Christel Verschaeren wins gender balance award
Christel Verschaeren, director of the Europe Integration & Global Change Management section of computer giant IBM, has won this year’s Wo_Men@Work award for executives who work to ensure a balance of men and women in management teams. The award is sponsored by Axa insurance and the JumpForum for professional women.
“Balanced teams perform better,” said Verschaeren. “That’s really important because it’s not competitive, it’s complementary.” Verschaeren started by chairing the Women Leadership Council in Belgium and Luxembourg, and since 2005 has co-chaired the European version on a voluntary basis. In 2007 she began to develop a programme of cross-company mentoring between IBM and Danone. “I’m very much focused on mentoring,” she says. She also runs the Blue Talent programme within IBM, which selects key women executives and defines for each a “detailed personal roadmap”.
“Working on gender balance is a journey,” she says. “It’s not something you do only once by making a speech or by signing a charter. It’s something that has to become part of your overall governance; it has to become part of business-as-usual, and it has to become part of the behaviour of every manager in the organisation."
