Happy Holidays from the Team at the glasshammer2.wpengine.com

christmas‘Tis the season to be jolly and we wish you and yours a festive break and a Merry Christmas to those who celebrate it. We will return on January 2, 2014 to bring you the best career advice that we can muster from our editorial team, which includes 15 freelance journalists from around the globe.

This year we have written over 400 stories and have endeavored to live up to our mission of informing, inspiring, and empowering you as you navigate your career in financial and professional services. We will continue to write articles, produce events, and provide resources in 2014.

This is a rare time of year, one of the few instances in which even the busiest among us can take a few days or weeks to relax and reflect. Reading, I’ve found, is enables both of those things wonderfully.

A lot of books come across my desk, but I wanted to share some of my recent favorites with you:

“Heels of Steel: Surviving & Thriving in the Corporate” by Vanessa Vallely: A charming story that details a young girl’s transition into womanhood while working in the ultra-competitive technology departments of London’s leading banks. The book features great practical advice about networking and overall, is a fun, especially if you’ve come across Vanessa and can imagine her cockney accent narrating the tale.

“Everyday Negotiations: Navigating the Hidden Agendas in Bargaining” by Deborah Kolb and Judith Williams: This book is a very useful how-to when it comes to managing the conversations and interactions around negotiations. Based on solid advice and evidence, “Everyday Negotiations” gives you the skills needed to spot the power and authority dynamics often at play between two people wanting mutual gains. Published in 2003, it’s not a new book, but very timely in light of Deborah and her colleague’s recent research surrounding second-generation gender bias in Harvard Business Review.

“Nice Girls Just Don’t Get It: 99 Ways to Win the Respect You Deserve, the Success You’ve Earned, and the Life You Want” by Lois Frankel and Carol Frohlinger: Girls are mostly socialized to play nice, not make demands, and let others be the captain. I have seen “nice girls” who are a million times more qualified than their male counterparts, but yet they stand in men’ shadows. This book will make you think about how you, your colleagues, friends, sisters, and daughters behave and hopefully, will make you see that there’s a lot on the line that “nice” may not get you, including money, power, and success.

See you in the New Year!

Best Wishes,

Nicki Gilmour, CEO & Founder, theglasshammer.com

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How Top Companies are Tackling Second-Generation Gender Bias and Closing the Gender Gap in Leadership

iStock_000006492382XSmallBy Mai Browne

The past two decades have seen notable progress for women in corporate America, as most forms of overt gender discrimination have been eliminated and many companies have invested in women’s advancement initiatives and organizational change programs. So why is it that the dial has barely moved for women at the highest ranks of business?

Last year’s “Fortune 500 Women Executive Officers and Top Earners” report by Catalyst revealed that women held only 16.6 percent of corporate board seats in 2012—the seventh straight year of no growth. It was also reported that women held 14.3 percent of executive officer positions for the third year in a row.

The gender gap in leadership is a major concern, not only for women who aspire to leadership, but also for companies that need strong, diverse leadership teams to help them compete successfully in a marketplace that is increasingly female, global, and volatile.

Why does the gender gap in leadership persist? The answer is complicated, but one piece of the puzzle is second-generation gender bias. This is quite different from first-generation gender bias, which is characterized by intentional acts of bias. Second-generation gender bias was examined in the recent Harvard Business Review article “Women Rising: The Unseen Barriers,” written by Robin Ely, Herminia Ibarra, and Deborah Kolb. The authors describe second-generation bias as “cultural assumptions and organizational structures and practices that inadvertently benefit men while putting women at a disadvantage.” These dynamics can go far in shaping formal systems, including promotion practices and compensation practices.

Double Binds
Second-generation gender bias reveals itself when women leaders find themselves in “double binds” because many characteristics associated with leadership are linked with masculinity. Words like “strong,” “assertive,” and “decisive,” the authors write, tend to engender confidence from colleagues when these attributes are associated with men. Women who display these attributes, however, are often seen as unlikeable or bossy. It should come as no surprise that the workplace prefers women to be empathetic, caretaking, and unselfish, yet women who demonstrate these “nice” qualities are liked and not respected. They are regarded as too soft to be a strong leader. It’s a no-win situation.

Another example of this particular form of bias is women’s lack of access to influential networks and sponsors. As we well know, informal networks are crucial for aspiring leaders, but as the authors note, “the differences in men’s and women’s organizational positions, and the tendency for each to network with others of the same gender, leads to women building weaker networks than men — and having less access to mentors and sponsors who have the ability to help them get promoted.”

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Movers & Shakers: Stephanie Weimer, Regional Vice President, ING U.S. Investment Management (ING U.S. IM)

 

women shaking handsWhile attending Pennsylvania State University, a friend’s father, who was President of Sun Life Financial Distributors, told Stephanie Weimer that she absolutely had to get into financial services. “I looked at him like he was crazy,” Weimer laughed. He said, “‘You’re smart and there aren’t enough women in the industry. If you enter it, you’ll be really successful.’”

He was right, of course.

Weimer is now Regional Vice President where she wholesales various mutual funds and separately-managed account products throughout the New England area. This is Weimer’s sixth year in the role and she has consistently ranked as one of the top salespeople for the company, despite covering one of the smaller regional areas.

From CIA to ING

Even upon entering the industry in 2006, Weimer still had no idea that financial services would be her career path. She had every intention of being a field agent in the CIA. When her friend’s father – the same man who urged her to enter the industry – offered her a job as an internal wholesaler with Sun Life, she gave him a one-year commitment as she waited for a background check with the CIA to clear. The problem was that her clearance went through quickly. As a woman of her word, she decided to maintain her commitment with Sun Life.

“It worked out for the best. I don’t dwell on it and I’m truly happy with where I am – and I’ve really come to love this industry,” Weimer said. “I learned the ropes with Sun Life, beginning as an internal wholesaler. In less than two years, I was offered a job as an external wholesaler with ING U.S. IM. That’s a quick move from internal to external.”

Interestingly it’s the skills that Weimer believed would make her successful in the CIA that have proven to be the most helpful in her success in financial services.

“I love to figure out what makes people tick and find out what they need and help them find a solution. Effective communication has proven to be one of my strongest assets,” Weimer said.

The Business of Golf

Weimer says that when first starting out in the industry, she wishes she would have understood the importance of having a good golf game. In first grade, her mom enrolled her in a junior golf league, but she had no patience for it.

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The Glass Hammer: 2013, A Year in Review

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Nicki HeadshotBy Nicki Gilmour, Founder and CEO of The Glass Hammer

The Glass Hammer wants to congratulate the women who have broken the glass ceiling by joining the C-suite or becoming Executive Officers at Fortune 500 (US), FTSE 100 (UK), and other globally-listed companies on stock exchanges this year. Special congratulations are in order for the highest profile CEO female joiners featured on the 2013 Fortune, including Marillyn Hewson of Lockheed Martin, Mary Barra, CEO of GM motors, and Lynn Good, CEO of Duke Energy.

The achievements of these women become even more impressive in light of recent findings reported in Catalyst’s end-of-year census. Both the 2013 Catalyst Census: Fortune 500 Women Board Directors and the 2013 Catalyst Census: Fortune 500 Women Executive Officers and Top Earners found that number of women on boards and the number of women executive officers have not increased by even a single percentage point in the past year. In 2012, women held only 16.6 percent of board seats. In 2013, it was 16.9 percent. Last year, women held 14.3 percent of executive officer positions. In 2013, women held 14.6 percent. There was also no gain year over year, as women held only 8.1 percent of Executive Officer top earner slots.

The UK is showing a better rate of gains for women on Boards, with the current figure sitting at 19 percent in the FTSE 100 . Also, 24 percent of all appointments since May have been women.

So, despite more women than ever before being in the workforce, the numbers just aren’t moving. This is not to say that women aren’t gaining ground in other areas, but they’re often in the most battered of companies and industries. This comes as no surprise. The Glass Hammer has written extensively about women taking on the mantle of leadership during a time of crisis, otherwise known as the “glass cliff”. Writer Melissa Anderson outlined the pitfalls of “think female, think crisis” astutely, writing, “The position is highly visible and comes with a lot of potential power – but the risk of failure is high; so high in fact, that the board or management committee decides it’s time to try something completely new and different to try and get it right: put a woman in charge.”

Here’s the question that begs answer: why are the numbers stagnant?

What is Stopping Us?
According to the article “More women leaders in D.C. than C suite”, experience is more crucial in business than it is in American politics. In the piece, Herminia Ibarra, professor of organizational behavior at France’s Insead business school, said that to become CEO of a big company, you typically have to have had several key jobs. The professor cited Ginni Rometty, chair and CEO of IBM, and Marissa Mayer, CEO at Yahoo, as examples of women who held senior management seats before the leap into the C-suite.

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The 2013 Catalyst Census: Progress in the Fortune 500 Remains Flat

iStock_000006262297XSmallBy Tina Vasquez, Editor

Catalyst has been tracking women’s representation at the highest levels of corporate America since the 1990’s and according to Rachel Soares, the organization’s Director of Research, 20 years of data indicates that historically, things are moving in the right direction, but we are currently at a standstill.

The 2013 Catalyst Census: Fortune 500 Women Board Directors and the 2013 Catalyst Census: Fortune 500 Women Executive Officers and Top Earners released December 10, indicate a troubling trend: no movement. Catalyst reports there has been little to no increase for women on boards in corporate America. In 2012, women held only 16.6 percent of board seats. In 2013, it was 16.9. In both 2012 and 2013, less than one-fifth of companies had 25 percent or more women directors, while one-tenth had no women serving on their boards. Even more dispiriting, less than one-quarter of companies had three or more women directors serving together in both 2012 and 2013.

There was also no change for women in top leadership. According to Catalyst’s findings, the needle barely budged for women aspiring to top business leadership in corporate America. Last year, women held 14.3 percent of executive officer positions. In 2013, women held 14.6 percent.
There was also no gain year over year, as women held only 8.1 percent of Executive Officer top earner slots. In both 2012 and 2013, one-fifth of companies had 25 percent or more women Executive Officers, yet more than one-quarter had no women Executive Officers.

Catalyst’s President & CEO, Ilene H. Lang, expressed her disappointment with the findings.

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Lonely at Work? You’re Not Alone

Liz ODonnell headshot 3x3-2By Liz O’Donnell

We often hear that for c-level executives, it’s lonely at the top. Well, it can be lonely on the way to the top too, and feeling isolated can be a major career hurdle for many women pursuing professional goals.

Several years ago I was working as the head of marketing for a family-owned business run by three brothers. I was the only female vice president. The head of sales and I, in order to foster a strong relationship between our two departments, shared an office. At least twice a week, one of the owners would stop by and ask my officemate, a man, to go to lunch. I was never invited.

I knew that because I was a woman, I would never forge the kind of casual, tight relationship with ownership that my peer did, and that I was missing out on the informal bonding and decision-making that took place across a lunch table instead of a conference table. On top of that, I was lonely. The only other women in the company were administrative staff, part-time consultants, and women who reported to me. I occasionally had lunch with my team, but they often didn’t want to hang out with their boss on their lunch break and despite my solid working relationship with my officemate, I experienced little camaraderie with my male peers and my female subordinates. I thought what I was experiencing was unique to the company, but in fact, many women, as our numbers dwindle on the way to the corner office, experience the same feeling of isolation at work.

Women Leaving is Bad for Women
Just look at the legal profession. According to the American Bar Association, despite women earning close to 50 percent of law degrees and representing approximately 45 percent of associate positions in private practices, only about 20 percent of women are at the partner level. That attrition doesn’t just impact women’s job satisfaction; it impacts their bank accounts.

While writing my book Mogul, Mom & Maid: The Balancing Act of the Modern Woman, I met several women who expressed concern about the lack of female peers at work. One woman, an attorney named Holli, had seen many of her female colleagues drop out of the workforce – and their absence impacted her career. Not only was she lonely as one of the few women in her firm and her practice area, but she was concerned about how the situation was affecting her ability to be a rainmaker.

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Voice of Experience: Christina Minnis, Managing Director in Healthcare M&A Investment Banking, Goldman Sachs

Christina MinnisChristina Minnis says that upon graduating from Yale in 1987, she had no real experience in the financial services industry and absolutely no Wall Street experience. “I was an intern at a bank and that was the extent of it,” Minnis said.

She obtained her Master of Management degree from the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University in 1991 before forging her career with Goldman Sachs beginning in 1998, where she began as a vice president in the Investment Banking Division (IBD), focusing on leveraged finance deals primarily for the financial sponsors group. In 2001, Minnis joined the Fixed Income Division as part of Capital Markets and focused on industrials followed by healthcare. She was named managing director in 2004 and partner in 2008.

Today, Minnis is co-head of Goldman Sachs’ Healthcare Group in the Americas and head of the Healthcare Leveraged Finance Group and the Pension Strategies Group. She serves as a member of the IBD Operating Committee, and the Global Recruiting Council, while also co-heading global recruiting for IBD and serving as the chair of diversity for IBD.

Healthcare: A Thriving Industry

Of her many achievements, it is her work in the Healthcare Group that Minnis is most proud of.

“I’m incredibly proud of what we have built in our Leveraged Finance healthcare franchise. When we started, the healthcare leveraged finance revenue was less than $10 million and the team consisted of myself and an analyst,” Minnis said. “Now we’ve built our team up to seven people, and we’re fully integrated into banking. It’s been an amazing collaboration and a terrific accomplishment.”

It’s an interesting and exciting time to be working in healthcare from the perspective of the investment banking industry. The Affordable Care Act has created a great deal of change, and though Minnis says there are many challenges, there are also “great opportunities.”

“So many people choose the healthcare field because they want to add good to the world by developing useful technology and helping the quality of care. This is a dynamic time in history for this industry and though the role I play in investment banking is very different, it’s exciting to be a part of it,” Minnis said.

The People Part

Minnis says that many coming into the investment banking industry are unaware how crucial good client skills are.

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Breakfast of Corporate Champions: Eye-Opening and Inspiring

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boardroom womanBy Natalie Sabia Hackett

Despite a strong push for gender parity over the past 20 years, women on Fortune 500 boards have only increased, on average, by half a percent annually. Today, 40 percent of Fortune 500 companies have, at the most, one woman on their boards. At less than 17 percent representation, it will take 75 years to even out. On November 21, those statistics were enough to draw about 300 attendees to the New York Stock Exchange for the second bi-annual Breakfast of Corporate Champions, an event by the Women’s Forum of New York in partnership with the Committee for Economic Development and the National Association of Corporate Directors. The purpose of the breakfast was two-fold: to honor 174 US-based Fortune 500 Companies and 31 Fortune 1000 companies in the New York area with corporate boards that are at least 20 percent female and to hear CEOs discuss their companies’ success and how others can move toward parity.

Janice Reals Ellig, co-CEO of Chadick Ellig, opened the event, discussing the reasons to applaud the companies and executive leaders in the audience while also encouraging them to help inspire others to follow in their footsteps. “We honored the companies and their key decision makers to this event today and you have filled this room,” Ellig said. “You are driving change in the board room and we thank you for that.”

The Women’s Forum of New York City: Opening Doors
The Women’s Forum is New York City’s distinguished organization of over 450 women leaders representing the highest levels of achievement across all professional and business sectors, from finance to fine arts. Membership in the Forum is limited and by invitation only. Founded in 1974 by Elinor Guggenheimer, the Women’s Forum mission is to form a community where preeminent New York women leaders of diverse achievement come together to make a difference for each other and to take an active, leadership role in matters of importance to them.

Judy Woodruff, co-anchor and managing editor of PBS NewsHour, monitored a panel at the breakfast, reminding the attendees the event was about figuring out how to open more doors for women, as only 16 percent of board members are women.

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Voice of Experience: Stephanie Schnabel, Managing Director, Corporate Development, Accenture

Stephanie K. SchnabelBy Tina Vasquez, Editor

Stephanie Schnabel joined Accenture in April of 2001 and since 2005, she has led the organization’s corporate development efforts where she is responsible for the evaluation and execution of all potential global acquisitions and divestitures. Though she’s had a stellar career in M&A, what motivates her is not the acknowledgment of her peers, but rather the impression she is gifting her daughters.

“I’m a working mom with two young daughters and I want to ensure I’m a positive role model for them,” Schnabel said. “My mother was a professional in a male dominated industry and the first woman to get her master’s degree in mechanical engineering in the former East Germany. She encouraged me to have confidence in my capabilities, to work hard and to execute, and she continues to be a valuable role model for me at the young age of 87.”

Driving Growth
The Princeton University and Wharton alumna says that the one common theme in her successful career thus far has been “working to drive growth.”

In college, she worked for General Electric in their Plastics and their Nuclear Energy Businesses, which were industries “at very different stages of maturity, facing very different growth challenges.” Upon graduating, she worked as a strategy consultant developing growth strategies for clients in North America and Europe. Later, she utilized these skills at the private equity firm Catterton Partners, providing growth capital to businesses. Before joining Accenture, Schnabel took on the role of interim CEO at one of Catterton’s portfolio companies.

At Accenture, Schnabel works in close collaboration with Accenture’s leadership around the globe to ensure the organization is developing the right strategies and identifying and executing transactions.

“I have the pleasure of working with a strong team and we work with diverse parts of our business to acquire technology and services businesses to help further Accenture’s differentiation in key growth sectors,” Schnabel said. “I’m most proud of my role in developing a robust corporate development capability and driving impactful transactions for Accenture. I’m also proud of being able to tackle the diverse issues that arise in this field, including being able to navigate constant change in the technology space and deal with the economic, cultural, and business considerations of doing transactions on a global basis – while maintaining a fulfilling family life with my husband and two young daughters.”

Maximizing Your Impact
The recent Accenture survey “Defining Success” resonated with Schnabel deeply, as it highlighted the importance of personally defining success.

“It’s so important to maintain your drive, but you also need to know yourself well enough to know how to maximize your impact,” Schnabel said. “I am a mother, wife, daughter, and a working professional and face many of the same balance challenges other women face. It is critical to occasionally step back and think about how you can be most effective across all your priorities. We need to be honest with ourselves and focus on impact and efficacy, not just putting in long hours. It’s important to keep your eyes on your long-term goals and maintain your drive to reach your potential.”

Entering M&A
Schnabel says the M&A field is highly demanding, but it’s possible to have a fulfilling life, including family and other interests.

“Women entering this industry should recognize that it may not be easy, but much of their destiny is in their hands and it’s extremely important to keep focused on your long-term goals,” Schnabel said. “Think of your career as a chess game, not just thinking of your next move, but what position you want to be in a few moves down the board.”

The managing director also suggests focusing on effectiveness, impact, and continually challenging yourself as to how you can best leverage your skills to benefit your stakeholders. Schnabel also places emphasis on the importance of mentors, asserting that your best mentors don’t have to be women.

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Are Business Schools The Solution for Reaching Boardroom Parity?

business schoolBy Tina Vasquez, Editor

According to the Alliance Board for Diversity’s recent report “Missing Pieces: Women and Minorities on Fortune 500 Boards”, men hold a bulk of the 5,488 board seats at American companies, with women representing just 16.6 percent of board seats, a percentage that hasn’t changed since 2004. The 2013 Catalyst Census: Fortune 500 Women Board Directors and the 2013 Catalyst Census: Fortune 500 Women Executive Officers and Top Earners confirm the same, announcing that while companies based in other countries are moving ahead with plans to advance women to top leadership, progress in the Fortune 500 remains flat.

We all know that progress is slow, but few anticipated that it would be so stagnant, begging the question of whether or not addressing parity at the corporate level too late. While we may never know the answer, one thing is for sure: the actions of business schools can naturally lead to more diversity in the c-level suite and on corporate boards.

This, according to Susan Kulp, associate professor of accountancy at George Washington University School of Business. In hopes of once again jumpstarting the number of women on boards, the school has created a new program called On the Board and Kulp is its academic director. According to the New York Times, the program will take a “two-pronged” approach to the issue by helping women get shortlisted to be considered for open seats, and training women to be ready to step into those roles.

“There’s no doubt that the world is full of incredibly smart and accomplished women who can easily step into board service,” Kulp said. “We just help them get ready to take on those challenges by providing experiences in our residencies designed to expose them to the inner workings of board activities.”

Real Tools for Board Service
The program starts with a rigorous screening process where only 15 female executives from diverse backgrounds are chosen to participate. Most of the women have little or no experience sitting on corporate boards, though they are top managers at major corporations. Once chosen, the Fellows meet for three residencies throughout the year: one in winter/spring, one in summer, and the third in late fall. Between residencies, the fellows meet with their mentors, implement what they’ve learned in the previous residency, and build their networks. The university will track their successes and assist in helping them achieve a board appointment.

On the Board exposes its fellows to case study exercises to help them understand the functions of audit or compensation committees, for example, or panel discussions with board members, along with a dose of academics to deepen their contextual understanding of board issues. Kulp says the women are also given lots of time for interaction, information, and activities with globally-known experts to help them understand and better leverage their networks, as well as one-on-one mentoring with women who currently serve as board directors.

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