free solution through its Poland facility as the company expands across Europe, with North America to follow. As operations ramp in Poland, Footprint will work with Transcend through a manufacturing partnership to support customer continuity across Europe and meet growing demand for practical alternatives to plastic-lined cups. Transcend will manufacture product from its Wales facility for Footprint customers, while continuing to serve customers in
Spectro Cloud Launches PaletteAI Inference Launchpad to Reduce Enterprise Token Costs by up to 70%21.7.2026 17:00:00 EEST | Press release
Spectro Cloud, a leading provider of AI infrastructure management software, today launched PaletteAI Inference Launchpad, a turnkey, locally managed solution designed to help enterprises reduce token costs by as much as 70% and run AI inference closer to their data, applications and users. This press release features multimedia. View the full release here: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20260721597271/en/ The company also announced expanded PaletteAI support for AMD-powered AI infrastructure, including AMD GPUs, AMD GPU Operator, ROCm™ runtime, and the AMD enterprise AI reference stack — including AMD-optimized models from the AMD Inference Microservices (AIMs) catalog. Together, the announcements expand PaletteAI as one platform for production AI infrastructure across heterogeneous environments — giving enterprises, neoclouds and sovereign cloud providers a more flexible path to run governed AI infrastructure across NVIDIA and AMD silicon. AI infrastructure is entering the tok
RecVue Launches First AI Native Agentic Revenue Operating System21.7.2026 16:03:00 EEST | Press release
RecVue, the leader in billing and revenue management solutions, today announced the evolution of RecVue RevOS into the industry's first Agentic Revenue Operating System. In an architectural shift, the now-native agentic revenue management platform moves revenue operations beyond AI-assisted workflows to fully governed, autonomous execution with more than 50 purpose-built agents that work across contracts, invoices and payment data to predict risk, surface anomalies and escalate exceptions throughout the quote-to-cash lifecycle. Enterprise revenue operations have long suffered from a structural gap between billing systems that generate invoices and ERP systems that record transactions. Finance teams face tedious, manual reconciliation month after month, often resulting in delayed cash, billing errors that generate disputes, revenue leakage from ungoverned contract changes and close cycles that consume weeks. “Enterprise RevOps has always demanded both speed and precision, but traditiona
Yubico Extends Passkeys Beyond Trusted Authentication to Verified Authorization with Launch of YubiKey 5.821.7.2026 16:00:00 EEST | Press release
Yubico (NASDAQ STOCKHOLM: YUBICO), the pioneer of phishing-resistant authentication and creator of the original passkey, the YubiKey, today announced the general availability of its YubiKey 5.8 – marking an expansion of the role of the passkey from secure authentication to include verifiable, hardware-backed authorization. The new firmware delivers a foundation for secure enterprise workflows across identity wallets, document signing, and AI-driven approvals, while also providing developers with the critical capabilities needed to test, design and deploy these next-generation security features early. This press release features multimedia. View the full release here: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20260721286409/en/ As generative and agentic AI mature to drive rapid, automated cyberattacks, traditional multi-factor authentication (MFA) is failing to keep pace. Security leaders now face a challenge globally: securing not just who logs into a system, but exactly what actions a us
In our pressroom you can read all our latest releases, find our press contacts, images, documents and other relevant information about us.
Visit our pressroom