Following the International Women's Day themes of #For All Women and Girls, #March Forward and #AccelerateAction, we invite you to learn about cultural intelligence and intersectionality through lived experience, in this armchair discussion between Naeema Yaqoob Sajid (Diversity+) and Rupa Mooker (SEMLA).

Through sharing their personal experiences, Naeema and Rupa will use this session to talk about:

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• What cultural intelligence is and why it is crucial in today’s globalised world

• How those in the legal industry can better serve their clients by understanding cultural backgrounds

• Their personal journeys into the profession, including the cultural barriers they have overcome as women from ethnic minorities

• Discuss how multiple identities (e.g. gender, race, age, ethnicity) intersect and impact experiences in the legal profession

• Offer strategies for creating more inclusive legal practices and workplaces, using examples through the work of Diversity+, SEMLA, and other organisations 

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This event is entirely free of charge and online, to keep this event as accessible as possible. Please share with your networks, and if you have questions you would like to submit to Naeema and Rupa ahead of the event, please email these to hello@diversityplus.info. 

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Meet Naeema and Rupa

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Naeema Yaqoob Sajid has over 20 years of experience in the Scottish legal sector. She completed her law degree with 2 young children and escaped academia for a short period. Her role as a parliamentary researcher, and later an advisor, within the reconvened Scottish Parliament in 1999, further whet her appetite to pursue her legal career. She commenced her career as a Procurator Fiscal Depute and later moved to the private sector where she specialised in child and family law and became a partner of a large Scottish law firm.

 

Naeema is an avid campaigner for change and is particularly passionate about making improvements in the legal sector. Her specialism lies in diversity, equity and inclusion and the additional barriers intersectionality can create. She uses her lived experience, interpersonal skills and business insights to navigate positive change to workplace cultures and structures. With that in mind, Naeema created Diversity+, a bespoke consultancy firm designed to assist organisations, specifically within the legal and financial sector make improvements in their diversity and inclusion footprint. Most recently, Naeema has created the first of its kind EDI certification course in collaboration with the Law Society of Scotland and was honoured with a doctorate degree from the University of Edinburgh.

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Rupa Mooker specialised in employment law after qualifying as a solicitor, and has advocated for equity, diversity, and inclusion within the Scottish legal profession since the start of her career. She has a particular interest in mental health and wellbeing, increasing representation of individuals from ethnically diverse backgrounds, and improving socio-economic diversity within workplaces. This led to her joining the team at global law firm, Ashurst, to continue in her pursuit of equality, driving policy both locally and globally.

 

She sits on the Law Society of Scotland’s Equality and Diversity Committee, the Scottish Ethnic Minorities Lawyer’s Association (SEMLA) Committee, the Scotland National Advisory committee for Action for Children and the BBC Scottish Advisory Committee on Religion & Ethics. Rupa is also a regular BBC Scotland contributor, an award-winning radio presenter, an events host, and volunteers at her local Gurdwara, advising young people on employability and career matters.​