De Beers committed to women, girls – Cormack

Executive Head of Human Resource, De Beers Group Ann Cormack said the W summit is a key part of their events calendar at De Beers Group under an important element within their overall commitment to standing  with women and girls both within Botswana as well as across the region.

She said they know that to thrive in today’s market place they need to evolve and reflect all those they serve as a business and they have started to see progress.

“If you were here last year you would have heard my colleague David Prager, the Vice President of Corporate Affairs, introduce our three-year partnership with UN Women. Through this partnership we have made three commitments: to achieve parity in the appointment of both men and women into senior leadership by 2020; to invest US$3 million to support women and girls in the countries in which we mine and thirdly; to ensure that De Beers brands promote gender equality through its marketing campaigns,” she said, adding that one year on they have started to see progress.

She said through both top-down and bottom up approaches and the results of numerous programmes including new recruitment guidelines, mentoring programmes, revised policies including flexible working hours, unconscious bias training and support from locally-led steering groups and networks, they have seen an increase of appointments of women into senior positions and have reached parity.  Cormack said De Beers vows to maintain this trend.

About Cormack

Cormack is currently the Executive Head of Human Resource, De Beers Group. She joined the group in October 2017. She has previously worked as Director – International at Rolls-Royce plc.

The first 20 years of her career were spent working for Shell International where she held various executive positions, including running Shell’s global internal consultancy B2B team and the European Fleet Fuel Cards business.

More recently, she was Chief Executive of a biofuel joint venture, 50 per cent owned by BP before becoming the Managing Director for Energy at Xynteo.

Cormack also serves as a Non-Executive Director of the UK government’s foreign & Commonwealth Office Audit and Risk Assurance Committee. She is also a Council Member of Chatham House, and a board member of the International Advisory Group of the Confederation of British Industry.

She holds an MA in modern languages from Edinburgh University and a post-graduate Diploma in Russian from Strathclyde University.