A Leg Up: Women for Boards

UK Women for BoardsBy Elizabeth Harrin (London)

The UK has a new initiative for women who want to make it to the top: Women for Boards, sponsored by MWM Consulting, aims to support female high-fliers in their drive to become non-executive directors for major companies.

“Female board directors remain rare and still face a steep climb to the top,” says Rebecca Fitzpatrick, spokesperson for Women for Boards. “Women for Boards is targeting highly qualified women, who for whatever reason so far have lacked visibility, and helping them to gain their valuable first board position. This will not only bring greater diversity to the Boards to which they are appointment, it will also help these women develop the experience to take on other Non-Executive roles in the future, potentially on larger boards.”

The aim is to build a groundswell of women in FTSE 250 and 350 companies, with an eventual goal of giving these women the skills they need to take on more responsibility as non-executive directors of FTSE100 companies.

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One Chicago Group’s Dynamic New Approach to Improving Women’s Advancement

chicagoBy Jessica Titlebaum (Chicago)

For all the progress women have made in the workplace, the numbers just aren’t showing it. One Chicago group is shaking its head at the statistics and looking at ways to increase the amount of women on corporate boards.

The Chicago Network, an organization dedicated to connecting and promoting high-profile women, has published an annual Census for the past 12 years. Taking a look at the top 50 publicly reported companies in the Chicagoland area, from Fortune 500 and Crain’s Chicago Business, the group determined that in 2009, growth had slowed for women climbing the corporate ladder.

“Roughly 15% of board seats are filled by women in the top 50 publicly reported companies in Chicago,” said Cheryl Francis, the Chair of The Chicago Network. “When we first started publishing the Census, women filled 10% of board seats but there has been very little movement since 2003.”

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Cracks Begining to Show in California’s Glass Ceiling – Where and Why

californiaBy Tina Vasquez (Los Angeles)

For the past five years, the UC Davis Graduate School of Management has worked in conjunction with the Forum for Women Entrepreneurs and Executives (FWE&E) to collect the data for their Study of California’s Women Business Leaders, which takes a census of California’s women directors and officers and sheds light on the lack of female representation found in these roles. For many of us already aware of the dismal numbers in which women are represented in c-suite positions and on boards across the country, it will come as no surprise that 2009’s study found that women continue to remain one of California’s most untapped resources.

The Bay Area: A Contradiction in Gender Representation

Nationally, only 15.2 percent of board positions are held by women and the numbers aren’t much better in California. FWE&E CEO, Wendy Beecham, has the unique perspective of having the area where she both lives and works be a representation of the best and worst of California. Beecham is a major proponent of diversity in the boardroom and her Palo Alto, CA office serves the entire Bay Area. Oddly enough, the Bay Area has both the highest and lowest numbers in the state for women directors. In San Francisco County, 15.7 percent of board positions are held by women, which is the highest in the state and higher than the national average. Just a little over sixty miles away; however, the booming Silicon Valley in Santa Clara County, considered the high-tech hub of the country and home to technology giants like Adobe Systems, Apple, eBay, and Google, continues to remain an all boy’s club with just 8.2 percent of board positions being held by women.

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35 Under 35: Natalie Kaminski, Chief Executive Officer of FinCode Solutions

kaminskiNBy Pamela Weinsaft (New York City)

Russian-born, Israeli-bred Natalie Kaminski has moxie. The chief executive and founder of FinCode Solutions came by herself to the United States at the tender age of eighteen, with only a high school diploma under her belt and a desire to build a career; in what, though, she wasn’t sure.

As a kid, Kaminski had her sights set on a variety of professions. “My preferences went from wanting to be a lawyer (because it was cool) to wanting to be a model to wanting to be a psychiatrist. I had no interest in either technology or finance. To be honest, I don’t know how I ended up in those. I didn’t even have a computer. I heard about the internet but didn’t even use it.”

Yet, she said, “when [the internship at a technology school in Minneapolis] came along, I just took it.”

After a few months the technology school hosted a job fair to introduce the interns to local businesses. “I came very prepared and handed out my resume to everyone. But, when two weeks later, I still hadn’t heard from anyone, I just picked up the phone and starting calling all of the people I’d met.” One of those conversations was with Steve Timmerman, the founder and CTO of SWAT Solutions. Kaminski recounted, “I said to him, ‘hire me for free, give me experience that I can put on my résumé so I can go on to find a paying job.’ And he said, ‘Just because you are being so bold, I’m going to hire you AND pay you.’”

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ExxonMobil Foundation and CEDPA Work to Advance Women’s Leadership Around the World

handsBy Andrea Newell (Grand Rapids, Michigan)

The Exxon Mobil Foundation’s Women’s Economic Opportunity Initiative has partnered with The Centre for Development and Population Activities (CEDPA) to support and advance women’s leadership around the world. The Global Women in Management program, a month-long workshop developed and facilitated by the CEDPA and sponsored by ExxonMobil, was most recently held in Cairo, Egypt and Douala, Cameroon in October and November.

Why would ExxonMobil make a long-term investment in educating women in developing countries? Lorie Jackson, Director of the Educating Women and Girls Initiative, says, “First, to meet a social need in our key communities and to demonstrate thoughtful and responsible corporate citizenship. Also, there is the fact that with the desired outcome – a more educated population where economic growth and prosperity are supported through good training and good institutions of individuals, including women – it makes for a better operational environment to do business in. It makes sense from both a social, as well as a business, perspective. Over time, by integrating women and girls into all areas of society and providing them with the opportunity to fulfill their potential, it gives companies like ExxonMobil, or any other company, access to best talent, regardless of gender.”

CEDPA has been educating women and girls worldwide for more than 35 years, but joined forces with the ExxonMobil Foundation in 2005. For Jackson, the choice was an easy one. “CEDPA is a very well-respected player in the field of women’s leadership training. The Global Women in Management program has been in existence and experiencing refinements for over 30 years.”

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Top Organizations Preparing Our Future Female Leaders

mentorsJacqueline B. Libster (New York City)

Creating workforce gender equality is a multifaceted project, including the work to help women at the top right now, as well as planting the seeds for success for future generations. That’s why many organizations are working to help girls and young women develop leadership skills that will carry them from the classroom to the boardroom, by:

  • introducing career planning and mentoring.
  • mitigating isolation in male dominated fields.
  • maintaining work-life balance.
  • highlighting the unconscious bias that exists in schools, the admissions process, and in hiring, promoting and retaining women.

Their efforts are helping add women to front end of the career pipeline, ensuring that there will be more women in the coming years to help crack the glass ceiling.
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Equalité for All – France Considers Boardroom Quotas

french quotasBy Elizabeth Harrin (London)

When I worked for a global financial services firm in Paris, I constantly found myself explaining to my French colleagues that both my degrees were in literature but in the UK I was still employable. French business is the bastion of people (read: men from wealthy backgrounds) who have gone to the right Grandes Ecoles and studied the right business course. I was odd – I didn’t have a business qualification, but the business district of La Défense had still welcomed me. It was a small sign that the French approach to work is changing – and in December it got a big push in the right direction with the launch of new legislation that would see women take half the seats in boardrooms in five years.

Currently, women only make up 10.5% of boards in the CAC 40 – the French stock market index – and only 8% of board members in the top 500 companies are women.

It’s a long way from the European average, and campaigners for the new law have cited Scandinavia as a role model for how quotas should be managed. Norway started the northern European revolution, by insisting that boards were made up of at least 40% women back in 2003. Comply or close were the options given to business leaders, and while it was a controversial law and a difficult time, board membership is now 44.2% female. Sweden (with 22% female board members) and Finland (17%) have also made huge inroads in moving towards a better gender balance at the top of organisations.

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Ask-A-Career Coach: What Are The Market Prospects For 2010?

jobsearchContributed by Caroline Ceniza-Levine of SixFigureStart™

I often get market-related questions: what are employment prospects; what are the hot industries; who is hiring. Keep in mind that employment statistics are not worth following for your career planning. Fears of 10% unemployment are misplaced. The statistic you care about is either 0% or 100%; it’s are you employed or not. The next question to ask is, “Are you in the job you want or not?” So regarding market prospects for 2010, the short answer is, “Why should you care?”

Focus on your individual career. Yes, all things being equal, I would pursue growing over shrinking industries. But all things aren’t equal. It is more important to know your values, skills and interests and align them with the correct industry, function and company, rather than picking employers and force-fitting yourself into them. Read more

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Back after the Bump: Difficulties of Returning to Work after Pregnancy

pregnant at workBy Elizabeth Harrin (New York)

After a year off, you would imagine that employers would be falling over themselves to welcome new mothers back to the workplace. Apparently not. One in three women report that going back to work after having a baby is difficult, according to a new study by the NCT, UK’s leading charity for parents.

There are vast amounts of legislation aimed at supporting the transition of new mothers to the office, and many companies have their own HR policies that often provide enhancements that go beyond the legal requirements. The research by the NCT, the UK’s leading charity for parents, shows that for many companies, this is all lip service, and many of the 400,000 women taking maternity leave in the UK each year don’t feel welcomed back to work when the time comes.

“Although the Government has introduced incentives to encourage mothers back to work, there is a lack of guidance or support for both women and their employers,” says Liz Morris, who completed the research as part of her Master’s degree at Aston Business School.

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Sovereign Wealth Funds Growing in Popularity

global financeBy Elizabeth Harrin (London)

The global economy has taken a battering recently – but not everywhere has been equally affected. Ernst & Young’s ITEM Club, one of the UK’s best-known independent economic forecasting groups, is predicting that the emerging markets will grow about 1% this year. Admittedly, growth up until recently had been around 6%, but at least those economies are not contracting. This has put the spotlight on to sovereign wealth funds (SWFs), which have helped keep the economies buoyant.

SWFs are like other investment funds, but they are owned and managed by the state. Depending on where the funds are based they might get some special tax perks for being a state-owned venture. For some countries, this state-run fund is managed by the central bank and is hugely important to the economy; for others it is just a slush fund without much of a role to play in balancing the books.

As you might expect, it is countries with state-owned commodities that tend to have this type of investment vehicle. Seventy-eight per cent of SWFs are in the Middle East and Asia and the largest SWFs are in the UAE. Even so, SWFs are not as big or as mature as corporate and institutional investments – but they haven’t fallen so hard as hedge funds or private equity either.

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