Position:
Head of Diversity & Inclusion
Company:
ACAS
Bio:
Julie is a Diversity and Inclusion specialist with over 19 years’ experience, gained within the public and voluntary sector. As Head of Diversity & Inclusion at ACAS, Julie is responsible for leading and providing expert advice on all diversity & inclusion related matters, with the aim of building an inclusive culture that drives engagement and ultimately performance.
She has successfully developed and delivered strategic diversity and inclusion initiatives relating to employment and service delivery and is one of the country’s most experienced professionals in this field.
Graduating from Sheffield Hallam University in 1998 with a BA (Hon’s) in Women’s Studies, her first diversity role was with Nottinghamshire Fire and Rescue Service where she successfully established the strategic direction in relation to the diversity & inclusion agenda across employment and service delivery. Enabling managers to see the relevance of diversity in their day-to-day work was an enjoyable challenge.
Over the years, Julie has developed and sustained robust corporate diversity and inclusion infrastructures including internal diversity staff networks and diversity champions, a wide range of positive action initiatives, internal diversity monitoring across all diversity strands, award winning diversity campaigns in order to increase awareness of diversity and inclusion and its relationship with cultural change, along with a suite of diversity and inclusion training packages, including unconscious bias and inclusive leadership.
Prior to joining Acas, she was Head of Diversity at the Land Registry, where her work on D&I was recognised repeatedly winning the department and successfully ensuring HMLR maintained its Stonewall Top 100 Employers Index position in 2016 & 2017.
More recently Julie’s work has ensured that Acas’ progress in diversity and inclusion has been recognised at the Employers’ Network for Equality and Inclusion (enei) awards, when they were awarded ‘Public Sector Employer of the year 2019’, along with winning the ‘Pay Gap’ category, and being highly commended in the ‘Disability Confident’ category.
She is a LGBTI+ workplace ally and a champion for mental health awareness, often sharing her own personal story about living with anxiety caused by PTSD.
Julie is passionate about diversity and inclusion in the workplace and strives to create an environment where people can be themselves at work.