Unleash Your Spirit with the Suntory Women Leadership Accelerator program

Through all our corporate pursuits, Suntory seeks to Inspire the Brilliance of Life.

Our values of Growing for Good, Yatte Minahare and Giving Back to Society unite us to achieve this purpose.

And our people are the driving force behind our business. We believe each of us has unlimited potential to grow, to lead and to positively contribute to society and nature. We encourage our more than 40,000 global employees to Unleash Your Spirit – to be curious, be bold, and be the best you can be. And we instill a Gemba mindset, enabling our people to understand the unique needs of our customers as we continuously look to exceed their expectations. As One Suntory, we strive to make an impact and have fun doing what we love by crafting our future together.

Suntory is committed to increasing the number of women in leadership at all levels and accelerating a more gender-inclusive workplace and society. In 2023, we launched the first Suntory Women Leadership Accelerator program for employees and women leaders across Suntory. Aimed at inspiring and supporting Suntorians to grow and build their careers at Suntory, the program is focused on cultivating critical leadership skills by:

• Exploring and developing the Suntory Leadership Spirit – five behaviors that connect all Suntorians, underpinning our ways of working, guiding our global ambitions, and defining excellence in leadership.
• Expanding perspectives on diversity and intersectionality;
• Navigating gender assumptions within the workplace with strength and resilience, and;
• Building connections with a network of women leaders across Suntory.

The three-month pilot program in Asia Pacific offered a combination of online and in-person learning and development opportunities, and brought together 18 Suntorians from Australia, China, Indonesia, Japan, Singapore, Taiwan, Thailand and Vietnam. The program provides an experiential and immersive learning structure, including individual leadership assessments and small to large group workshops, networking, peer coaching, executive sponsorship, and on-site Gemba visits.

When asked about their experience of the Suntory Women Leadership Accelerator, participants shared the impact and learnings they took away from the program:

• “All of these experiences gave me ideas for how I can develop as a leader on projects and how we can collaborate better with each other.”
• “After the program, we reflected on the importance of having time to connect and share in this forum.? When you are working in a professional front, sometimes you think, ‘Am I in this alone? Am I the only one experiencing this?’ And with this group connected, we came out feeling and learning that we’re not alone.”
• “When I go back to my workplace, I really want to help other women. That’s what I have learned through this program, and I want to bring this back specifically."

Coming together to #UnleashYourSpirit as One Suntory, we are able to further the impact of our initiatives, and our vision of Growing for Good.?We look forward to celebrating the launch of the Suntory Women Leadership Accelerator program in Europe in the coming months.

The program is nomination-based. Current and emerging women leaders at Suntory are selected based on exemplary behavior, work performance, and leadership potential.

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