Voice of Experience: Carolyn Buck Luce, Global Pharmaceutical Sector Leader, Ernst & Young LLP

By Melissa J. Anderson (New York City)

“Life is filled with chapters. The ability to live a life worth dying for is an important touchstone for me,” explained Carolyn Buck Luce, Global Life Science Sector Leader at Ernst & Young, and Co-Founder of the Hidden Brain Drain Task Force.

She recommends ten-year planning as a way to manage that life. “Every ten years, I go over what I want to learn in the next ten, and the critical experiences I want to have. I ask, ‘how do I live the next chapter as fully as I can?’”

As a result, Buck Luce has gained a wealth of experience and advice, and has passionately dedicated chapters of her life to helping advance women and girls.

“One of my interests is helping women and girls be all that they can be,” she said. “Women and girls have this ambivalent relationship with power and ambition. For many reasons women and girls are underserved, under-empowered, and under-appreciated around the world.”

She continued, “We need to create institutions that meet the needs of society, and that means women and girls getting comfortable with power and ambition so we can take our place at the table and join men in leadership.”

Achieving a Vision

Buck Luce recalled that she developed an interest in foreign affairs at the age of eight, after watching the televised debates between John F. Kennedy and Richard Nixon. She studied Russian in college and started her career in the foreign service as a member of the United States Information Agency (part of the State Department). Her first assignment was in the Soviet Union, working in a full size model of an American house and talking about life and culture in the United States.

After that, Buck Luce earned an MBA from Columbia University and went to work at Citibank to do East-West trade. “When we began to hit our lending limit, I worked for fifteen years doing complex financing for Citibank and on Wall Street.

Then she founded her own company, a broker-dealer. “Twenty-one years ago, I sold my company and joined Ernst & Young. They wanted a to build a new business around consulting and advisory,” she explained.

“Eleven years ago, I volunteered to help build our global pharmaceuticals business, and I’m now the global business leader.”

Looking back on her career, she said, “I’m proud of my ability to be able to see a need in the market that is not being filled, and not only have a vision of what’s possible, but have the practical and organization skills to have other people see what I see and actually build business.”

She continued, “What gives me a great sense of achievement is that I’ve used this skill outside of work too. I’m still learning how to be an effective leader and build a high impact team that can deliver on a vision. But I have also been able to prioritize building my family – I have four kids and one grandbaby, and a large extended family – and to continue to grow as a leader within the community, working with non-profits that continue to grow and thrive.”

“I look at growing as a leader and creating high impact teams, whether in the for-profit or non-profit space, as a common thread and I’m happy about that.”

As far as her work, Buck Luce said that she believes the pharmaceuticals industry is going through a sea-change, and has been spending time writing and thinking about ways to approach the dramatic changes ahead – what she calls Pharma 3.0.

She explained, “We have seven billion people on the Earth, we have an aging population, a rising middle class, and a rising cost for health care that is not sustainable. It’s really a sick care business, as opposed to a health care business.”

With 75% of health care costs going to chronic diseases, she continued, she is working to rethink what the industry will look like. Considering technological advances, she envisions a health care industry that is much more consumer-focused, transparent and responsive.

“If we don’t have our health, we can’t have prosperity, we can’t take care of our families, and this is a critical piece of our ability to thrive as a society,” she added.

Ten-Year Planning

Buck Luce explained that one of the ways she has managed her career is through ten-year planning.

“Your job is not a position, it’s a platform,” she explained. “The way you think about a job is not something that should be defined by your job description. You have to think about the things you want to learn, the people you want to meet, and the impact you want to have.”

“Through the ten-year planning platform, over the years, I’ve really learned to rethink my job this way. “

In the next ten years, she said, she hopes to become known as an “organizational shaman.” She explained, “I would like to learn more about what happens in people’s heads, soul, spirit, and energy, and how I can help leaders be more courageous by calling on all their gifts.”

“I believe that institutions of today no longer meet the needs of people, and for us to make a difference in the world, for our grandchildren and their grandchildren, it requires a hero’s journey. What are the sources to draw upon that make leaders courageous?”

She added, “I think many of these leaders will be women.”

Structural Challenges

Institutions must find ways to eliminate structural barriers that keep women from advancing, she said. “I see themes across industries – there are certain barriers that are structural and inherent barriers in the workplace, and there are certain barriers in women’s minds as well.”

“The workplace, for example, was organized in the industrial age – you had to go to a place to work and stay for eight to ten hours in one place, five days a week throughout your career. Women’s lives are different than that.”

Buck Luce referred to the Hidden Brain Drain Task Force, which she co-founded with Sylvia Ann Hewlett. “Our research, ‘Off-Ramps and On-Ramps,’ showed that 60% of highly talented women had non-linear careers. Mainly between the ages of 25 and 40, women take time out or work part time, or take a job with less responsibilities or travel, in order to be a leader at home as well as a leader at work.”

She continued, “Structurally, women’s career paths are different – and for many reasons they are seen as not as committed or not as ambitious. Add issues of unconscious bias, and these structural issues can become death by a thousand cuts.”

As for the barriers in women’s minds, she continued, “it’s what I call the ‘good girl syndrome.’”

“No matter where I am around the world, I ask women for a show of hands of who’s ambitious. And the hands slowly creep up. But if you ask who was raised to be a ‘good girl,’ everyone raises their hands high, regardless of their culture,” she explained.

“At work, you might have to do things that make you feel bad.” She continued, for example, “If you’re not invited to a meeting you helped prepare for, you have to insist on being invited. But that’s not what a ‘good girl’ does. It can be difficult.”

Buck Luce chalked this difficulty up to challenges women have in creating transactional relationships. “Women are so wonderful at meeting friends, but when they’re asked about networking, they shudder. Why?”

She answered, “Women are great at building friends first, but ‘good girls’ don’t impose on their friends.”

Advice for Professional Women

“My advice for young women is to build your network before you need it,” Buck Luce said.

“Women do not have the internal or external networks they need to be successful. You have to be able to mobilize information, relationships, people, attitudes, emotions, inspiration – and you can’t command that. You have to have broad networks before you need them.”

She continued, “My other advice is to really examine your relationship with power. Have a clear idea of the importance of building power, and how you can use it to achieve your purpose on the planet.”

“Power is not a dirty word. It comes from your knowledge, your position, your relationships, your brand, your personality. And it can be used on behalf of others, rather than over others.”

As women become more senior in their organizations, she advised, it’s important not to shy away from politics. “It’s not a meritocracy, and the more senior you are, the less it is. You need to be clear about what you want and why you want it, let other people know, and elicit their support and build a campaign.”

“Things rarely come to you,” she explained. “You have to think about it as a political campaign, and be very strategic.”

Women at Ernst & Young

Buck Luce has been involved for the last 19 to 20 years on Ernst & Young’s journey to gender equity. “I was on the first committee reporting to the chairman to diagnose the challenges and come up with approaches to accelerate our journey to equity.”

She explained that the firm is working on five areas: internal networks, external networks, role models and mentors, the culture of work/life balance, and alternative work arrangements.

She also co-founded Ernst & Young’s professional women’s networks in the Northeast. “Women coming together to support each other is critical,” she explained.

For the past ten years, the firm has also sponsored an external networking event for clients called “Issues on My Mind,” which gathers 150 to 200 executive female clients. “Everyone has the opportunity to come together and talk about the issues,” she said.

Finally, she mentioned the firm’s Career Watch initiative, in which senior “career watchers” keep tabs on the careers of women and men from historically underrepresented groups, to make sure they are being included on important projects.

“If you’re not working on complex issues, with important clients that have powerful partners involved, that’s going to have a negative impact on your career,” she explained. “We’re trying to break the cycle of people wanting to work with people who look like them.”

In Her Personal Time

“I’m very involved and passionate about women being able to be the leaders they want to be,” Buck Luce said. “I co-founded the Hidden Brain Drain Task Force, which now includes 71 global private sector companies, to get to the second generation of policies and practices that do a better job for the advancement of women to senior leadership.”

She is also a commissioner on the New York City Mayor’s Commission on Women’s Issues and is on the board of the New York Women’s Foundation (and was previously its chair).

Additionally, Buck Luce is an adjunct professor at Columbia University, and teaches a graduate course on Women and Power.

She has three sons, a daughter, and one grandchild. “They are central to me – I do a lot of what I do so I can be a role model for them to guide them on how to live a life worth dying for,” she said.