Going for Growth: Sandra Healy’s Inclusio is becoming a global platform for organisations embracing diversity and inclusion.
Award-winning business development scheme for women entrepreneurs Going for Growth is accepting applications for the 16th year of the programme.
The programme, which is supported by Enterprise Ireland and KPMG, helps ambitious female entrepreneurs to achieve their growth ambitions – helping to build stronger companies, create new jobs and increase revenues.
“I found the programme invaluable, and the timing was great as I was pitching for our seed funding round”
The 15th cycle of Going for Growth reported significant results for its 69 participants. Combined turnover increased from €80.6m at the start of the cycle to almost €92.3m by the end, almost a 15% increase in just six months.
The deadline for applications for the 16th cycle of Going for Growth is Friday 17 November 2023.
Up to 60 places will be available and applications are sought from female entrepreneurs across all sectors who are strongly focused on growth. There is no charge for those selected and the six-month initiative will begin in January 2024. To learn more, click here
Inclusio
Sandra Healy is CEO and founder of Inclusio. Prior to Inclusio, Sandra’s career spanned 20 years in the global telecoms industry and 5 years at Dublin City University where she was the founding director of the DCU Centre of Excellence for Diversity and Inclusion (D&I). Sandra is an Organisational Psychologist and NLP Master Practitioner and is considered one of the leading experts in D&I, having championed and driven D&I practice across industry for almost 20 years.
In 2015, faced with the challenges of every D&I practitioner of how to measure impact and return on investment on workplace culture and diversity, Sandra developed the concept of Inclusio. In 2016, she “spun in” the idea to DCU where the company incubated until 2020, when it was spun out of the university.
During her time at DCU, Sandra led a body of research with 35 global organisations across different sectors to better understand the problem and their needs – the result is the Inclusio solution that combines technology, psychology and AI and brings a scientific, evidence-based approach to measuring diversity and Inclusion.
Sandra says: “The combination of three things – being counted, providing feedback, and ‘nudge learning’ – empowers people and democratises diversity and inclusion but also helps clients to identify their strengths and weaknesses and where they need to focus their efforts.”
Inclusio’s initial clientele comprised of several global corporations that had collaborated previously with Sandra. Today, Inclusio’s clients are an array of esteemed organisations from both the public and private sectors with significant growth in financial services, construction and engineering, and aviation. Some notable clients include FBD Insurance, and RSA Insurance 123.ie, Kilsaran, Linesight, Teagasc and PublicJobs.ie.
Headquartered in Dublin, Inclusio’s employees include organisational psychologists with diverse perspectives and the company’s 30+ team members are based across the globe from Brazil to India to the US to Poland.
Sandra is part of the Going for Growth community after participating in the Starting Strong element of the programme in 2021 with Fiona O’Carroll as her Lead Entrepreneur. “I found the programme invaluable, and the timing was great as I was pitching for our seed funding round” said Sandra, “so Fiona and my group really supported me through that phase”. Sandra and her team successfully raised a pre-seed funding round in 2021 and a seed round in 2022.
Inclusio has won many awards to date including the Business & Finance ESG Award in 2023 and was listed in the Top 100 Startups to Watch in 2023. Sandra herself also has an impressive list of awards – in 2018, she was named in the top three Diversity Leaders to Watch by DiverseIn as a ‘game changer for diversity and Inclusion’. She has also won Entrepreneur of the Year – Diversity in Tech Award 2021 and most recently Sandra won the EY female Entrepreneur of the Year 2023 and was a finalist in the 2023 KPMG Global Tech Innovator.
Having just launched into the UK and Canada, Inclusio is poised for further international expansion with entry into the US market also planned. Social impact is at the heart of what the company does and with the increasing requirements of mandatory reporting on ESG, Inclusio is uniquely positioned and ahead of its time in helping companies respond to this.
“We’re only at the very beginning,” says Sandra “and we’re very grateful for the customers that we have on board now because they are the leaders that will help us take our platform global.”
The deadline for applications for the 16th cycle of Going for Growth is Friday 17 November 2023. To learn more, click here
