Anita, a distinguished finance leader, champions impactful change through courage, curiosity, and service. With over 30 years of global experience, including a decade at Hindustan Unilever and leadership in technology and business services, Anita has been recognized with a WEQUAL award and is a dedicated advocate for Diversity & Inclusion.

In a recent conversation with The Global Woman Leader Magazine, Anita has shared detailed insights on balancing financial performance with a culture of innovation and inclusivity. She also talks about her leadership impact on cultural transformation during digital shifts, and strategies for maintaining financial resilience and agility amidst technological advancements and regulatory challenges.

How do you balance the demands of driving financial performance with fostering a culture of innovation and inclusivity within such a large and diverse organization like Unilever?

These two elements are not mutually exclusive. They are actually closely related and feed off each other. There is plenty of research out there that confirms it takes diverse perspectives to drive innovation and innovation drives performance, and I am a strong advocate of this.

We know that culture is not what is written down, but it is behavior at scale. To develop a culture of innovation as well as inclusivity it’s all about safety: to make it safe for people to try things and to be their authentic self. My leadership philosophy is to treat people as Human Beings and not Human Doings, if you do this then performance and collaboration are real outcomes delivered.

Can you share an instance where your leadership style significantly influenced the cultural transformation of a team or organization, particularly through periods of rapid digital transformation?

I am a strong believer in the potential of people, talent development and engagement has always been close to my heart. Over the years my leadership style has moved from a 3D approach - Direct, Drive and Deliver to a 3E approach – Envision, Empower and Energize.

This means co-creating a compelling vision with my teams, empowering them to lead the change while coaching and supporting them when needed, and being their no. 1 cheerleader and advocate across the business.

The best example I have is when between 2018 to 2022 I was leading a 500+ strong global team led by 20 Directors who managed the global operations for finance and procurement for Unilever; which can sometimes be perceived as “back office” and unattractive from a career and motivation perspective. As part of my 3-year journey in this role, I significantly improved the culture, talent engagement and density of the team through:

- Creating a strong vision for the team – to be the Sun not Planet X – a performance, value and controls engine for Unilever.

- Frame a 1 Team culture based on Expertise, Experience, Collaboration and also Fun

- Empower each of my directors to lead a Talent Pillar – across engagement, development, digital, leadership, Inclusion and Well-being while supporting them with resources, tools. Cheerleading, leaning in and being a visible advocate and sponsor for these initiatives.

- This included Quarterly town halls, Leadership immersions, digital and functional capability building, celebrations and fire side chats under a multi-year agenda.

This approach was recognized internally by our teams through significantly higher engagement scores, by our stakeholders during interactions with 3X talent exchange and externally winning an award at the Asia Shared Service and Outsourcing Network – Singapore in 2020.

Given your experience in leading global transformations, how do you navigate the inherent risks and challenges associated with implementing cutting-edge technologies like AI, ML, and RPA, while ensuring operational continuity and regulatory compliance?

Technology is a huge enabler, but it’s only one part of what makes up a successful business transformation. Any successful transformation is a combination of people; organisation, process, data, tech and most importantly change management and culture.

AI, ML and RPA deliver large scale productivity improvements in the way we do business every day, equally it is critical to ensure business continuity and compliance – which can be done with the right diligence, robust change management and planned hyper-care. Hence the criticality of leveraging people, organisation, processes, and detain an integrated way, underscored with a robust change management programme will you help you negate any challenge son the way.

In the current global economic climate, what strategies do you find most effective in maintaining financial resilience and agility within large multinational corporations like Unilever?

First and foremost, you must have diligent risk management and control mechanisms, and they must be rigorously evaluated, regularly – this is a given. But in Finance we must also be pragmatic, and enable our business, rather than locking it down or slowing it down, so I see risk and performance as two sides of the same coin; an opportunity to optimize shifting conditions in areas such as geopolitics, supply chain resilience and inflation to improve or maintain our position. A very practical example is my team’s development of a resilience tower during extreme business conditions (e.g., Covid) to support our procurement teams in navigating the need to maintain supply.

In your experience, what are the critical components of successful succession planning, particularly in a global context where leadership transitions can have significant impacts on business continuity?

Succession planning needs to be anchored in a formal and timely talent development process, and not something that’s done in a hurry or without structure. It starts with a long-term view of key roles and key talent -driven by business strategy. For me, a critical component is to make your plans known; this includes engaging other senior leaders in the process and for the person concerned to know what is available to them (e.g., training, coaching and other development mechanisms) and what is expected of them. I would also say you need to be unselfish and be prepared to release your key talent into other roles if it’s the right fit for their career aspirations and is in the long-term interest of talent development in the organisation. I make a point of hosting skip-level meetings with the team members of my direct reports, this way I get to know them better and spot emerging talent early.

Personally, what motivates and inspires you amidst the complexities and demands of your role as Global CFO, and how do you maintain that inspiration over time?

A CFO role at whatever level is extremely demanding. You need to have great passion, resilience, and energy to sustain motivation through the good times and more importantly the challenging ones. While it’s been a few years since I formulated my leadership purpose – “Igniting positive impactful change through courage, curiosity and service”;it has stood the test of time. It continues to inspire and guide me every day and what I have found is that it is especially powerful in the most difficult moments to help me decide the path forward. As Leaders, we can have a significant impact on people and performance, both negatively and positively; my purpose reminds me to be outcome focused, to make brave but informed decisions, never stop learning and stay in the service of the business and people around me. To be honest, I am inspired every day by the opportunity to remain true to this North Star.