Aanchal “Ann” Thakur

As a professional and as a person, Aanchal “Ann” Thakur identifies as a helper. “It does not take an effort for me to help the next person in need, either personally or professionally,” she says.

Thakur champions diversity in every aspect of eTeam’s business, from employment and management to sourcing and recruiting, and sets the expectation with the company’s recruiters to use diversity when it comes to finding talent. Job posts go up not only on the usual channels but also across more than 100 career sites that cater to specific diverse professionals, such as Black Latino and Asian professionals; women; veterans; workers over age 50; LGBTQ+ professionals and more. These recruitment efforts have yielded more than 11,000 diverse candidate hires in the past three years.

In the last year, Thakur has paid particular attention to bringing women back to the workforce, part of a global effort that began at eTeam’s India offices. This campaign, called SHeTeam, is intended to get women with gaps in their résumés back into the workforce. SHeTeam provides access to training and help preparing for interviews as well as mentoring from female leaders in the company. The campaign has launched in all of eTeam’s APAC branches, and in the coming months, the company looks forward to expanding the same effort to the US.

It does not take an effort for me to help the next person in need, either personally or professionally.

“Strong, intelligent, passionate women in positions of leadership have empowered our company,” Thakur says. “That has helped other women see themselves in positions of leadership.”

The past four years have found Thakur working to promote new employee resource groups across her business. The ERGs have helped workers organize, discuss the issues facing them, communicate and collaborate around these issues with other ERGs, and offer company leadership feedback on how they can improve their DE&I efforts.

Thakur has pushed for her organization to hire diverse candidates for at least half of open positions. Her efforts to boost the number of women in leadership positions across her business have brought about an increase of more than 60%. Under her leadership, workers have received unconscious bias training, and the firm has begun celebrating all holidays for employees in more than 14 countries.