Voice of Experience: Ci Ci Holloway, Managing Director, Diversity & Inclusion, Americas, UBS Investment Bank

Image courtesy The Network Journal

Image courtesy The Network Journal

By Melissa J. Anderson (New York City)

Ci Ci Holloway spent the majority of her career working in the diversity and inclusion space in the entertainment industry. But four years ago, she found herself drawn to the financial services. Now Managing Director of Diversity and Inclusion for the Americas at UBS, Holloway said she’s working on an exciting new initiative – DROI.

Holloway explained, “Diversity Return On Investment will clearly make the connection between diverse achievements and the impact on the organization – how that ties to the bottom line.”

She continued, “It’s certainly not an easy argument to make, and it gets challenged. But the good thing is that the numbers don’t lie, and we can tie those numbers or new clients to diversity. Showing how a diverse team outperforms a homogenous team will make people rethink how they look at diversity and inclusion in an organization.”

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LinkedIn Lessons: 10 Ways to Stand Out and Level the Playing Field

judylindenbergerContributed by Judy Lindenberger

I love LinkedIn. It’s one of the best networking tools out there to help you expand your reach. It’s “Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon” for the business world. But it can be a big, foreign maze. To stand out in the LinkedIn crowd, here are ten quick tips:

1. To increase your Google search rankings, make your LinkedIn profile 100% complete.
2. Brand yourself by using a professional headshot that’s also on your website.
3. In the “Specialties” box, list keywords that will help people find you.
4. Don’t just cut and paste your resume – use short sound-bites that get your readers’ attention.
5. Update your status regularly by adding articles and blog posts you have written, awards you have won, promotions you have earned, or, if you are looking for a job, let people know exactly what you are looking for so it’s easy for them to help you.
6. Include links to your website, blog and twitter account.
7. Put your phone number and email address in the “Summary” section at the top of your profile for quick contact.
8. Be open to invitations to connect with new people.
9. Get involved in groups and discussions by asking thought-provoking questions, answering questions, and sharing interesting information.
10. Get and give recommendations.

But speaking of recommendations – keep in mind that the words people choose to describe you could hurt your chances. Here’s why.

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Ambassador Karen Hughes Discusses Leadership at the FWA

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hughes_karenBy Melissa J. Anderson (New York City)

“I’ve always done what I’m passionate about,” began Ambassador Karen Hughes, Global Vice Chair of public relations firm Burson Marsteller. “I always tell young people, ‘follow your passion and keep with your values.'”

At a recent Financial Women’s Association Event, Hughes recalled some of the critical moments during her previous career as Counselor to President George W. Bush and Under Secretary of Public Affairs at the State Department. She discussed important factors for strong leadership, and what it means to follow your passion.

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The Gender Advantage for Multinational Firms

iStock_000015361168XSmallBy Elizabeth Harrin (London)

New research shows that companies can benefit by exploiting gender discrepancies in host countries – in other words, hiring highly skilled, local women who are not ‘employees of choice’ in their own countries. Can companies really gain a competitive advantage by hiring women who are overlooked? And should they?

When Qualified Women are Overlooked…

The research was produced by Professor Jordan Siegel from Harvard Business School, Lynn Pyun of MIT, and B.Y. Cheon of Hanshin University and the Korea Labor Institute. The multinational team looked extensively at hiring practices in South Korea. They found that women were frequently discriminated against in the labor market, particularly for management positions. However, the female candidates were as qualified as the male candidates. There is a rich pool of talent there, but local firms are reluctant to tap into it.

So, there are lots of qualified, talented women waiting for jobs, and fierce competition with male candidates. That equals an opportunity for multinational firms, who can exploit “social schisms” in the employment economy through hiring and promoting women. Better candidates mean better – and loyal – employees, and in turn this equals a competitive advantage and better profit margins.

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It’s Time to Redefine Authenticity

lesliewilliamsContributed by Leslie Williams, Author of Leading With Grit And Grace: Smart Power for Women Leaders

Authenticity at work: oxymoron? Pipe dream? Many of us long to be more honest and true to ourselves at work. Yet in most organizations, authenticity is a risky proposition.

Here’s a quick exercise that illustrates why that might be so. Identify a current work situation that you think is being badly handled but that you haven’t confronted. If you had a free pass to react authentically – with no threat of repercussion – what would you do or say? Now… if you actually did or said that, what do you think would happen? For many of us, that much honesty could constitute career suicide.

This is the double bind of authenticity. We want more of it, but we fear the vulnerability it can create. So we resign ourselves to the belief that authenticity is only possible in ‘enlightened’ organizations – which is certainly not where WE work.

The problem with authenticity lies in how we define it. Many people equate being authentic with being emotionally transparent. Defined thus, the authentic move in response to anger might be to give someone a piece of your mind. In a conflict, it might be to tell someone that they’re being selfish and short-sighted. This kind of honesty has its place; it can clear the air and let people know where you stand. But it can also backfire: escalating conflict, eroding trust and damaging reputations. You’re smart to be wary of that.

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Surprising New Findings on Gender Wage Gap in IT

Successful group of business colleagues working on a laptopBy Tina Vasquez (Los Angeles)

Last fall, Technisource released its Women & Men in Information Technology Survey, which revealed the many discrepancies in how men and women in the IT industry view the challenges being faced by women.

One of the most interesting findings revealed that nearly half of the men surveyed strongly believed that female IT workers were equally compensated for their work as their male counterparts, while only 22 percent of women surveyed felt the same.

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Measure of Success – Global Gender Equality Initiative to be Launched at Davos

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Beautiful business woman with colleagues in line at the backBy Melissa J. Anderson (New York City)

“Gender equality needs to be a strategic priority for organizations. It demands all of the rigor companies usually display when pursuing business-critical objectives and the full commitment of top leadership,” said Aniela Unguresan, co-founder (along with Nicole Schwab) of The Gender Equality Project, a new benchmarking and certification initiative backed by the World Economic Forum and several multinational corporations.

According to Unguresan, the goal of The Gender Equality Project is to enable the world’s largest firms to, both quantitatively and qualitatively, measure progress toward gender equality. What makes The Gender Equality Project stand out, she explained, is that it enables participating firms not only to measure their own progress, but also to accelerate the pace of change by implementing a standardized assessment methodology that can be applied across different industries and regions. This assessment methodology will serve as a basis for the first global certification system in gender equality.

“It’s our experience within the corporate environment that what gets measured gets done,” she explained. By measuring and comparing their progress toward defined goals, just like any other strategic initiative, companies can begin to make headway in the global problem of gender inequality in the workplace. After the launch of its assessment methodology, The Gender Equality project will make available a self-assessment tool and will put in place a global certification system– a veritable stamp of approval for gender equality.

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Voice of Experience: Aine Leddy, Executive Director, Investment Management Technology, Morgan Stanley

Leddy-1By Melissa J. Anderson (New York City)

“Just go for it. Don’t be afraid to show interest. If you prefer a career in something considered to be an all-male bastion like Wall Street investment banking, just do it,” said Aine Leddy, Executive Director, Investment Management Technology at Morgan Stanley.

As chief operating officer for the company’s investment technology group, Leddy, who hails from Ireland, has plenty of experience in a traditionally male dominated field, and has found success in “going for it.”

And while she encourages women to enter roles where they may initially be the odd person out, she encourages men to do the same. She continued, “I try to give the same advice to my sons as to my daughter.”

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Intrepid Woman: Educating Children in Goa

P1050292By Cleo Thompson (London), founder of The Gender Blog. A regular contributor, Thompson has just returned to the UK from a period of volunteer work for a charity in India. This is her story.

Goa: the smallest and the richest state in India; a former Portuguese colony, a place of beautiful golden beaches, swaying palm trees and over a million domestic and foreign tourists per year. The wealth brought by the tourists also brings an influx of economic migrants. In search of work and money, they travel to this tiny state in western India from other areas – hundreds and in some cases thousands of miles away.

I first visited Goa in 1999, have been back many times since then and have seen the volume of both tourists and of workers from other parts of India soar in the intervening years. Unsurprisingly, the Goan infrastructure is now creaking under this flood of people; from a tourist’s point of view, power cuts and water shortages are increasingly common but can be dismissed as being “part of the Indian experience.” However, what many tourists never see are the living environments of many of the migrant workers – and, more particularly, how this impacts the health and education of their children.

Before Christmas, I spent time undertaking volunteer work for a small Goan-based charity called Educators’ Trust India – I’m pictured here with some of the children on a trip to the beach. The charity was set up two years ago in order to provide practical assistance to the children of these migrant workers and they now, funded only by donations, run two schools, Leading Light and New Light, and a number of outreach projects where they work with migrant workers in the local slums.

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Female Lawyers Skirt Likeability Paradox – Here’s How

Confident business womanBy Melissa J. Anderson (New York City)

How does the likeability/competence double-bind affect female lawyers today? According to some new research, it doesn’t.

A new paper published in the Duke Journal of Gender Law & Policy has surprising new insight into the classic likeability vs. competence dichotomy reviled by professional women. We’ve discussed this issue on The Glass Hammer in the past, that women tend to face disproportionate penalties when they are perceived as being “pushy” or “aggressive,” while a man displaying the same behavior would simply be perceived as “assertive” or “confident.”

But according to the study, Likeability v. Competence: The Impossible Choice Faced by Female Politicians, Attenuated by Lawyers, “in style and in effectiveness, there is no difference between how female and male lawyers are perceived.”

This flies in the face of many women’s experiences in the professional space – what are these women doing right?

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