UBS Center Newsletter | N°12, January 2019

8 “100 percent of the talent pool must be used!” Iris Bohnet “Equal opportunities are a question of fairness.” Mara Harvey Like Iris Bohnet (far left), Gabriele Siegert (second from left) stressed that all people are biased, men and women. Bohnet declared that gender equality is a moral and a business imperative. Yet, unconscious bias prevents us from achieving gender equality, and debiasing indi- viduals’ minds has proven to be difficult and expen- sive. With an impressive example of an optical illusion – the checker shadow illusion – she caught the atten- tion of the audience and proved with this simple example how biased everyone is; this also applies to organizations. Behavioral design helps debias organi- zations. Bohnet presented research-based tools to move the needle in classrooms and boardrooms, in hiring and promotion, benefiting businesses, govern- ments, and society. Bohnet is convinced that the best solutions can only be achieved if 100% of the talent pool is used, and not just half of it. The panel following Bohnet’s keynote featured four panelists with very different backgrounds: Iris Bohnet was joined by Gabriele Siegert (UZH deputy presi- DIALOGUE & EVENTS How to design equal opportunities, a question of fairness. dent), representing academia, Jacqueline Fehr (state councilor of Zurich) representing the political world, and Mara Harvey (UBS Wealth Management) repre- senting the business world. Unsurprisingly, all panelists agreed that diversity is good for successful teams and organizations, no matter which world they represent. Thus, fostering diversity – and specifically also gender diversity – should be in every organization’s best interest. Identi- fying the mechanisms which undermine equal oppor- tunities, however, is often as challenging as defining solutions. For Mara Harvey, looking at the underlying mechanisms also involves taking an outside-in per- spective, e.g. looking at female clients and their needs. As a matter of fact, economic data like consumer data is mostly gender blind; however, reliable gender- specific data allows us to better identify the needs of female clients, for example. Moreover, combining the