Kevin is the founder and co-chair of SMBC’s LGBTQ+ Allies Network for the EMEA Division and is an adviser to their D&I Steering Committee. In these roles, he leads the Bank’s LGBTQ+ strategy and has delivered numerous events over the last two years, raising awareness about LGBTQ+ topics such as being transgender, surrogacy, a book club event to discuss intersectionality, and LGBTQ+ parenting. Alongside this work, Kevin also led and advised HR on the launch of two new employee policies covering transitioning at work and surrogacy and parental leave and also managed to get respective health insurance companies to update their policies. He advised the Bank on its SMBC EMEA Gender-Neutral Best Practice Writing Guidelines and the use of preferred pronouns in email signatures. In addition, he oversaw the rollout of independently sourced tailored D&I Awareness Training for his department – where the outputs from the training were used to develop his department’s ED&I Charter Commitments. The Charter is referenced in individual performance reviews where examples can be provided as actions undertaken to demonstrate one or more of the ED&I commitments and enables progress to be tracked overtime. Other departments at SMBC are now looking to replicate this for their teams.
