Hanneke Smits, CEO of BNY Mellon Investment Management, has been named the fourth global chair of The 30% Club.
Smits has advocated for increasing gender diversity in the workplace throughout her career. She helped co-found Level 20, a non-profit organisation created to encourage women to excel in the private equity sector, in 2015. Smits is also the chair of Impetus, a venture philanthropy organisation that supports nonprofits working to improve the lives of underprivileged children.
Smits succeeds Ann Cairns as the 30% Club’s global chair. Cairns joined the campaign in 2019 as Co-Chair and collaborated with the late Brenda Trenowden until taking over as the campaign’s sole global Chair in 2020. Cairns departed as Executive Vice Chair of Mastercard at the end of 2022.
Smits says: “It is an honour to succeed Ann Cairns as Global Chair of the 30% Club and to continue its mission of increasing the number of women at board and senior management levels. The role of the 30% Club is as vital now as it was at launch in 2010. Even today, the baseline target of reaching 30% women – either at board or senior management level – remains a stretch for many organisations throughout the world. Reaching the campaign’s ultimate goal of gender parity will take significant effort and investment. I look forward to continuing to grow the 30% Club internationally and tackle a wider range of diversity challenges, inside and outside the boardroom.”
30% Club outgoing global chair Ann Cairns says: “On behalf of the members of the 30% Club, we are proud to welcome Hanneke as our new Global Chair. It will be invaluable to have a respected leader of Hanneke’s experience and calibre join the global campaign at a time when many companies are still struggling to achieve diversity at board and executive levels.
“In the UK, for instance, we may have reached 40 per cent women on the boards of the FTSE 100, but the majority remain in non-executive roles; there are just 25 per cent women at executive committee level and just 8 female CEOs. Women of colour remain under-represented at every managerial and leadership level. We must continue to keep diversity and inclusion high on the agenda.”