Our Story
Building ethnically diverse leadership pipelines — closing the gap between talent and senior leadership.
Our Story
Building ethnically diverse leadership pipelines — closing the gap between talent and senior leadership.
Why We Exist
Ethnic professionals are consistently underrepresented in senior leadership — not because the talent is absent, but because the pathways that determine who advances remain largely invisible and unevenly accessible.
Roots Inspire is a leadership development platform, founded in 2020 to address this directly: through structured development for ethnic professionals at the critical mid-to-senior transition, and through activating the organisation’s senior leadership around them as sponsors.
We operate across the UK and Continental Europe, serving senior professionals through programmes built on leadership research and delivered by those with the lived experience to make it credible.
Our Impact
Every cohort generates the same question for us: did this actually change someone’s trajectory?
Across five years and 300+ alumni, the answer is consistently yes:
72% made a career step within 18 months of completing the programme.
Reach
300+
Programme
alumni
120+
Leadership
mentors
35+
Organisations
represented
Outcome
88%
Now have clarity on their next career step (up from 27%)
83%
Now have actionable guidance on visibility (up from 16%)
95%
Now feel Inspired to maximise thier potential (up to 45%)
Our Mentor Panel
Our mentor panel comprises 120+ ethnic senior leaders who contribute their expertise on a voluntary basis — executives, partners, and managing directors from leading organisations across financial services, law, consulting, and beyond.
Our mentors are one of the most distinctive elements of what we do: professionals who have navigated the same corporate environments our participants are working to advance in, and who bring that knowledge into structured one-to-one career coaching relationships.
A Glimpse of Our Mentor Panel
Managing Director
Merrill Lynch
Strategist
NegotiateHer
Honeywell
Meta
VNLIFE
ABN AMRO
Ference Lamp
Managing Director
Merrill Lynch
“From my mentees, I expect commitment, curiosity and eagerness. You can expect me to show you, success is possible.”
Sue Stephens
Growth Business Lead
Meta
“I fundamentally believe talent is distributed equally, opportunity is not.”
Sumitra Moeller
Managing Director
ABN AMRO
“One of the key tools of career advancement is cultivating the courage to be genuine.”
Robert Wong
Director of Sales
Honeywell
“I hope to provide my mentees with the confidence and inspiration to chart their own successful course.”
Niraan De Silva
Executive Board Member
VNLIFE
“Gaining a deeper understanding of the person across the table is an essential soft skill for leadership.”
Gitanjali Ponnappa
Strategist
NegotiateHer
“Careers often hinges on skillful negotiation and navigating relationships. We can together explore this dynamic to achieve your goals.”
Our Community
What holds this community together is not proximity, but purpose: a shared understanding of what it takes to advance as an ethnic professional in corporate leadership, and a willingness to make that path easier for others. That investment — in time, in mentorship, in honest conversation — is what turns programme participation into lasting career advancement.
Our Founders
Sergio Panday
Former Banking Executive, Co-Founder of Roots Inspire
I was born in Suriname to a Curaçaoan mother and an Indian-Surinamese father. I moved to the Netherlands at a young age and was raised by a single mom on a secretary salary. The odds were not in favour of a successful 18 year long international banking career.
It took me years to learn how to navigate a predominantly white corporate world and even more years to learn how to merge the two completely different worlds I was operating in. Once I found that balance, my connection with the corporate world improved and I found that having a different cultural background that offers fresh perspectives actually started to work in my favour.
I want to help ethnic minority talent speed up the process I went through, so they can maximise their potential in their careers and in society. I co-founded this platform with that single mission and my dream is that this platform will start to make waves of positive change to our society as a whole.
Melvin Spalburg
Supply Chain Leader, Co-Founder of Roots Inspire
I was born in the Netherlands to parents who migrated from Suriname and spent my life in and between the Surinamese and Dutch cultures.
Growing up, there was the Caribbean, Surinamese warmth and laughter of my family around me. But I also took perspective of the Dutch directness in a professional environment. A versatile career covering various Supply Chain leadership roles has led me from Amsterdam, London to Singapore and Bangkok. I am passionate about sharing my experiences from living and working in different countries, with young professionals of colour.
Personally, I know how important it is to those with an ethnic diverse background to have at least one foot in each culture, to stay true to yourself and to be able to establish meaningful relations on both ends. This skill helps, if well-used, any professional to adapt & excel, while keeping close to one’s core values. There are many more like us, willing to share and inspire. Let Roots Inspire help you find them.
Get in Touch
If you are exploring what ethnoculturally diverse leadership development could look like in your organisation, we are glad to connect. Share your details and we will follow up to discuss how our approach might align with your objectives.
Explore how we can support your leadership pipeline.