What BT International’s Rodney Kinchington gets right about people and power

Rodney Kinchington carries a title that is heavy with geography: managing director for Asia-Pacific, Japan, and Greater China at BT International. But when he speaks about his work, the coordinates dissolve. “People are our most important asset, and my role is about creating a culture where they can thrive,” he says. 

Inclusion sits at the heart of that ambition. At BT, it is not intention alone but measured action. In India, for instance, new policies have helped close the attrition gap between men and women to just 0.4 per cent, while female representation has risen to nearly a third of the workforce.

In Singapore, partnerships with charities such as Children’s Wishing Well extend that ethos beyond the office, aligning corporate purpose with social mobility. “It shows that inclusion isn’t just about policies or programmes, but also about how we come together to give back as a team,” Kinchington reflects.

The language of “people and culture” in business often drifts into abstraction, but Kinchington resists that vagueness. For him, it is nothing less than the operating system of an organisation: the architecture through which decisions are made, risks are taken, and collaboration is sustained.

The company’s group CEO, Allison Kirkby, has already set the benchmark, committing BT to gender parity by 2030. Today, women make up 35 per cent of the workforce and 38 per cent of senior leadership. That these are measurable goals matters to him because a culture that cannot be measured is a culture that can be quietly abandoned.

Balancing standards and context

Still, the work is not without friction. “The biggest challenge has been balancing global standards with local realities,” he admits. Flexible working, for example, plays out differently in India, Singapore, and Australia, each requiring a form of translation that respects cultural nuance without diluting principle.

“Building a culture of inclusion isn’t a one-size-fits-all programme. It’s a principle that requires adaptation and humility.” This recognition — that inclusion is both universal and stubbornly local — anchors his approach to leadership.

Personal investment, he insists, is non-negotiable. Mentoring, sponsoring women in technology, and calling out bias when it surfaces form part of his own practice of allyship. Trust, he believes, emerges from transparency.

“I make a point of explaining not just what decisions we’ve made, but why. When people understand the ‘why’, they feel part of something bigger than themselves — they are more engaged, more willing to innovate, and more confident in taking risks.”

Yet, the cultural terrain ahead is shifting, perhaps faster than institutions can adjust. The rise of AI, cloud, and automation compels companies to rethink not only their technical capacity but also their human inclusion. Kinchington frames this as the defining tension of the future: technological change that threatens to outrun cultural adaptation.

“Skills alone are not enough. People need the confidence, trust, and sense of belonging to put those skills to work,” he argues. To prepare, BT has invested in digital upskilling while embedding inclusion into every stage of transformation, ensuring that innovation empowers rather than excludes.

Inclusion’s next frontier

His concern is particularly acute when it comes to women in technology. The statistics remain sobering: women accounted for only 28.2 per cent of the STEM global workforce in 2024, with Singapore’s pipeline equally narrow.

To widen it, Kinchington believes intervention must happen early, at the level of schools and universities. Programmes like the Lucy Mentoring initiative in Australia and collaborations with the Australian Women in Security Network seek to dismantle stereotypes by reframing technology as not only coding but a diverse landscape of opportunities.

“If we can inspire and support young women at these early stages, we can build a stronger, more diverse pipeline of talent for the future,” he says.

What sustains him, though, is not corporate metric but human encounter. Hope, he insists, comes from witnessing the younger generation’s unwillingness to settle for diluted commitments. “They are not willing to accept anything less, and that pressure is a powerful force for change.”

He recalls the impact of BT’s grassroots work — from training tens of thousands of girls in India with STEM and life skills to building confidence among underserved youth in Singapore.

Each instance carries the same lesson: business can, if it chooses, become a platform for social transformation.

Kinchington’s outlook is neither utopian nor resigned. It is anchored in the conviction that inclusion, when lived as daily practice, strengthens not only communities but the durability of business itself. There is no neat resolution, no final victory to declare.

Instead, there is the unfinished work of listening, adapting, and insisting that progress must be both measured and felt. And perhaps this is the point: culture is never static, and leadership, when taken seriously, is the willingness to remain accountable to that constant becoming.