The leader who makes inclusion feel real at NAB

If you talk to people who work with Devina Chatterji, one theme keeps coming up. It feels different when she is in the room.

Devina is a values driven, action oriented leader in Group Finance at NAB, known for her authenticity, her empathy, and her unwavering commitment to diversity, equity and inclusion, especially gender inclusion. She does not treat inclusion as a side project. It is the lens she brings to everything she touches.

“Inclusion is not about asking people to fit better. It is about redesigning the spaces so more of us can belong.”

Alongside her core role, Devina plays an active part in NAB’s Gender Equity and Cultural Inc Employee Resource Groups. She is not a name on a committee list. She leads ideas that challenge the status quo and translate big concepts into practical change.

On International Women’s Day 2025 she was recognised with NAB’s Gender Equity Changemaker Award. The award celebrated the way she identifies structural barriers then responds with innovative, scalable solutions that lift women across the bank.Colleagues see her as someone who moves seamlessly from insight to action and brings others with her.

Devina is also a two time winner of the Great Debate, a flagship event hosted by the Gender Equity ERG. On that stage she has tackled the hard topics, calling out ongoing gendered barriers in pay, visibility and representation and pushing for shared accountability. Her speeches have helped many people find language for things they had felt but never quite been able to name.

Inside Group Finance she founded GRROW Group Regulatory Reporting Outstanding Women. These quarterly sessions create a safe and inclusive forum for female identifying colleagues to talk honestly about progression, bias, imposter syndrome and allyship. Women describe GRROW as the place where they found their voice, their network and a practical strategy for the next step in their career.

Through participation in Cultural Inc’s Own Your Voice leadership program, Devina has actively engaged with culturally and gender diverse participants to overcome communication barriers and own their leadership presence. She helps people move from “I am grateful to be here” to “I deserve to be heard here.” Being named Best Speaker at the program’s graduation ceremony reflected the deep impact she had on the cohort.

Her influence reaches into leadership pipelines as well. As co-lead of the Capability and Awareness pillar of Cultural Inc, Devina co-designed the Accelerated Leadership Program, a pioneering initiative building pathways for culturally and gender diverse talent into senior executive roles, especially women of colour. She has also driven campaigns that build cultural and religious awareness across teams. A cross site Diwali celebration she led brought more than six hundred staff together and showcased the power of inclusive storytelling.

Her appointment as Inclusion and Diversity Champion on the Deputy Group CFO Leadership Team is a formal recognition of what she already does every day, embedding gender equity in leadership development, hiring and succession planning for more than two hundred finance professionals.

Devina mentors emerging female leaders, speaks on panels from Parental Leave to Women in Treasury and uses every platform to amplify under represented voices. For people coming up behind her at NAB, she is proof that you can be ambitious, principled and proudly yourself and still move the system.