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Earlier this year, I had the opportunity to interview Fiona Bartels-Ellis about work on equality and diversity. An internationally acknowledged leader in the field, Fiona was awarded an OBE from the British Government in 2005 for her contribution to equal opportunities, a Mainstreaming Diversity Award from the European Federation of Black Women Business Owners in 2002, and the Peter Robinson Award for Equality and Diversity Champions in 2009. The interview covered her early experiences of growing up in a mixed heritage family, why she works on equality and diversity, and what approach she takes to ensure that equality and diversity are integral to the British Council's international cultural relations work.
As the Head of Equality and Diversity at the British Council, Fiona Bartels-Ellis is an influential practitioner. With 110 offices around the world, she has thought hard about how to promote equality and diversity throughout the work of the organisation. A big challenge is to develop ways of ensuring that the organisation is sensitive to local cultures whilst maintaining a consistent core message of equality, diversity and anti-discrimination. She is faced daily with interpreting equality issues in different cultures in Africa, Asia, Europe, the Middle East and North and South America.
Fiona draws on her training as a social worker, her academic background, her equality and diversity consultancy work and her practical experience of working alongside colleagues across the world. Her doctoral thesis looks at the effectiveness of the British Council's Global Diversity Network (GDE), which she set up.
Fiona is frequently invited to speak at conferences and seminars on how she develops equality across a global network. This interview provides a vehicle for her words to reach an even wider audience.
I would like to ask you to talk about your early influences and when you began to think about equality and diversity in your life
I have a background of what I would call difference. I have a White English father who went to Africa to work. He met and married my mother, a Black Ghanaian woman and I and my siblings were born in Ghana. I grew up between two distinct cultural influences of Africa and England. So, I have a background of dual heritage, mixed parentage. African was the predominant one...