Audra Jenkins

With over 25 years of industry experience, Global Chief Equity Officer Audra Jenkins (she/her) has seen many changes in staffing while building Randstad’s diversity program from the ground up.

Jenkins works with organizations to understand the root causes of their lack of diversity, helping to co-create strategies that remove barriers to inclusion and empowering them to become more equitable by giving employees and candidates what they need to be successful.

“Good intentions do not necessarily lead to good results,” Jenkins explains. As a result, understanding they need diversity is only the beginning with organizations — there is a real need for action to become more diverse. With Jenkins’ guidance, company leadership examine their practices and policies to understand why they struggle with diversity, which can uncover hard changes that need to be made in the hearts and minds of the employees and the organization as a whole. From there, Jenkins works with them to close the gap by creating a strategy to reach their DE&I goals.

Consumers are values driven. If an organization is not living up to their own values, they no longer appeal to clients, which impacts their revenue directly.

Diversity has a substantial impact on a business’s growth and success. “We’re living in an era where consumers are values driven. If an organization is not living up to their own values, they no longer appeal to clients, which impacts their revenue directly,” Jenkins says. “As for the future of DE&I, these programs will continue to be an integral part of business, driven top down from CEO and boards. Brand reputations will depend on showing diversity and inclusion.”

From a personal perspective, Jenkins hopes that her work has enabled her to be an impactful voice of change in the industry as DE&I practices become more commonplace and just another part of doing business. “My hope is that one day my children will live in a world where they are allowed to simply exist, and there will no longer be a need for DE&I because it’s become widely accepted as the way we live,” she shares.