Marianne Mwaniki (Standard Chartered, UK) explains how Standard Chartered's approach to gender in integral to how they do business. * Advisory Group Member

My name is Marianne Mwaniki and I work for Group Sustainability within Standard Chartered Bank. Standard Chartered operates in over 70 countries across Asia, Africa and the Middle East. We believe that women are extremely important for economic development in these markets. For Standard Chartered, we look at diversity and inclusion and women's empowerment in three different areas. The first area is the community and how women operate and their empowerment to have a voice to participate in development. The second is about customers and to ensure that our women customers have access to our products—access to finance. And thirdly, we look at women in the workplace, and for us it is not just about diversity, it is about inclusion: making sure that women can use their skills, their strengths—to be positive contributors to the success of our organization. So in a nut-shell, we believe that our workforce needs to represent the markets which we operate in. We need to ensure that women are participating fully because of the multiplier effect that it has on economies.