🇩🇪 Berlin: 150 D&I champions come together at Zalando for Vessy.com’s last event for 2019

Vessy Tasheva
Nov 1 · 3 min read

(With video recordings from the event!)

After publishing an independent internatonal Diversity & Inclusion Report covering 10 companies from 10 countries called “2019 Diversity in the Workplace Report”, I naturally wanted to show the report and give it a well deserved.. 🗺️world tour of sorts!

Dublin ✈ ️Sofia ✈ Berlin

While the launch of the event was on a rainy January evening in Dublin, in April we had a 2-day event in Sofia, it was high time for the third one in Berlin about a month ago. [Pssst, next event is in London 🇬🇧 on Feb 19th, 2020]

On September 26th, in a partnership with Culture Amo and Zalando, we had an invite-only event for 150 passionate Diversity & Inclusion champions: CEOs, GMs, COOs, VPs of Talent, HR, D&I experts, representatives of underrepresented groups and minorities, community leaders, and investors.

✅Some of the attendees: Porsche, Axel Springer, Deutsche Bahn, Wayfair, GetYourGuide, SoundCloud, Mozilla, Delivery Hero, Tandemploy, BCG Digital Ventures, SumUp, LHBS, Volkswagen, Scout24, Trifork, HelloFresh, Bosch, Philips, Coca Cola, Blinkist, Taledo, Uniper, TOTAL, & more

The agenda focused on:

  • Trends & Predictions in D&I
  • D&I Challenges and How We Tackle Them
  • How We Measure D&I

Zainab Boladale, RTÉ TV Presenter & Reporter, was our MC and the event was kicked off by welcome notes by Thibaut Pugin, Zalando’s VP People Products, and Maeve Von Heynitz, Deputy Head of Mission at the Irish Embassy in Berlin.

Trends & Predictions

Together with the audience, we looked into the Trends & Predictions in Diversity & Inclusion across 10 countries that I had identified while working on2019 Diversity in the Workplace Report”.

Vessy presents Trends & Predictions in Diversity & Inclusion

Most common D&I challenges?

We continued with a panel discussion on D&I Challenges, moderated by Sarah Cordivano, Zalando’s Diversity & Inclusion Officer, with participants from a wide range of roles and industries:

  • Larissa Leienbach, Governmental Relations & D&I Champion, Uniper
  • Celine Bordin, Senior Patent Attorney and Diversity & Inclusion Champion at Bayer, Queer Staff Network_Berlin co-founder
  • Constanze Osei, Manager Public Policy at Facebook
  • Julia Carloff-Winkelmann, VP People & Workplace at Soundcloud
  • Mark Ivan Serunjogi, Employer Brand Strategist at GetYourGuide

Measuring D&I

Together with Jessica Brook, Senior People Scientist at Culture Amp, we spoke on the importance of measuring and where to start.

Check out the video:

The official launch of the Global D&I Knowledge Community

At the end of the event and after 4 months in beta, it was time to announce the global community for D&I champions to the world:

What’s next?

London! 🇬🇧

Join us on February 19th for the launch of the brand new 2020 Report at its invite-only event in a partnership with IBM and Applied. Request to join


Vessy Tasheva

Written by

Founder of Vessy.com, the first global online community for D&I champions • Author of “2019 Diversity in the Workplace Report”

Welcome to a place where words matter. On Medium, smart voices and original ideas take center stage - with no ads in sight. Watch
Follow all the topics you care about, and we’ll deliver the best stories for you to your homepage and inbox. Explore
Get unlimited access to the best stories on Medium — and support writers while you’re at it. Just $5/month. Upgrade