Why Inclusion Works When Everyone Owns It

What does it take to make inclusion real for 420,000 people across 55 countries? We sit down with Karine Vasselin, Group Head of Inclusive Futures at Capgemini, to unpack a pragmatic playbook that turns diversity into business value and culture into daily practice. Karine shares how a simple shift in language—“inclusive futures for all”—opened the door for everyone to see themselves in the work, from parents and caregivers to neurodivergent colleagues and people with disabilities.

Across the conversation, we dig into the tools and choices that matter most. Inclusion Circles give managers semi-guided, scenario-based conversations that build psychological safety and shared norms without adding corporate fluff. Employee networks—Women@Capgemini, OutFront, Capability, and NeuroAbility—move beyond awareness to shape policies like safer travel guidance and inclusive benefits that recognize all families. We also examine hard-won lessons from neurodiversity pilots: why early enthusiasm ran into real-world friction, how smaller cohorts and expert partners like Auticon and Ambitious about Autism changed outcomes, and what it takes to scale responsibly.

AI runs as a hopeful throughline. For many neurodivergent and disabled employees, generative AI behaves like assistive tech—organizing ideas, clarifying communication, summarizing meetings, and removing friction through captions and text-to-speech. But tools alone can’t fix culture. We talk hiring pipelines, role design, advancement, and the manager skills needed to spot bias and coach diverse teams. Karine also offers career advice for future inclusion leaders: build credibility through business and talent experience, and learn to influence without authority.

If you care about practical inclusion, leadership training that sticks, and using AI to expand access rather than entrench bias, this conversation delivers a clear blueprint you can adapt tomorrow. Subscribe, share with a colleague who leads teams, and leave a review with one policy you’d change to make work truly work for everyone.

Chapters

• 0:00 Meet Karine And Capgemini
• 2:31 Inclusion As Business Advantage
• 4:13 Europe’s Momentum And Reframing DEI
• 6:18 Inclusive Futures For All
• 8:25 AI’s Impact On Equity And Work
• 10:31 Making Inclusion Real Locally
• 12:22 Inclusion Circles And Manager Tools
• 14:02 Power Of Employee Networks
• 15:15 Neurodiversity: Lessons From Pilots
• 17:10 Building Coalitions And Standards
• 18:25 AI As Assistive Tech For Many
• 20:00 Beyond Tools: Culture And Careers
• 21:42 Career Advice For Future Leaders
• 25:22 Closing Thanks And Support

Transcript

Neil Milliken: 0:00

Hello and welcome to AXSChat. I'm really delighted that we're joined today by Karine Vasselin, who is the group head of inclusive futures at Cap gemini, a French headquartered multinational IT services and transformation company. Sounds a little bit like something I did previously, but they're very different, I swear. And I met Karim first when I was working with the ILO as part of the Global Business and Disability Network, which Deborah's also had some work with, and I've been trying to get you on ever since. And so we're really glad to have you with us today. Uh Karine, can you tell us a little bit about who you are, what Cab Gemini is, so probably misdescribed, and also a little bit about your role and how you came to be working in the inclusion space.

Karine Vasselin: 0:49

Yes, thank you so much, Neil, Antonio and Deborah. Good afternoon to all of you, and really happy to be in this uh podcast. So, as you said, I'm Karine. I'm a French middle-aged lady, even more so uh the mother of two um fantastic um children. I'm based in Paris. I've been working for Cap gemini for almost 30 years old now. And across uh this career in the group, I've had several roles uh from managing consultant to HR director, and I've joined our group, CSR team, back in 2021 to be in charge of coordinating across the 50 uh countries where Cap Gemini operates our diversity and inclusion agenda. And as you mentioned, yes, uh Cap Gemini is uh is uh historically a French company. Uh really um acquisition after acquisition, it has grown up to uh four hundred and twenty thousand people, and uh it uh it is active uh as a multicultural company in uh close to fifty-five countries now, which really represents a great challenge but uh an exciting experience to to to drive inclusion in in that context.

Neil Milliken: 2:15

So you're diverse by the very nature of being in uh 55 countries and having hundreds of thousands of people. But the challenge is how do you create the inclusivity in the organization? What was it that that drew you into the role after doing all of these other roles within within CARE?

Karine Vasselin: 2:36

I think that in this role I wanted to combine two past experiences, combining business orientation and talent management, because I I do see really the added value of inclusion at the intersection of this business and talent. Because what we we do to develop an inclusive workplace is really important to be in capacity to innovate more with more diverse thinking around the table, to better serve our clients because they are very diverse, and uh to keep on attracting, growing the best talents wherever they are and whoever they are.

Neil Milliken: 3:17

Thank you. Deborah, I had a question.

Debra Ruh: 3:20

Yeah, thank you. And Creen, thank you for being on the show today. I I'm noticing something being from the United States that I don't know if well anyway, I'm happy about it because there's nothing I can do about it. But I really appreciate how much Europe is stepping up when it comes to inclusion and accessibility. And some of y'all might notice that my little country is struggling a little with words like D-E-I and woke. But I'm really excited actually to see Europe standing up and really saying, okay, y'all do whatever y'all want, but we actually really are going to commit to this in ways that I haven't seen before. So I'm actually really, really excited about that, just as an individual that cares about this community. But Karine, I was just wondering how do you feel it's going? I mean, are you are you optimistic about what you're seeing come out of your countries and in Europe? And are you a little optimistic? Maybe I'm it's unfair to me to say, but I'm always looking for the optimism. Are you optimistic about what's happening in your own country and in Europe in regards to inclusion?

Karine Vasselin: 4:26

Honestly, I think that uh to avoid the negative or the risk of uh just being a kind of uh another uh I would say uh wave of um management or fashion something fashionable, we always try to position what we were doing on inclusion around the the value as I was mentioning it brings to our business. So to really consider that this is not something to add extra, but this is something that really is at the core of our uh future growth. However, we are very conscious of what is happening externally. And to be to be fair, we made some adjustments in the way we were talking about inclusion, even beyond we had this new uh US president. Because we uh were receiving feedback from our own employees through our uh monthly employee survey, they were not against some of that. There is always a small proportion of opponents, but majority of them felt interested. But unfortunately, they they were feeling that they were not the target because they had the impression that our inclusion roadmap and efforts were targeting only minorities, and so if you were not a woman uh with a disability or from uh LGBT plus community, it was not for you. So even in twenty starting in 2024, we repositioned a bit the narrative to say, on the contrary, I mean we are trying to build a culture and a workplace which works for everybody. And so we changed our motto to inclusive futures for all. Because in fact, people are not defined by just one identity. I mean, you are not just a woman, you are not just having a disability. This identity evolves along the time with your life, because you can become a parent, a carer, and you can acquire a disability or a condition. And uh anyway, beyond that, every progress we make in terms of uh enrich benefits policy, in terms of accessibility, really benefits all in the end and improves the employee overall life experience, and so everybody can find something for it for them in it.

Debra Ruh: 6:48

Wow, I think that is extremely innovative. And it sounds silly to say, oh, well, we all should be included. Well, duh, that's what we've been saying for 12 years, but I think it's a subtle change that's very powerful, Corinne. So thank you, thank you. I also want to make one smart aleck comment in that my one of my team members at Billion Strong, who is a person with a disability, met with major leaders like parliament leaders in their particular country. And a parliament leader, he told him what he did for a living, and he said, Trump hates you. Anyway. So I was like, oh my gosh. Yeah, so thank you all for caring about this topic.

Karine Vasselin: 7:27

But if I made Debra, there's not only I would say uh the uh political, geopolitical uh context which affect our journey and uh our audience. I think another thing which is very important and which is growing more and more is the role of AI and how we can ensure that the the world we are uh designing don't exclude a group of people or don't increase the uh exclusion or limitation that could already happen. And uh for instance, we are a bit concerned of uh how it will affect women's representation because we know that uh women are less represented in uh scientific or technical uh curses and roles, but it affects also maybe uh people from a generation generational standpoint, because we used to fear that uh people over 50 non-digital native may be more affected, but I think that maybe on the contrary, as they have develop more expertise, they could still find a role in addition or in complement of AI when people from the young generation might be uh confronted to a shortage of uh on three uh grade uh jobs. And so this reflection I think uh will be taking more and more pace and not only uh focusing uh just on the geopolitical context, which is uh an issue by by itself.

Antonio Vieira Santos: 8:54

So, uh Corinne, welcome. Nice to have you with us today. Sometimes organizations run this type of programs from the head office, but and then people who are in different countries might think this is something interesting that is happening in our in our HQ. But how can this impact us? So, my question to you is how can we make sure that this type of initiatives are embraced by all employees, by every CEO in every region? Because you can you can have this commitment from the ad office, but sometimes in other regions, people others might oh don't take this serious, this is something that they are doing. And then employees might feel this is the point. I really want to onboard this, but my local CEO is not really on it. How can we make sure that actually everyone feels that this is for them?

Karine Vasselin: 9:45

Yes, it's it's a fair question that you're asking, Antonio, because yes, we have the um the chance to have a strong sponsorship from the top head of our company. Our uh CEO um committed himself to uh strong commitments and international pledges, notably uh with the valuable 500 and uh high low. But it has to be then cascaded with uh the uh second level of leadership and uh proximity managers, which is uh not so easy because uh even if they have uh most of them goodwill or uh understood that it could be important uh to uh maintain the good dynamics of their team. They are so busy with so many um business, client reporting uh obligations. So to try to uh equip them, we have embedded, I would say, inclusion modules and trainings in uh most of our leadership and management uh trainings. And we have tried to make them interactive, situation-based, and not something that comes from the top as a kind of a you know religion or a book to learn by heart, but really to see that it is actionable and that it could really help them to better understand the reaction of some of their team members. And for that, we developed a tool which we called Inclusion Circles. It's a semi-guided conversation, so with a kind of a pre-assessment uh to see where you are as a manager, uh a toolkit with basic notions, and with a set of scenarios based on the authentic cases that we collected from our employee survey, to be in capacity to discuss as a team what kind of feeling or ideas they have in front of this scenario, and how could uh they be proactive and uh and give a response as a team, and so following this scenario, how it could be translated into their own team situation. So this is uh something from the managerial uh chain with their team, and in parallel of that, something which is really instrumental in the rollout of our inclusion roadmap is uh the contribution of our employee networks. So we've got um across the group uh more than 100 chapters in total, but uh five main global employee networks like women at Capgemini, out front, capability, neuroability, and uh they are really uh active altogether. First, to offer a safe uh moment and safe spaces of uh chat, networking, and uh, if uh they are okay with it to work with us on some of initiatives, either internally or externally, to really uh have a role and a direct contribution in what we do. And sometimes I can say it's a bit challenging because uh and this is part of their role, and notably uh for outfront, uh they were uh pretty uh active and determined in uh in us uh enriching the uh safety travel guides, for instance, and the um and make the um employee benefits considering all kinds of couples and families, so it has tangible impact.

Neil Milliken: 13:12

Amazing. Having worked in a federated multinational organization, I know this is not a trivial piece of work. So great stuff you're doing on on the sort of hands-on aspect of the training. Another area that I know you've been working on, and you briefly touched on it, was Euro inclusion. And it's it's a an area that I think clearly has gathered momentum over the last four or five years. But as an observer from the UK, it was an area where France was doing different things and maybe was maybe a little slower to adopt, but now is is really active. So and you've been part of that. So can you tell our audience a bit about the the work that you've been doing as part of Manifest Inclusion and the work around neurodiversity particularly?

Karine Vasselin: 14:05

Yes, so I think that we started early, notably in France, with a program that was called uh Les Zebres, because you know zebras are uh a different kind of uh horses. And the idea was really to work in partnership with uh governmental and social and training institutions to onboard in uh Cap Gemini France cohorts of uh interns and really uh monitor them with uh managers that were trained to work with neurodivergent people. So that was uh quite successful. Everybody was very uh energized and uh and enthusiastic about it. Unfortunately, it was uh just a pilot because we realized it was raising more difficulties uh than we anticipated, uh you know, because this is this kind of uh very positive image associated to neuroinclusion versus disability, by the way. I mean uh if I if I'm being uh a bit sometimes we associate talent, uh innovation, creativity to neuroinclusion, to neurodiversity versus the uh traditional image of around disability is a bit more negative, a bit more pitiful, something that we want to avoid at all costs. But never mind. So everybody was enthusiastic, but yes, there was really this uh this realization that it's not so easy. I mean the workplace itself needs to be a bit uh accommodated to ensure that uh it's it is not so noisy, to ensure that uh the the guidelines are very clear how to navigate in the building. The managers really need maybe to to have uh more time and uh really uh have sometimes a difficult moment and so some support to deal with some uh some potential difficulties. So for all this reason, it was not possible to scale really this initiative. So to be honest, so we we stopped it or we froze it for a certain time. But there were there were another type of pilot running in different countries, notably in Australia, New Zealand, in the US, in the UK, but learning from this first pilot, they decided to go small, so uh with a limited cohort, to go with an expert, and so uh they decided to get advice from, for instance, ambitious uh about autism or Zavicon, Auticon, so not to be alone. And progressively and working as a kind of a task force, learning on our respective experience, we were able in uh two years' time, so between 2022 and 2024, really gather a kind of uh knowledge base, share uh good practices, develop some uh trainings and some uh referentials, and the task force uh ended with uh 12 countries, so sharing all of this all together. And we funded our uh neuroability network as a kind of a sub chapter of our disability network, precisely to learn from our uh employees who were directly impacted or who were uh impacted through their family, and so have this uh grassroot experience and grassroot learning. We decided that uh we still needed to learn, and so that's why we joined uh different external coalitions and uh notably uh with uh eight other um global companies headquartered uh in France, like Orange, L'Oréal, Pernoricard, CMN, Stales. We decided really to have a regular catch-up, put all together our resources and try to align on a shared roadmap and shared ambition to progressively and with concrete illustrations in terms of recruitment, career management to become more neuro-inclusive companies.

Debra Ruh: 18:05

Crean, you mentioned before this um the word we all love, AI. I'm gonna give you a second, I'm gonna I'm gonna take my time to ask this so you have a second to catch your breath there. But AI is so important, and I'll and thank you for sharing the efforts that y'all did with the neurodiversity and also that it got very complicated. I myself learned that I was neurodiverse. Everybody else around me knew it, but I learned it in my mid. And it is interesting understanding that you live with ADHD. I know when I was a younger woman, we would use terms like they're triple A personalities. And it's like I realize triple A personalities mean that we're, you know, that people like us, people like me and Neil, sorry Neil, but people like us that we're we add a lot of value, but you know, we're also, yeah, neurodiverse. But I think it's fascinating that you learned what you learned and you worked with all of the others. And I also appreciate that as a corporation, you looked at it and said, all right, we can continue to go this way, but maybe there's not as much value to everyone. And so let's stop and let's look at it from this perspective. So I I appreciate that because I imagine you got a lot of pushback making that decision. So I just want to say I honor that so that because we can keep pushing forward and just doing the same thing, but yeah. So but I I'm fascinated with how it is tying to actually what we all should be saying, why are you not including any employee? That's ridiculous. At the same time, don't lose the voice of our community, which it's really easy to say, oh, we include everybody, and then actually we don't include. We include the woody, yeah. Right, which we're we've been doing that forever. But anyway, I mean, we in the United States, we created the Americans with Disability Act in 1990. That is what 36 years ago. And yet, when you look at our statistics, people with severe disabilities are they're they're more unemployed than ever before. Very, very sad little statistics coming out of my beautiful country, but at the same time, I am hopeful about AI. So, how do you use AI, Kareem, to help you learn more about neurodiversity, make sure that people with disabilities are included and and embrace the entire workforce? I understand that's a ridiculous question.

Karine Vasselin: 20:25

No, no, not at all. Honestly, I may be a bit uh naive because this is uh the beginning of AI, but especially for people with disabilities and neurodiversity, I think that really AI is more of a chance and than a risk. And statistics show that uh neurodiverse people in average use AI really more frequently than the uh other than the rest of the population. Because I think that they they have realized that this is by nature a kind of an assistive tech, very um open to all, very affordable and uh very easy to use and to improve. And so for neurodiverse people, I suppose it really uh can help them in uh you know uh organizing better their ID, making some uh synthetic uh uh synthetic overview after a meeting, or uh trying really to uh rephrase and express better what they really meant. And so I think really and uh sometimes maybe uh with the uh Gen AI help them in uh performing some uh tasks like uh managing their agenda, something like that. It can really be very supportive and and very useful. For people with disabilities, I think it's very promising as well because with the it's not only AI, it's also all the accessibility efforts that have been uh developed by um. tech and software software companies embedding really um in their uh basic version caption translation uh text to speech and so on that that are really now available for them on demand and then they they they could really uh help them in the in their daily task. But once again uh this is a bit the beginning this is promising and I hope this promise will really be concretized because unfortunately this is not the only dimension and scope uh that are at stake when it's about uh when uh their uh inclusion in the workplace is um is uh is is is at stake. I mean uh AI and uh and tech facilities won't be enough to uh ensure that uh people with disability or neurodivergence are uh really uh uh recruited at a fair rhythm and proportion of their skills that uh they are not only hired for specific roles and kept left to these limited roles and can really evolve in the organization as anybody else with no prejuges or barriers attached to to their uh to to who they are and to their uh to their condition or sometimes difficulties.

Antonio Vieira Santos: 23:21

So uh and and for this it's more a question of culture of process not AI only and tech only it won't be won't be enough so Corinne we're about to to end the our conversation but I I would like to ask you and and based it in your experience and and considering the current times we are living in let's say if you have to advise your anger self who wanted to join organization to work on accessibility and inclusion what advice would you give that person today?

Karine Vasselin: 23:55

Hmm it's a bit polemic but I won't recommend to start by this kind of role I think that to be convincing and to be equipped for this kind of role you need to have developed some other backgrounds. I think yes business background, talent management background are very useful and on top of that you you you must have developed some specific skills that sometimes come with experience like influential skills like resilience like cooperation coordination and on see starting by this kind of role for your early career I think it's quite challenging. It might be more easy if you start in the CSR domain for instance on the environmental field because it's a bit more technical more associated to reporting standards and so on but for these inclusion topics which are really connected to the cultural uh the values the the managerial mode of your company I think you need to have built on your personal and professional background to to be more impactful and more uh more ready for that.

Neil Milliken: 25:07

Thank you that's a that's a great perspective and and one that I think I feel echoed that in order to have the credibility within an organization you need to understand how the the rest of the organization works. So Karina it's been a a great pleasure to have you with us today. I need to think our friends at Amazon for supporting us and helping keep the show on air and we we look forward to sharing this with the wider community when when we put the podcast out shortly.

Speaker: 25:37

Thanks so much again for your time and and for this invitation.

Neil Milliken: 25:41

Our pleasure