After the dire warnings last year about the disproportionate impact of COVID-19 on working women, particularly those in senior positions, the gambling industry started 2021 on a perhaps unexpected high.
In January came the news that Entain had appointed Jette Nygaard-Andersen as its new chief executive, marking the first female CEO for a major UK-listed gaming company.
In the same month, the British Columbia Lottery Corporation (BCLC) named Lynda Cavanaugh as its interim president and chief executive and Malta’s Interactive Gaming Group named Cristina Niculae its new CEO.
Other notable C-suite appointments this year have included Zoe Osmond, who has big shoes to fill in taking over from Marc Etches as CEO of GambleAware, Noorul-ain Khan, who joined iSoftBet as its chief financial officer and Lynn S. McCreary, who took on the chief legal officer role at Sportradar.
Gaming companies have also been increasingly adding women to their boards this year, with Bragg Gaming Group adding one of last year’s Most Influential Women, Lara Falzon, to its board in February, a month before she was appointed CFO at SK365.
Shortly afterwards, Entain announced that Stella David and Vicky Jarman would join its board, while Flutter named Holly Koeppel and Nancy Dubuc non-executive directors.
Flutter then announced in June that non-executive director Mary Turner would head up a new Workforce Engagement Committee, a challenging brief given the issues thrown up by the pandemic and the company’s 14,000 strong global workforce.
Building the pipeline
All of these appointments were, of course, welcome news, but particularly given some of these women came from outside the industry, it’s just as important to consider whether or not the igaming industry is working hard enough to develop the talent it has within its own ranks.
On this front, there have been some positive developments this year. For example, William Hill’s charitable foundation announced a programme to help progress the careers of women in technology within the industry. Similarly, in March Entain pledged donations to programmes aimed at bringing young women into the technology industry, in recognition of the long-standing lack of women working in tech roles.
Entain also has a number of internal programmes aimed at advancing women through the ranks, and the company’s head of ESG Jay Dossetter says Nygaard-Andersen’s appointment is likely to accelerate developments in this area further.
“We run a women in management programme that is specifically focused on providing opportunities for our female leaders within the business. It provides a structured approach with a three-year roadmap. One of the things that Jette has highlighted since she took over as CEO is that she is very keen that we mentor senior women within the business so that we really give not just tacit support but really active support to develop women’s careers,” Dossetter said.
Another of last year’s Most Influential Women, Maris Bonello, says Kindred is also running a number of programmes to help the company move towards a better gender balance at the highest levels of the company.
“We have created a women’s network in order to develop internal talent and also taken certain steps in the recruitment area as well in terms of weighting and targeting and challenging the unconscious bias in the organisation,” Bonello commented.
Fourth survey
But despite many other companies also running similar schemes, the industry is still a long way from gender equality – gender pay gaps persist and in most companies there are still significantly more men than women at both board and C-level.
“This makes it all the more important that we again shine a spotlight on those women who are having a significant influence on our industry,” iGB’s team states.
In 2018 iGB launched the Most Influential Women survey in a bid to redress the gender imbalance in the industry.
After a gradual rise in entries over the first two years, nominations soared last year, with hundreds of industry insiders nominating a large number of successful women, making its especially tough for our panel of judges to whittle entries down to the final list of 10.
“We’re now opening up nominations for our fourth survey, the results of which will be revealed on iGB later in the year,” the team invites.
Source: iGB
