This year has been momentous for women. From the executive suite, sports, politics and the military, women are continuing to lead and inspire.

Starting with International Women’s Day earlier this month and throughout March, we’ve been able to spend Women’s History Month celebrating the contributions women have made in so many aspects of society. 

This month is especially important for me as a female executive. I’m proud of what we have accomplished at XPO Logistics regarding the accomplishments of the female members of our team. We have female leaders across our organization, and it speaks to the value that women bring to the XPO brand and to the marketplace.

This year’s International Women’s Day theme was “Choose to Challenge.” We are constantly striving to challenge stereotypes that women face when entering a male-dominated industry and we want to make it possible for women to truly choose their own course, instead of accepting a course that’s been laid out for them.

Earlier this month, my colleague Josephine Berisha (our chief human resources officer) wrote a blog about International Women’s Day and said that women who have pushed against long-standing norms deserved to be recognized. I couldn’t agree more.

We’ve made it a priority to focus our pipeline development on attracting more women to our organization as well as on the internal growth and development of women within our team. Some of these initiatives include:

  • A UK mentoring program, SheISXPO, which focuses on the mentorship and development of women
  • Grow at XPO has an active participation rate of more than 40% women
  • 36% of our RISE cohort participants are women
  • We recently launched an Employee Resource Group, #SheISXPO, with Josephine as the executive sponsor to encourage engagement with women and allies across the organization

To me, this is still just the beginning. Diversity, Equity and Inclusion are not “nice to have” – they are critically important to creating a sense of belonging for all employees. The ceiling is ours to break. Let’s choose to challenge and create a path forward for generations of women to come.