Calling All Intrepid Women!

iStock_000010491842XSmallBy Melissa J. Anderson (New York City)

The Glass Hammer is looking for more stories on Intrepid Women – professional women who have a flair for adventure, a love of the unknown, and the courage to step out of their comfort zone. Sound like you, or someone you know?

Previous Intrepid Women have included a lawyer / volunteer fire fighter, a marketing executive who scaled the Great Wall, and our former editor Pamela Weinsaft – who wrote about her expedition to Antarctica. We’ve also visited trapeze school, sky diving class, and even a Russian Bath House here in New York.

And now we want to know about your adventure.

How have you challenged yourself physically or emotionally lately? What was the outcome? What has your adventuresome, limit-pushing experience taught you about yourself, and how has it helped you professionally?

Are you an intrepid woman? Tell us why! Email me and tell me what you’d like to write about, and we’ll discuss the next steps.

Can’t wait to hear about your adventure!

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Networking: Why Even the Biggest Events Have Strategic Value

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Nicki HeadshotBy Nicki Gilmour, Founder and CEO of The Glass Hammer

It has been a busy week at theglasshammer.com – as you can see from our coverage we have been attending several events: The Women’s Conference, the FWA’s event with PIMCO’s Mohamed El-Erian, and Deutsche Bank’s Women on Wall Street Conference.

What constitutes a good event, which ones should you go to, what should you expect to get out of the networking event? Good networking events can offer the following benefits:

1) Useful content delivered by an inspiring panel – You learn something that will help you in some way (it can be generic advice or a specific action you can take)
2) Good contacts – you actually swap cards with people who you can do business with at some point

Bad networking events usually offer very little content of value, and on the people side of things, there is no reason to write or call anyone whose card you swapped yours with.

No networking at all is the worst kind of event for women, as we traditionally have less access to networked business conversations where decisions are made. Therefore, we need to form our own connections. Where do you start in one room with two thousand women, like at the Deutsche Bank WOWS event? You start by reaching out to the female clients (not friends) that you want to do business with ahead of time, and ask them to meet you at the door going in. Use these events strategically. Small events are easier to navigate, and theglasshammer.com hosts 100-200 women only at a time at our events.

I enjoy big events if they have interesting panel speakers and I am constantly in awe of the what some of these senior women have to say about their experiences. My favorite panelist at WOWS this year was Alex Lebenthal, CEO of Lebenthal & Company, recounting her childhood visits to her grandmother, “Mrs. L,” in the Wall Street office she ran since 1925, with Lady Liberty standing in the distance. This memory of leadership by a women, through the eyes of a child, leaves quite an image in your head.

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Getting Personal at The Women’s Conference

michellemaria

Photo via The Women's Conference

By Melissa J. Anderson (New York City)

Wednesday marked the last day of The Women’s Conference, a gathering of 14,000 women at the Long Beach Convention Center in California – plus several smaller teleconferenced gatherings around the globe. The annual event, now twenty-five years old, was hosted by California’s First Lady, Maria Shriver – who encouraged women to be Architects of Change.

She said she had “a simple and profound message: we are the leaders we have been waiting for.”

In New York, over 500 women attended the Conference virtually as part of the Satellite Summit. Marie Wilson, Founder of The White House Project, opened the Summit saying, “We sit at the nexus of business, politics, and media. The comfort level of us as leaders is changing.”

Wilson encouraged all of the attendees, in the next twenty-four hours, to call a woman and encourage her to lead. She said, “It is our time, and we can’t do a democracy with only half of the resources.”

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From Improbable to Reality – PIMCO’s El-Erian at the FWA

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Image Courtesy FWA

Image Courtesy FWA

By Melissa J. Anderson (New York City)

Tuesday evening, the Financial Women’s Association of New York hosted a sold out, members only event featuring Dr. Mohamed El-Erian, CEO & co-CIO of PIMCO. Dr. El-Erian discussed the changes facing the financial markets, the US, and the world, as we navigate what he has coined “the new normal.”

Interviewer Michelle Caruso-Cabrera, analyst and reporter at CNBC, opened the evening by asking what the US Treasury’s first ever issue of a negative yield meant in terms of inflation. Dr. El-Erian said, “It tells you the economy is having some trouble gaining strength.”

But on a broader scale, he continued, “it’s an indication that the unthinkable and the improbable, or at least what used to be unthinkable and what used to be improbable, is not only possible but is the reality.”

Dr. El-Erian believes that rather than simply resetting after the recession, the market is head in a totally new direction – one that is now a structurally different institution. “We came up with the idea that the system wouldn’t reset, that this is the ‘new normal’.” Dr. El-Erian said that the new normal is characterized by slow growth, persistently high unemployment, more political involvement in economies, and a much flatter distribution of outcomes.

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WOWS 2010: Innovation, Ideas, and Action

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innovationBy Natalie Sabia (New York City)

Good conversation, interesting people, warm energy and high powered women are all ways to describe Deutsche Bank’s 16th Annual Women on Wall Street Conference, which is dedicated to the courageous women who represent great power and achievements. Sold out in a matter of 15 minutes, The Women on Wall Street conference drew in over 2,000 women from all areas of the financial services industry to learn about “innovation” and how other women have paved their path to success. “This night is all about empowering, supporting and mentoring women,” said Donna Milrod, Head of Regional Oversight and Strategy, Americas at Deutsche Bank.

The Women on Wall Street network (WOWS) is apart of Deutsche Bank’s diversity strategy, which seeks to develop, retain and motivate diverse talent. Even with a total of 16,000 corporate and investment bank employees, Deutsche Bank has managed to sponsor this conference for members of the financial and broader business communities every year since 1995 and have grown the attendance from just 200 to over 2000.

Kicking off the night, Anshu Jain, Head of Corporate and Investment Bank at Deutsche Bank, highlighted just how strong Deutsche Bank’s view is towards having a diverse population within the firm. Currently, with 138 different nationalities, Jain detailed how important this event is in order to continue the expansion of gender diversity. “Financial innovation is created in many ways,” said Jain. “We should continue to have effortless diversity.”

Hosting a panel of true executive and entrepreneurial women, Sharon Hall, Partner & Co-founder of the Diversity Practice, asked several insightful questions such as what innovation means to them and also what advice that they have learned along the way.

“Innovation means offering creative solutions and collaboration; not being afraid to take risks,” said Reshma Saujani, Attorney & Former Deputy General Counsel at Fortress Investment Group.

“Assessing risk, while having a sense of optimism,” said Alexandra Lebenthal, CEO, Alexandra & James Co. and Lebenthal & Company.

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Are You a Role Model? Teach a Business Course

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Woman Smiling Behind PodiumBy Melissa J. Anderson (New York City)

What’s one way to pull more women into the leadership pipeline? Be a role model.

On The Glass Hammer, we shine the spotlight on successful professional women in an effort to inspire other high-achieving professional women to break the glass ceiling, and to show that there are plenty high performing women out there – even if they aren’t always highly visible. We’re committed to providing role models and peer networking for our audience of successful women.

But the need for role models begins early. Currently, female MBA enrollment rates are hovering around 30%. The leadership gender imbalance is at play even before women actually make it into the workforce. Only a small percentage of MBA instructors are female – and the lack of successful female role models in business education is one thing keeping women out of the career pipeline.

Do you want to make an impact on the next generation of female business leaders? Be a role model at the MBA level. Teach a course, give a guest lecture, or speak at a networking event. Make yourself visible!

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Voice of Experience: Pam Kiernan, Global Head of Business Development, Global Prime Finance, Deutsche Bank

kiernan_pam_colorBy Melissa J. Anderson (New York City)

“My advice is to be confident in what you do really well. Be open to taking risks, and to new opportunities, leveraging what you do really well,” advised Pam Kiernan, Managing Director and Global Head of Business Development for Deutsche Bank’s Global Prime Finance business.

She explained that when she heard women voicing frustration about their careers, it was usually “the result of an aversion to taking risks at a key inflection point.”

Kiernan said one of the things she’s most proud of in her own career has been her ability to take on new opportunities – moving from an infrastructure position early in her career, to a client facing role, and eventually holding COO roles for the Bank’s North American cash equities business and DB Advisors’ hedge fund business. And now she’s taken on a global role in the company’s prime brokerage business as Global Head of Business Development for Global Prime Finance.

“Be confident, and take the risk,” she said.

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This Year’s UN Report on the World’s Women: The Rundown

coverWW2010By Melissa J. Anderson (New York City)

Last Wednesday, in recognition of World Statistics Day, the UN released The World’s Women 2010. The report covers a broad range of data and trends on women around the globe – 284 pages of data, in fact – so we’ve put together a review of the most salient information to be useful and easily accessible for you, our readers.

  • Still Plenty of Work to Do
    In his opening letter, UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon writes, “The World’s Women 2010 is intended to contribute to the stocktaking being done to mark the fifteenth anniversary of the Beijing Conference. …It finds that progress in ensuring the equal status of women and men has been made in many areas, including school enrolment, health and economic participation.”

    But, he continued, “At the same time, it makes clear that much more needs to be done, in particular to close the gender gap in public life and to prevent the many forms of violence to which women are subjected.”

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Pooling Corporate Philanthropy Efforts for Real Progress

Schoolgirl-TeacherBy Melissa J. Anderson (New York City)

“There are 600 million young women between the ages of 13 and 19,” said Louise Guido, president and CEO of the Foundation for Social Change. The organization works to unite leaders from non-profits, governments, and companies, to share best practices and collaborate in their efforts toward improving environmental and social issues.

Guido continued, “Helping a few thousand people is great, and it’s necessary, but if you really want to change the world, it takes a lot of resources.”

“We really need to share the cost and the outlay. And what we’ve been trying to do seems like it’s working,” she added.

The Foundation is currently launching a program designed to provide job training and education for young women around the globe. But unlike most corporate philanthropy efforts, in which one company “owns” the project and might contract with local non-profits, Guido’s project is bigger.

“We are getting as many corporations involved as possible.” The network includes a major technology company, financial corporations, and hopefully telcoms – and more. Through a “shared enterprise platform,” Guido said, the program will be able to reach more girls, provide more resources, and create better programming.

The initiative will involve several programs around the globe, featuring learning and development modules around business and life skills, as appropriate to each individual culture. These programs will enable the participants to improve their job prospects, and hopefully become the next generation workforce for companies sponsoring the program. “So there’s an HR sustainability component as well,” Guido explained.

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The Value of Networking – Beyond the Quota

networkingBy Melissa J. Anderson (New York City)

While visiting Norway last month, it became obvious that the country’s push for gender equality is about more than regulation, like quotas or parental leave legislation. In fact, various organizations outside the government work hard, with both women and men, to improve gender parity.

For example, in order to better prepare women for leadership positions in the financial services, one organization, Futura, has created a unique networking-mentoring program to guide women as they build their leadership skills. The organization believes that putting women in the leadership pipeline is just as important as the law requiring women to fill 40% of board positions in publicly traded companies – and will ultimately improve business performance in the future.

Formed in 2006, Futura pairs high performing women (“Talents”) in Norway’s financial services industry with senior leaders (“Agents”) in the field (not necessarily at their own company), based on interviews and psychological surveys. The women work closely with the Agents to solve problems and gain leadership skills, and benefit from the networking opportunities afforded by “being taken under someone’s wing.”

And it seems to be working. According to the program, “34% have gained positions at a higher organizational level, 53% have more responsibility for personnel, 45% have more budget responsibility, and 50% have greater operational responsibilities than before entering the program.” Keep in mind, the program is only 4 years old – for roughly half of these women to have been promoted already speaks to the value of organized networking – and the give and take relationships fostered by the program.

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