Business purpose and focus | Hephzi Pemberton

Hephzi Pemberton has an extremely strong ethical background. Her parents were missionaries and she grew up in Zaire (now the Democratic Republic of Congo). She has witnessed just how diverse the world is, and yet she is keenly aware just how limited the western world is (and her own previous investment banking industry) when it comes to professional diversity. Following the co-founding of a successful financial headhunting firm, Hephzi combined her passion for diversity and research into her latest venture and founded a diversity and inclusion strategic consultancy, The Equality Group. The focus of their work is helping companies hire diverse leadership talent and embed inclusion and diversity across their organisation, including strategy, data collection, process redesign and inclusion education. Hephzi is an enabler: she facilitates open communication with her team. She wants ongoing dialogue on things like performance discussions. Through this, she explains how we can avoid ‘peak bias’ (focusing on just the high moments) or ‘recency bias’ (focusing on the immediate past).  She has worked on herself a lot as a leader through coaching, therapy and her advisory board. All this means she has a very supportive community around her. Hephzi is someone with a big vision but who also exposes her team to strategy and helps them achieve what they want personally out of life as well as professionally.