An In Good Company podcast with Louisa Rodriguez, UN Woman Delegate and Leadership Coach at Yorkshire Building Society.
Helping women achieve their full potential
In 2015 UN Member States set a deadline of 2030 to achieve gender equality and the empowerment of all women and girls. At the speed we are going, it will take 286 years. The target and the reality are a long way off. Here at Impact, we’re finding more organisations looking for help to create the right environment where women can achieve their full potential.
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Louisa Rodriguez is a leadership and performance coach with a passion for facilitating change for balanced, equitable and happy organisations. In this podcast she covers topics from who are her female role models, to the importance of having a creative outlet, to what is means to be a UN Women Delegate in 2023.
“What got us here isn't going to get us to the future”
When we look at the world, what we need from our leaders is changing. Things like climate change, the cost-of-living crisis, the pandemic, and the fallout from all of that, means we need a different type of leadership if we want to create a different type of world.
What it means to be a UN Women Delegate in 2023
Before I worked in leadership development I worked for charities. I worked with sex working women for a while, helping them get out of sex work. And then I ran a Women for Peace programme, helping women to be peace builders and getting them to understand what causes violent extremism and how to have challenging conversations to prevent conflict and bring peace to communities.
I've always had a passion for empowering women. And I applied to be a delegate for the Commission on The Status of Women not thinking I'd get accepted. And I did. As a delegate we were able to virtually attend the UN’s Commission on The Status of Women and listen to events where members talked about how to reach equality for women.
The theme in 2023 was very much about innovation, technological change and how digital education can help achieve equality and empowerment for all women and girls. It was fascinating because just as inequality still exists in the non-technology world – it is being transferred into the tech space. It raised important points, are women included in the development of AI? Social media has supported women in Ukraine to help keep in touch with their dispersed community, but women in Myanmar are having access restricted by the military. It’s fundamental to consider as our world increasingly becomes more online that it can increase the inequalities of people who don’t have access.
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Continue with Dan and Louisa’s conversation here:
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008: Leading with diversity, equity, inclusion and belonging with Liz Ward, Stonewall
Coming up
010: Entrepreneurial leadership with Leigh Gammons, Tangent
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More from Louisa...
Louisa is a self confessed 'bit of a geek' when it comes to reading around the topic of leadership. Following her podcast she curated a book list especially for In Good Company subscribers.