A New, Sophisticated Take on Personal Finance for Women

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learnvestBy Melissa J. Anderson (New York City)

“Reading a book about personal finance sounds like the worst thing I’ve ever heard of,” joked Alexa von Tobel, CEO and Founder of LearnVest.com, a website designed to “provide trusted personal finance education in a simple, easy-to-understand manner and help women everywhere take control of their finances.”

Personal finance is a subject von Tobel recognized as crucial a few years ago, as a senior at Harvard University. She had just been accepted to Harvard Business School, and was about to begin a career as a hedge fund trader at Morgan Stanley – and yet, with all of her business education and experience, she says, she had absolutely “no clue” about what to do about her own personal finances.

“Very few schools actually teach the basics of personal finance – which actually affects every day of your life,” she explained. “We want to educate as many women as possible.”

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Women Fleeing Tech Field: Causes and Solutions

NCWITBy Melissa J. Anderson (New York City)

Over the last two decades, the computer science industry has seen almost a mass exodus of women – while other science fields have seen the number of jobs held by women rise significantly.

According to a new report by the National Center for Women & Information Technology (NCWIT), the percentage of computer-related jobs held by women has declined steadily from its high of 36% in 1991, to just above 25% in 2008.

Dr. Catherine Ashcraft, co-author (with Sarah Blithe) of Women in IT: The Facts, explained that there are a number of reasons for the decline:

  • the dot-com burst in the late ’90s leading to a perception that there aren’t any jobs in the field
  • a perception that technology and computer-related jobs have been outsourced to people in countries outside the US
  • a misunderstanding about what the field really is
  • higher visibility of other science fields
  • and an image that these jobs are “nerdy or geeky”

But it’s not just a decline in the number of women entering the field – women are leaving jobs in the technology field at a startling rate.

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SEC Actions Concern Market Participants at STAC Conference

chicago stock exchangeBy Jessica Titlebaum (Chicago)

“Blame, Blame, Blame, Ban, Ban, Ban, Tax, Tax, Tax,” were the first words in Congresswomen Judy Biggert’s keynote address at the Security Traders Association of Chicago’s (STAC) 85th Annual Mid-Winter Meeting last week, to describe actions coming out of Washington. Her regulatory concerns were familiar ones.

Congresswomen Biggert spoke critically of Congress and her opposition of H.R. 1068, a bill to tax distressed securities transactions. She also expressed concern over the OTC regulations coming out of Washington which she described as “sorry excuses for reform,” giving too much power to the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC).

She commented on the way the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) approached short selling, which is a strategy investors use to profit from falling stock prices. Congresswomen Biggert believed that the SEC was wrong in their temporary ban of short selling, saying that it provided positive price discovery and liquidity.

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Ask-A-Career Coach: How Does a Company Select From a Big Pile of Resumes?

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jobsearchContributed by Caroline Ceniza-Levine of SixFigureStart™

I was recently on a recruiting project, helping out a non-profit with dozens of open jobs. You would not know there is 10% unemployment at this place because they can’t hire fast enough to keep up with their needs. I see this feast or famine phenomenon often as a recruiter – either the company has nothing and no reason to call people in; or they are so busy, they don’t have the time to call people in.

Either way, companies are likely not going to call people in for interviews.

WHAT?!?! Am I saying that companies need to find the best and the brightest but they won’t take the time to do that? Yes, I am saying exactly that.

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Should Women Act Like ‘Self Aggrandizing Jerks’?

negotiatingBy Melissa J. Anderson (New York City)

In a recent blog post, Clay Shirky, a world-famous new media scholar and consultant, wrote, “not enough women have what it takes to behave like arrogant self-aggrandizing jerks.”

This is bad for women, he reasons, because, “people who don’t raise their hands don’t get called on, and people who raise their hands timidly get called on less. Some of this is because assertive people get noticed more easily, but some of it is because raising your hand is itself a high-cost signal that you are willing to risk public failure in order to try something.”

Men, on the other hand, seem to have less of a problem with stretching the facts in order to promote themselves. “There is no upper limit to the risks men are willing to take in order to succeed, and if there is an upper limit for women, they will succeed less.”

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Helping Professional Women Band Together and Build Strengths

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networkingBy Jessica Titlebaum (Chicago)

There has been a noticeable change in the way women help other women in the workforce.

“In the past 10 years, I have seen a huge push among senior level women who are passionate about mentoring,” said Jo Miller, Founder of Women’s Leadership Coaching “to help emerging women leaders gain access to networks, role models and opportunities.”

Miller offers seminars, coaching programs and webinars that are designed for businesswomen to create roadmaps into leadership positions. She launched a webinar series as a cost-effective solution for career advancement and advice. Divided into two categories to meet the needs of emerging and executive leaders, the webinars feature speakers who have broken through the glass ceiling and want to share their experiences with other like-minded women.

Miller also speaks at seminars and workshops regarding career advancement for women. Topics include winning at the game of office politics, creating your own brand as an emerging leader and becoming a person of influence.

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Voice of Experience: Barbara-Ann King, Head of Investments, Barclays Stockbrokers

barbara-annBy Elizabeth Harrin (London)

Barbara-Ann King is not your stereotypical stockbroker. In May this year she will be jumping out of a plane to raise money for Breakthrough Breast Cancer. “I am a great believer in giving things a try, because if it does not work out you can try something else,” she says, “and I believe that leadership, or the best leaders, are those who are willing to go outside their comfort zone.”

King took another leap over ten years ago, when she moved from a legal and management consultancy career to alternative investment management. It turned out to be a shrewd move, as she has risen through the financial services ranks to become Head of Investments at Barclays Stockbrokers. However, it wasn’t a structured step on her career journey. “To be honest there was no master plan, it just happened,” she explains. “I was working on a project that involved private equity and got head hunted by a bank for a role that I had no interest in, fed this back and was then asked to consider another role in the start up of a ‘new’ department of alternative investments – the industry was not even called that at the time, it was called ‘special funds’.”

King liked the team at Citigroup and sees herself as a natural entrepreneur and ‘builder’ so she gave the role at serious consideration – and took it. “It sounded fun so I took a leap of faith,” she says. “It turned into a multi billion revenue business and with it I moved to New York and took a global senior management role.”

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On Your Bookshelf: The Mentor’s Guide

BooksBy Andrea Newell (Grand Rapids, MI)

Does your company have a mentoring program? Were you considering signing up to mentor a colleague? You have great timing – January is National Mentoring Month.

We previously reported on the benefits of having a mentor at any stage in your career, but how do you actually go about mentoring someone? Dr. Lois Zachary, President of Leadership Development Services, contributed her insight to our article, but she is also the author of The Mentor’s Guide: Facilitating Effective Learning Relationships.

The Mentor’s Guide gives you a concrete process to follow in order to build a successful and mutually beneficial mentoring relationship. Zachary’s approach is much like a business project, and as the mentor, you are the project manager.

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Importance of the Long Term View: Sallie Krawcheck at the FWA’s Distinguished Speakers Series

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Image courtesy Bank of America

Image courtesy Bank of America

By Melissa J. Anderson (New York City)

Last night, the Financial Women’s Association hosted a discussion with Sallie Krawcheck, President of Global Wealth & Investment Management for Bank of America, as part of the organization’s Distinguished Speakers Series.

The candid (and often humorous) discussion touched upon career development, the state of the financial services industry, trust, and what it means to be in transition. The point Krawcheck kept returning to, though, was the importance of keeping a long term view – both in terms of the markets and in professional growth.

Regarding the state of the financial industry’s efforts to advance women in leadership positions, she said, “The industry has been working on it for a while. Progress in some years is good, and in other years it is limited.”

Many companies in the financial services industry operate in a state of crisis, she explained, working to beat quarterly results, rather than looking out for the long term good of the firm. And this behavior transfers to the firms’ hiring processes as well. Because these banks are constantly in crisis mode, managers choose to promote the so-called safe choices – people who look and behave similarly to the ones already in charge. “This goes against giving people who not just look different, but think differently” opportunities for promotion, Krawcheck said.

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Why Accountability is What Matters: Achieving Critical Mass with Targets or Quotas

Nicki Headshot By Nicki Gilmour, Founder and CEO of theglasshammer.com

In March 2010, the UN’s Commission on the Status of Women will undertake a fifteen-year review of the implementation of the Beijing Declaration. It was at this meeting in China that a group of 50,000 people representing 189 governments actively agreed a goal to increase women in leadership positions.

The magic number became known as the 30% solution, the idea being that once women reached a Critical Mass in an organization, people would stop seeing them as women and start evaluating their work as managers. This theory was originally developed more than 40 years ago by Harvard academic Rosabeth Moss Kanter in her book Men and Women of the Corporation.

Fifteen years after the Beijing Declaration, Norway is the only country to have progressed towards this goal via legislation – championed by someone who definitely doesn’t meet the profile of a typical feminist. Norwegian politician Ansgar Gabrielsen is a Pentecostal Christian, and an archetypal alpha-male businessman. His reasons seem logical and resource driven.

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