E-Commerce Speakers
Ecommerce-speakers.com and marketing-speakers.com are resources to provide diverse perspectives in the industry.
Both sites came about initially to address the lack of diversity in the speakers and participants at industry events.
In the summer of 2019 we were trying to find female eCommerce speakers for a panel we were chairing at an upcoming event. We were keen to avoid a manel (male only panel). We posted the request on linkedin and were somewhat taken aback with the response – around 20K views and 80+ comments or suggestions.
We had three fantastic male speakers already but we subsequently broadened the panel to include two female and two male speakers.
However, that left us feeling pretty bad about all the great female eCommerce superstars that we couldn’t include. We therefore put their linkedin profiles on a page together as a resource for events organisers to approach.
The response we got seemed to tap into something. We took it to demonstrate how there is a much greater need for us to work together as an industry to ensure that female talent within eCommerce / Digital Commerce gets the same exposure as their male counterparts.
A month later it emerged that one of the biggest marketing conferences in Europe DMEXCO had a staggering 19 manels (as well as we’ve been told a 79: 19 male : female gender split for panels and presenters). Alex Tait wrote this article about it. After approaching the conference they said it was too late to find additional panelists so we put another post on linkedin to help. Marketing-speakers.com was born to host the responses we got as a sister resource to eCommerce-speakers.com for event organisers.
The panel we put together in the end for DTC London was a great set of panelists: Jean Philippe Nier (Head of eCommerce UK & Ireland, Kraft Heinz), Janis Hopwood (Marketing Director, Deltare), Rachael Jones (Head of eCommerce, Seedlip) and Mark Little (ex Global DTC Director, Unilever).
Please contact us if you’d like to be included on either site and we’ll add you to the list. Also if you’ve suggestions of other speakers that you think should be included please do send them on to us. With their permission we’ll add them to the site too. If at any point you’d like to be taken off the list just let us know and we’ll remove you.
The array of different diversity initiatives in the industry these days is impressive. This episode did seem to start a bit of a conversation about diversity in events. However, we are just happy to play any part we can going forward in assisting with better representation in the industry.
Here’s hoping the sites play a small part in manel prevention going forward!