The Coca-Cola Company has been named a recipient of the 2013 Catalyst Award in recognition of our work to advance and empower women in the workplace and across our value chain.

Our Company shares the prestigious honor with aluminum producer Alcoa and Unilever.

Catalyst logo
Founded in 1962, Catalyst is the world’s leading nonprofit organization devoted to expanding opportunities for women in business. The New York-based group has handed out its annual award since 1987.

In honoring Coca-Cola, the organization singled out our Global Women’s Initiative (GWI). This internal and external program, led by Chairman and CEO Muhtar Kent, was created in 2007 to advance women to leadership positions within the Company, as well as to empower women in business throughout our external value chain. A key GWI program, 5by20, aims to enable the economic empowerment of five million women entrepreneurs across our global value chain by 2020.

Catalyst President & CEO Ilene Lang says our Global Women’s Initiative and other programs enacted by this year’s honorees not only demonstrate that gender diversity strategies can be implemented to support local regions and businesses. They’re also “championed by male CEOs who understand the strong business case for including women in top leadership and have made women’s advancement an organization-wide priority from day one,” she adds.

Kent said the Company is honored by the recognition, and reiterated our continued commitment to empowering women in all aspects of business. “We are truly honored to receive this prestigious award, which validates that we are on the right track toward empowering women inside our Company and across our value chain,” he noted. “We are proud to be recognized for our accomplishments, but we realize there is still a great deal of work to do to reach our goal of achieving true diversity. This award will give us further courage on our exciting journey.”