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Empowering women in leadership with Experian

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About

WILD is Experian’s Women in Leadership #DiveIn programme, created with the strategic objective of transforming women’s leadership journeys through, targeted development, sponsorship and support to accelerate the women's pathway to promotion. WILD’s success was recognised in the form of a prestigious Brandon Hall Gold Award for excellence in diversity, equity and inclusion.

A core philosophy at Experian is that diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) is essential to their purpose. In line with Experian’s DEI strategy and the company’s commitment to increasing the representation of women across the organisation, specific three-year targets were set for global gender diversity, to measure their progress objectively.

The DEI report sets out five commitments in service of meeting these targets. One of them is to focus strongly on development opportunities.

Development is key, as it will ensure that the leadership pipeline has the best talent to successfully lead the region towards achieving their ambitious targets.

Aligned to the five commitments set out in Experian's DEI report, as well as their core philosophy and wider DEI strategy, Experian APAC partnered with Impact to create a leadership development programme for women.

Women in Leadership #DiveIn programme (WILD) focused on:

  • Building courage, authenticity, and confidence in the face of adversity
  • Fostering autonomy and self-awareness
  • Enabling participants to become more adaptable and agile
  • Building strong relationships
  • Connecting participants with themselves, others, and the world around them
  • Fostering resilience
  • Developing the Experian ‘Leader of the Future’ characteristics.

WILD supported participants in building a new picture of themselves as leaders – not as women filling men’s shoes, but as mindful, empowered masters of their own professional lives.

Initially, the programme included a three-day adventure experience in the jungles of Laos focused on increasing courage and agility, fostering autonomy and resilience, and building strong relationships and networks. The experience combined challenging adventure activities, coaching, deep reflection, and cultural community immersion. However, due to Covid-19, the programme was redesigned to be fully virtual, delivered via Impact’s dedicated digital platform, air™.

Immersion experiences provided the foundation for both the face-to-face and virtual versions. These events focused on building self-awareness, overcoming challenges, and impactful reflection. Each event began with a powerful conversation, enabling participants to discuss fears, share insight, and support and connect with each other on a human level.

The programme (in both forms) also comprised skill-building sessions, ‘on the job’ stretch challenges, 1:1 coaching, peer group coaching, and a three-month capstone project: a self-driven learning project designed to embed learning and forge strong relationships as participants identified and ‘paid forward’ key skills they had learnt in the programme, sharing them with others in their Experian networks.

Following the face-to-face solution, Experian reported:

  • 88% retention rate
  • 71% of participants’ roles developing after finishing the programme

In later, virtual cohorts:

  • 100% of participants agreed or strongly agreed that WILD provided practical learning that would benefit their career
  • 100% agreed or strongly agreed that the WILD objectives were met
  • 100% agreed or strongly agreed that the organisation will also benefit

Award winning

WILD’s success was recognised in the form of a prestigious Brandon Hall Gold Award for excellence in diversity, equity and inclusion.

Brandon Hall Gold Award for excellence in diversity, equity and inclusion.
Testimonials
See what our customers say about us
Sisca Margaretta
Chief Marketing Officer
Experian
"I see a marked difference in my mentee: a boost in confidence and a transformation at the end of the programme. I’m proud to be an executive sponsor, as gender parity and developing women’s careers is something that I feel passionately about. WILD deserves all the recognition that it can get for its transformative quality and how it’s impacted many women’s lives – imparting lessons that they can take with them for the rest of their lives."
Shauna Stones
APAC Talent Partner
Experian
“Impact were world class in their ability to align desired outcomes and design a challenging leadership experience. Their facilitation was on. point, woven in perfectly with the external conditions our participants were experiencing. The programme challenged participants in many different forms to ensure everyone was stretched. It brought an awareness of how to handle difficulty and ambiguity, of the impact they had on others, and of the strength they drew from themselves and their team."
Participant
Experian
“It was an amazing learning experience. I’m extremely grateful to be part of the programme. Thank you for believing me and giving me courage. I got more than I could imagine out of it and definitely not what I was expecting.”