Transgender Professional Women: Authenticity and Transitioning in the Workplace

MichellleFigueiredoBy Hadley Catalano (Boston)

After a successful managerial climb at State Street, a large global financial services company in Boston, Michelle Figueiredo made the most difficult decision of her professional career. She had her first conversation with the company’s human resources department about her true identity.

“I spoke for three hours with the woman in HR,” Figueiredo, who was professionally known as Michael before she transitioned, recalled. “She said to me, ‘we have never had this happen before, we’ll work with you. We support you 100 percent.”

A similar conversation occurred a year later at the Boston office of the large multi-national law firm Edwards Wildman where Sara Schnorr had been a lawyer for 30 plus years (Edwards Wildman is the successor to Edwards Angell Palmer & Dodge). Schnorr, who was named partner at the Boston office in 1987, had made the decision in 2009, at the age of 61, to professionally acknowledge her true identity. The law firm’s senior management, having known Sara as Tom – her given birth name – as an invaluable partner, told her, “of course we’ll support you.”

These two stories of male-to-female transition (MTF) are becoming more frequent in working environments throughout the state of Massachusetts, where the state legislature and local businesses are widening their anti-discrimination clauses. A 2011 law called An Act Relative to Gender Identity prohibits discrimination in several key areas and defines gender identity as “a person’s gender-related identity, appearance or behavior, whether or not that gender-related identity, appearance or behavior is different from that traditionally associated with the person’s physiology or assigned sex at birth.”

Even before the Massachusetts legislature enacted the law and the Governor signed it effective as of July 2012, employers across the state, both locally and those with global partners, were breaking barriers through the implementation of diversity policies, including the freedom for employees to self-identify. It’s a trend that, while not federally mandated, has been included in anti-discrimination polices for many private businesses across the country.

According to the Human Rights Campaign Foundation’s 2013 Corporate Equality Index (CEI) this year has seen 54 new businesses adjust their corporate policies as they relate to LGBT employees, 42 percent of the CEI-rated employers have distinct global codes of conduct or employment standards that are inclusive of both sexual orientation and gender identity, and of those same rated employers 83 percent have a LGBT Employee Resources Group or Diversity Council (as compared to 40 Percent in 2002).

State Street, where roughly 28,000 employees are spread out over 100 geographic markets worldwide, has a similar distinct global code and Figueiredo became the company’s first transgender women to transition MTF on the job. Her journey began by first explaining her true identity to family and friends. With the encouragement of her closest supporters she inquired with her company’s human resources department and was surprised and delighted to hear about their progressive diversity policy and support of her decision.

“I wanted to tell my co-workers personally,” Figueiredo explained, noting that the pivotal point in her determination to live her life as her true self was based on a promotion to a new managerial position. “I was nervous, but I wanted them to know that I was confident and proud of who I was.”

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A Deeper Layer of Diversity: Exploring Multicultural LGBT Identity at Work

iStock_000006712763XSmallBy Nicki Gilmour and Michelle Clark

Being out at work has shown to be good for business, good for team performance and good for the individual’s own sense of wellbeing. Furthermore, leaders are starting to recognize the power of creating open and honest work environments.

At The Glass Hammer, we try to always take the conversation further and this week as part of our Pride series, we explore what it means to be female and multicultural and LGBT working in financial or professional services or in the Fortune 500.

Compounded identities around gender, ethnicity, and LGBT and their effect on career advancement is most evident when we look at LGBT CEOs –a quick analysis suggests that white LGBT men, like white straight men are more likely to run Fortune 500 firms, while LGBT women are seen in charge of more entrepreneurial firms.

Last year our research arm, Evolved Employer, specifically focused on LGBT women in the workplace polling LGBT women who attended our Managing Identities at work career events in both the US and the UK. Our findings suggested that gender trumps LGBT status when it comes to how women feel about career advancement opportunities, how they network, and how they feel they are perceived at work. We will explore this topic more in our Multicultural women at work series scheduled to be released later this year.

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Voice of Experience: Julie Harris, Managing Director, Goldman Sachs

Julie HarrisWelcome to Pride Week on The Glass Hammer — we’ll be profiling successful LGBT business women all week long!

Julie Harris, Managing Director at Goldman Sachs, had a master plan when she entered college – or so she thought. “I come from a blue collar family,” said Harris, “and while my parents have always been incredibly supportive, they did not have a lot of advice on career choices, so I picked a major that seemed challenging and figured I would get a good job. That was my mental model.”

Harris decided that she was going to major in Computer Science and get a job programming. This trajectory probably would have served Harris very well had she not determined in her senior year of college that while she was very interested in applying technology to business problems, she did not love programming.

It was at this juncture that Harris first tapped into a bit of profound professional wisdom. Harris said, “It was the first time I made the distinction between knowing what you can do and are good at, versus knowing what you love doing.” She adds, “This is something I have thought a lot about throughout my career when making choices. When you follow passions instead of just capabilities, it can be the difference between good and great.”

Although Harris had just spent four years preparing to graduate with a Computer Science major and enter the workforce as a top notch programmer, she was unwilling to settle. So, instead of heading to a traditional programming job, Harris decided to apply her technology background in a burgeoning industry at the time known as consulting.

“All the big accounting firms started building consulting arms because clients wanted total solutions.” Harris continued, “I started working at what was then known as Arthur Andersen, which became Andersen Consulting, and is now Accenture, in the Management Information Consulting division.” Out of the nine years Harris spent there, she only focused on programming for two of those years, ultimately moving to business analysis roles which focused more on application of technology to business problems .

Even though this experience formed the foundation for Harris’ professional career, she gleaned much more from her time as a consultant. Harris explained, “The great thing about a firm like that is that it taught someone who didn’t have professional experience how to be structured and disciplined, essentially how to be a professional.”

If Harris was going to continue to be a key player in the corporate arena she knew she had to familiarize herself with the business landscape in order to successfully navigate it. Although her knowledge of business, particularly in the financial services sector, was limited, Harris was not deterred. Instead, this motivated her to enroll in the MBA program at the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern.

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Relationships are Everything in Businesses

JohnKeyserContributed by John Keyser

Relationships matter. If someone trusts us, respects us, has confidence in us and wants to work with us, that can go a very long way to ensure our success. And we must realize that we must earn and continue to earn that trusting relationship, every day.

My experience as an executive in the corporate world and now leadership consultant and coach to CEOs and senior executives in businesses and nonprofit institutions, is that too few in senior management realize that relationships with those who choose to do business with us, our external clients, are vitally important, of course – and so are our relationships with the people within our organization.

Our relationships with our people are every bit as important! They both are top priorities! As the renowned management professor and expert Tom Peters said some time back, “Take good care of your people and they will take good care of your clients.”

The business world is so demanding today. When I was growing up, my father got to his office 8:30 and left at 5:30 and did not bring home hours of work each night and each weekend, as most of us do today. We work in a super competitive environment with pressure on fees charged and profit margins. In the past, companies dictated to clients what their fees would be. Those days are long gone.

And today we have to do more with fewer people.

As managers, hopefully as leaders, we have to drive for results. Absolutely. That is certainly true if we are with a publicly owned company and have to meet 90-day financial targets. And if we’re with a privately owned company, the pressure is still there. Certainly, there are the needs to focus on numbers and also our relationships with our clients, or we risk losing them.

What some senior managers fail to realize is that we must also focus on our internal relationships – and not just with our chief executive, operating, financial, technology, marketing, talent management, human resource and other chief officers.

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Thought Leaders: Chris Crespo, Inclusiveness Director, Ernst & Young LLP

Chris CrespoWelcome to Pride Week on The Glass Hammer — we’ll be profiling successful LGBT business women all week long!

When Chris Crespo was applying for her first job out of college, professional services firms hadn’t yet taken many steps to address diversity challenges. “When I started in the industry, we didn’t talk about diversity and inclusion. They made an effort to have a woman interviewer, if you were a woman. And that was it,” she recalled.

“Now we see diversity and inclusion as part of what we do to brand ourselves as leaders in the industry in terms of meeting client needs, learning new things, and doing everything we can to be as strong as we can in this area,” she explained.

Crespo has had a lot to do with that change. In addition to working as Inclusiveness Director at Ernst & Young LLP, she was the catalyst behind the firm’s lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) professional network, Beyond.

“The biggest way I’ve changed over the course of my career is listening more and figuring out what it is that I don’t know. It used to be very easy for me to argue with people,” she reflected. “It’s been an important lesson for me along the way that sometimes what seems so obvious to me is not obvious to other people. I needed to learn to ask more questions and find out the reasons behind why people were seeing something differently from me.”

She continued, “There were times on the LGBT side where it was easy for me to get angry – for example, ‘why don’t we have partner benefits?’ And more often than not it was a lack of other people’s understanding. It became evident to me that there are some things other people had never thought of. The Beyond network is a good example of that. We had a women’s network, a few ethnic minority networks, and I said, ‘Why don’t we have an LGBT network?’”

“And the next thing I know, I’m leading one,” she said with a laugh. “That’s the other thing – when you ask questions, be prepared to follow up on them.”

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Movers and Shakers: Lanaya Irvin, Vice President, Global Banking and Markets, Bank of America Merrill Lynch

Lanaya Irvin

Lanaya Irvin, Vice President, Bank of America Merrill Lynch, believes the financial services industry can only serve to benefit by moving toward greater diversity and inclusion.

“The glass ceiling is still very much a real thing. The industry continues to be male dominated at senior leadership levels. Sexism exists in some places just as racism exists.” But, she continued, the industry is evolving, and old stereotypes are giving way to more inclusive cultures. Industry leaders are working to change those perceptions, transform culture, and some of the legacy that may create hurdles for women and other groups. Our firm has been proactive in driving a culture of inclusivity.”

She believes this evolution is is, in part, a response to the challenges that the financial services industry has faced in recent years. After all, diversity provides the unique viewpoints and solutions that companies need today to gain an edge in an increasingly competitive marketplace. “At a high level, what’s particularly interesting to me is the positive shift the industry has been able to make. The domestic and global economic environment has required adjustment. Our strategy has been to refocus on our clients, and maintain that laser focus on the ways we can deliver value to them. Companies need diverse, talented professionals to do that.”

Irvin is leader of the Bank’s LGBT Pride Employee Network for Metro New York and the first female co-chair of Interbank Roundtable Committee, a consortium of 29 banks and financial services firms working together to share best practices around LGBT diversity and inclusion.

She believes that, as a group that represents multiple facets of diversity, LGBT women may face additional challenges when it comes to advancement, but she encouraged LGBT women to own their identities and stay true to themselves. “There is the complexity of having multiple minority identities. I think lesbian, bisexual, and transgender women in the workplace face many of the same challenges as heterosexual women, but silence around that identity can be more difficult.”

“For LGBT women, I would say, make your presence known,” she advised. “Our firm has made it clear that those perceived barriers should not exist and need to be disrupted. These barriers are not insurmountable.”

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Voice of Experience: Kathy Levinson, Managing Director, Golden Seeds

KathyLevinsonWelcome to Pride Week on The Glass Hammer — we’ll be profiling successful LGBT business women all week long!

By Michelle Clark (Keene, NH)

When you ask Kathy Levinson, Managing Director at Golden Seeds, what her greatest professional accomplishment is, she will modestly talk about the details of her fourteen year career at investment firm Charles Schwab, or briefly mention what it was like to be the President of E*TRADE. But, it is when she speaks about the positive difference she has made in the lives of people who face professional challenges simply because they are different, that you really hear the pride shine through in Kathy Levinson’s voice.

Levinson did not always plan to be such an influential leader in the financial services industry. “My original plan when I was younger,” she says, “was to be a professional tennis player or a professional violin player, so I really I had no idea or intention that I would be an influential business leader, much less at the time, an out lesbian or a woman leading a company.”

In 1979, Levinson answered an ad in the newspaper for a broker’s assistant job at financial services firm, Bache, Halsey & Stuart, after letting go of her dream to achieve athletic or musical stardom. This, she says, “Was my unintentional and serendipitous start in the financial services industry.”

At Bache, Levinson experienced a lot of gender-based discrimination and verbal abuse and even some physical harassment, which was pretty common for women entering the male-dominated financial services industry at that time. Levinson sums up the general workplace culture by saying, “The words to describe women came in four letter words, maybe five letter words, and none of them were pleasant.” However, despite facing such an oppressive environment, as Levinson described it, she made the most of her time at Bache. During her year as a broker’s assistant, Levinson obtained her stock brokerage license.

After leaving Bache, Levinson had a short stint at a money management firm, but continued to struggle with finding her place in such a hostile environment. She eventually found her niche at a little known company at the time called Charles Schwab. Levinson recalls how she felt, “Charles Schwab seemed to fit me from both a philosophical and a values perspective.” She continues, “It was a renegade firm, the first financial services firm to be based on the West coast.”

Charles Schwab was a game changer in the financial industry because it was one of the first financial services firms established after new laws were introduced in the mid 1970s deregulating commissions on the buying and selling of stock. Unlike all other brokerage companies, Schwab’s brokers were salaried – they did not get paid commissions. In many ways, there are important parallels between Levinson and Charles Schwab. That is Wall Street wanted them both to fail – Levinson for not fitting the profile of a typical financial services professional and Schwab for creating an entirely new way for consumers to invest which benefited the investors instead of the brokers.

“When I went into the headquarters office at Charles Schwab for my interview, I saw women and young people, and that environment felt more appropriate for me.” Apparently, Levinson’s feeling was spot on as she spent fourteen years at Charles Schwab, holding a number of different positions. Aside from gaining valuable experience at Schwab, Levinson also felt like she was finally working in an environment where the company’s leaders were receptive to change, especially when it came to welcoming women into the world of investing. “I saw my higher level purpose as helping women become more financially secure and manage their money. Schwab was making investing easier for women, since women were so unwelcome at traditional brokerage firms, not only as employees but as customers.”

Yet, Levinson still recalls moments at Schwab where she felt like an outsider. Naturally, when Levinson arrived at Schwab, one of the first steps she took was to scan the company’s organization chart for a woman’s name. She found one woman in senior management, which certainly wasn’t uncommon at the time. Levinson recalls, “I got up my nerve to walk up to the executive floor and into her office. I told her how impressed I was by how far she had gotten in her career, and how I wanted to learn from her.” The response Levinson got wasn’t quite what she expected. “I was treated so harshly,” says Levinson. “She said to me that you just need to work hard and being a woman doesn’t matter at all because we’re no different.”

Levinson was taken aback by this misguided advice, but like she so often does when faced with adversity, she used this event to fuel her greater mission of promoting diversity in the workplace by promising herself that when she got to a senior level position, she would always make herself available as a mentor to women, lesbians, or anyone else who felt like they were struggling in their career based on the fact that they were different.

Feeling fulfilled by everything that she had accomplished at Charles Schwab, Levinson turned her focus to spending more time with her family until she received a phone call from a company called TradePlus, offering her a position at their firm. Levinson was so dedicated to establishing and raising her family at the time, she refused to even consider a position at any company located outside a five mile radius of her home. Luckily, TradePlus fit the bill.

Levinson had been committed to taking some time off, so instead of joining TradePlus as a full-time employee, Levinson became a consultant for the company, as that seemed like less of a formal commitment at the time. After serving as a consultant for a little over a year, Levinson became President of the brokerage company, which soon thereafter morphed into E*TRADE, becoming one of the first financial services firms to offer internet trading. Shortly after, Levinson became President and COO of the holding company.

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Personal Power and Your Posture – What Does Your Smartphone Have to Do With It?

Businesswoman using smart phoneBy Melissa J. Anderson (New York City)

Blackberry addict? According to a new Harvard study, you may be sabotaging your leadership style by stooping over your smartphone. Sure, it may seem a little silly that your phone could influence how much confidence you exude, but research into posture and the psychology of power is no joke.

Studies have shown that when people use expansive postures they tend to feel and act more powerful. After spending as few as two minutes adopting an expansive posture, people are more willing to take risks and they tend to do better in interviews. They may also be less fearful or stressed out.

Now, say researchers Maarten W. Bos and Amy J.C. Cuddy, there is reason to believe that using bigger technology may lead you to be more assertive, and smaller tech to be less assertive. They believe it has to do with how your device affects your posture. They write:

“Just before walking into a meeting, many of us are hunched over our smart phones, reading and responding to emails, and reviewing last minute notes. Following this frenzied attempt to efficiently manage our time, we have to be on our game in the meeting. Recent research documenting the benefits of adopting expansive (vs. contractive) body postures – “power posing” – suggests that hunching over our smart phones before a stressful social interaction, like a job interview, may undermine our confidence and performance during that interaction.”

Bos and Cuddy set out to test this hypothesis, and according to their new working paper [PDF], people in their experiment who were using bigger pieces of technology (like an iMac) were more assertive than those with small ones (like an iPhone).

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The Glass Ceiling is Real – Why are Leaders Taking So Long to Get Rid of It?

Business woman on the phone checking watchBy Melissa J. Anderson (New York City)

According to a survey of over 1,000 Americans by Edward Jones, women are more ambitious than men. About two-thirds of male and female respondents say that women strive harder than men when it comes to getting leadership roles at work.

But if women are so ambitious, why aren’t there more of them at the top?

The reason, according to the survey, is that the glass ceiling is alive and well. In fact, about two-thirds of respondents (65 percent) believe that women face additional barriers to advancement.

Respondents said the main factors blocking women’s advancement to leadership included male-dominated workplaces (83 percent), the juggle between work and family (73 percent), inadequate policies for women at work (62 percent), and a lack of mentoring leading up to executive levels (56 percent).

Yes, you read that right: according to this study, two-thirds of Americans believe there are structural challenges blocking women’s advancement at work. What’s more, one factor that was definitely not at the top of the list was the notion that women are not trying hard enough to get into leadership roles. In fact, based on the respondents’ views on gender and ambition, women are already leaning in pretty hard.

Here’s what business leaders can do to remove some of those barriers standing in the way of those ambitious, well-educated women – and help themselves in the process, since gender diversity has been shown time and time again to improve company’s’ performance in real, measurable results.

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Three Takeaways in Our Latest Research on Women in Tech That Will Really Make You Think

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Woman Typing on Computer Keyboard In OfficeBy Melissa J. Anderson (New York City)

Today The Glass Hammer is releasing the latest in our series of research papers: Women in Technology: Leaders of Tomorrow. Sponsored by Accenture, the report examines the next generation of women leaders in technology and the responsibility that companies have in supporting their growth and development.

At our Women in Tech career event last fall, we heard stories of success from women in senior technology roles at their companies. But afterward, during the Q&A and networking sessions, we found that our guests (junior and mid-level women technologists) still had some questions. They had a lot of ambition, but they seemed unsure of how to approach real obstacles in their climb to the top. They asked questions like how to make sure they are taken seriously and getting credit for the work they’ve done, how to deal with supervisors who just don’t seem to acknowledge their potential, and how to be seen and remembered in a field rife with turnover and near-constant reorganization.

Issues like these, we believe, are the ones that drive women to leave technology careers, rather than realize their full potential as leaders.

Yet, the solutions to these issues have little to do women themselves. They are systemic problems within organizations that push women to the side and don’t provide them with the opportunities to flex their very capable leadership muscles. With this research, we sought to find out what engages women leaders, how to support them as they advance, and what they think of leadership and themselves.

Over the next few weeks, we’ll be examining more closely the findings of our report and what they mean for women in technology as well as the companies that need them. Here are three big takeaways from our report.

1. Women in Tech are Ambitious. The vast majority (85.3 percent) of the women who responded to our survey (almost 200 women in junior and mid-level technology roles around the world, but mainly focused in New York) said they hoped to get a promotion in the next three years. This is not big news – career advancement is a short term goal for a lot of people.

But our respondents’ ambition was not limited to the short term.

Almost two-thirds (62 percent) of our respondents said they hoped to make it to the C-Suite or Senior Management someday. This is higher than other similar measures that have been reported in recent years. For example, in McKinsey’s 2012 report “Unlocking the full potential of women at work,” only 41 percent of successful women executives said they were interested in a C-Suite job.

We don’t know if long-term ambition is a common characteristic of women in technology as a whole, or if it was just a common characteristic of the women who chose to take our survey. Since The Glass Hammer is a career website for women interested in leadership, it seems likely that these are the type of people who would respond. Either way, we believe this means our report provides a unique insight into what high potential women technologists are looking for in their career and company.

2. Less Than a Quarter Say Their Company “Walks the Talk” on Women’s Advancement. At many companies, it’s become fashionable for corporate leaders to talk about the “business case” for women’s advancement, and to discuss why their companies should develop more inclusive cultures that empower women. But, our survey shows, that’s not as common as we might think. Less than half of our respondents (44.6 percent) said their leaders are vocally supportive of women.

What’s more, less than a quarter of our respondents (24.5 percent) said companies “walk the talk” by following through on the values espoused by corporate leadership by providing real support for women.

A trend in our research showed that “walking the talk” is really important for igniting women’s desire to lead. Women who worked at companies that “walked the talk” were often more interested in advancing to the C-Suite someday. This points to the critical importance of companies following through on promises by providing real, tangible resources for programs designed to develop women leaders.

3. Women Believe They Have Different Core Traits than Today’s Leaders. We were curious about what women thought of today’s leaders, and we were also curious about how that compares to the way they see themselves. In our survey, we presented our respondents with a list of ten traits and asked them to pick three to describe today’s leaders. Later on, we presented the same list and asked them to pick the three that best describe themselves. The differences were striking.

Top 3 Traits for Leaders        
 Top 3 Traits to Describe Yourself
Collaborative (44%) Collaborative (50.5%)
Innovative (41.9%) Honest (47.8%)
Decisive (38.0%) Goal Oriented (44.0%)
Technically Adept (35.3%) Confident (32.1%)
Confident (33.2%) High EQ (32.1%)
High EQ (30.4%) Passionate (27.7%)
Goal Oriented (28.3%) Technically Adept (23.9%)
Passionate (23.4%) Creative (23.4%)
Honest (19.6%) Decisive (22.8%)
Creative (16.3%) Innovative (17.9%)

The number one trait women chose to describe both themselves and technology leaders was “Collaborative.” Otherwise, the lists couldn’t be more different. Women described themselves as “Honest” much more than their leaders. They also described themselves as “Goal Oriented” more frequently. On the other hand, for leaders, “Innovative” and “Decisive” were top traits, but they were at the bottom of the list of traits women used to describe themselves.

This poses an interesting question: do women anticipate growing into the traits that mark today’s leaders? Or do they expect to change what it means to be a leader tomorrow?

Our research also produced meaningful information on sponsorship, networking, role models, and more – we will explore these topics further in the coming weeks. Click here to download a full report [PDF].

We would like to thank Accenture for sponsoring this very important research. If you have any questions about how corporate leaders can use this information to better attract, retain, and develop female technologists, please contact our Founder and CEO, Nicki Gilmour at nicki@theglasshammer.com.

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