Voice of Experience: Sony Rusteberg, Senior Executive, Global Outsourcing and Local Delivery, Accenture

Sony Rusteberg - AccentureBy Melissa J. Anderson (New York City)

“Women have the ability to demonstrate strength and the confidence to grow,” said Sony Rusteberg, Senior Executive, Global Outsourcing and Local Delivery at Accenture.

Rusteberg began her career at Accenture seventeen years ago, and has steadily climbed the ranks. She has dealt with personal hardships and joys, and credits the company for its support as she battled ovarian cancer, had children, and made partner in a short period of time.

“To be confident you have to believe in yourself,” she advised.

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Authenticity: How Women Leaders Can Be True To Themselves

Lynn_24P2193_FContributed by Lynn Harris, author of Unwritten Rules: What Women Need to Know About Leading In Today’s Organizations

It seems obvious to many of us that a diverse group of men and women leaders are more likely to be creative and make better decisions than a homogeneous group of men.

If we manage to achieve gender-balanced leadership in our organizations we will, however, only reap the rewards if women leaders are able to be true to themselves. If women have to behave like men to succeed, the benefits of gender diversity remain unrealized and we might as well not bother.

But can women leaders really be authentically themselves within the structure of our current male leadership model, or must they conform to traditional male leadership values and behaviors in order to progress their careers?

Authenticity in this context refers to our capacity to align our behavior with our core values; to know what is most important to us and act accordingly. Most would agree that this is a quality fundamental to all good leaders.

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Voice of Experience: Mika Mayer, Partner, Morrison & Foerster

mikamayerBy Melissa J. Anderson (New York City)

This week, in honor of Ada Lovelace Day, The Glass Hammer is highlighting women who have achieved high levels of success working in technology. Making role models visible is one important way we can encourage girls and young women to pursue a career in tech – and stay there!

“I don’t want to over generalize what the main challenges for women are, but for me personally, the greatest challenge has been balancing my role as a partner with my role as a mother,” said Mika Mayer, Partner at Morrison & Foerster, who deals with patent law in the medical device, drug delivery, and pharmaceutical fields. “For each role, there is no limit to the amount of time you can invest, and I take both roles very seriously.”

She continued, “Balance is one of those words that has very little meaning, because true balance is very hard to obtain. You need to define boundaries and set limits for yourself. You can’t rely on your employer to set those limits for you.”

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Voice of Experience: Augusta Sanfilippo, Managing Director, Cash Securities Operations IT, Citi

augustasanfilippoBy Melissa J. Anderson (New York City)

This week, in honor of Ada Lovelace Day, The Glass Hammer is highlighting women who have achieved high levels of success working in technology. Making role models visible is one important way we can encourage girls and young women to pursue a career in tech – and stay there!

Speaking with Augusta Sanfilippo, Managing Director of Cash Securities Operations IT at Citi, you get the feeling that she is one of those people who really loves her work. In fact, Sanfilippo says she has loved IT and investment banking since she was in college. Having grown up in Queens, she was studying business at St. John’s University. Then, she said, “I fell in love with the computer room in about 1983.”

Sanfilippo went on to major in computer science and minor in business. Since then, she’s spent her career in managing data, designing systems and processes, and implementing new ideas on Wall Street. “I just had this passion for computers,” she explained with a laugh.

Sanfilippo is also passionate about solving problems. Now leading Citi’s efforts to streamline its various cash securities operations systems after several years of mergers, she has also become enthusiastic about improving the IT space for women.

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Op-Ed: The Part-Time Lawyer Layoff Myth

CynthiaThomasCalvertContributed by Cynthia Thomas Calvert, Co-Founder of and Senior Advisor for the Project for Attorney Retention

Part-time lawyer layoffs can now join sewer crocodiles and kidney thefts on the list of attention-grabbing hoaxes.

During the recession, the “highest number of terminations occurred amongst part-time attorneys,” said a recent op-ed that appeared in The Glass Hammer. The source of this assertion was the respected and influential 2010 national survey of women in law firms by the National Association of Women Lawyers, but the report does not say that more part-time lawyers were laid off. A close reading shows that the report says only that male and female full-time lawyers were laid off in equal proportion but because most of the part-time lawyers are female, it follows that more part-time females than part-time males were laid off.

The NAWL report does not expressly compare the termination rates for part-time and full-time lawyers, but it does say that in 2010, 93% of firms terminated “lawyers” and that 56% of firms terminated “one or more part-time employees.” Although this does not negate the reality that a handful of firms did terminate all their part-time lawyers, it clearly suggests that law firms in general did not target part-time lawyers for layoff.

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Audition: Women Breaking Barriers and Leading the Way

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BarbaraWaltersBy Melissa J. Anderson (New York City)

Last Friday, in celebration of International Women’s Day, Accenture hosted an event at the Paley Center for Media in New York to honor one of the world’s most recognizable women, Barbara Walters. Pat Mitchell, CEO of the Paley Center, said, “She, in many ways, defines the collective media memory of our most important television experiences.”

She explained that Walters had defined our times, covering the people, places, and events that matter.

The conversation between Mitchell and Walters was broadcast on the web to thousands of Accenture women around the globe, and covered Walters’ memories of her early days on television (for example, being asked to masquerade in a Playboy Bunny costume for the camera – as a journalist!) to ultimately becoming the first female co-anchor of network evening news, producing her own television show, and being the only journalist to have interviewed every president since Nixon.

Inspiringly, Walters said, “Every once in a while you are able to do something that you feel might make a difference.”

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Investor Activism – How Investors Can Make a Difference for Women

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iStock_000007832712XSmallBy Melissa J. Anderson (New York City)

“It makes sense for investors to get involved. Gender issues can have financial relevance, and there is plenty of research to back that up,” said Joe Keefe, President and CEO of Pax World Investments. Keefe believes that shareholders can and should demand more from the companies they invest in. Pax World’s investing philosophy is built around driving change around sustainability and gender.

Pax World just released a paper written by Keefe, Gender Equality as an Investment Concept, drawing together a decade of research on the strategic value of women in leadership roles at today’s corporations. “I was trying to really call attention to the fact that investors can make a difference,” Keefe said.

He explained, “I thought that if we better publicize that research, it will underscore the point that companies that do a better job retaining and advancing women are better companies. Investing in these companies is a smarter way to invest.”

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Mentoring and Millennials

judylindenbergerContributed by Judith Lindenberger

In their book, The 2020 Workplace, Jeannie C. Meister and Karie Willyerd report that the top three things Millennials want from their bosses is straight feedback, coaching and mentoring, and personal development. There is a danger in not providing these kinds of learning experiences in your organization – one in four Millennials anticipate leaving their present employer or work setting within the next year and one in three Millennials admit they are not putting their full energies into their current job.

Jack was hired four months ago to work in research and development for a company that specializes in health care products. Jack graduated from college last June and this is his first professional job. He was assigned to a few projects and has done a good job so far. Because Jack has expressed a desire to take on more responsibility, his boss, Karen, asks him to take on lead for researching a new product. Jack is psyched … this is his opportunity to show what he’s got. After a couple of days, Jack has researched a lot of information from specialized magazines, on the Internet, and by connecting with college friend through Linked In and Twitter. He wants to meet with Karen to ask her some questions and keep the momentum going but she has been traveling and sends him a few quick emails in response that don’t really answer his questions. Frustrated, Jack posts on his Facebook page and his Twitter update “My boss is useless … not answering my questions so it’s keeping me from getting my work done.”

What mistakes did Karen make in managing her new Millennial employee, Jack? First, she should have let Jack know the company policy on using social media to be critical of the company. Next, for a new project like this, where Jack will have a lot of learning, she might have had him work in a team with more experienced researchers. And, because she won’t always be around to give Jack on demand coaching and counsel, she could assign him a mentor.

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Smart Woman Securities: Educating Young Female Investors

iStock_000015852572XSmallBy Stephanie Wilcox (Middlefield, CT)

In 2005 Tracy Britt and Teresa Hsiao were juniors studying economics at Harvard when they discovered that while women want to manage money and make money, there were few ways in which they could learn how to do the managing part. Though there were lots of investment clubs on campus, most of them included people who already knew about investing, and therefore many women were too intimidated to join.

So Britt, now 26, and Hsiao, 25, went to work creating Smart Woman Securities (SWS) to teach women about finances from the ground level.

During their 2005 summer internship at Lehman Brothers where they worked in equity research, the two ambitious young entrepreneurs were able to get a lot of good advice on how to structure the program.

“We worked through the summer to develop what we believed would be the best program and implemented it the next year in 2006,” said Hsiao. Despite the plethora of investing websites, Hsiao points out that, “There really isn’t anything else at colleges like this that is women-to-women. And a lot of these sites are more high level than what we try to provide, which is the basics.” SWS is an educational tool for women to learn about investing and to feel safe in a joint community where everyone is learning at the same time.

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5 Ways to Keep Your Women’s Initiative on Track

iStock_000002096821XSmallBy Melanie H. Axman (Boston)

It’s no surprise that throughout the economic downturn, companies’ resources have become scarce, and issues of diversity and gender inclusion tend to take a backseat to shrinking profit margins. Despite these ever-increasing challenges, some businesses and organizations have managed to navigate these and other distractions. Keeping their women’s initiative at the forefront of their business growth and on the road to success, they share some of their insight through these 5 tips.

1. Form a long-term strategic plan. Similar to the market, companies face their own plethora of challenges that tend to take the focus away from many important issues and initiatives. However, having a strategic plan in place allows an organization to create a map of its resources, as well drive direction forward, despite a demanding and evolving landscape.

Nancy Calderon, chair of KPMG’s Women’s Advisory Board (WAB) attributes part of the success of women’s advancement in the firm to a far-sighted vision of an objective. She explains, “When we started, we developed a long-term strategy to support our objectives, and we’ve continued to evolve it over the years. That strategy includes the development and continuous improvement of programs that are relevant, and easily executed by the members of KPMG’s Network of Women, which has nearly 60 chapters in KPMG offices across the country.”

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