As the AIM Market celebrated its 30th anniversary, Burson Buchanan had the pleasure of attending the market close ceremony on 19th June, hosted by Marcus Stuttard, Head of AIM, and Julia Hoggett, CEO of the London Stock Exchange.

The occasion was a reminder of the immense success the junior market has achieved since its launch in 1995 – its development into one of the world’s most successful growth markets, the crucial role it has played in encouraging and driving innovation, and most of all, the strength of the capital markets community it nurtures, from investment banks to PRs, lawyers to the companies themselves.

Burson Buchanan has enjoyed a wonderful and enduring 30 years with the AIM Market. As one of the few PRs around at the time of its inception, we are delighted to have been able to celebrate this significant milestone and look forward to the next 30 years!

“It was an honour to join the LSE and so many influential City advisers in celebrating 30 years of the AIM Market. It was a day to champion innovation and remind ourselves of the significant potential for UK capital markets. As one of the few London Financial PR firms to have been around since the AIM market’s inception, Burson Buchanan is proud to have played a significant part in supporting our share of the over 4,000 ambitious companies that have successfully raised £136 billion to date. We’re excited for the next chapter of AIM’s journey, continuing to promote the growth of dynamic businesses and the value in our capital market’s community.”

Stephanie Whitmore, Associate Partner

Reputation Capital Helps Companies Maximize Reputation to Unlock Billions in Shareholder Value

NEW YORK, June 10, 2025 – Burson, the global communications agency purpose-built to create value for clients through reputation, today announced the launch of Reputation Capital, a first-of-its-kind AI- powered technology and consulting solution designed to connect drivers of reputation to specific business outcomes such as stock price, sales or purchase intent. This new offer fundamentally advances how reputation is measured, valued and managed, offering leading businesses a live view of this dynamic, multi-faceted asset. Burson’s approach facilitates immediate decision making so businesses can act with speed and precision against reputational shifts that have a direct bearing on commercial success. Reputation Capital is available through WPP Open, the AI-enabled marketing platform.

“Our core belief at Burson is that reputation is the most valuable asset that any organization possesses,” said Corey duBrowa, Global CEO, Burson. “It’s complex and constantly evolving, influenced by a variety of factors beyond any singular element such as trust. Traditional tools for measuring and shaping reputation simply can’t keep pace with the velocity and volume of challenges our clients are navigating today. With Reputation Capital, we’re pinpointing the specific drivers of reputation, forecasting the impact of potential actions, connecting these insights directly to business outcomes, and pairing them with expert counsel. This empowers our clients to make informed decisions with speed and agility, ensuring their actions and communications positively impact corporate perception and business performance, and ultimately build a lasting competitive advantage in the marketplace.”

Advanced AI Modeling Pinpoints Reputation Drivers and Impact on Performance

The Reputation Capital methodology defines eight levers of reputation management, ranging from citizenship & social responsibility to management & leadership, to creativity & innovation, among others, and uses advanced data and AI models to predict the potential impact of the media environment, news, narratives, events, or actions on each lever. The models ingest and analyze information 24/7 from proprietary sources and technology platforms, capturing signals ranging from client-owned information to digital and social media. This analysis yields an up-to-the-minute reputation score that illustrates how a brand is perceived overall and isolates which specific levers need action to improve reputation with a direct impact on business. Burson’s expert counselors then develop strategic and creative messages and ideas, which are then tested and perfected for their potential for impact.

Reputation Capital analyzes brand-specific signals across segments – including geography, sector, reputation lever and audience – and uses near real-time AI analysis to pinpoint hidden or emerging reputational risks and opportunities and forecast their likelihood of scale and impact. Reputation Capital’s breadth of data and its modeling capabilities can deliver reputation scores and insights for thousands of global companies, both public and private.

“Traditional reputation management tools only offer a backwards view of corporate perception,” said Chad Latz, Global Chief Innovation Officer, Burson. “Reputation Capital changes the game by providing a dynamic understanding of a brand’s reputation in the marketplace and predicting the impact of actions relative to key business metrics. This latest innovation is unique in the marketplace and especially valuable during periods of turbulence or emerging opportunity, when advanced intelligence, urgent action, and sophisticated communications counsel are critical for safeguarding reputation or seizing potential.”

Direct Connection Between Reputation and Shareholder Value

The Reputation Capital platform models the shareholder value of a company’s reputation by focusing on business outcomes, such as stock returns, that differ from market expectations – to provide a clear picture of the impact of specific factors, like reputation, on shareholder value.

Modeling of technology sector companies proved that reputation contributes significantly to shareholder value. In this sector, shifts in company reputations contributed, on average, 0.97 percent in additional weekly returns – which in shareholder value ranges from USD $2.5B to USD $38B depending on the company being analyzed. Simply put, a one percent increase in its Reputation Capital score equated to USD $2.4B in added shareholder value for a technology company profiled in the platform.

“This profiling exercise underscores the critical role of reputation in driving financial outcomes,” duBrowa noted. “For businesses, it highlights the tangible economic value of building, maintaining and enhancing reputation. For investors, it emphasizes the importance of considering reputation when evaluating potential investments. For boards, it makes reputation – always a subject in the boardroom – a more tangible asset for every company and brand.”

Added Grant Toups, Global Chief Digital and Intelligence Officer, Burson, “Imagine knowing that perception around corporate integrity and governance, for example, or creativity, was having outsized impact on shareholder value creation compared to the other levers of reputation. Reputation Capital delivers that specificity, arming our clients with the predictive intelligence needed to build and sustain the reputational currency that drives business performance. By transforming perception into actionable intelligence, we can help clients make reputation a distinct and quantifiable competitive advantage that can be optimized for maximum ROI.”

Reputation Capital was validated by Augmented Intelligence Labs, a University of Oxford enterprise, and includes features that are part of Burson’s proprietary cognitive AI solution, Decipher, created in partnership with Limbik.

“Burson’s Reputation Capital is an exceptionally advanced platform that takes the most comprehensive view of reputation – and provides the most actionable intelligence – of anything that’s currently on the market,” said Dr. Felipe Thomaz, Associate Professor of Marketing, University of Oxford, and Co-Founder and Managing Director of Augmented Intelligence Labs, who counseled Burson on the solution’s development. “The empirical evidence that Reputation Capital reveals about the attributes that comprise reputation is extraordinarily valuable information that can guide Burson’s counselors and the C-suite.”

Reputation Capital is the latest addition to the Burson Innovation Portfolio, a suite of AI-enabled tools that equip Burson’s communications experts to provide clients with faster, better insights; precision audience targeting; and culturally relevant creative.

See the future of reputation management.

About Burson

Burson is the global communications leader built to create value for clients through reputation. With highly specialized teams, industry-leading technologies and breakthrough creative, we help brands and businesses redefine reputation as a competitive advantage so they can lead today and into the future. Burson is part of WPP (LSE/NYSE: WPP), the creative transformation company. Learn more at www.bursonglobal.com.

About Burson Buchanan

Burson Buchanan became a part of Burson in April 2024. Burson Buchanan was founded in 1984 and is acknowledged as one of the UK’s leading corporate and financial communications consultancies, renowned for its high standards of work and its integrity.

With over 90 retained clients, from FTSE 100 to privately owned companies of all sizes, our 45 specialist consultants advise businesses on how to communicate effectively with their target stakeholders and raise their profiles amongst mainstream and specialist investment media. We also provide digital, design, social, ESG, internal comms and crisis comms support.

Burson Buchanan supports the Altrad Group, a global leader in the provision of industrial services to a wide range of sectors and equipment for the construction and buildings sectors in various aspects of its corporate communications, including on the future advancement of its Sustainability strategy.

Altrad has published its 2024 Annual Report, reporting on another year of strong performance underpinned by a culture of empowering identity, and the Group’s 2024 Sustainability Report which advances its Sustainability reporting.

The enlarged Group (now made up of 60,000 skilled and talented people), with a diversified offering, positions Altrad as a strategic partner to blue chip clients supporting critical infrastructure across multiple sectors. Altrad’s diversification strategy provides strong business resilience with exposure to different market drivers in multiple sectors and regions of the world.

The Annual Report theme of Empowering Identity focuses on how this is a cornerstone of Altrad’s strategic vision and is at the heart of Altrad’s commitment to sustainable growth and ethical leadership. By fostering a culture and organisational structure that empowers people, Altrad cultivates a thriving environment where skills and excellence flourish. Creating a workplace where individuals innovate, collaborate and reach their full potential to achieve the collective goals of the Group.

Altrad Advances Sustainability Reporting

In 2024, Burson Buchanan was commissioned for a 2nd year to support Altrad with its sustainability disclosures.

Whilst the deadline for compliance with the new reporting standard – ESRS – has been delayed, Burson Buchanan guided Altrad with a foundational assessment of materiality, engaging with senior leadership and determining regulatory disclosure obligations for the multinational Group, based on the new standard and its relevance to Altrad’s operations.

The Group is a good example of the type of private organisation that now has to address formal non-financial reporting in line with new European Union legislation (CSRD), having previously provided stakeholders with a voluntary sample of sustainability activities from around its operations. The exercise has stimulated a Group-wide programme to develop the governance and internal controls necessary to increase the breadth and quality of sustainability-related performance, to provide a standardised level of external reporting that will meet both regulatory and stakeholder expectation over the coming years.

View the Annual report here

View the Sustainability report here

Related news: Altrad celebrates 40 years of excellence

London, 9 May 2025 – Burson Buchanan is pleased to announce the appointment of two new partners, Louise Mason-Rutherford and Henry Wilson.

Louise brings nearly two decades of experience in strategic financial and corporate communications, advising clients from ambitious disruptors to FTSE 100 companies. She returns to Burson Buchanan after holding senior leadership roles at Citigate Dewe Rogerson, Portland and Buchanan, bringing deep expertise across sectors—particularly in industry, natural resources, sustainability, technology, and AI. Her return strengthens Burson Buchanan’s capabilities in high-growth and high-stakes sectors, where her insight, network, and strategic counsel will help clients navigate complex communications challenges with clarity and confidence.

Louise can be reached at [email protected]

Henry Wilson is Burson Buchanan’s Head of Investment Companies and has been leading and building our sector practice for many years. His reputation for excellence in this highly specialist sector has been instrumental in the continued growth of our presence in this important London market sector. Burson Buchanan is proud to continue to work with investment companies run by leading management teams in the sector including in recent years Aberdeen, Baillie Gifford, JP Morgan Asset Management and Schroders among many others.

Henry can be reached at [email protected]

Commenting on the appointments of Louise and Henry as Partners of Burson Buchanan, Bobby Morse, Senior Partner, said:

“The further strengthening of our Board at Burson Buchanan is testament to our commitment to providing clients with senior advisory services. Both Louise and Henry bring significant knowledge and experience in key sectors, including technology, AI, mining, and investment companies, all of which remain hugely dynamic in a rapidly evolving global capital market ecosystem. With the significant broadening of Burson Buchanan’s capabilities following the merger with Burson, today we have significant leverage in key global capital markets, stretching from North America, London, Europe, Asia as well as the Middle East, providing our clients with a strong platform to deliver on their growth strategies.”

About Burson Burson is the global communications leader built to create value for clients through reputation. With highly specialised teams, industry-leading technologies and breakthrough creative, we help brands and businesses redefine reputation as a competitive advantage so they can lead today and into the future. Burson is the flagship PR division of WPP (LSE/NYSE: WPP), the creative transformation company. Learn more at www.bursonglobal.com and www.bursonbuchanan.co.uk.

https://www.prweek.co.uk/article/1917238/burson-buchanan-names-two-new-partners

Altrad Group marks four decades of heritage built upon its founding values

Altrad Group, an international leader in industrial maintenance services and construction equipment, is proud to celebrate its 40th anniversary.

Established in 1985 in Montpellier, France, by its eponymous founder Mohed Altrad, the Group has evolved from its humble beginnings into an international leader delivering a diverse suite of specialist services and innovative products to multi sectors across its global footprint.

Transforming from humble beginnings into an international leader

The Altrad Group story began 40 years ago with the acquisition and transformation of an insolvent scaffolding manufacturing business. In the process of restructuring that business and securing the jobs of its workforce, Altrad embarked on a journey from a regional French business to a pan-European and then international Group, expanding by acquisition and organic means to build an organisation of scale and diverse offering across industrial and construction sectors. Today, the Group employs a talented workforce of c.65,000 people around the world.

Strategic expansion enhances value proposition for clients

The diversification of the Group has resulted in a stable business that is resilient to the cyclical nature of the sectors in which it operates, allowing the Group to deliver consistent and sustainable growth and secure employment and job creation.

Today, the Group generates sales in excess of €5.45 billion evenly distributed across its core geographic markets of UK & Nordics, Continental Europe, MENA, APAC, Americas & Africa, with 84% coming from the Services business and 16% from the Equipment business. Showcasing the Group’s ambitions to support a sustainable future, c. €1 billion of Group revenue was derived from services to clean energy sectors of nuclear, hydrogen and wind.

Burson Buchanan supports Altrad in various aspects of its corporate communications. As part of this collaboration, Burson Buchanan also advises Altrad on the future advancement of its ESG strategy, as well as its effective implementation and communication to all stakeholders.

Read Altrad’s press release: here

Read more here in a recent Forbes article.

Berenberg International Women’s Day

Many thanks to Berenberg for hosting their International Women’s Day panel discussion last Thursday at The Tate Modern. With glorious views overlooking the City from the Southbank, the panel discussion, moderated by Berenberg’s Lauma Kalns-Timans, focused on women’s healthcare within the NHS and included an excellent line up of Caroline Perez, #1 Sunday Times best-selling author of ‘INVISIBLE WOMEN: Exposing Data Dias in a world designed for Men’, Peter Turek, Head of Women’s Healthcare at Gedeon Richter and Jo Cruse, Founder of Delivering Better, a movement aiming to create extraordinary change within the maternity care sector of the NHS.

When discussing women’s health, the conversation can’t but help turn towards maternity care, one of the oldest forms of medicine in human history. And yet, despite this, it was still astonishing to hear some of the statistics raised by the panel and from members of the audience who either work in or, through their own pregnancy journeys, experienced some of the following first-hand:

If we were to look at the maternity care within the NHS as an individual company, with an annual compensation bill for negligence sitting at over £1bn and around 1/3 of women having negative birth experiences being impacted on their ability to return to work (c.50,000 women a year), the red flags should be flying high and making news headlines daily. This is not a health crisis affecting women, but one that touches all aspects of life, from the office to childcare and has a huge economic impact.

The economic, social, moral and political value in women’s health were clear in fact, and hearing from those at the front line was a fantastic way to celebrate IWD in the City.

Thank you to Berenberg and all your speakers for continuing to raise awareness of this health crisis. If you’d like to help, get involved by signing the Delivering Better open letter to Wes Streeting here: https://deliveringbetter.org/

New hires strengthen the firm’s capital markets and strategic advisory services

NEW YORK, March 4, 2025 – Burson Buchanan, the strategic communications and financial markets advisory firm, today announced the appointment of two managing directors to its U.S. business: Claire Doan in San Francisco and Jake Yanulis in New York. Their appointments are effective March 3, 2025.

“Claire and Jake have significant experience advising clients through the most consequential, ‘bet the company’ opportunities and threats that businesses face,” said Matt Reid, U.S. CEO, Burson Buchanan. “Their expertise across M&A, litigation, government investigations, private equity and shareholder activism strengthen our strategic advisory capabilities. I have seen firsthand the expertise and dedication they bring to client assignments, and I’m delighted to continue that partnership as we grow Burson Buchanan in the U.S.”

Doan joins Burson Buchanan from H/Advisors Abernathy, where she was Managing Director and Head of Litigation, advising on myriad high-profile matters and crises for clients across a variety of industries, including technology, higher education and healthcare. Before that, she oversaw strategic communications and media relations for the University of California across its campuses and medical centers, spearheading communications strategy on sensitive matters such as litigation, cybersecurity, COVID-19 policies, labor disputes, student protests and the Varsity Blues admissions controversy. Doan is an Emmy- and Edward R. Murrow Award winner, having spent the early part of her career as an investigative journalist at stations in Sacramento, California, and Tucson, Arizona.

Yanulis comes to Burson Buchanan from H/Advisors Abernathy, where he served as a Managing Director, advising boards and management teams on effective communication and stakeholder engagement through periods of business transformation, including corporate transactions, shareholder activism defense and major crises. During a nearly decade-long tenure with his prior firm, he partnered with leading consumer companies, healthcare organizations and technology, media and telecommunications businesses to articulate shifts in strategy, execute industry-defining M&A transactions and protect and enhance corporate reputation amid unexpected external challenges.

About Burson Buchanan

Burson Buchanan provides strategic communications advisory services to help clients achieve their business and reputation goals. The firm specializes in advising companies on reaching critical financial and stakeholder audiences and to navigate major inflection points in their business. The firm’s key areas of expertise include financial communications, mergers & acquisitions, fund raisings and IPOs, spinoffs and demergers, activist defense, crisis and issues management, litigation communications, and regulatory issues/government investigations. Burson Buchanan is a member of Burson Group. Burson is part of WPP (LSE/NYSE: WPP), the creative transformation company.

Burson Buchanan had a busy Mining Indaba 2025, the conference where the great and good of the African mining industry convene for a 3-day event in sunny Cape Town in early February.

By Bobby Morse, Senior Partner

We kicked off with a site visit to the Mogale Tailings Mine in Western Johannesburg, which just started commercial production in December last. One of Pan African’s operations, this new state of the art tailings operation is a highly profitable and environmentally beneficial gold mine, which is now generating strong cash flow, employing over 500 direct jobs, as well as cleaning up liabilities generated from previous mining activities. Mogale is expected to produce between 50,000 to 60,000 ounces of gold annually, which is great timing considering gold is pushing towards record highs and is close to breaching US$3,000/oz.

Moving south to Cape Town, the annual Diggers vs Dealers cricket match on Sunday 2 February, organised by Burson Buchanan and now very much established as the curtain raiser for Mining Indaba, was attended by over 200 guests combining the financial and mining worlds ahead of the conference. The conviviality of the food and drink on offer did not lessen the competitivity of the cricket match, for the tenth year, with the Diggers overcoming an obdurate Dealers team to record the second win in a row, in hot and sultry conditions. A shout out to the other cricket event sponsors including Hannam & Partners, StoneX and Wia Gold, who helped make this great sporting and social event happen. The new cricket equipment and kits were donated to a local charity, Calling Education, a not-for-profit organisation building high-quality secondary schools for low-income families in the Cape and Stellenbosch regions. They have built two such schools to date, with a third in construction, and the ability to offer their students high quality safety equipment for playing cricket is essential to encouraging healthy extra-curricular activities among students.

Starting on the Monday, the Mining Indaba conference itself was somewhat polarized by the contrasting forces of strong metal price momentum, particularly gold which reached an all-time during the conference, dampened by the spectre of the new US Administration imposing punitive tariffs on a plethora of its close trading partners. In addition, the constant drumbeat on the sheer volume of critical metals required for the energy transition continued unabated from previous years, with greater recognition that Africa, as a continent, now has a huge opportunity to play a much bigger role beyond its key commodities of copper and cobalt, particularly from the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) and Zambia. Connected to both those countries, I moderated a high level and extremely well-attended (over 300 guests) panel discussion, hosted by Africa Finance Corporation, at the prestigious One & Only Hotel on Tuesday 4 February.

This panel focused on the game changing Lobito Corridor development, a strategic infrastructure project, co-led by the US and European Union, with funding from AFC, AfDB and Trafigura, which will link the DRC and Zambia’s Copperbelt by rail, connecting with the Lobito Port in Angola – opening up Africa’s Western seaboard to export their valuable products, including copper and cobalt to the western world.

One of the main news items during the conference was the significant fund raise by ASX-listed Predictive Discovery, one of Burson Buchanan’s leading gold mining clients, who welcomed both the Lundin family from Sweden, and Zijing Corporation, a giant Chinese gold company, as strategic investors in Predictive, raising almost A$70m to accelerate the development of its flagship Bankan Gold Project in Guinea, West Africa, currently Africa’s largest gold development project.

Burson Buchanan also had numerous engagements with its other clients attending the conference, with Kodal Minerals updating the market on its Bougouni Lithium Project in Southern Mali, which has since gone into production; Sovereign Metals presenting the Kasiya project in Malawi, the largest known rutile and second largest graphite deposit on the planet, following its comprehensive optimised PFS announcement; as well as private companies Westate Resources (gold in Zambia) and Koidu (diamonds in Sierra Leone), having a number of impactful investor meetings.

All in all a very busy 3 days…

On 21 January, Burson, Burson Buchanan and Axicom brought together their networks of clients and advisors for a panel event in London with representatives from Sage, Investec, Labour Digital, LightheartedAI and LSEG to discuss the continued evolution of the AI sector with a particular focus on exploring the lack of female representation and the scarcity of funding for women in AI.

By Stephanie Whitmore, Associate Partner

What gave you the idea for the Rebalancing Innovation: Women in AI event?
In January, as technology experts across the Communications, Investment, Corporate, Media and Advisory worlds set out their ‘Key Predictions for 2025’, the recurring theme was that AI is going mainstream. It was time for AI to move from “Confident Toddler” to “Confident Teen” – according to our panellists.

The critical impact AI can have on everything from how we fight disease, to the way we work, to how we run our families and homes was made clear.

However, as LinkedIn lit up, corporate marketing gathered pace and column inches grew, the question emerging in my mind was whether we are at risk of making another technological shift as monumental as the introduction of the internet, or pillar of society as influential as Western medicine, that was neither made by or for women?

I was not aware of a physical or virtual space where the lack of equality evolving within AI – in the building, application and regulation – was being discussed. And what impact will there be if AI continues to evolve with an inherent bias towards men? More importantly, what could be done to change this?

Why is now the time to be talking about this topic and how did working with Burson & Axicom impact the event?
In July 2024, Burson Buchanan joined forces with BCW, H&K, and Axicom to create a leading global communications agency. As the newly formed Burson Group, we have relationships across the corporate lifecycle; we can help clients fundraise, build a brand, protect reputation and help influence public policy, all of this being led by WPP’s most cutting-edge AI technology. With over 6,000 employees across North America, Latin America, EMEA and Asia Pacific, Burson represents some of the world’s leading brands and high growth organisations.

The Burson Group is therefore uniquely placed to bring people together to discuss this important topic. If we accept that AI is the next era defining development, it’s imperative we get this technology right from the start, in a way we perhaps haven’t for other technological shifts.

However, to have any meaningful success we need to find a way to not only look at the issues but to also tease out the solutions in a collaborative way that does not isolate experience to the individual. We need to bring women and men from across roles, sectors, and business growth stages together.

We’ve had six months to start exploring how we can all work collaboratively, and it felt like a great opportunity to bring our newly joined worlds together. Now was the time to explore the questions, think about solutions, and build relationships to address emerging bias.

As one of the panellists said in the run up to the event “it’s not a unicorn we need, it’s a whole different beast required to make it as a woman in business”. We want to help provide visibility for women, which in turn leads to accountability, and encourage a more equitable future.

What were the key takeaways?
When Lucrezia Cester, CEO and Founder of startup LightHeartedAI, said it was estimated that only 0.4% of funding in AI is given to female founders, with $billions currently allocated to the sector, we were all taken aback, particularly when women make up 51% of the global population. There were so many important conversations to emerge from the diverse panel but a couple of key points included:

Addressing early years education was a recurrent theme. Making STEM learning for women and girls more attractive, accessible and culturally normalised, was vital – it was great to hear some of the grass roots programmes Sage was running up in the Northeast. A huge part of making these subjects attractive to girls at school is by having more women in leadership roles in STEM sectors to look up to and aspire to be like.

Fundraising for women in AI/tech was also discussed at length, and the experiences of Virginia Bull, Investec, and Lauren Crawley-Moore, London Stock Exchange, were central to this debate. To build the next generation of female founders, there needs to be access to funding pools, and those funding pools need to have women as well as men on investment committees. Virginia explained in 20 years of investment banking she’s never worked with a female founder – this isn’t good enough! It’s not just a Founder problem – it’s a challenge for the whole industry. There’s so much focus on UK pension fund capital allocation policies – and those of VCs and PE houses – do we need to amplify the voice of women more here too? The key takeaway was that it’s imperative that female-led companies are given the right opportunity at the right time and with the right investor audience.

Attracting and maintaining female talent was another theme that was highlighted in the insightful Q&A session. We hosted a fantastic audience, with the likes of Amazon, Sky, BT, Nomad and Sage joining us, as well as a whole host of growth focussed businesses and the intermediaries that support their ecosystem; it soon became clear that the gender imbalance is affecting the success of UK businesses across the board. This was not only in terms of lack of funding but also difficulties with hiring female talent across all levels and maintaining female employees to the point of them obtaining leadership and Executive roles. On the latter point, it was highlighted how women are over mentored and under sponsored – the mentoring often does not lead to tangible results.

We must remember that this isn’t about demanding a percent of women in business for the sake of it, diversity is the key to future corporate success. We learnt that Sage has a policy for no more than 60% of one gender in a leadership team as the dominance of any one particular group does not provide the best outcomes – that’s a great takeaway as we return back to our desks.

Another example was given of women in a tech company being asked for their feedback on how to improve the workplace to both attract and retain female employees – something so simple and yet more than likely overlooked in most companies for all employees!

How do you think the event helped move the conversation forward for individuals, companies and Government?

Bringing such diverse perspectives together was a privilege – highlighting the individual challenges but, importantly, thinking about solutions too.

Men and women working together was discussed as an absolute, for everyone’s benefit, and the risk of creating echo chambers – particularly with AI in use – is a concern and not productive for anyone. Thinking about how we get more men into the room to hear these important conversations is a real point of focus going forwards, and communicating that pushing one gender up isn’t to the detriment of the other.

The discussion zoomed in on the importance of building communities and networks to elevate concerns, share tips, and establish the intersections of our working worlds. I’m glad we can use our network of Burson, Burson Buchanan and Axicom to navigate some of these important issues and bring people together.

In terms of practical steps for businesses, the common misconceptions involved when hiring either a women or a man in their 30s were discussed and how they can create further barriers for women entering the technology industry. To change expectations and assumptions, maternity and paternity policies need to be more equal and management teams need to be aware of the true data behind building a stable workforce.

Our moderator Casey Calista did a fantastic job, and her current position as Chair of Labour Digital left her well placed to explore how policy would be at the heart of moving the conversation forward. She mentioned the Women Pivoting to Digital Taskforce and some of the key areas they are focused on.

Our CEO startup Founder, Lucrezia, commented that certain UK Government initiatives have been really helpful for female founders – but there’s still a bias among investors who think female led businesses are less revenue generating and more ‘lifestyle’ businesses which is wholly untrue.

The final point I’ll bring up is the media: “girls can’t want to be something they can’t see”. As Communications professionals, we have a responsibility to “do the work” to get more female leaders visible in traditional and social media to give role models for younger generations, ensuring we can make it through the two key drop off points of tweenhood and senior leadership outlined by Amy Lawson.

It was also interesting to learn how many communities and networks there already are that can help. So many communities, networks, podcasts and wider resources were mentioned today. We’d like to collate and share a list of these so we’re asking all our attendees to send their ideas and we’ll follow up in a few days time!

“When I was appointed CEO of Landore, I wanted to make it clear that my tenure would be different. My desire was to be able to communicate the new Landore strategy and opportunity in an interactive way with shareholders. Therefore, I am delighted to be able to announce the launch of the new Landore website.”

Alexander Shaw, CEO of Landore Resources

Burson Buchanan’s creative team is proud to announce the launch of the new Landore Resources website. After receiving a brief for a rebrand and new corporate website, our team relished the opportunity to collaborate with Landore Resources, building a modern and informative platform that effectively showcases their exploration projects and overall company vision. 

From the timeline mapping out the targeted strategy for developing its highly accretive BAM Project, to detailed information on their team and Landore’s long-term goals, the focus was on creating a seamless and engaging user experience. We invite you to explore the new site and discover the potential of Landore Resources – now presented with clarity, style, and a user-friendly design. 

View the new website here