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.