By Obrein Simasiku
WINDHOEK – Nedbank Namibia and PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) on Wednesday last week each committed N$100 000 to the Diversity Namibia conference, which is due to take place on February 11 and 12. The venue is the Safari Hotel, with the opening evening and panel discussion scheduled for the first day of the event.
“We are planning to drive diversity within our organization and looking forward to learning how best to manage diversity at the upcoming conference,” said Dr Andreas Mwoombola, head of transformation and strategy at Nedbank Namibia.
Meanwhile, the managing director at Nedbank Namibia, Lionel Matthews, added that Nedbank supports inclusivity as a corporate organization and is pleased to partner with the Diversity Namibia organizing team, as they believe in leveraging diversity in the workplace.
PwC’s Stefan Hugo aired that it is of importance to support each other’s differences because PwC believes in diversity to the extent that it is one of the parameters used in leadership appraisal.
The main organizer of Diversity Namibia, Margareth Gustavo, expressed her sincere gratitude to the sponsors, stating it will be exciting to bring over internationally-acclaimed expert on organizational culture and diversity, Fons Trompenaars, for the conference.
“This will allow business leaders to gain knowledge about how to manage something as complex as diversity in the workplace,” explained Gustavo.
She continued that Trompenaars is founder and director of Trompenaars-Hampden-Turner, an intercultural management firm based in the Netherlands.
For the past 25 years Trompenaars has helped Fortune 500 leaders to manage and solve their business and cultural dilemmas to increase global effectiveness and performance, particularly in the areas of globalisation, mergers, acquisitions, human resources and leadership development.
“I had the privilege of being trained by Fons Trompenaars. He is a dynamic speaker and in my opinion is the right person to stir the thinking of leaders about diversity,” concluded Gustavo.