Annette Pampel is a seasoned Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) expert who led national DEI strategy at Coca-Cola Europacific Partners in Germany from 2018 to 2024. With a visionary approach to workplace belonging and inclusion, she has pioneered initiatives around gender equity, LGBTQ+ advocacy, and multicultural integration. Her influence expanded globally as Coca-Cola transitioned to a multinational structure, allowing her to shape international DEI policies and networks. A passionate advocate for measurable, sustainable inclusion, Annette believes in bottom-up employee empowerment, top-management accountability, and innovation through diverse representation. Her leadership continues to inspire organizations navigating today’s evolving DEI landscape.
The Social Digest: What inspired your journey into Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI), and how has your role evolved at Coca-Cola Europacific Partners over the years?
From 2018 to the end of 2024, I had been in the role of the national DEI Manager for Coca-Cola Europacific Partners (CCEP) in Germany. I was in charge of strategy, implementing the company’s strategy, as well as local concepts, trainings & workshops around DEI in Germany. My goal was to raise awareness for all DEI issues and topics from the baseline – meaning workers at our production site – up to the top management. According to how this was practiced in Germany at that time, we’ve started from the scratch meaning, back at that time we had acknowledged already awareness for gender equity but not that much for all other diversity dimensions such as disability, cultural heritage and ethnicity, social background (class), age, religion and LGBTIQ+.
This started to change when a colleague and I started an LGBTIQ+ employee network in 2014. Then the queer topic raised an unexpected amount of recognition, and for a while, we were covering those two pillars (2014-2018). My role changed a lot during those years since the German bottler, called Coca-Cola Erfrischungsgetränke AG (CCEAG), had started to merge first Coca-Cola European and later into Europacific Partners (CCEP). This brought quite a big change since the company no longer had a national focus but became a multinational bottler with London headquarters. Since Germany as a country was and is still a little behind the “state-of-the-art” discourse of DEI worldwide, this meant also a great step forward for our German business unit. Since there was a central DEI officer based in London and due to the company structure and its international focus, DEI made a great step up on the agenda. Therefore, I was no longer just involved at a national stage but also able to exchange with colleagues driving DEI in all other CCEP Business Units. Of course, this included setting up discourses, pushing topics, and working together on an international level on DEI concepts to be aligned.
The Social Digest: Can you share a defining moment in your career that shaped your perspective on workplace equity and inclusion?
I started thinking about inequity, equal opportunities, and discrimination early, to be honest, long before the terms Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and nowadays Belonging became buzzwords. As a student of English and American Studies, I recognized during my first years that even in East Germany (German Democratic Republic), American history began with the “discovery” of (North-)America by Christopher Columbus, only mentioning that there had been indigenous people living there before. No deep dive into ancient cultures on that continent…
Right after the changes (summer 1990) I got the chance to be part of a language camp in the US in northern Midwest (Minnesota) and experienced on the one hand a serious and very successful concept of bringing US-American (at least) middle class kids closer to language and culture of their (white European) ancestors via a total immersion program (music, language classes, sports, food, dances etc.). And on the other hand, there was the idea to give a small group of underprivileged (Black) kids from Washington DC the chance to explore a foreign language and culture in the woods of Minnesota but without any sort of intercultural counselling – they did not even had a Black (adult) person with them or sb else since the entire staff was white. Though it was obvious that they felt far away from belonging to most of the campers. I just recognized this by heart at that time and felt that this was a strange approach (“giving them a chance…” seemed a little like an unfortunate try to support without real awareness), but at that time, I could not become active or even speak up. But this experience struck me and had a long-term influence on me, especially concerning belonging.
The Social Digest: Having worked in both corporate and educational environments, how do these experiences inform your approach to fostering diversity in the workplace?
A wide range of experiences gives you the chance to change perspectives and get insights into various aspects. I have always valued this interdisciplinary approach. I also worked in different fields and branches throughout my career, and even at times when I was not that satisfied with my role at the moment, it gave me strength and allowed me to get new views on things.
The Social Digest: How do you navigate challenges when integrating DEI initiatives into an organization’s broader business strategy, especially in a global entity like Coca-Cola Europacific Partners?
I have always appreciated working with people of diverse backgrounds and sharing views and perspectives. The Head of Diversity at CCEP, Julie Thomas, has been a great leader and can gather highly motivated people to push DEI forward within the company. Especially concerning LGBTIQ+ awareness among our company and the business units. An open-minded atmosphere and a very positive mindset let us publish a Gender affirmation and transitioning guide, Ally-trainings, PRIDE activities…just to name a few. Apart from LGBTIQ, we adapted the key strategies to local challenges and implemented revised plans covering all DEI dimensions in each country. Those international perspectives gave me the chance to learn, to share, and get in touch with very different people and mindsets. What an asset! It encouraged me a lot and made me stronger and feel more confident.
The Social Digest: Your work often highlights the intersection of diversity and innovation. Can you share an example of how inclusive practices have driven innovation within your teams or organization?
Let me give you an example. If you are active in sales and your sales force does not represent your customers (or to put it into another way, – your salesforce is not as diverse or at least not even aware of this diversity) you and your sales reps might have an issue to understand the needs and challenges of your customer. But if you want to sell things, you have to understand your customer. In the field of food service (the entrance working field for many immigrants), you should be aware of cultural differences in negotiating, contracting, and even language skills. We provided a lot of marketing materials to our customers, of course, in German. Knowing that about 80 to 90 % of customers in the food industry in urban areas in Germany are of non-German origin and the food industry is employing a lot of immigrants with very diverse German-language skills, the usage of German-only materials will probably not be recognized or read at all. Since ‘language is home’ – so why not provide those materials in your customer’s language? After analyzing the customers, you can figure out the biggest groups of customers and provide those materials. In Germany, those are Arabic, Turkish, English, and Vietnamese. To be honest, we piloted this and experienced that the customers receiving materials in their mother tongue or second language felt much more appreciated and valued! Along with this, training that focuses on multi-cultural misunderstandings and raising awareness should also be implemented, ideally led by employees with multicultural experience (which we piloted at CCEP DE 2022).
The Social Digest: What advice would you give to companies looking to implement long-term DEI measures?
First, measures are an important instrument to have reasonable facts about a company’s workforce composition and structure. DEI measure can focus on challenges and best practices, they should be used to improve a status quo that is to be changed (glass ceilings for women and/or people of other than the domestic culture or ethnicity, disability, class) This includes all sections of a company (team structure, recruiting, promotions, leavers, Board, Management et cetera). Numbers will show success or challenges.
A good mixture of bottom-up internal DEI key drivers and sponsors’ activities from top Management is very important. Top managers must prove that they are actively standing up for DEI by heart (an important sign to the workforce, since the workforce acknowledges very sensitive whether it is just words), especially in those times when companies feel a political pressure to step back concerning DEI issues. Creating an atmosphere in which belonging is a core value and everyone feels welcome will contribute to a workplace that will bring the best out of people at work. Volunteering in ERGs has to be part of working time and should be appreciated and rewarded, not taken for granted. Usually, the entire workforce as well as the company itself benefits from efforts made by engaged people within ERGs. Example: An internal DEI survey showed that the group of people openly identifying as belonging to the LGBTIQ+ community felt a higher rate of belonging to the company than the average of employees. To be seen and recognized strengthens the bond between employer and employee.
The Social Digest: What emerging trends in DEI do you see shaping the future of workplace culture over the next decade?
I hope that the atmosphere of DEI backlash will be overcome by a deep understanding that a global world needs mutual listening, understanding, and respect. Companies nowadays have a diverse workforce and do not necessarily have to deal with all kinds of diversity. If they are not willing to face the challenges that a diverse and self-confident workforce implies, they will not only lose talent but also innovative drive. Mutual understanding and acceptance are the key to progress and success.
This interview was conducted by our Head of Outreach, Ansh Vachhani, The Social Digest on 11/07/2025. If you have any interview recommendations or have a story that you want to share with our readers, get in touch with our editor, Vedant Bhrambhatt, at editor@thesocialdigest.com
