A Culture of Inclusivity: How Waters Is Creating Programming That Encourages DEI

Tiffani Nasutovicz is the manager of Global Liquid Chromatography (LC) Support at Waters, where she manages a team of LC experts who help support new product releases and field services. In her two months in the role, she has already leveraged her background in process improvement and change management, gained as a former Continuous Improvement Leader for Global Services, to positively impact the Global Support team.

Nasutovicz also leads the America’s Hub for the Women at Waters employee resource group (ERG), one of the company’s ERGs. Waters also offers global ERGs for women, People of Color, the LGBTQIA+ community, veterans,  people with disabilities, and allies. 

“I participate as an ally in all our ERG events,” she tells Fairygodboss. “I think it’s important to learn what I can from my colleagues and better support all our diversity and inclusion efforts. As a new manager, I make sure my team knows about all the events — whether or not they choose to participate. We need to let our teams know they can take time to attend these events or be members of these groups to connect with their colleagues around the country.”

She shares that one of her goals this year was to build awareness about the benefits and resources at Waters. While digging into disability resources for a surgery she needed, she discovered many great benefits she was unaware of. 

“I think, sometimes, we don’t look into our benefits until we need them,” she says. “We have a great women’s health guide with all our benefits from family planning, pregnancy and maternity care to preventative care and menopause programs. There are also multiple physical, mental, and nutritional well-being offerings, parental support, and financial well-being resources. We offer a lot to our employees, so it’s important that we share that information and people take advantage of these services.”

Here, we caught up with Nasutovicz to learn more about the America’s Hub for the Women at Waters ERG, the benefits and resources available to employees, and what curious job seekers should know about Waters’ extensive employee support.

Tell us a bit about Water’s diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) efforts and employee resource groups (ERGs).

We celebrate International Women’s Day with HQ events and virtual speaker sessions every year. We also created an annual Walk with Women at Waters event through our Virgin Pulse app, which connects all employees (remote and HQ) through a virtual steps challenge. During this challenge, you [virtually] step through the Americas, starting in Canada and walking down to Brazil, meeting some of the great women and allies who work at Waters. You get to read the bios of these employees, and they give tips on how they keep mentally and physically healthy. At the end, the team with the most steps gets to pick one of three women’s health charities that Waters will donate to on their behalf. It’s a great way to engage all Waters’ employees and donate to a good cause.

Can you share how ERGs and the Women’s Hub in the Americas work at Waters?

Our Hub meets once a month for regular team meetings. We also have subcommittees that meet more regularly for various events. The meetings are loosely structured. They usually start with updates on upcoming events, any open items, or events happening with other circles, and then we just talk. It’s a great place to meet with your peers to discuss what’s on your mind. We talk about struggles, share how we get through hard times, and celebrate each other’s success.

We use surveys for events to evaluate how well the hub is doing from an employee standpoint, and we also have a yearly survey that reviews how we’re doing globally as the Women’s Circle. I’ve also been using our Microsoft Team’s site to measure activity and see how much traction the Teams pages get. The analytics tool is a great way to see what events and information are popular with our employees. 

How and why did you first get involved in Waters’ women’s network?

I got involved with our women’s network six years ago by presenting STEM work I had done with my local science museum for Earth Day. I was a field engineer, and I traveled a lot early in my career. It made it hard to attend regularly scheduled meetings when I was always onsite with a customer. I got promoted to an Implementation Project Manager, which allowed me to work from home more frequently so I could start attending our women’s network meetings. As the current leader of our Americas Women’s Hub, I try to make sure all of our events have virtual and recorded components. Our field employees are very busy, so I want to ensure they can access the resources when they have time. 

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