Diversity Not a Separate Initiative

“The most important thing when you talk about diversity and inclusion, is it authentic? We have not looked at diversity inclusion as a separate initiative in the company; it permeates everything we do. And it’s starts from the top down,” said Microsoft’s Sanford.

“Diversity and inclusion, to be honest, can be a scary and unfamiliar topic for a lot of people. Just knowing that they the company was investing and enabling us to be curious and be vulnerable around this topic. We did a lot of training on unconscious bias, which was amazing.

“Then you look at our product innovation; we’ve been taking a D&I approach to our product development for 25 years. Our employees with disabilities are actually the catalyst for change that’s helped us deliver products like the Xbox adaptive controller, seeing AI.

“D&I permeates everything we do from product development to inclusive hiring practices and how we reward and rewarding behaviour at the organization.”