8  |  HBAdvantage The HBA is at the forefront of efforts focused on optimizing the business benefits of gender diversity by providing credible insights and offerings to support accelerated achievements of healthcare organizations’ goals and impact. As such, we’ve taken an in-depth look into the evolution of diversity and inclusion (D&I), and the steps organizations can take to support its continued evolution toward Gender Diversity 5.0. The following is an overview of the HBA’s recommended best practices to help organizations foster and sustain gender parity progress in their organizations. Today, gender diversity is a recognized driver of business success. Yet, senior female executives still represent just 17 percent of top 20 pharmaceutical company management teams (ranked by sales). So how can biopharma and life science companies move the needle to achieve gender parity—and the enhanced corporate performance that comes with it? MAKE D&I ESSENTIAL TO GLOBAL STRATEGY Success starts with building a culture of inclusion in which all employees can realize their full poten- tial. By building a foundation that values diversity, companies can create an organizational environment grounded in trust that creates the culture to support talent to flourish. This requires encouraging participation from everyone, critically the CEO, to demonstrate their support and importance of addressing unconscious bias. It requires creating a core competency around gender partnership—and how this plays out around the world. And, it requires making gender parity the highest priority in selection, retention, training and promotion, including holding senior leaders accountable for considering a gender-balanced slate for open positions, and ongoing mentoring and sponsorship programs. Best Practices forAchievingGender Parity—and EnhancedCorporate Performance— inBiopharmaand LifeSciences INCLUSION  |  PROFESSIONAL ENRICHMENT  |  BUSINESS GROWTH  |  RADICAL HOSPITALITY