Brokering Change: A Wall Street Multicultural Women’s Exchange

Last Tuesday, June 24, 2008, Goldman Sachs held a half-day conference for women from multicultural backgrounds who work at Wall Street’s top firms. Aynesh Johnson, Vice President and Global Head of the Office of Global Leadership and Diversity at Goldman Sachs described the event.

“Our Brokering Change program is a pivotal element of the Goldman Sachs Multicultural Women’s Initiative, which aims to enhance workplace experience, promote career development and advancement, and facilitate relationship building among Asian, Black, Hispanic and Native American women. As a firm, we are excited about being able to champion and support opportunities that promote broader inclusion on Wall Street.”

The conference highlighted emerging trends in business as well as hot topics such as equal access in the workplace to work/life balance. Abby Joseph Cohen’s opening keynote speech gave a global update on the current market volatility in the post sub-prime economy, as well as gave a historical overview of some important market trends. The presentation included an impressive and clear picture of how the US economy is growing despite fears of a looming recession.

Jessica Faye Carter’s (www.women-suite.com) breakout session entitled “Corporate Chess: Master the Rules. Meet the Players. Play to Win,” provided an interesting career perspective. Ms. Carter analogized individual career development to being a pawn in someone else’s chess game most of the time, and underlined the idea of building networks to help people overcome equal access issues. Some winning strategies included:

• Closing the gap and finding commonalities with co-workers, and bosses.
• Checking your performance, making sure it is up to par then asking for assignments to get wider and deeper experience.
• Being on the lookout for relationships that are natural (referring to mentors and advocates).
• Knowing your environment, self- disclosing information strategically.

The panels and facilitators of each session were lively and intelligent. Sharleen Guiterrez, Vice President at Goldman Sachs said of the event, “This was truly a successful and enriching event. Our goal for the conference was to provide multicultural women on Wall Street with tools and knowledge to enhance their professional portfolio, access to insights from thought leaders and experts from across the globe, and a forum to exchange ideas and share best practices.”