Vera Kirikova

Why I joined Smiths is I love companies that make something, that create something. And the other thing, I saw the potential - I think that the company's performance over the years has been quite flat and I really see the potential and the opportunity. And over the recent years, we are already seeing that we are starting to gain or recover some of that potential. And we're certainly really, really excited about what we can achieve in the future. So, that's where I am and that's why I'm in Smiths.

I see a lot of similarities, rather than differences. I'm absolutely convinced that the gender balance is not dependent on the industry. The gender balance is primarily dependent on the leadership commitment and consistency that the company displays. And I also know that once you show that leadership commitment, you can make enormous progress. But once that leadership commitment reduces, then all of a sudden, we slide back into the lack of balance and then you have to lift it up again. With the leadership commitment and the knowing why you do it, you can achieve tremendous things.

We've put a lot of the emphasis now on the pipeline. So, over the last year, we established some really clear processes and every spring, we do what we call the CEO Roundtables that focus only on the development of, particularly, our top people, [and] on succession planning for our critical roles. And we go quite in-depth in those conversations and make sure that we come out with specific actions.

When we look across the company at all the fairly large P&L roles, we've got 21 of them. It's true - we are, at that level, still primarily male-dominated, but over this the last year we've appointed two women in those extremely visible large general management roles. So, there's definitely progress. And now, we have Exco mentoring, and we know that mentoring works - mentoring really, really works here. So, for example, out of 22 women that Exco currently mentors, in the last nine months, we've already promoted, or moved into the positions with new responsibilities, seven of them. So, we will definitely continue on that path.