When Accenture’s Inclusion & Diversity team leaders — Carolina Cardoso and Arlene Mabrey — joined Network Leader’s Phil Willburn for a recent webinar, they shared their findings from a groundbreaking three-year activation at Accenture.
Cardoso and Mabrey’s work proves that understanding and strengthening professional networks, and incorporating a network science-based approach to equity, creates measurable improvements in career advancement, especially for underrepresented groups.
Read our summary of the discussion below, and watch the recording here at any time.
Professional success often depends on who you know — but more importantly, on how you build and maintain those relationships. “Relationships are the glue and grease of interactions,” Cardoso explained. “When you get it right, it can help you grow. If you get it wrong, it’s going to be slippery — it’s going to go away.”
Cardoso brings 25 years of experience in inclusion and diversity work to this perspective. As an immigrant who has worked across six continents, she understands how relationship patterns shape career trajectories across cultures.
Three years ago, Accenture partnered with Network Leader to study relationship patterns across their organization. The research focused on a key question: What happens when you make invisible professional networks visible and help people strengthen them intentionally?
Research shows that only 20% of high performers understand how to build effective professional networks. These top performers:
Most companies reserve network development resources for executives. Accenture took a different approach. "I’m going to open this up to people who are young in their career, people who may not see themselves as leaders yet,” Mabrey explained. Her background in finance and team development showed her that relationship-building skills matter at every career stage.
Accenture’s data revealed clear patterns in how different groups build professional relationships. New managers often create strong, family-like networks with similar colleagues — a natural starting point that provides initial support and confidence.
As professionals advance, successful leaders expand their networks to include more diverse connections. This expansion brings new perspectives and opportunities while maintaining their foundational relationships.
The program produced measurable changes:
Cardoso shared a powerful metaphor: Picture your network as interconnected light bulbs. Each person adds their unique glow, with relationships acting as connecting wires. Together the network is brighter, but when one light flickers, the network’s collective brightness stays illuminated.
This concept resonates with Mabrey's experience in learning and development: "Accenture makes brilliant human beings who go out into the world and drive tremendous change…all because we showed up.”
The Accenture team broke down its network-building approach into two core principles. First, professionals need to direct their relationship-building energy with purpose. This means understanding your current connections and deliberately expanding your network to fill gaps and create bridges between groups.
The second principle involves creating mutual value in every interaction. Strong networks grow from genuine exchanges where each person both contributes and benefits. As Mabrey noted, "Ask yourself in every handshake: What can I receive, and what can I give?"
For Accenture, network science has become central to their equity strategy. By making relationship patterns visible and teaching people how to strengthen them, they're creating new pathways for talent at every level.
The initiative continues to expand. Cardoso and Mabrey are now analyzing how strong networks correlate with retention, promotion, and career development. They're also incorporating network development principles into leadership training across the organization.
Their work shows that when companies invest in teaching network development skills broadly, they create more opportunities for advancement while building stronger, more connected organizations.
Want to learn more about building effective networks? Check out our ebook, Eight Practices for Building Social Capital, and sign-up here for a live, interactive session to get certified in the Leader Network Diagnostic (LND).
