47. Sergio Panday

Company: Roots Inspire

Website: https://rootsinspire.com/

Business: A leadership development platform by ethnic corporate leaders for ethnic aspiring leaders.

 

About Sergio and Roots Inspire

Sergio was born in Suriname to a Curacaoan mother and an Indian-Surinamese father. He moved to the Netherlands at a young age and was raised by a single mom on a secretary salary.

After an 18 year international corporate banking career Sergio believed it was time to add real value to society.

Sergio is now a social entrepreneur and co-founded Roots Inspire a year ago as a leadership development platform by ethnic corporate leaders for ethnic aspiring leaders. The mission is clear: increase ethnic diversity across corporate leadership.

In his words, it took him years to learn how to navigate a predominantly white corporate world and even more years to learn how to merge the two completely different worlds he was operating in.

Once Sergio found that balance, his connection with the corporate world improved and found that having a different cultural background that offers fresh perspectives actually started to work in his favour.

 

Roots-Inspire-logo

 

Sergio wants to help ethnic minority talent speed up the process that he went through, so they can maximise their potential in their careers and in society.

Sergio co-founded this platform with that single mission and the dream is that Roots Inspire’s platform will start to make waves of positive change to our society as a whole.

Roots Inspire now has over 50 ethnic corporate leaders available to virtually mentor ethnic corporate talent.

They have clients such as Unilever, CBRE, ABN AMRO, Baker McKenzie, Oliver Wyman and they are only just starting.

The positive feedback Sergio and his team have received from over 40 aspiring leaders that are following their leadership programme has been energising.

Their solution is built to be scalable and they intend to make a meaningful impact that spreads across the community!