Announcing #WICxWorldRecord: GUINNESS WORLD RECORDS™ Title Attempt While Helping Women and Allies Navigate Their Future

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Exciting Announcement!!

We are thrilled to let you know we have partnered with Guinness World Record to create an immersive experience ideal for women and allies of all ages looking to change gears in their lives, whether transitioning from high school to college, college to career, employment to self-employment, employment to retirement, or those seeking a change in their career fields.

Join Women in Cloud as we take on a GUINNESS WORLD RECORDS™ title attempt for the most users in a vision board video hangout.

As part of their Annual Summit 2023 programming, the #WICxWorldRecord project aims to create a digital collage of 500 unique “Future You” vision boards, individually uploaded during the event and shared via an online album.

The record-setting event will take place on February 1, 2023 and will be led by Patti Dobrowolski, visual thinker and change activator, and Founder of Up Your Creative Genius. During the three-hour session, Patti will lead participants through her unique process for defining their “Future You” identity, supporting those in transitional periods of their personal and professional lives in identifying who they want to become and the bold steps they will take to get there.

“It has been proven that creating a picture of your future, putting it somewhere you can see it everyday and taking incremental actions to achieve your future substantially increases your chances of success”, says Patti Dobrowolski. “One of the best ways that you can cope with whatever experience or challenge you’re facing is by drawing a picture of the ‘future you’ on the other side of it.”

“I have had the pleasure of doing previous vision boarding sessions with Patti and believe in the power they hold for reflecting on your growth and achievements”, said Sharan Hildebrand, Vice President of Hitachi Group Companies. “I look forward to participating in the #WICxWorldRecord event and highly recommend the experience to anyone else in a time of transition or growth.”

This immersive experience is designed to support women and allies looking to change gears in their lives, whether transitioning from high school to college, college to career, employment to self-employment, employment to retirement, or those seeking a change in their career fields.

“#WICxWorldRecord is more than just a GUINNESS WORLD RECORDS title attempt,” said Chaitra Vedullapalli, President and Co-Founder of Women in Cloud, “it’s an opportunity to learn to lead through transition to help others achieve success while building an accountability network to achieve your vision.”

To learn more about the #WICxWorldRecord event or register to participate in the history-making experience visit: https://women-in-cloud-network.mn.co/feed

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3 Mistakes to Avoid While Developing ESG Leaders

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The ESG movement has taken the business world by storm — encouraging companies to measure and disclose their “environmental, social, and governance” goals and impacts. The health of the movement rests in consumers and stakeholders holding businesses to higher standards; consumers want to promote positive change with their money, and investors now use ESG performance to determine the value and risk of their investments.

That’s why it has never been more important to develop diverse ESG leaders. After all, even the best ESG initiatives can fail under the wrong leadership. In this article, we’re going to explore three of the biggest mistakes companies make while developing ESG leaders — and how they can correct them.

Mistake 1: Underestimating Just How New the “ESG Leader” Role is

There isn’t yet a defined ESG leader skillset. In fact, the movement is so new that many of the heads of some of the largest companies’ ESG programs don’t have previous ESG experience. Instead, their past experience varies, including consultancy, DEI roles (diversity, equity, and Inclusion), public affairs, and trade journal editors.

You can see a pattern here. The key to developing effective ESG leaders is identifying relevant core competencies. For instance, valuable skills may include experience with research, communications, strategy deployment, key leader engagement, and cross-organizational collaboration. These are excellent qualities that can be put to use to transform a company’s impacts and values.

Mistake 2: Framing ESG as Merely a Communication Effort

While developing ESG leaders, it’s crucial to show that there’s complete buy-in from the boardroom, confluence with company values, and synergy with the business strategy. The people in charge of the initiative must know that ESG isn’t just a move to boost public relations or please stakeholders — it’s a core element of the business. It isn’t just about one department or one quarter.

This is company-wide future-proofing intended to improve the impacts of the business on its customers, employees, and world. As such, all prospective ESG leaders should maintain a clear line of communication between the board and senior management. Leaders who understand the scope, mission, and execution of ESG will be able to coordinate policy adherence across the entire company. In this way, ESG leaders will be able to achieve full adoption and burst through silos because they understand how initiative policies affect different departments.

Mistake 3: Underestimating the Importance of Diverse Women Leaders

One Deloitte survey found that executives considered diversity, equity, and inclusion as the major disclosure topic, inching out greenhouse gas emissions, health and safety, and governance practices. The importance of this cannot be overstated. If your ESG leaders and decision-makers don’t include enough diverse voices and women, then people without the lived experience of this major disclosure topic will be making decisions on their behalf. 

After all, strong ESG initiatives start with great data — and there’s no better source to learn about diversity dynamics than from diverse leaders. To them, it’s personal. That’s why companies must prioritize diverse women decision-makers and consciously bring them to the table, not to check boxes, not as a gesture, but to ensure that well-informed and successful ESG goals will be proposed and accomplished.

Start Leading a Successful ESG Initiative Now

The Women in Cloud (WiC) team spends a lot of time with enterprise ESG initiatives. The truth is, many organizations don’t have access to an ESG-driven leadership program that empowers women, and as a result, they’re incurring a massive opportunity cost.

That’s why we created a next-generation Corporate ESG Women’s Leadership Program called WICxLead.

The WICxLead program solves the inclusive programming problem for CEOs and their board of directors by helping them develop an ESG business case and operating model while accelerating brand, thought, and community development. Ready to start?

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