iGaming Business magazine iGB 111 July/Aug | Page 78

Feature
iGB
MOST INFLUENTIAL
WOMEN 2018
This year’s gender pay gap reporting
revealed that women remain
under-represented at the top of business,
and consequently so does their influence.
The inaugural iGaming Business
Most Influential Women list
aim s to redress
the balance
The judges
Stephen Carter is editorial director across
the iGaming Business stable of magazines and websites.
He has more than 10 years’ experience working for a variety of
igaming sector publications and affiliate websites, including a stint
as deputy editor at EGR before going on to join iGB as editor in 2014.
Kelly Kehn is co-founder of the All-in Diversity Initiative,
which advocates for a data-driven approach to improving inclusion
in gaming. Since entering the industry in 2004, Kehn has held
leadership roles in marketing, operations, management and sales.
She won the Women in Gaming Award for Leader of the Year in 2016.
Christina Thakor-Rankin is the other half of All-in Diversity
and runs a consultancy business. Her career in the industry spans
25 years and the whole betting and gambling ecosystem, including
land-based, online and mobile gaming. She firmly believes
that diversity and inclusion are critical to success in business.
Helen Walton is founder and marketing director at gaming
software company Gamevy. A relative newcomer to igaming,
she brings with her a wealth of experience from journalism,
marketing and education. She believes the corporate definition
of ‘experience’ is limiting and unrelated to the core skills of
analysing problems, building solutions and managing people.
Andrew Bulloss is a partner at executive search firm
Odgers Berndtson and has been placing directors, senior executives,
C-level and non-executive directors in the international gaming
and gambling industries for a decade. Prior to joining Odgers,
he spent eight years leading recruitment in the technology/online,
consumer goods and financial services industries in the UK and Europe.
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iGamingBusiness | Issue 111 | July/August 2018
Research shows that the more diverse and inclusive businesses are,
the better they perform. According to McKinsey, companies with
gender equality at a senior level perform better and for every 10%
increase in gender diversity on senior executive teams, EBIT increases
by 3.5%.
For now, though, quantitative measures of how the industry is
doing in terms of diversity and inclusion are limited. What we do
know is that, while men still greatly outnumber women in the higher
reaches of the industry, there are some extremely accomplished
women at senior level.
It seemed like the right time to make some noise about those
women and to highlight their achievements as a reminder, to those
coming through and anyone considering a career in igaming, that
there are, as one of the women on our list put it, high rewards
“for those who dare”.
A few of the names in this feature will not come as a surprise;
after all, igaming boasts not just the highest-paid female business
leader, but the highest paid, period. Her presence here reflects the
fact that igaming is perhaps one of the few industries where the
glass ceiling has been well and truly smashed, and there is a real
opportunity for other women, other people from all backgrounds,
to take advantage of that.
However, there are also some surprises in here. Some names you
may not have heard of. It was important for us to make the process
of identifying our first 10 most influential women as fair as possible,
so we opened the nominations process up to the industry.
It is worth mentioning that each of the women on our judging
panel received enough nominations to have been considered for the
final list had they qualified for inclusion.
As this would have posed a conflict of interest, they were
withdrawn from the reckoning. We thank them for waiving their
likely positions on the list to share their insight and help us reach a
fair conclusion on who should be featured.
Three rounds of judging later, we had settled on the final 10.
It’s important to highlight that while drawing up this list was done
as fairly as possible, we accept we were not judging from an
exhaustive line-up of the women that make up this industry.
We hope this feature showcases not just what women in our
industry are achieving today, but how rewarding a career in the
gambling industry can be, irrespective of background.