35 PUBLIC GAMING INTERNATIONAL • JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2022 After Two-Year Absence, Rebecca Paul’s Industry Leader Panel Makes a Triumphant Return,continued from page 19 invest in the growth and profitability of the business for the benefit of good causes. If your vendor isn’t incentivized to help you get through the challenging years ahead your future viability is at risk.” Update on Inclusion and Diversity in the Industry The final portion of Rebecca’s panel was devoted to a topic close to her heart. As founder and leader of the Women Initiative in Lottery Leadership (WILL) program, Rebecca has been a champion in the advancement of women, as well as other groups, for decades. She asked the panel a question she has asked at many NASPL conferences over the years: “What are you all doing towards diversity and inclusion? When will we have the first woman on this panel?” Doug Pollard kicked off this portion of the panel by considering Rebecca’s entire inquiry. “I appreciate this question because I do see it more broadly than women,” he said. “As I look around the room, there are many women in the audience who are great leaders, and this is especially true at Pollard and NeoPollard. The broader goal of work-place diversity is an important part of every company today. As a public company, we are held to a high standard, so we’ve been working on these issues for some time. We have a long-standing philosophy about Investing in Good, and now have a formal task-force focused on the challenges faced by women and people of color and working to highlight the blind spots that might exist. Top management is equally engaged in supporting the efforts of everyone to drive progress, diversity and inclusion in the work-place and in our work-force.” Scientific Games has women leaders at many different levels said Pat McHugh. “Our Board’s Vice Chair is a woman and we have more diversity on our Board than ever before,” he said. “We are much more deliberate in our focus on gender and ethnic diversity across our global organization, and more proactive in our talent recruitment. We spend more time in the community, supporting DE&I initiatives and providing internships. Our female leaders at Scientific Games’ global lottery headquarters serve as mentors to future women leaders in greater Atlanta. We support and engage with industry groups like WILL. Our A Class program, now in its third year, identifies and readies a diverse group of future company leaders from around the globe. By 2023, A Class will have created a path for more than 100 employees to become the next generation of Scientific Games leaders.” Byron Boothe said that while Intralot has created a strategic group to look at hiring, there are challenges. “We believe we have created pathways to senior leadership for women and actually, we have a number of female leaders right now,” he said. “We are excited about promoting from within and providing opportunities to our employees, and that includes diverse groups. Hiring right now is challenging as a new generation of potential employees has an adjusted mindset about the workplace. So our challenge is to work with our current employees, help them succeed, ensure that we keep diversity in the forefront, and hire new employees with an eye toward supporting women and people of color.” Prior to Richard’s remarks, Rebecca Paul noted that JUMBO has been a supporter of WILL from the start, donating $50,000 for scholarships. “We are proud of our sponsorship of WILL because these types of groups are actually taking action towards how we deal with discrimination and inclusivity,” Richard Bateson said. “Some of these issues are as much societal as they are industry issues. We have all worked on these issues but there is much more to be done. In our efforts to be inclusive, we must continue to focus on recruitment and how we present ourselves to our players as well as our internal teams. The approach we take and the programs we create must be built into the culture and what we live and breathe throughout our organizations.” IGT has taken a number of proactive steps, including hosting monthly sessions on diversity, and Rebecca has been a recent guest speaker. “We have made a lot of progress in this area over the last several years and there is still more to do,” Jay Gendron said. “We have a Global Diversity & Inclusion Council and an employee who is a Vice President of Diversity and Inclusion. Senior level executives are required to have diversity and inclusion training as part of their jobs. One thing we can all do as an industry is mentor our younger employees. Most people on this panel and attending this conference have benefited from the help of others during their career. We should take that as a responsibility to pass on the same kind of help to the next generation of employees.” Rebecca wrapped up the panel with a simple question: “What keeps you up at night?” Pat: “It goes back to what I said about advocacy for the industry. We must ensure that our stakeholders understand why lottery exists and the importance of its mission. I think everything else we talked about here gets easier if we’re doing a good job of that.” Doug: “Two things. The first is iLottery – we’re almost two years into a pandemic that should have driven us to make the products available online, yet we are not very close in many jurisdictions. The second is the supply chain and hiring issues. We need goods, we need paper and ink to print tickets, and we need people to get the work done. These issues keep me awake, too.” Jay: “Digital transformation. There are 24 states with legalized sports betting, and we have only 12 states that can sell lottery via interactive channels. I think it’s incumbent upon all of us in conjunction with NASPL to make sure we advocate for our industry to make sure we’re not left behind on the digital front. Right now, my concern is that the lottery industry is not keeping pace with where others in the broader gamesof-chance industry are going and where we need to be.” Byron: “I agree that it’s digital transformation, mainly from a policy perspective. When we meet with legislators, they are perfectly fine with sports betting being conducted on 10 million phones but insist on thinking of iLottery as an expansion of lottery games. It’s a major disconnect. It requires education at both the legislative and executive levels. We have to think differently as we continue down the digital road.” Richard: “Are we doing enough at this point in time, with record sales, to help our players understand what digital means to them? We have consumers who are cashless, they’re not interested in the traditional ways of interacting with lottery. We have some talented people in this industry who must continue to look at the growth drivers and how we focus on them. Our competitors in the gambling industry are working on initiatives that are taking a bite out of our business. Let’s make sure we’re fixing our roof while the sun is shining. We can’t wait.” Rebecca will be back with these leaders in a few months at the WLA/NASPL conference in Vancouver. Q
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