Slaughter and May announced as a founding member of EMpower

Slaughter and May is pleased to announce its role as one of the founding members of EMpower, an initiative driving the empowerment of ethnic minority employees within corporate organisations, ensuring equality of opportunity, more inclusive cultures and breaking down barriers to success. Slaughter and May is the only law firm amongst the founding members. EMpower helps facilitate the inclusion and support of BAME employees and their allies. It also runs an annual role model list (formerly known as UPstanding) celebrating the top 100 BAME leaders and top 30 Future Leaders from the UK, Ireland and the US.

Becoming a founding member of EMpower continues the firm’s efforts to ensure a more diverse and inclusive workplace and follows in the footsteps of its BAME cross-company mentoring programme. The programme, the first of its kind, was developed in partnership with UPstanding and matches the firm’s BAME lawyers with senior BAME leaders outside the legal sector to provide impartial career guidance and advice.

Steve Cooke, Senior Partner at Slaughter and May said: “We believe that it is important for us to celebrate the achievements of diverse leaders in the business community. They act as inspirational role models for all of us and for future generations coming through the pipeline.”

Uzma Hamid-Dizier, Head of Inclusion and Corporate Responsibility said:  “We are delighted to be the only law firm founding member of EMpower. This builds on our commitment to inclusion and our relationship with the EMpower team, with whom we worked last year to deliver our successful bespoke BAME mentoring programme. We look forward to celebrating the launch of the role model list in May.”