Successful DEI in MedTech Companies

by | Oct 15, 2024 | Diversity & Inclusion Strategy | 0 comments

SUMMARY

Successful DEI in MedTech is possible. Inclusive Matters met with Kashif Ikram, a trailblazer in the medical device industry who’s not just climbed the career ladder but reshaping it. In this eye-opening episode, Kashif shares his inspiring journey as a person of color in a field where representation matters more than ever. From his immigrant parents’ sacrifices to his rise through the ranks, Kashif’s story is a testament to the power of authenticity and perseverance. Tune in to discover how he’s leveraging data-driven strategies and mentorship to build more inclusive workplaces, and learn from a leader who’s turning challenges into opportunities for change. No matter your level of involvement with DEI principles, this conversation will equip you with insights to make a real difference in your organization!

In this episode, you’re going to learn:

  • 4 focus area for effective Diversity & Inclusion strategies
  • How to authenticity drive innovation and better business outcomes
  • About measuring and implementing diversity metrics, particularly in regions with resistance or misconceptions
  • The value of sponsorship programs to support underrepresented talent
  • Examples of inclusive practices

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Connect with Kashif on:
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Our MedTech Lives

 


There’s no point getting to be the CEO of a multinational corporation, but below you, there’s this moat of non-diversity.


I’m Chandre Torpet from Inclusive Matters, and today I am with Kashif Ikram, better known as Kash, and we’re going to have a great discussion about all things Diversity & Inclusion in the space he is in. So let’s hear from you, Kash.

Thank you, Chandre, I’m absolutely delighted to be here. So everyone calls me Kash. Doesn’t mean I have any but everyone calls me Kash. I’ve been working in med device for most of my career. I studied biology at university, and then I dropped into the pharmaceutical industry, after a short stint in journalism, where I was actually working on the Michael Jackson fan magazine.

Then I went into normal industry. I worked in the pharmaceutical industry, which was absolutely fascinating. And after a few years, I moved into med device, which I didn’t really think that much about, or didn’t even realize was such a big industry, but it is, um, everything that is used in a hospital or in a in a GP or an ambulance, some companies had to manufacture and develop, and There’s a whole industry behind that. So I’ve been working 31 years in the med device industry. 10 years or so, I’ve been very specialized in the cutting edge area of medical robotics.

So that’s using in between the the patient and the doctor. So basically putting a computer between the patient and the doctor to and add that to, how do we enhance healthcare in medicine, whether that be a surgical robot, a robot for vascular and that brings with it AI and stuff like so it’s a fascinating part of the industry that I love, and I’m very much specialized in launch product launches, some turnarounds. It’s a very exciting industry, and if you’re not in it, I recommend everyone to take a look, because whatever your skill set, there’s an opportunity for you in med device.

Coupled with the tech aspects and your AI there, it  sounds like there are lot of space to grow in this area.

It is, and it’s so rewarding, because whatever you’re doing, whether you’re in logistics, you’re in accounting, whether you’re in software development, hardware development, what you do means someone’s going to have going to be pain free. Someone’s mom can get cured of cancer. Someone’s child is going to have their disease solved, or their or they’re made more comfortable. So what could be more rewarding? What makes you jump out of bed and go to work than the fact that you’rehelping people all over the world, and it’s a pretty fun thing to be able to do.

And speaking of all over the world, where are you?

So I’m based so I’m I grew up in the UK, so I’m British, but I live in Sweden, in Stockholm, with with my wonderful wife, who is Swedish, right? So that’s why I moved to the Nordics area. But I actually haven’t lived in the UK for probably close to 20 years. I’ve lived in Switzerland for a long time, and then I moved here to Sweden.

The experiences that you’ve had internationally and working in this industry, and also in Michael Jackson’s fan magazine magazine, how does, how does D&I show up for you? And I mean it in terms of that personal side and the work side.

It’s, it’s, it’s been a journey. So when I got into the med device industry 25 plus years ago. You know, it wasn’t, it was small. It was a niche industry to somewhere, and it was, you know, D&I were not really pursued or seen as required. I can tell you, like in my one of my first jobs, I was in the interview. I just and there were three people interviewing me, two area managers and the European head, two of whom were just wonderful, amazing people who I’ve looked up to my whole life. The third one didn’t say much for the whole career conversation or interview. And then the one question he asked me was, if we hire you, you’d be the only person of color in orthopedics in the UK. What would you do about that? What would you think about that?

And it’s a little thrown by the question, but then I was like, wow, that just makes me want it even more, because. Because I love the fact that I’ll be the first I’ll be able to break some ice and carve a channel for other people right from day one, literally, before I even got the job, I hit this D&I question that they were asking and I was experiencing. And when I joined there, I got the job, somebody later apologied to me for that question. It just shows that this is, this is something that’s in the minds of people. And I soon discovered I wasn’t the only one. There was one other who became a very good friend of mine. So it was the two of us. We see each other across the Congress floor.

For those who are listening and to this conversation, you mentioned you’re a person of color.  Do you have a shared culture from the UK?

My parents, they immigrated from Pakistan in the early 60s. It’s a good question, because diversity means a lot of things.  So my diversity is that I’m a person of color. I’m I come from a Muslim background. I come from Asia. I would be like first generation immigrant child. Um, I’m always very conscious that for me to have the opportunities I had in the UK, growing up like my parents, made a massive sacrifice to get on a boat and sail for a month to get to the UK, and with them, and the other general people came from Africa and the West Indies, they they were invited, but they wasn’t welcomed when they got there.

The the amount of sacrifice they made, and then my grandfather, he worked for the British Army over in Singapore. So there are these distinct gaps between my dad and his siblings, because the periods in between dad, Granddad wasn’t there. He was in Singapore. Or he was somewhere with the army. He’d come back spend a year at home. Kid would be born, he’d be off again. So again, sacrifices made by the previous generations.

I’m I’m standing on the shoulders of the people that came before me, and I’m very conscious that I definitely don’t want to waste their sacrifice. I don’t want to take that for granted. I want to make sure that I take it to the next level, so that the next generation, my children, my children’s children, are able to to take advantage of the sacrifices made. My dad he has two brothers. One is a was a GP, a doctor in the army, and one was a professor at a university. But my when it came to education, my my there was no money for my dad. He is a super intelligent guy, but wasn’t able so he worked himself up mechanic, bus driver, business owner and and my mother as well helping him. So I’ve there’s a legacy there that I really respect and want to I want to make sure that I don’t throw away those opportunities that people sacrifice for me.

That’s one part of diversity.  I’m a Muslim, Asian, etc. But, you know, diversity in the workplace is in many so there’s age, and I’m as I get older, I start to think more about the age discrimination. There’s culture, and it’s not just about religion. But you know, there are different cultures within the same society. Sexual orientation and gender. You know, that’s a lot in the news these days. And I also have experience. I experienced in my career, two people who were gay  but hid it from the company. When I reflected on that and how painful that must have been, and to go through that was I can’t imagine how to live year after year, pretending to be somebody else at work in case that might affect your ability to do your work or to get promotions, etc, that really, that really hit me hard.

There are many who would say, for example,  with, you know, persons sexual orientation and background, yeah. What does that have to do with work? It’s not a personal space. And I come back with the fact that, yes, people are not being themselves, they’re doing what’s called covering. They’re trying to hide away the things that might be seen as uncomfortable for others, yes, in order to get through the day or the work.

Right, that could play, that could come out unconsciously through your actions, through the way you talk to people. Maybe you become short tempered. Maybe you’re you, you fear and therefore you you take less risks. Now, if you’re a company that wants to move fast and develop and you got someone who’s not taking who’s avoiding any risk because of various issues that they may have that can have an, in fact, impact on your business. So there’s lots of reasons why everybody should come and be their authentic selves, and then the company can benefit from that everyone being their true selves, because I think the benefits of diversity are known.

That’s a very interesting insight. It’s so crucial to have the wherewithal to accept that people’s journeys will be very different, yeah, and their way of maneuvering those journeys is also likely going to have a different style than they might
be used to.

Exactly. To think of someone who comes to work and they speak English all day, or French or Italian. They go home andthey speak Arabic. And with that, speaking Arabic Is it comes a different culture, a different way of thinking. There’s this theory that the language you speak can somewhat define the way you think.

4 Factors of Successful D&I

I’d like to get more on where you see, diversity, inclusion, bringing in the results in terms of, yes, innovation, or in in how you’re working with stakeholders.

Absolutely. I see diversity in action every day in robotics. So I think, as a company, when you’re thinking about diversity, is there’s four aspects that you need to think about. And it’s almost a model.

One is inclusivity. How you need to include everyone,you need to be aware.  You need to celebrate everyone you know.
And that could be a simple you know, you need to if you recognize holidays, you recognize events, you recognize. You know, leaders lead by example. They have to prioritize the fact that, hey, we’re going to recognize that different people want to do different things. Like, let’s get involved in that. You know, let’s make sure that our place is suitable for disabilities, not because the law state says so, but because we want to right, and let’s go beyond what the law minimum, the law says we have to do. So there’s the inclusive part.

The second part is, once you decide that you’re going to be a diverse company, and maybe you’re not diverse at the moment, is you need to acquisition. How do you go about acquisition? How do you look at acquisition. Are you only seeing people who are like you, like minded, they look like you, they come from the same culture. Is there an unconscious bias going on there?  Are you talking to recruiters saying, hey, I want to see a diverse people. I’m putting quotas in. I want to see three people from color. I want to see disabled people. I want to see X number of women.

And you see, over the last few years with these women quotas, that you’re seeing that metric play out when it comes to female recruiting, which is fantastic, and thank God. And finally, but let’s put that across the field as well. So I think acquisition of diverse talent, how you go about that, is very important. And there’s a number of tools you can use, how you write the job description, etc, as a whole, science and an industry behind that. Look at that and take it.

What about the people you have in the company. So this is the third part development. Are you developing them? Are you  understanding their vulnerabilities? Are you understanding their mental state? Are you developing not just the people who are, you know, the diversity that you’re looking for, but also the, what should we call the indigenous, you know, the wider population. They need to be educated, not as to why, I think people will recognize why diversity is soimportant, but about unconscious bias. They need to be educated about how things should be done, what people are thinking.

Let’s change, you know, the values. When you change the values, you’re able to change the culture so that internal development, whether that be coaching of of people of coloror or disability, but also coaching the leaders, coaching the managers, really important. Making sure that there are diverse leaders in the organization, and diverse leaders that aren’t, you know, reaching these heights and then pulling the ladder up behind them. You see a lot of that, like, like, I’ve got to this position, oh my god, you know, I don’t want anyone coming in and making me look bad. So I’m going to pull the ladder up, and I’m going to now follow what’s been happening in the past. You got to watchout for that as well.

And the the fourth thing, which is important is, once you’ve got this mix really working, you don’t want to lose these people. You want to retain them. So retention of people is really important, and that may you may look at your complaint system, employee feedback system, fit  for purpose in a diverse world, right again, we talked previously about fear. If you ever fear that, hey, I’m different, and therefore let me not raise my head above the parapet. You know, is your complaint system designed in a way to protect those people, because if you don’t get the accurate feedback, you don’t know where to go. Those are the four things I think are most important.

And I think the first thing is you gotta start conversation. You gotta start talking about it. Define what what diversity means. Your organization, and then you need to start measuring. So in any business, if you don’t measure  something, you can’t fix it. You can’t change it, right? So you’ve got to start having metrics in place and set maybe targets, and start measuring where you are against what good  looks like. What you’ve defined is what good looks like. Inclusivity, acquisition,development, retention and metrics.

Successful DEI in MedTech

Those are the things, and these are fundamental aspects that any company can can do absolutely and it starts, it just starts with those inclusive conversations, or what I call the Acts Of Inclusion, the small, everyday gestures that you can make to to invite and welcome a person and their perspectives into your environment. That’s this place to start.

Let me give you an example. In robotics, as we said a lot of the people who are experts in AI software writing development, are a lot of young hipsters I see who ride the skateboard to work. They’re not in a suit, right? And they’re writing fantastic code, and they’re developing these amazing things. They’re going to help the future healthcare industry. So you need that youth. You need that talent. And a lot of this I also see coming out of India and China, Asia, where a lot of this software talent is coming from. That’s pretty awesome.

But to turn that into a med device that the FDA or the MDR in Europe will accept, you need experience. You need leadership. You need people who have done this before and know how to get these processes done. That bring that’s a different type of person. So that’s typically your older persons, your person who has many years of experience in med devices, launched products before, knows what the FDA is going to be looking for. So you can produce those studies, produce those documents, do that regulatory work. And then the regulatory things, I find that people who work in regulatory are very detail orientated. And then the clinical side, you have people who are very clinically orientated. They understand what a clinical study should look like, what the outcomes are, how to get outcomes that are scientifically valuable. Again, this is where you see the diversity within the organization.

How do you blend or prevent the silo effect?  Because you have each of these place, places that has itsunique character, if you will, but if you have the younger or person from a geographically distant part of the world doingone part. Where do we connect all of this so it gets to the final product?

This is where all the tools of the the inclusive part that I talked about. So you need to have clearly defined cultural rules that, hey, this is, this is who we are. This is who we represent. We’re going to be a cutting edge corporation that’s going to make x for the benefit of all, for example. You’re going to say you’re going to hold leaders accountable, that that diversity is there, right?  Because that you need that diversity be successful, right?  So you want these leaders to be trained, mandatory training. Things they need to understand are unconscious bias, right? You know, being able to listen to everyone foster a culture where you listen to everyone.

Everyone’s voice matters. Feedback is taken very seriously. There’s a there’s a process for gathering that feedback, disseminating that right. Cross-cultural meetings where you bring diverse people together so they start to understand each other. Now, that could be regular social events, but that could be also in a formal way, also celebrating holidays and things like that, right?

So I was in one company.I said, Hey, the the leader sends out a Christmas message, an Easter message, and you know, why not send out for Eid or for Chinese New Year? And it was so it was really ironic, because they turned around and said, HR said to me, “No, we only celebrate Christian holidays in the company. Those aren’t Christian holidays.”  And I looked around the room, and it was mid October. And we’re sitting in a room with Halloween decorations all over the place, and we’re gonna have a Halloween party looking around, like, Do you realize what you just said? And like, that’s not a Christian holiday. And there’s Halloween Party Happy Halloween messages going out, but you’re  not going to, sort of, you’re not going to send out an email for Eid okay, this is where maybe there’s some blink, you know, people don’t see it. They don’t, right?

Hidden Bias

And it’s, it’s that moment of helping someone uncover, yes or interrupt the bias so that they can uncover the fact that, wait, what I just. That is inconsistent. What I just did was inconsistent to what we’re trying to do as a company or or with our staff. So a very good point there.

100% and I think that’s so important, and so that’s, I think, talks to the unconscious bias kind of thing. But employee networks, resource groups, putting some mentoring in place, not just for the for the diversity group, but also for the main group as well, right? So everyone should have access to to that.

These are all aspects that companies are working on now, and as you were mentioning them, the pushback will hear is, well, in terms of being inclusive, we are that we even have a disclaimer that we don’t discriminate. That’s the compliance factor, that we treat everybody equally.  There is this, I wouldn’t say, hesitancy, but people are saying, well, we’ve done that.  We are inclusive. You’ll see it almost on every single company’s website that they are inclusive employers. So that’s one part is, it’s the compliance. Another part, it’s a false sense of security. Because people say, Well, we are we’re doing this. However, if your teams, or if your company is still not representative of the wider population, then you’re going against the grain.

I think you hit on a really important point. Because saying I choose not to see color, or deciding people of color are
equal, that’s not enough, right?  And I’m just using people as color as an example. It could for all groups. It’s the same, it’s not enough. You have to take active action. This is where the metrics come in. Are you measuring it and is it happening? Are you getting the feedback? Are you seeing these people thrive because you’re coming, just saying it and putting it on LinkedIn posts. It’s not enough, right? You gotta be actively doing it.

In Europe, outside of the UK, the metrics that you talked about understanding of the cross sections of the community where you have different ethnicities or religions that are not that information is not currently being tracked. There is an urban myth that it is illegal to do so. It’s actually not true. There is a space where people can self identify and what they share becomes part of that thatdialog, and they’re also third party companies that can take that information and house it so that it’s not necessarily within the company’s realm. So that  being said, we’re still fighting these. No, we can’t do this. We can’t measure it, and we’re not going to so there’s no discussion, and we’re not in the situation where we have a problem that is a big issue. I can see just from the conversations I’m having.

No, I encountered what, exactly what you’re talking about. When I started to I wanted to do more diversity, inclusion work in companies that are working for like HR will. Or some people come to you and say, some leaders say, hey, we can’t do this. We can’t measure this right. We can do it in the US, and we have to do it sometimes, but we can’t do it. And exactly that. And I just think so on the one hand, you believe that diversity is really important and leads to more success. But you don’t want to measure for it, therefore you don’t want to act on it.

This does, if we were to say, like, you know, if you were to take any department in, you know, clinical development, say, if we take the clinical data of our new product, we’ll be able to prove that it works better on patients, right? But we’re not going to measure it. We’re just going to say, hey, we think it works. We have no data around it, but please use this product. We think it’s better. No one’s going to buy that product. And you’re going to your company’s going to fail. So if you were to propose to senior leadership. Hey, we know that if we collect the right clinical data, we’re going to be a success, but we’re choosing not to do it. You know, can I have my next promotion please? Well, you’ll be shown the door pretty quickly.

Successful DEI in MedTech

As ridiculous as it sounds, yeah, there are situations that this does happen because companies are competing with other companies. They’re trying to be first to market, and there are systems that make it so that we can just squeeze through. I’ve even talked about this and highlighted it when Covid was out, when the vaccine was was being delivered,

It was two main companies that were competing over who was going to get to market first. And one of the companies, Moderna, was stopped because it had not done enough testing on different parts of the communities, BioNTech, which was with Pfizer, they had done that, and they’d done it because the founders of the company are Turkish and German and and at the time, Pfizer’s head was Greek and American. So you had all of these different perspectives and international parts brought in and were utilized in order to say, hey, we need to test as much of the world as possible. And they did that, and that’s one of the reasons they were first to market.

You know, we keep coming back to metrics, and we keep coming back to getting that data. It’s, it’s it’s there, it’s available. If you don’t want to count how many people you got from with a Pakistani background in your company, fine, don’t do that. But there are other ways of getting data,  Don’t be afraid.

That’s a, I think that’s a huge opportunity. It’s a missed opportunity for so many right now who are claiming that they ask questions about diversity on their inclusion and their engagement surveys, everybody says it’s great, but if 80% of your team or 90 looks the same way or acts the same way or has the same background, you’re going to get certain kinds of feedback that are just ones you know heavily dominated on one side without getting the bigger picture. Yeah.

You’re not judged by the height you have risen, but from the depth from which you have climbed. 

So tell me. Tell me, Kash, what aha moment have you had around Diversity, Equity & Inclusion?

I read a quote recently by Frederick Douglass, “You’re not judged by the height you have risen, but from the depth from which you have climbed.” And wow, powerful. When I think about my life, my generations before me, I think about my friends, and this could be if you’re a person with a disability, if you’re a person who’s has gender issues, and you’ve been hiding that for most of your life. Wow, to get to continue every day and to keep going and to do your job well, to progress through an organization, I just think that’s incredible. And I the only thing I would do is is add to that,

 I measure my success, not by how far I’ve risen, but by who I’ve brought with me, and the numbers of people that I’ve brought with me, right, who are who maybe would not have got there,

Who have I developed? Who have I helped? Who have I helped break glass ceilings? I’m drawn to people who are diverse in some way or shape or form than coaching and mentoring. So not only how far you’ve risen from which depth, but also who you brought with you. I think that’s so much important as well, because there’s no point getting to being the CEO of a multinational corporation, but below you, there’s this moat of non diversity, and that’s that’s for me, is not success.

Well, Kash, how can people learn more about you and what it is you’re up to?

Look me up on LinkedIn. Happy to connect. I’m in the process of setting up a podcast called Our MedTech Lives. Maybe  you are in the industry already. You’re a salesperson. You want to get into marketing, you’re an engineer, you want to get into product management. Let me introduce you to people who’ve done that, who’ve made that transition, made that journey, and maybe we can help with tips and tricks. So look out for that as well.

Thank you so much Kash for your time today, and thanks for joining us.

Always a pleasure. Thank you Chandre.

 

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