Women in IP’s
2021 annual event
Monday 22 February 2021
1 – 2 pm
Women in IP’s annual event this year focused on “quick wins” for IP Inclusive Charter signatories. What can you do at your organisation to improve D&I? How can you build a more inclusive and supportive workplace? We explored these and similar questions alongside our expert panellists, generating practical tips and ideas to help both small and large organisations support their employees and improve D&I.
The event was accompanied by a survey and the outcomes have been collated into a toolkit (see below) for IP Inclusive Charter signatories to identify quick wins in terms of, for instance, internal policies, staff activities, networks to join, relevant external charters, and lots more. Also feeding into that document were the outcomes of follow-up discussions during Women in IP’s March 2021 coffee dates.
This event was kindly hosted by Abel + Imray.
Our panellists
The following panellists shared their experiences and provided advice:
- Jane Burton, Chair of the Lawyers with Disabilities Division of the Law Society of England and Wales
- Kate Swaine, Head of IP at Gowling WLG UK LLP
- Krishna Kakkaiyadi, Associate at Pinsent Masons LLP
- Wayne Spillett, Head of Legal – Commercial Operations at Vodafone
Our audience
This event was open to all IP professionals, regardless of gender, role or career level. We encouraged attendees to bring a colleague along, particularly someone who hadn’t been involved in IP Inclusive before. We were delighted with the huge turnout; it would have been standing room only at a face-to-face event!
Women in IP invited supporters of all five of our communities to join the event, which covered all aspects of diversity and inclusion.
The survey
To accompany this event, we surveyed the IP Inclusive community to find out impressions of what D&I-related initiatives make a difference, and gather ideas of “quick wins” that have been successful in the past. We used this to help us generate our Quick Wins toolkit, which you can use to help make changes in your organisation. The survey was anonymous and all questions were optional.
Follow-up resources
You can access a recording of the event here, and download the Quick Wins toolkit here.
The following resources were mentioned by the panellists; we hope you find them useful:
- Easy wins and action points for disability inclusion – developed by Legally Disabled/Cardiff University, the Law Society and its Lawyers with Disabilities Division.
- Practical steps for improving BAME representation in the IP sector – the product of an IP Inclusive roundtable in July 2020.