India
Roots Inspire: Closing the Gap to Senior Leadership
Two Audiences, One Mission: A Website for Roots Inspire
Roots Inspire closes the gap between ethnically diverse talent and senior leadership across the UK and Continental Europe. CodingCafe built a WordPress site that speaks to the professional planning their next step and to the employer funding the programme.
Client
Industry
Leadership Development & Diversity Empowerment
Services
Timeline
4 Weeks
About the Project
Sergio Panday and Melvin Spalburg founded Roots Inspire in 2020 on a simple observation: ethnic professionals are underrepresented in senior roles not because the talent is missing, but because the routes upward are invisible and unevenly open.
Their answer pairs career coaching from senior ethnic leaders with sponsorship from inside the employer. According to Roots Inspire, more than 300 alumni and 120 mentors have now been part of that community, with partners including Van Lanschot Kempen, Rabobank, De Brauw and ABN AMRO.
Challenge We Tackled
A sensitive message had to work for two readers with different questions.
- A mid-career professional asking whether this programme understands what they are dealing with.
- A senior leader or HR team asking whether it holds up, and what their organization gets from it.
The earlier site did not do this. The design felt dated, the content hierarchy was unclear, and it worked poorly on phones. The stories that make Roots Inspire persuasive were not getting through.
Our Approach
The website was designed around one goal: making the Roots Inspire mission and its founders’ stories clear and credible to ethnic-cultural professionals and the organizations that support them.
The home page splits early into For Organisations and For Individuals, so each reader gets their own argument. It then explains the problem plainly as The Broken Pipeline, before introducing the approach. Evidence is treated seriously, with a dedicated research page and partner leaders speaking in their own words.
The personal side stays personal. Interviews, such as Shahraiz Akram on modesty and ambition, run as articles rather than marketing copy. An events hub lets people filter the leadership dinners, cohort kick-offs and online sessions by type.
What We Delivered
Separate Paths from the Start
For Organisations and For Individuals each get their own pages, language and call to action.
Three Programmes Explained
Emerging Professionals, Emerging Leaders and Emerging Executives, so people can see where they fit.
Filterable Events Hub
In-person and virtual events that can be filtered by type, access and programme.
The Research Behind It
A page on the four research themes behind the programme, for readers who want evidence first.
Partners in Their Own Words
Senior leaders from corporate partners explain what the partnership looks like in practice.
Career Interviews
Interviews and articles on career progression, which give visitors a reason to stay and return.
