Chief Executive Women boss Lisa Annese warns against giving Donald Trump’s diversity war too much air time

The freshly-minted boss of Chief Executive Women has cautioned against giving too much air time to Donald Trump’s war on diversity and inclusion policies.

Lisa Annese took the CEO role at one of nation’s most powerful female lobby groups in January, two months after Mr Trump won the presidential election in a political resurrection that sent shockwaves though the US and around the world.

On his first day back at the White House, Mr Trump scrapped Federal diversity, equity and inclusion programs to prevent discrimination based on gender or sexual orientation.

“It’s important not to talk it into existence (in Australia) just because it’s a conversation in the US,” Ms Annese told The Nightly ahead of CEW’s annual dinner in Perth this week.

“After the election of Trump . . . he was very public about rolling back on what they call diversity, equity and inclusion programs in the US and so people were reacting to that thinking, ‘Oh well if that’s being discussed, maybe we should preemptively roll back or preemptively re-examine what our approach is’.

“We’ve got buckets of evidence around why diversity and inclusion is good for business. Let’s not panic and let’s not just assume because some one person, or a few people, think that this is all about political correctness that that’s actually true, because it’s not.”

Walmart, McDonald’s and Facebook owner Meta are among the major US companies that have proactively scaled back their DEI initiatives to comply with Mr Trump’s crackdown.

Ms Annese notes that “we never really did DEI in Australia, it’s a very American thing”.

“What diversity and inclusion has meant in Australia is around how do we make sure that our processes, the way we develop talent and the way we support people into leadership draws on 100 per cent of the talent pool, not just 50 per cent of the talent pool,” she said.

“Whilst I’ve always supported organisations having targets to achieve these things, we don’t have a lot of the affirmative action of the US and so it’s a different thing here.”

She reckons Australian businesses remain committed to the equality fight.

“I actually don’t believe anyone has changed their position,” Ms Annese said.

“Whilst there’s always resistance whenever you try and create change . . . I just haven’t seen enough evidence in Australia that en masse, organisations are rolling back on (diversity and inclusion).”

Ms Annese started the CEW role on January 6. Most recently, she was the CEO of Diversity Council of Australia, where was responsible for growing its membership to 1400 organisations.

Prior to that, Ms Annese worked as a diversity practitioner at law firm Corrs Chambers Westgarth and at the Workplace Gender Equality Agency.

“I feel really confident in being able to defend the work of the gender equality movement because I know it’s good for business and it’s good for people,” Ms Annese said.

Meanwhile, outgoing CEW president Susan Lloyd-Hurwitz reflected on her two-and-a-half-year stint as “an absolute honour and privilege, although not always easy”.

“CEW has made some really important contributions toward advocacy around gender equality in Australia with the lens that gender equality isn’t a seesaw about about men versus women,” she said.

“It’s genuinely something that is good for everybody and indeed the single biggest economic lever that we have.

“In shaping the narrative around the why of gender equality, it’s because we need to create high performance teams from 100 per cent of the population.”

CEW is in its final stages of selecting Ms Lloyd-Hurwitz’s successor.