BraunAbility Recognized as Valuable 500 Founding Member
The global business collective The Valuable 500, a business to business operation that prioritizes the influence of large private-sector corporations in international and national markets, announced on May 18, 2021, from London, England that just after two years of being created, it had officially reached its goal of 500 international organizations committing to putting disability inclusion on their board agenda. Officially making it the world's largest CEO collective for disability inclusion.
The Valuable 500 was launched at the World Economic Forum’s Annual Meeting in Davos back in 2019. Since the launch, some of the most recognizable businesses and corporations from across the world have joined the campaign, including Allianz, Apple, BBC, BP, The Coca-Cola Company, Daimler, Deloitte, EY, Google, Johnson & Johnson, Microsoft, Nestle, P&G, Mahindra & Mahindra Ltd., Prada, Shell, Sky, Sony, Twitter, Unilever, Virgin Media, Verizon, and Vodafone. There are multiple additional corporations involved that are in other prestigious groups as well. Including 36 out of the 100 Financial Times Stock Exchange (FTSE) members, 46 of the Fortune 500 companies, and 28 of the Nikkei 225.
According to the Global Economics of Disability Report, only 4% of businesses are focused on making offerings inclusive of disability. With 1.3 billion people across the world living with some form of disability, that’s not a lot of opportunity for the disability community to be in the business field. That’s why The Valuable 500 is so significant, the collective of prominent corporations starting the charge of disability inclusion will begin a trickle-down effect to other corporations. And along with that comes the financial backing provided by the corporations in The Valuable 500. The combined revenue between these corporations comes in at over $8 trillion dollars. Along with the impressive revenue, the combined employee total is over 20 million, with those employees working across a span of 36 different countries.
The financials are relevant because getting businesses to sign on was only phase 1, but phase 2 includes much more. The goal of phase 2 for The Valuable 500 is to activate the 500 major businesses and corporations to work together to achieve actual progress for disability inclusion in business. As part of this, a select group of the corporations within The Valuable 500 stepped up to be recognized as “Iconic Leaders”. The number of businesses that stepped up ended at 13, being Allianz, BBC, Deloitte, EY, Google, Mahindra & Mahindra Ltd., LSEG, Omnicorn, P&G, Salesforce, Sony, Sky, Verizon, and lastly Apple.
The 13 Iconic Leaders agreed to co-fund, co-build, and co-test different programs utilizing their industry experience to come up with solutions in order to catalyze progress across the disability community. Helping to achieve the highest levels of inclusion within and beyond the community.
