Daria Preston

Daria co-created the Bank of England’s Fertility, Pregnancy and Baby Loss employee resource group and plays a key role in the senior leadership team for the Parents+ Network. She pioneered a policy providing up to one month of fully paid miscarriage leave for pregnancies under 24 weeks, benefiting hundreds of employees annually.

Daria actively supports new talent through cultural induction sessions and mentors women who wish to advance their careers or who are affected by trauma. She delivers webinars and learning sessions in collaboration with charities like Petals and Tommy’s, promoting greater workplace inclusion on sensitive issues. Her advocacy extends to supporting colleagues facing mental health challenges, adoption, infertility, birth trauma, and pregnancy loss.

How does it feel to be nominated for the Inclusive Leader Award and have you been involved with WIBF before this?

This is my first experience of WIBF and It feels like such a significant, exciting step in my career. This opportunity has already been so rewarding for me and I am looking forward to throwing myself into volunteering with the future leaders initiative.

You co-founded the Bank of England’s Fertility, Pregnancy and Baby Loss employee resource group, can you tell us more about that and what you are most proud of?

I’m most proud of the campaigns that we run to raise awareness across the bank at every level. Each year the volunteering effort gets bigger and we have quadrupled in recent years and gained Executive support. Seeing the Bank light up in pink and blue colours for Baby loss awareness week was really special, and our annual Wave of Light our choir service is incredible.

Whether it’s the passing conversations in the hallways, or through the community interactions, I know that I have found my purpose in helping others find the light in dark times. My goal is to keep advocating for new policies or benefits, and to continue to improve the bank support system for staff. But outside of this, my focus is to amplify the challenges women are silently facing, using my influence within the Bank to positively encourage other organisations to follow in our footsteps.

I am currently co-ordinating a baby loss and fertility industry event which will bring together industries and start more conversation on measures they could take to improve support. I know that by being able to use my voice, even when it may feel a bit uncomfortable, I am fighting to change perceptions and break down taboos. This endeavour has brought psychological safety to many in my workplace as we began to normalise talking about sensitive but very commonly occurring issues like baby loss and fertility struggles. Through doing this work, people have expressed to me that the community has become a lifeline to them and we have helped them to channel their lived experiences into positivity. But what I am most proud of is that the policy I helped to pioneer helps hundreds of bereaved parents annually.

The person nominating you said ‘Daria is passionate about changing workplace culture to be more inclusive and understanding of individuals and their lived experiences’. Can you elaborate on that?

There are lots of things that became clear to me had to change over the years surrounding psychological safety in the workplace, as there was a little bit of a fear of speaking up about difficult, sensitive topics.

Feminist historian Ulrich said “well-behaved women seldom make history”. I’ve worked really hard to try to engage different people, change hearts and minds and adapt my language and communication to rally as much support as possible. At times I have been challenged and faced resistance on issues facing women’s health and baby loss because of how hidden the impact is – yet in reality it can reverberate across personal and work life. Challenging the status quo can feel personally exposing, or like oversharing, but I am not easily budged from my mission to increase equity for women dealing with these hidden impacts.

In the early stages of developing the policy for baby loss in the bank, it was important to gather personal stories and bring to life the issue through sharing data. This is because I knew that in a data driven organisation we needed to build a compelling case for change. I was passionate about encouraging as much engagement from people in the Bank as possible. Over the years my initiative has expanded into numerous workstreams because what has started as focused babyloss quickly connected to topics around infertility, women’s health, maternal mental health and other underrepresented issues.

I am feel so strongly about making sure no one feels that their experience or journey should be hidden in the workplace and I’m a huge advocate for bringing real, sometime traumatic, experiences to light. I like to show through my actions that there can be so much growth from lifechanging experiences and that whilst it doesn’t define you, there’s a way of positively framing it into your career. In a world that has become obsessed with presenting a perfect outward image of yourself, I wanted to highlight that we should instead be aiming to show compassion to those that are silently struggling. I feel that the impact of home life on work life is massively underestimated! There is so much discussion around the gender pay gap and improving women’s experiences in the workplace, but I feel that we don’t hone in enough on contributing factors like baby loss or fertility issues that cause women to be disadvantaged all too often. There is so much more advocacy to be done on these issues, but I am glad to have begun making a start.

What were some of your early career experiences that shaped your views on diversity and inclusion?

In my 20s I became a woman in banking and finance, I felt like I had made it and felt real pride in this achievement, especially as a single mother coming from a hardworking immigrant family background. In my early career I was far to accepting of inequalities in the workplace such as unfair expectations of working long hours, and I struggled to balance this pressure with raising my daughter. As a young woman my self-confidence was low, and I found it difficult to assert myself in the workplace. Reflecting on my early career, I wish I had access to networks or female mentors in the same way that I do today, which could have helped me to navigate these challenges. I know now that building resilience early in your career can really help set you up in the event you face setbacks later.

What are your future aspirations as an inclusive leader, and how do you hope to continue evolving in this space

In doing this advocacy work I have learnt so much about myself and I have uncovered so much new understanding of women’s wellbeing and misunderstood issues such as female hormonal health or menstruation, not just exclusive to fertility. My plans are to really focus on more outreach to young female audiences, and advocate for people early in their career. I want to create a culture of developing talent and to stop avoiding acknowledgement of issues which can often hold people back in their early careers. My futures aspirations aren’t just limited to campaigning for change, I hope to express myself through storytelling by writing a book. Not only this but I want to take everything I’ve learnt from the WIBF scheme and see how I can apply this to working with other organisations and take on a trustee role for a charity.