Barclays CEO Jes Staley spoke recently at Bloomberg’s launch of its second annual Financial Services Gender-Equality Index, taking the opportunity to highlight the issues of gender, race and sexuality and encourage his contemporaries to make change. “The business world is skewed in the favor of straight, white men and it is up to banks and major corporations to change it”, said Staley in his address at the event
While the topic of diversity is discussed regularly within financial services, Staley took it a step further by emboldening individual corporations to take responsibility their inequity and make a difference. “I don’t think the world is a level playing field. I think it is harder in the world of business to be a woman, black, a gay man or someone from the LGBT community, and we have to strongly make the initiative to level out the playing field.”