Voice of Experience: Sonja Barendregt-Roojers, Partner, PricewaterhouseCoopers Accountants N.V.

sonja_barendregtBy Melissa J. Anderson (New York City)

“Becoming a partner in a time frame when it was not common for women to join the partnership is one of my proudest professional experiences,” said Sonja Barendregt-Roojers, a Partner at PricewaterhouseCoopers Accountants N.V. Barendregt-Roojers has, in fact, been with the firm since she was a teenager – beginning her career at one of PwC’s predecessor firms right after high school.

After graduating from Erasmus University Rotterdam and becoming a chartered accountant, Barendregt-Roojers stayed with the firm. After being named a partner in 1998, she became the Investment Management industry leader for the Netherlands and joined the European Investment Management Leadership team. In 2004, Barendregt-Roojers said she became chair of the Pension Funds industry group in the Netherlands and founded the International Pensions group.

As she has climbed the ladder at PwC, Barendregt-Roojers said one of the things she wishes she had learned earlier on was the differences in how men and women behave – inside and outside the workplace, “Men and women are different in certain ways. Because of my high school education, in a group with 30 boys and only 4 girls, I never noticed any difference, but in fact there are differences. Had I known them at that time, it could have given a boost to my career.”

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Diversity and Inclusion: A Commercial Imperative

iStock_000000214466XSmallBy Melissa J. Anderson (New York City)

This article originally appeared on our sister site Evolved Employer.

Last week, Deutsche Bank hosted the first ever Out On the Street conference, an event designed to address the commercial advantage of LGBT inclusiveness for Wall Street firms.

Seth Waugh, CEO of Deutsche Bank Americas, explained that the conference held two missions. First of all, “to make sure Wall Street is an attractive and welcome place for all LGBT professionals.” And secondly, “it’s not only the right thing to do, but it is a commercial imperative.”

He explained that a broad perspective of view points enables companies to make better decisions and appeal to a broader audience of potential clients. The need for diversity of perspectives is gaining steady acceptance. This is important, Waugh said, because “Things that are nice to have but not ‘needs to have’ tend not to have a long lifespan.”

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Microfinance in the BRIC Countries

iStock_000005237614XSmallBy Kelly Tanner (New York City)

Audrey Choi, Managing Director of Morgan Stanley Global Sustainable Finance, moderated a panel discussion last week entitled, “Will Microfinance Succeed in the BRIC countries? Does Regulation Matter?” The answer to both questions, according to panelists Hans Dellien, Chikako Kuno, and Elisabeth Rhyne, is yes.

The event, organized by Financial Women’s Association and sponsored by Morgan Stanley’s Global Sustainable Finance and Women’s Initiative, focused on how regulation promotes and hinders microfinance institutions in Brazil, Russia, India, and China, collectively referred to as the BRIC countries. Though these countries are known as emerging opportunities for investors, they have “enormous potential and enormously different market dynamics,” says Choi.

She asked, “As we get to a real evolution of the field, where you have investors coming into microfinance with very different motivations, very different kinds of checkbooks…What happens? What is the right way to untangle mission and profit and fiduciary responsibility?”

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Ask for More Now, Ladies – Here’s How to Get That Raise

iStock_000013511726XSmallBy Melissa J. Anderson (New York City)

When was the last time you negotiated a raise? If it’s been a while (or perhaps, if your answer was ‘never’), chances are you could be making more. According to Matt Wallaert, lead scientist at GetRaised, “The research shows that women don’t ask for raises as often as men do, and when they do, they’re not as successful at it.”

Carol Frohlinger, co-author of Her Place at the Table: A Woman’s Guide to Negotiating Five Key Challenges to Leadership Success, agreed. She said, “The challenge for women is that not only are we reluctant to ask because of socialization, but the reality is that both men and women expect women to negotiate differently than men. So when we ask, we get push-back, or we heard about someone else who asked and it didn’t go well, so we don’t try.”

But that’s no reason to be discouraged – research and planning can help you ask for and get more.

GetRaised, for instance, shows women how much they could be making, based on its extensive database of market-based compensation research, and then provides women with a tool to help frame the negotiation conversation. According to Wallaert, tens of thousands women have now used GetRaised – and 75% of the women who have used it have gotten a raise. On average, the site’s users receive a raise of about $6,000.

This is about confidence. The success of GetRaised’s users shows women just aren’t asking. It’s time for women to start negotiating with the confidence that they can get more.

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Getting to Gravitas: The Business Sweet Spot

RaleighMayerContributed by Raleigh Mayer, Gravitas Guru, Raleigh Mayer Consulting

Joan Steinberg, Morgan Stanley’s Global Head of Philanthropy, was quoted in The Glass Hammer recently emphasizing the importance of projecting professionalism and leadership when seeking advancement.

“You have to be at the next level,” advised Steinberg. “Be the role you want to be, so that it’s easy for others to see you that way,” she said.

Excellent advice, but do women really know what she means, and how to achieve it? I haven’t met Joan, but I know what she means, and she means gravitas.

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Ask-A-Career-Coach: Let’s Get Political!

AnnDalyHighRes-2Contributed by executive coach Ann Daly, PhD

Like many summa cum laude graduates, I started my career with confidence in my talents and abilities. So much so that I refused to get involved in anything that smacked of “office politics.” I believed that work and career were all about merit, not about backroom bartering or Happy Hour schmoozing. Today I look back at my younger self with amusement and affection, recognizing that what she considered integrity was actually a tangle of naiveté and arrogance.

Oh, how I wish Linda A. Hill and Kent Lineback had been around to set me straight.

In their new book, Being the Boss: The 3 Imperatives for Becoming a Great Leader, Harvard business prof Hill and business exec Lineback make an argument for office politics to which even the indignant Ms. Daly would have conceded. Here’s how I imagine such a conversation might have gone:

Q: Office politics are a waste of my time, and I don’t want to deal with them. Why should I bother?

A: Well, for one thing, your organization, like all organizations, is inherently political. Where there are people, there are power relations. If you ignore that reality, you’ll miss out on an essential tool you need to get your work and your team’s work accomplished—because your ability to obtain necessary resources often depends upon the intelligence you gather and the partnerships you’ve established. Even more, you’ll miss out on the opportunity to influence (read: lead) the direction of your organization.

Q: But what about that old saying, “power corrupts”?

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Sharing Best Practices to Boost Senior Female Leadership

business woman with penBy Melissa J. Anderson (New York City)

Last week Catalyst presented its annual awards for companies going the extra mile to advance and retain women. While the winning companies – Kaiser Permanente, Time Warner, and McDonald’s – boasted strong results for promoting women across the board, they each took an interesting approach to getting more women into senior roles.

Each of the winning companies recognized the business value of employing more women. After all, women traditionally make the majority of healthcare and nutrition related decisions within the family. And women are also a huge market for news and entertainment. It makes sense that these companies would benefit by improving the gender balance of their workforce in general, as well as key leadership and decision making roles.

As Julie S. Nugent, Senior Director, Research, and Chair, Catalyst Award Evaluation Committee, remarked, “diversity and inclusion is an important business imperative that deserves our attention, and it’s not just a nice thing to have.”

The conference enabled business leaders to learn from the winning companies’ best practices, and hopefully implement the gender diversity strategies at their own companies. Here are a few of the key takeaways that the conference participants shared.

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Voice of Experience: Laura Yunger, President, Cheevers & Co.

laurayungerBy Jessica Titlebaum (Chicago)

“I always think about how people get jobs in this industry,” said Laura Yunger, President of Cheevers & Company, Inc., a woman-owned brokerage firm founded in 1982. “Schools generally don’t have classes or programs specifically designed to teach you about trading or derivatives.”

Falling In

Like most of her colleagues, Yunger “fell in” to the financial industry. After graduating with a journalism degree from the University of Maryland, she initially had plans to move to Berkeley to study public health policy and nutrition. Her friend’s father had offered her a part time job at Rydex Investments, while she completed pre-requisite courses.

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Catalyst Honors Companies Making a Difference in Gender Diversity

catalystawardBy Melissa J. Anderson (New York City)

This week marked Catalyst‘s annual awards celebration to honor companies that are making progress in the advancement and retention of women. This year’s honorees included Kaiser Permanente, McDonald’s, and Time Warner.

Each of the winning companies was commended for its ongoing work to improve gender balance – as Julie S. Nugent, Senior Director, Research, and Chair, Catalyst Award Evaluation Committee, explained, the awards honor progress – not perfection. Plus, Nugent explained, winners of the award were careful to back up their success with metrics. “We do love our results, being a research organization,” she said.

Whether it was the growth of women on boards at Kaiser Permanente, an increase of women in senior management at McDonald’s, or an improvement in the retention of women at Time Warner, each of the companies had the numbers to show that their programs were working.

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Project Nanhi Kali: Educating Girls for a Growing India

iStock_000012513252XSmallBy Melissa J. Anderson (New York City)

As India’s growth – 8% last year, measured by GDP – quickly outstrips its supply of talented workers, the country will need to focus on better educating its huge population, particularly its girls and young women. According to a new report by Catalyst, India is facing a severe projected talent gap – more than 5 million – by 2012. The report adds, “Women’s labor force participation, at 36 percent, is less than half of the labor force participation rate of men (85 percent).”

But keeping up with labor demand is only one reason to focus on educating girls. As Sheetal Mehta, Trustee and Executive Director of Project Nanhi Kali, explained, when girls are educated, they have more opportunities, and a better chance in life. In many areas of India, girls are seen as an expense, not an asset. While educating girls can lift entire families from poverty, Mehta explained, the impact of an education begins with each girl herself. She said, “When girls get educated, the earnings go back to their families. All of that is wonderful, and it does happen. But more importantly, it’s for their own self esteem.”

Education, Mehta said, keeps girls safe. She continued, “If girls are not educated, they are vulnerable to exploitation and abuse. They could fall prey to other possibilities (like getting involved in terrorism or sex trafficking). If a girl is educated, she becomes independent and able to make her own decisions. She need not reach the level of poverty where she has to earn money by selling her body or risking her life. It’s about self respect, and those benefits are huge.”

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