Women@Grab – A Pilot Ground-Up Initiative
Less than a month ago, Grab hosted our first Women@Grab Speaker Series. To kick off the session, we highlighted speakers who exemplified one of our key workplace principles, ‘Disrupt or be Disrupted’. We welcomed over 150 guests from Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter and other major tech players, to our Headquarters in Marina One, Singapore, to share their stories on inclusivity and diversity in the industry.
About Women@Grab
Women@Grab is an Employee Resource Group focused on creating an inclusive community at Grab for everyone. As an employee-led group, Women@Grab aims to align our own mission with Grab’s values and culture, to ensure a collaborative effort is sustained and developed past workplace barriers. We want to empower Grab’s employees to grow, collaborate and be their authentic selves.
“With that in mind, we sought to create an event that not only showcased our own community here at Grab, but also allows us to partner our peers with similar initiatives within the tech network to strengthen our cause for better inclusiveness.”
Seeing the Women@Grab Speaker Series come to life has allowed us to inspire conversations on diversity and inclusion, and deepened our commitment to improving workplace culture.
The event started on a casual yet fun note with an interactive networking session and icebreaker games. This set the tone for what would be an amazing lineup of five esteemed speakers, each with their own unique story to tell in regard to Disruption in the Workplace.
First off, we welcomed our very own Head of People at Grab, Chin Yin Ong, to lead the way with her sharing on how she Disrupts Ageism in a predominantly millennial tech industry. This was followed by AWARE’s Anisha Joseph’s powerful talk on the importance of Disrupting Silence to prevent sexual assault in Singapore. Derrick Kong then shed some light on his experiences Disrupting the Norm by launching the LGBTQ Employee Resource Group, Out@In, at LinkedIn Singapore. We then invited Rebecca Craig from Be-X, who inspired the audience with her call to action to Disrupt The Self. Last but not least, Adobe’s Danielle West moved all of us with her sharing on the Duality of Disruption through her incredible personal journey as an MMA Fighter.
Rather than its usual negative connotation, we believe that the term ‘Disruption’ possesses more than the idea of destruction; in fact, it highlights the concept of creation. At Grab, we not only want to explore the duality and diversity of our workplace values, but also how the same values lead to value creation in our social relationships at work, and our social mission to touch lives through what we do.
“Disruption is either going to happen to you, or because of you. It starts by knowing oneself, by spending time reflecting and fully understanding your purpose and values that you stand for. Once you figure that out, I dare you to be brilliant. To truly be a disruptor, we need to play as big as we can and step into our power.”
It was incredibly humbling to see the breadth of individuals who have chosen to participate and engage with us during the two-hour networking event, creating a community of disruptors ready to challenge workplace norms in pursuit of equality and diversity. We hope that Women@Grab continues its mission to champion equality, and empower everyone to be able to speak up by creating an inclusive and safe environment where each voice matters.
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(We also want to give a huge shoutout to our food & drinks sponsors: A Poke Theory, boxgreen, The French Cellar Asia, & Gorilla Press.)
At Grab, we challenge you to be part of this movement in how we live out our values every day. If you’re a disruptor looking to challenge the status quo for better inclusiveness and equality, join us to make the change today!