In her role as EMEA executive sponsor for IMPACT, a resource group supporting BNY Mellon’s commitment to ethnic diversity and inclusion, Ileana is steadfastly committed to leading efforts to embed the mission of “driving ethnic diversity and making it an asset” within BNY Mellon’s company culture, focusing on ethnically diverse talent both internally and externally and ensuring everything is measurable, for the purpose of benchmarking, data gathering and monitoring. This year, Ileana launched the network’s ‘self-disclosure’ campaign, which aims to understand the reasons behind why people don’t disclose their ethnicity. Ileana continues to challenge BNY Mellon’s senior team to embed diversity in promoting and hiring practices, and establish a diverse stream of internal talent for middle and senior management roles. She is also partnering with BNY Mellon’s HR to review their university recruiting programme and the ways in which they could improve diversity in the talent pipeline. Ileana regularly shares her personal commitment by participating on industry panels, most recently on a ‘Women in Islamic and Ethical Finance’ panel. She is also one of the original founding members of The Network of Networks, which aims to connect women’s network leaders, BAME network leaders and LGBT+ network leaders from 50 companies to share experiences and ideas surrounding D&I.