Welcome to the UK Chapter

As part of the 30% Club efforts to encourage and increase female gender balance at all organisational levels, we establish partnerships with business schools globally to rectify the under-representation of women pursuing post-graduate management education by offering scholarships.

Through these partnerships, we are able to offer scholarships to women with leadership potential  at the world’s leading business schools – of up to 50% of course fees.

We seek to build a continuum of change from schoolrooms to boardrooms, helping women to make the decision to undertake further education and accelerate their career progression.

Please click below for more information on the under-representation of women on management courses from Brenda Trenowden CBE, former 30% Club Global Chair. She explains why this matters and what’s being done to change it. More information here.

Our scholarships

To view the institutions that offer 30% Club scholarships, please click here.

Contact

For more information on our scholarships, please contact us.

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Main Aim

Our two 30% Club cross-company, cross-sector mentoring programmes are helping to deliver our ambition for an inclusive society that advances workplace diversity and inclusion. They are an example of employer sponsorship and commitment to inclusion.

By carefully pairing up mentors and mentees, these structured, nine-month programmes bolster these efforts to build a talent pipeline into senior leadership and management roles for women – and more recently, for others from diverse backgrounds.

At a time when many businesses and organisations are facing a retention crisis, our research shows that 80% of programme participants have remained with their employers in the three years after taking part. Almost half have been promoted.

Our programmes are delivered by Moving Ahead, a social impact organisation which specialises in inclusion and diversity training through mentoring and learning. Each partnership is matched cross-company and the programmes are designed to pair participants with different experiences, so they learn from each other’s diverse perspectives.

Our programmes

We run two programmes with one focusing on advancing gender diversity and the other on advancing broader D&I. 

Mission: Gender Equity Advancing gender diversity

Watch video here

Now entering its eighth year, Mission: Gender Equity is the world’s largest cross-company mentoring programme and is successfully helping to build a talent pipeline to achieve our aim for parity of women in leadership and board roles.

Mentees are high-potential women who are committed to their personal growth and development. They can be from every layer of the career pyramid. Mentors are leaders of any gender, from middle management up to board level, who are committed to creating a culture where men and women have equal opportunities to thrive.

Since launching in 2014 – when it was known as the 30% Club cross-company mentoring programme – it has supported a total of 9,324 mentors and mentees. The first cohort was made up of 80 participants from eight organisations and it has grown ever since. Last year, 2,634 mentors and mentees from 194 organisations took part, including representatives from HSBC, EY, The Environment Agency, Ocado, Oxford University Press and Cisco.

And our latest research shows that 47% of the women mentees from our 2018-2019 cohort have since been promoted within their organisation. And 80% were still with their employer three years later.

Mission INCLUDE: advancing broader D&I

Watch the video here

Two years ago, following the success of Mission: Gender Equity, we widened our focus beyond gender and into broader diversity with the launch of a second, nine-month-mentoring programme called Mission INCLUDE. This cross-company, cross-sector initiative focuses on achieving greater broader diversity within organisations – including ethnicity, religion, disability, sexual orientation as well as behavioural and background diversity – and to build that pipeline to top management positions.

Mentees are high-potential colleagues who are committed to their personal growth and development and would like to share their diversity story to help others walk in their shoes. Organisations can select from every layer of the career pyramid and may wish to target mentees from underrepresented groups.

Mentors are leaders from middle management up to board level, who are committed to developing their skills and muscles around being an inclusive leader and walking in the shoes of others.

The rollout of Mission INCLUDE furthers our aspirations for a world in which organisations foster truly inclusive cultures – cultures that embrace people who look, act and, importantly, think differently – so people can reach their full potential to positively impact their teams, their markets and their communities.

The programmes run from November to July every year. For our scheme literature and further information on how to take part, please click here.

Contact

For more information or to add your story to our case studies get in touch with Rebecca Davies from Moving Ahead, rebecca.davies@moving-ahead.org. 

The UK chapter of the 30% Club has recently published some research on women as changemakers in the race to net zero in partnership with the Oliver Wyman Forum.

You can read it here. 

We are currently in the process of creating a new working group to continue our action in this important area.

Please contact us if you would like to know more. 

We are the UK investor voice on diversity and inclusion

The 30% Club UK Investor Group was established in 2011 and brings together more than 40 investors with trillions of pounds of assets under management to drive change with companies on inclusion and diversity.

Our members are asset owners, asset managers and investment intermediaries like financial advisors who want to drive change with the companies they own.

Our targets

We want UK Plc to represent the diversity of our society. As members of the 30% Club Investor Group, we are committed to achieving the 30% Club targets for the UK market, which are:

• Beyond 30% representation of women on all FTSE 350 Executive Committees, to include one person of colour by 2023
• Beyond 30% female representation of FTSE 100 CEOs & chairs by 2035
• 50% female representation in FTSE 100 ExCo and Exco-1 by 2035
• Fully support the Parker Review’s race targets
  As of February 2025, the Parker Review’s targets have recently expanded in scope beyond board directorships to include key senior executive positions, and beyond FTSE 350 to include the UK’s 50 largest private companies. In addition, the Parker Review has invited businesses to set their own targets for the end of 2027 with regards to the share of minority ethnic executives in their senior management teams.

What we do

We are the place where UK investors passionate about diversity and inclusion can meet, learn and take action to drive change with the assets they own

Investors are responsible for the stewardship of the investments they make on behalf of their clients and pension members. The UK Investor Group supports this in three ways:

We cooperate to be stronger together

We co-ordinate the UK investment community’s approach to diversity by bringing investors together and take joint action, including through collaborative engagement campaigns. Our focus is the FTSE 350 which comprise the largest 100 companies (FTSE 100) and the next largest 250 companies (FTSE 250) in the UK. One example is our engagement with so called “one and done” boards who have appointed one woman to their board but failed to reach the 30% Club targets. We also engage with the wider ecosystem such as proxy advisors, data providers and executive search firms.

We commit to act

Members who are part of our group have committed to exercise their ownership rights, including voting and engagement, to effect change on company boards, senior management teams and company strategy. Members also commit to reporting on their activities. For more information on members’ commitment, please see our Statement of Intent which all our members have signed up to here. Click here

To read our new statement on address racial inequality, click here. 

To read our statement on our new analysis with Diversio, click here: 

We equip and communicate

Our knowledge workstream aims to drive change in the industry and beyond by empowering more investors to engage on the issue of diversity and inclusion and speak out publicly to make sure our voice is heard. Examples of our activities:

• Our Toolkit for Engaging Boards on Diversity. Click here. 
• Industry insight related to the investment case for corporate gender and race equity, including UBS Asset Management’s Q4 2023 Whitepaper on how investors can fuel progress on corporate racial and ethnic diversity through active ownership. Click here. 
• A best practice guide for companies to diversity and inclusion reporting. Click here. 
• Group statement on addressing racial inequality and call to action. Click here.
  You can read the accompanying press release here.
• Exclusive analysis with Diversio on how the FTSE 100 compares to the S&P 500 and TSX 60 for diversity and inclusion.
  Click here.

How to get involved

We encourage any investor located in or investing in the UK to get involved. Membership of the 30% Club UK investor group is free and provides significant benefits including the change to be actively involved in shaping the diversity of the UK corporate landscape, be part of the industry leading voice on gender and race equity in the UK and get access to diversity and inclusion insights, analysis, training and expertise. If you’re interested in hearing more, please register you interest here.

Members

abrdn, AMP Capital (UK), Astarte Capital Partners, Aviva Investors, AXA Investment Managers, Baring Foundation, Barrow Cadbury Trust, BlackRock, BMO Global Asset Management, Border to Coast Pensions Partnership, Brunel Pension Partnership, Castlefield Investment Partners LLP, Church Investors Group, Eco Advisers Ltd, EdenTree Investment Management, Environment Agency Pension Fund, Fidelity International, Government Pension Investment Fund (GPIF), Hermes Investment Management, HSBC Investment Management, J.P. Morgan Asset Management, Jupiter Asset Management, Legal & General Investment Management, LGPS Central Ltd, LGT Wealth Management, Liontrust Investment Partners LLP, Local Authority Pension Fund Forum, Local Pensions Partnership, M&G Investments, NEST, Newton Investment Management, Northern Local Government Pension Scheme, Old Mutual Global Investors, Quilter Cheviot Investment Management, Resona Asset Management Co., Ltd., Robeco, Royal London Asset Management (CIS) Limited, RPMI Railpen Investments, Sarasin & Partners LLP, Sumitomo Mitsui Trust Asset Management, TPT Retirement Solutions, T. Rowe Price International Ltd, The Health Foundation, UBS Asset Management and West Midlands Pension Fund, West Yorkshire Pension Fund

Contact

We have two co-chairs running the 30% Club UK investor group. They are:

Sachi Suzuki – Stewardship Director, HSBC Asset Management

Dianda Soobiah – Head of Responsible Investment at Nest Corporation

For more information, please contact us.

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The 30% Club Race Equity Group (“REG”) was established in March 2021. The REG’s goal is to enable the UK Chapter of the 30% Club to fulfil its objectives for supporting greater and enduring representation of racial and ethnic minority women in senior executive and board roles in major companies operating in the UK as set out in the Club’s targets to the end of 2023.

Main Aim

The strategic focus areas for the REG are as follows:

• Advising the 30% Club of opportunities to operate optimally in support of the targets.
• Influencing industry leaders to publicly advocate for and adopt meaningful race action plans.
• Activating the investor community as a lever for transformation at scale.
• Sponsoring racial and ethnic minority women into senior executive and board roles.
• Capacity building for key corporate stakeholders e.g. mentoring, race fluency and allyship.
• Leveraging technology and research to provide evidence-based approach to problem solving.

Our approach

The REG operates in the following way:

• Convening powerful industry leaders.
• Campaigning for change at systems level.
• Challenging the status quo for a more urgent pace of change.
• Collaborating with strategic partners who are leaders in their fields.
• Creating safe spaces for courageous conversations, learning and community building.
• Calculating the impact of our work.

Initiatives

The REG has developed a number of initiatives to achieve its goals, including:

• Leaders for Race Equity programme – a cross-company development initiative to accelerate ethnic diversity in senior leadership, build a talent pipeline from diverse communities of future leaders and unlock the productivity potential of diverse teams. The 9-month programme  is delivered by our mentoring partner Moving Ahead. The second year of the programme kicks off in summer 2023. Find out more here.
• The Global Investor Strategy and Corporate Governance Forum
• Diversity and inclusion analysis platform for investors
• Regular convenings of CEOs and Chairs on the topic of race equity
• Sponsorship programmes for individuals of colour into senior and Board roles
• And more.

The Network of Networks (TNON) serves as the secretariat for the REG.

Contact

For more information or to add your story to our case studies get in touch with Rose Qian

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