Dentsu International has appointed Rashmi Vikram as its chief equity officer for APAC. Vikram moves from Microsoft, where she was group diversity & inclusivity practice lead.
Vikram, who has studied business administration, human resource management and personnel administration from Symbiosis Institute of Management Studies, has worked with Thomson Reuters for a decade. She led the diversity strategy and implemented related initiatives across Thomson Reuters India. Her role required her to provide support to talent acceleration as well as the growth and flow of talent, HR project management, as well as collaborative and social learning.
In 2015, she joined Community Business, a membership-based not-for-profit organisation dedicated to advancing D&I and corporate social responsibility (CSR) in Asia, as country head. In her role as the India lead, she was responsible for strengthening the presence of Community Business in India providing strategic leadership, consulting and subject matter expertise in the area of diversity & inclusion.
More than four years later, Vikram joined Microsoft as global diversity and inclusion (GD&I) practice lead. Her responsibility was to support leaders in their endeavour to nurture a culture where all employees, irrespective of their differences in perspective, are empowered to achieve more. She was responsible to make inclusion a habit, so that Microsoft’s products and services could be inclusive.
At dentsu international, Vikram will be working closely with the other two equity officers for the Americas and EMEA regions, respectively.
About the organisation’s commitment to D&I, Ashish Bhasin, CEO, dentsu international, Asia Pacific, says, “Dentsu’s strength lies in making a difference. To do that, we seek out diverse perspectives, celebrate difference and empower everyone to bring their most authentic self to work. We encourage our leaders to build diverse teams, teams with a healthy, vibrant culture. A culture that enables every employee to do great work, build a phenomenal career and know they belong. We are very excited to have Rashmi on board to champion Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) and we look forward to working with her to chart meaningful progress for our businesses in APAC.”
Kinch Ong, regional human resource director, dentsu Asia Pacific, has faith in Vikram’s “solid track-record in the DEI space” and is sure “she will inspire and make a difference.”
Commeting on her new assignment, Vikram herself reiterates how passionate she is about the work and how much she is looking forward “to working with the global, regional and country teams at dentsu to champion, reinforce and build an inclusive culture.”
Vikram will report to Ashish Bhasin, CEO, dentsu international Asia Pacific and Kinch Ong, regional HR director, Asia Pacific.
Part of dentsu, dentsu international is made up of six leadership brands – Carat, dentsu X, iProspect, Isobar, dentsumcgarrybowen and Merkle, all of which are supported by its specialist divisions and scaled services. With their quality services and solutions in media, customer experience management (CXM), and creative, dentsu international operates in over 145 markets worldwide with more than 45,000 dedicated specialists.
