Voice of Experience: Vanessa Lau, Group CFO, Global Rolled Products, Alcoa

vanessa_lauBy Melissa J. Anderson (New York City)

Vanessa Lau, Group CFO for Global Rolled Products at Alcoa has never shied away from a challenge. Named on Crain’s New York’s 40 Under 40 list last year, Lau has had the drive to fuel an exciting and esteemed career from the very beginning.

Her advice? Don’t be shy about your goals.

She said, “I find that my male colleagues are more willing to show their ambitions and my female colleagues are less willing to show their ambitions. They feel like they are being pushy.”

“But management really values transparent discussion. Be ambitious.”

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Managing Leadership Styles and Overcoming Stereotypes

JaneSandersContributed by Jane Sanders, President, GenderSmart® Solutions

Yes, things in the corporate world are getting better for women. And yes, we still have a ways to go. Women in leadership and executive positions stare down a double-edged sword daily. If their style is primarily assertive, decisive, task vs. relationship oriented, etc., they are labeled as too tough and masculine…the ‘b’ word. So does this mean don’t act like a man? Or, if a woman’s style is predominantly collaborative, supportive, and friendly, she is perceived as nice but less competent. So does this mean don’t act like a woman if she wants to advance? But what’s left – how is she supposed to act?

Managing Gender Stereotypes

Women must walk a fine line in the corporate world, especially in longer-established industries such as financial services, insurance, automotive, and manufacturing. Using solely one gender communication style or the other can often backfire, much more so than it would for a man, as this inflexible behavior will illicit stereotyping and misperceptions of women’s competence and personality. Such behavior by men can cause judgment too, but less often and less severe, with milder consequences.

Eliminating these gender stereotypes is a valid but lofty goal and, for the foreseeable future, completely unattainable goal. So instead of focusing on eliminating stereotyping, the world would be better served by becoming aware of gender styles, accepting them merely as differences rather than right or wrong behaviors, and learning how to work with them more effectively. In a way this is a form of eliminating typecasting, but it approaches the issue by managing stereotypes, not expecting them to disappear.

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Playing Politics: Three Tips to Develop Your Career Savviness

Businesswoman negotiating with menBy Melissa J. Anderson (New York City)

Last week, the New York City Bar Association hosted an intimate women in law career workshop with Ida Abbott, co-founder and Director of the Hastings Leadership Academy for Women at the University of California Hastings College of the Law, co-Chair of the Women in Law Empowerment Forum, and a lawyer development consultant.

Women in any career walk a fine line – between assertive and aggressive, collaborative and accommodating, bold… and the b-word. And in a relationship-focused field like law, these tensions become even more concentrated.

Abbott said, “I remember years ago, a lawyer referred to me as a dragon lady – and he didn’t mean it as a compliment. I took it that way anyway.” She continued, “Politics is not something you can ignore – it’s a process for reconciling competing interests. As a leader, you have to find ways to persuade people with different interests to do things they might not want to do.”

There are ways to gain the upper hand in a politically charged workplace – here are three pieces of advice Abbott recommended.

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Voice of Experience: Yolanda Seals-Coffield, Principal, Office of the General Counsel, PwC

Yolanda SealsHaving begun her career as an employment litigator and then moving in-house to work for Diageo, and now PwC, Yolanda Seals-Coffield, Principal in the Office of the General Counsel, has used her considerable skills in nurturing authentic relationships to build the career she’s envisioned for herself.

“Women should understand that your potential is limitless,” she said. “How far ones goes should be defined by what one wants to do, not by what people tell them they can do.”

“There are many things I have learned over the course of my career – but I wish I had known from the beginning that I had more input and accountability in driving my career If I knew then what I know now, I would have had the confidence in the early years to be more proactive and seek out the opportunities that interested me rather than waiting to be tapped on the shoulder” she explained.

“It would have been advantageous to know that I had a lot more flexibility around who I wanted to be, where I wanted to go, and the impact I wanted to make,” she said. Seals-Coffield, who now supports the human capital function at PwC, is doing her best to open doors and clear a pathway for the women climbing the ladder behind her – and blazing her own trail as well.

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Advice for Managing Millennials

judylindenbergerTeriKlassContributed by Terri Klass and Judith Lindenberger

One of the biggest challenges for businesses today is integrating the Millennials twenty-somethings into a Baby Boomer culture. They are the newest generation to enter the labor market, arriving with their distinct ideas about what they expect from their jobs. They are our future leaders and our next generation of revenue-generators. So who are the Millennials and how do we manage their expectations while maintaining high performing organizations?

How Millennials Operate

The Millennial Generation was born between 1977 and 1998. They are 75 million strong in size and were raised by “helicopter parents,” who doted on them, giving them an ample supply of attention and validation. Because they were heralded with high expectations, Millennials tend to display an abundance of self-confidence and believe they are highly valuable to any organization from day one. They are extremely focused on developing themselves and thrive on learning new job skills, always setting new challenges to achieve. They are also the “can do” generation, never worrying about failure, for they see themselves as running the world and work environments.

Unlike other generations, the Millennials are very connected to their parents. As they move through their twenties, they still speak to their parents frequently and turn to their parents for personal and career advice. Some are still even living at home, not uncomfortable with the arrangement. Organizations must remember the parent involvement factor when dealing with this group.

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Men Who Get It: Mark Chamberlain, Head of Diversity, Americas, Deutsche Bank

markchamberlainBy Melissa J. Anderson (New York City)

Mark Chamberlain, Head of Diversity for the Americas at Deutsche Bank, said the best piece of advice he received actually came from his grandmother. He explained, “In the early part of the 20th century, women weren’t supposed to go on to higher education, play sports or work outside the home – and she did all that. She said, ‘Only you can make your life interesting. Go out and do it.’”

He continued, “You have to take charge of your life.”

Chamberlain, whose interest in diversity issues started during his time with the Peace Corps working in Mali, now leads Deutsche Bank’s efforts in the Americas to attract and retain diverse talent. The other piece of advice Chamberlain said has impacted his life came from his father. He said, “He told both my sister and me, ‘No matter what you do, do it well.’”

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Building a Better Wall Street: Training Female Traders

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iStock_000010363335XSmallBy Stephanie Wilcox (Middlefield, CT)

Why is there such a paucity of female traders on Wall Street? Why are they difficult to find? Why don’t they apply for hedge fund jobs? Renée Haugerud, Chief Investment Officer and Managing Principal of Galtere Ltd., asked these questions when she discovered the difficulties of hiring female traders.

Though the hedge fund industry is a $2.5 trillion industry, a mere three percent of the assets are managed by women, according to Lauren Templeton, hedge fund manager and founder and principal of Lauren Templeton Capital Management and Maximum Pessimism, LLC. Wall Street is predominantly led by men, but what would happen if there was a better balance of men and women on Wall Street?

Haugerud thinks it would make a better Wall Street. “We need more balanced and more diversified trading desks,” she said. “Only a diversified portfolio management team will produce truly diversified portfolios. When I try to hire women I have a difficult time finding them. I have to actively search. A trading desk should represent all nationalities, ethnicities and maintain a gender balance as well.”

That’s why Haugerud, founder and chief investment officer of the commodities-focused asset management firm Galtere Ltd. donated $1.5 million to the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga (UTC) to establish a new program with an initiative on trading from a female perspective. The program, Finance for the Future, focuses on female investment bankers and exposes all attendees to what Haugerud refers to as the female/right side of the brain of the trading business.

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Voice of Experience: Denise Diallo, Partner, Banking and Capital Markets Practice, White & Case

DeniseDialloBy Melissa J. Anderson (New York City)

“I definitely think work/life balance exists,” said Denise Diallo, Partner in White & Case‘s Banking and Capital Markets Practice at its Paris office. “It can be difficult at times, and you have to be willing to adapt –“ At this point in our conversation, Diallo started laughing.

“I’m laughing because my daughter is actually here in my office today,” she said. “My nanny wasn’t able to pick her up from school, so I did. It just illustrates that not everything goes the way you plan. But it doesn’t mean you don’t have work/life balance.”

“You just have to be adaptable,” she explained.

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Four Expert Tips on Personal Finance for Executive Women

Myra Salzer for Investment Advisor Magazine -10/09Contributed by Myra Salzer, author of Inheritor’s Sherpa and Living Richly: Seizing the Potential of Inherited Wealth

Everything I ever needed to know about becoming financially independent, I learned from my grandmother’s one-sentence motto. I can still hear her thick Hungarian accent repeat, “You can always live on 90% of whatever you make, and save the difference.” That’s it. Really! It’s that simple. Makes you wonder what all the self-help, get-rich-quick books are about.

Yes, accumulation is simple. It’s the keeping it that is tricky. Fortunately, everything I ever needed to know about preservation, I learned from Steve Henningsen, my business partner. Once it’s accumulated, everyone wants a piece of it and there are more ways to lose it than self-help books at Barnes and Noble. In my grandmother’s day, at least it could all safely be put into bonds. Not so today.

Even more complex, what if you were born “accumulated” – i.e., you inherited enough that you could afford to skip that long, drawn-out accumulation phase? The library of potential losses is many times greater than the likelihood for one who has spent decades accumulating because you have to preserve your accumulation for a lifetime, rather than the typical retirement years. That provides many, many years of opportunity to make mistakes. What can you safely do under those circumstances?

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The Mommy Penalty Hits MBAs Hard

iStock_000012432210XSmallBy Tina Vasquez (Los Angeles)

“The Career Cost of Family,” a study written late last year by Harvard economics professors Claudia Goldin and Lawrence F. Katz, found that women with MBAs suffer the largest percentage “mommy penalty,” while those with medical degrees suffer the lowest proportionate loss. Findings were based on a survey of Harvard College graduates from 1969 to 1992, a study of MBAs from the University of Chicago, and a nationwide survey of various professions.

The study’s most crucial findings revealed that female MBAs who take 18 months off from their career to have children earn 41 percent less than male MBAs. Female Ph.D.’s earn 33 percent less than male Ph.D.s for taking the same amount of time off, while female lawyers earn 29 percent less than male lawyers, and female MDs earn 16 percent less than male doctors.

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