Equitable has been on a thoughtful and ongoing journey to create an environment where everyone can thrive, and unique beliefs, backgrounds, talents and capabilities contribute to learning and informing better business decisions. Over the past ten years, we have built a solid D&I foundation by focusing on culture and employee engagement. While efforts have increased company awareness of D&I and enhanced employee engagement, our diversity representation has remained relatively flat. Although this challenge is not unique to Equitable or our industry, we recognized a need to increase visibility and advancement opportunities for women and underrepresented talent across the organization. As part of our broader Diversity & Inclusion strategy, Equitable's strategic priorities includes a commitment to promoting and retaining diverse talent at every level, with a focus on director and executive management.

The 12-month Tandem experience is our deliberate effort to deepen and diversify our talent pipeline by providing high-potential women with experiences that will propel them forward and position them for a new expanded career opportunity. Each woman is selected to be part of the cohort by leadership from across the organization because of her superior performance and her potential to make great impact and grow within our organization.

Based on extensive best practice research and benchmarking, Tandem is designed around five key experiences most likely to propel a woman into a leadership role and support her continued success. These five experiences include:

1. Senior-Level Sponsor
2. Growing Functional/Industry Expertise
3. Leading and Inspiring People
4. Increasing Fluency in Financials and Operations
5. Building Resilience

Starting with a pilot program, the first cohort had 83% success rate of the attainment of new expanded roles or promotions. Now, in its 2nd year, with a refined design and program rigor, we already see an impact with our current cohort, with several women receiving promotions or taking on new roles with expanded responsibilities during the course of the experience. Given Tandem’s early success, we are piloting a similar 12-month cohort-based program for ethnically diverse talent.