For this month’s CSR Profile, we’re shining the spotlight on KPMG, hearing from Forida Islam, Assistant Manager in the KPMG Corporate responsibility education team.

Please provide a short outline of your current role and a brief description of any other relevant career experience
I am Assistant Manager in the KPMG Corporate responsibility education team but my journey with ELBA and corporate responsibility goes back even further. I started off my career as an EAGLE back in 2013 with my placement right here in CR at KPMG. Since then I’ve moved on to various roles within Student Recruitment and Education Outreach but moved back to Corporate Responsibility as I just couldn’t stay away. My role now includes looking after our suite of education volunteering programmes across our London office, managing our charity partnerships and heading up our numeracy programmes.

Why is CSR important to your organisation?
Corporate responsibility is important to us as we know we have a duty to support our communities. Our approach at KPMG starts with a simple premise: responsible, diverse and inclusive businesses are more successful. Having our head office situated in Canary Wharf we can see the broad and diverse talent all around us. Being responsible helps us to attract, develop and retain the talented people we need to succeed, to better understand and help our clients and build public trust.

Which topics, themes or initiatives are your organisation currently focused on?
Through our CR we’re focused on promoting lifelong learning and increasing numeracy and literacy skills to drive opportunity for people from lower socio-economic backgrounds across the UK. We believe these are the three barriers to social mobility where we can make the biggest difference.

What is the best part of your job?
The best part of my job has to be seeing the real tangible difference our programmes make to the life of the young people we work with. Seeing the look on someone’s face when they have spent a whole day in our office, inspired by the workplace environment; the volunteers they’ve met and that moment of realisation that they too have the potential and ability to go as far as life will take them by having equal access and taking the opportunities available in front of them. That’s when I know I’ve done my small part in helping us to make a difference to our communities.