How might we bring about gender equity in academic research? With Ylann Schemm, VP for Corporate Responsibility at Elsevier, and Executive Director of the Elsevier Foundation

Data Malarkey - the podcast about using data smarter

In this episode of the Data Malarkey podcast, master data storyteller Sam Knowles is joined by Ylann Schemm, Vice President for Corporate Responsibility at the leading academic publisher, Elsevier, home to almost 3,000 academic journals, specialising in scientific, technical, and medical content. Elsevier describes itself as “an information analytics” business – so right up our alley here at Data Malarkey.

In a career with the publisher spanning almost two decades, Ylann has been on a remarkable journey of both personal and corporate development, moving from communications to corporate relations and from there into corporate responsibility. And for more than a decade, she has been a leading figure in the Elsevier Foundation, first as Program Director – running the Foundation’s New Scholars program designed to expand the participation of women in STEM – and since 2017 as its Director.

Under Ylann’s leadership, the Foundation is taking pioneering steps and making a tangible difference. This is manifested most clearly in the organisation’s regular, data-driven reporting into gender and diversity in research. The latest, 2024 report showed that, although as many as 41% of all academic researchers today are women, this is much lower in STEM subjects. At the current rate of change, parity is not expected to be reached until 2052.

Ylann was allowed to lay the – shall we say? – foundations for the Foundation’s work in “a climate of benign neglect” as she found her feet and built networks and partnerships inside and outside of Elsevier. But it was with the 2019 arrival of the company’s first female CEO, Kumsal Bayazit, that Ylann’s work moved front and centre of the publisher’s strategic vision.

EXTERNAL LINKS

Ylann’s LinkedIn profile – https://www.linkedin.com/in/ylann-schemm-a5a3632/

Elsevier home page – https://www.elsevier.com/en-gb

The Elsevier Foundation – https://elsevierfoundation.org

2024 Elsevier Foundation gender and diversity in research report – https://www.elsevier.com/en-au/insights/gender-and-diversity-in-research

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