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Ishtar Schneider
Mars Petcare
Global People, Inclusion & Diversity Communications Lead
Ishtar dedicates her time, energy and attention to building more diverse and inclusive societies and businesses through both her day-to-day work (as global People, Inclusion and Diversity Communications Lead for Mars Petcare) and her extracurricular roles within leading industry bodies Women in PR (as co-lead for the flagship mentoring programme run in partnership with PR Week) and the PR and Communications Association (PRCA) as the newly elected Chair of the Equity Inclusion Advisory Board. In early 2023, Women in PR was facing challenges related to perceptions of the organisation’s commitments to diversity and inclusion – a key tenant of it’s goals and advocacy. Work needed to be done to earn back trust with members and the wider industry as well as to bring the programmes in line with the needs of practitioners today. Ishtar has been part of the key group driving an overhaul of the group’s DEI efforts and re-design of the mentoring programme – all to ensure DEI is at heart of every action. Eight months of concerted efforts have yielded the best results to date – with nearly double the applications YOY coming from across the PR & communications landscape. It secured the most diverse mentor and mentee cohorts to date – and is being used as best practice to inform recruitment across the organisation. Her clear love of PR profession fuels her efforts – all of this was achieved by Ishtar and team outside their “9 to 5’s”.