Julie Sweet

The images and voices from Ukraine are tragic. Accenture is committed to supporting humanitarian aid to address the crisis and we stand with all in the global community who are calling for peace.

This week I was honored to help launch the new Career Readiness and Modern Youth Apprenticeship program in New York City, along with the New York Jobs CEO Council, NYC Department of Education, and CareerWise New York. This program provides a proven methodology to help young people find careers, companies to hire them, and educational institutions to support them. At Accenture, apprenticeships are core to our talent strategy—our U.S. program has grown from five Chicago apprentices in 2016 to nearly 2,000 participants in 35 cities to date, and we exceeded our goal of filling 20% of our U.S. entry-level roles with apprentices this past fiscal year. Thank you to Accenture apprentice Ryan Bernal Franco, who shared his story at the launch and to New York Mayor Eric Adams, and New York City Department of Education Chancellor David C. Banks. I also want to recognize and thank the other committed companies of the New York Jobs CEO Council for all they are doing, including our chair JPMorgan Chase Chairman & CEO Jamie Dimon, and my co-chairs EY Global Chairman Carmine Di Sibio, IBM chairman & CEO Arvind Krishna, and McKinsey & Company Global Managing Partner Bob Sternfels.

We’re seeing the power of how companies and governments work together to create solutions. Thanks to the World Economic Forum for bringing us together, and to my fellow panelists IBM Chairman and CEO Arvind Krishna, Nokia CEO and President Pekka Lundmark, Hewlett Packard Enterprise President and CEO Antonio Neri, Google Chief Financial Officer Ruth Porat, and our moderator, The Atlantic CEO Nicholas Thompson. #WEF22

https://lnkd.in/gzJsnsWa

Actively innovate is one of our leadership essentials at Accenture and underscores everything we do. I was honored recently to celebrate the V360 Awards, our highest recognition of the best of the best work and innovation across Accenture. 
 
V360 stands for 360° Value, which we define as delivering the financial business case and unique value a client may be seeking, along with striving to partner with our clients to achieve greater progress on inclusion and diversity, reskilling and upskilling their people, achieving their sustainability goals, and creating meaningful experiences for their customers and employees.
 
This year the awards celebrated nearly 1,400 innovative projects, including more than 800 that were co-created with our clients. It was an honor to have many of our clients on stage helping to present this groundbreaking work during the event. 
 
Your stories inspire me because I can see that around the world for our clients, people, and communities, you are bringing our purpose to life. Congratulations to all the V360 finalists and winners, and to all our people who serve our clients every day!

As we head into #Juneteenth weekend, I’m taking a moment to celebrate freedom and our Black and African American colleagues everywhere. As a society, we have made strides in the pursuit of equality and justice, and yet we are reminded nearly every day that we have much much farther to go. #FreedomDay is a reminder that we must continue the fight—by listening, learning, knowing what we don’t know, collaborating and advocating for the changes needed. At Accenture, we must live our unwavering commitment to diversity, inclusion and equity every day.

Today, on Global Accessibility Awareness Day, I am grateful to everyone at Accenture who innovates to remove barriers and create a more accessible workplace for our people, clients and partners. You are truly inspiring. By providing and promoting access to the latest technology, tools and learning that enable all of us to thrive and be our best selves, you are not only doing the right thing—you are also building a culture of belonging. And that is always good business. https://lnkd.in/e_h6bWqJ
#GAAD #LetThereBeChange #Accenture

[Video Description:
Frame 1:
On the left, a purple background with hard-to-read faded text reads: Low contrast text makes this harder to read. The text brightens and words swap out, so it reads: High contrast text makes this easier to read. On the right a sound wave animates on a purple background, then text appears overtop that reads: Captions are a must, especially for people with hearing disabilities.
Frame 2: 
On a plain white background text explains: People aren’t limited by their disability; they’re limited by their environment. And we’re working to change that. The text is surrounded by decorative inverted dots. 
Frame 3:
On a plain white background text explains what Accenture is doing to prioritize accessibility: 36 Accessibility Centers globally, 44 countries offer our Accommodation Support Tool, and 29 countries with disability-focused networks. Above the text, braille letters spell out equality, and below the text braille letters spell out inclusive. 
Frame 4:
On a plain white background text animates to say: We’re breaking sound barriers, vision barriers, mobility barriers. The Accenture Greater Than logo is below the animating text.]

At Accenture, our goal is to create 360° Value for all our stakeholders— our clients, people, shareholders, partners, and communities. We measure our success by how well we are achieving this goal. We are proud to present our 360° Value Reporting Experience — a new way to share our progress on how we are creating this value. With this comprehensive digital experience, you’ll find all our reporting and data in one place, measuring how we are doing. We believe that transparency builds trust and helps us all make more progress.

I often talk with clients about one of Accenture's Leadership Essentials: Have the courage to change and the ability to bring people along the journey.  We have a long-standing partnership with BBVA (Banco Bilbao Vizcaya Argentaria), an international bank based in Spain that is living this idea every day, with great results for its business and its customers.
 
BBVA became a trailblazer in digital banking by investing early and significantly in a modern digital core—cloud, data and AI—while retraining and reskilling its people and shifting the entire company culture to a change mindset. This continuous reinvention strategy has enabled a range of innovations, including highly personalized customer experiences, “one-click” loans and onboarding a client in a few minutes instead of in a week like most other banks. It’s brought about a staggering 150% growth in new customers, record revenue, and better fraud protection—and now BBVA is already well on its way to using generative AI. 
 
Listen to our new Built for Change podcast to learn how they did it. https://lnkd.in/gdFNW3Ge