As 2025 draws to a close, so too does the CERN 25 by ’25 initiative, launched in 2021 to improve the gender and nationality diversity of the Organization. The initiative outlined two aspirational objectives that CERN would aim to meet by the end of 2025: to address “nationality clusters”, where one nationality exceeds 25% in a department or departmental group, and to increase the percentage of women among the staff and graduates/fellows population to 25%.
Over the past five years CERN has seen an overall increase in nationality diversity and a reduction in the number and size of nationality clusters at departmental group level. The nationality objective also led to the creation of the Conscious Hiring policy, which aims to ensure that a Member State’s financial contribution is reflected in a more balanced representation among the personnel. For gender, at just 0.3% away from the target, the aspirational goal exceeded expectations. Women currently make up 24.7% of the staff and graduates/fellows population, compared with 21% at the start of the initiative.
“Aspirational targets have proven effective in attracting the attention and engagement of the CERN community,” explains Louise Carvalho, Diversity & Inclusion Programme Leader. “Even more important, however, is fostering a conscious reflection during our recruitment process: considering not only a diverse candidate’s individual potential, but also their potential for excellence within a diverse team.”
The targets set in 2021 felt ambitious at first, given the historical slow progress and challenges such as low staff turnover. Fully supported by CERN’s leadership, each department adopted a selection of the suggested actions that they felt would help improve their own nationality and gender diversity. The initiatives that were most widely adopted included the appointment of departmental Diversity & Inclusion Officers (10% of an officer’s working time was allocated to this role), the introduction of offboarding surveys to understand any diversity or inclusion-related retention issues and the creation of recruitment dashboards to track nationality and gender diversity in the recruitment process.
Thinking ahead to 2026 and beyond, Carvalho emphasises that “a key priority for CERN is to retain the diversity we have attracted”. To sustain and build on the progress of 25 by ’25, it is vital that the women and colleagues from under-represented nationalities who have been recruited over the past four years retain a strong sense of belonging during their CERN careers.
Carvalho looks forward to building on the 25 by ’25 momentum to further enhance the diversity of CERN’s personnel. “As a publicly funded international organisation, we have a moral imperative to reflect the diversity of the Member States who support us,” she stated, adding, “CERN was founded on the idea that science advances through diverse collaboration, and that remains a cornerstone of our success.”