Top global and local maritime leaders including Mansukh Mandaviya, Minister of Ports, Shipping and Waterways and Kitack Lim, Secretary General of the International Maritime Organization (IMO), will talk on gender diversity and other issues and challenges facing the industry at the Maritime SheEO conference to be held virtually on November 23.

The conference is co-organised by Ocean Opportunity Lab (TOOL) on the TOOL Aquarium digital conference platform.

The founders of Maritime SheEO and TOOL, Sanjam Sahi Gupta and Birgit Marie Liodden, have collaborated on pushing initiatives such as gender diversity in the maritime industry since 2018. They have garnered backing from the Indian and Norwegian governments as well as a growing number of industries, corporates and companies.

The third collaboration partner in this initiative is the SHE community, a Norwegian cross-industry equality group that organises Europe’s biggest gender equality conferences.

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The conference covers a wide range of issues and challenges faced by the industry. While the main thrust of the conference is gender diversity, it will also talk about issues and difficulties on crew change, particularly when the world is confronted by Covid-19, said Sanjam Sahi Gupta, a founding member of the Women’s International Shipping and Trading Association (WISTA) in India, board member of WISTA International and a member of the executive board of directors of the World Maritime University.

Besides this, maritime students will benefit from the discussion on education and training requirements to solve the challenges of the future, which will be discussed by Malini Shankar, Vice-Chancellor, Indian Maritime University; Cleopatra Doumbia Henry, President, World Maritime University; and Harris Daskalakis, Executive Director, BCA College, Athens.

The Maritime SheEO conference also gives companies an opportunity to showcase their best practices in gender diversity. The conference will also award such best practices, said Sanjam, who runs Mumbai-based Sitara Shipping, a privately-owned non-vessel operating common carrier.

Key speakers at the conference include Ine Eriksen Soreide, Norway’s Minister of Foreign Affairs; Amitabh Kumar, Director General of Shipping; Anil Devli, CEO, Indian Ship Owners’ Association (INSA); HK Joshi, chairperson and managing director, Shipping Corporation of India; Katharina Stanze, MD, Intertanko; Despina Theodosiou, CEO, Tototheo Maritime; Harald Solberg, CEO, Norwegian Ship Owners’ Association; Guy Platten, Secretary General, International Chamber of Shipping and Karin Orsel, MD, MF Shipping Group, The Netherlands.

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