Movers & Shakers: Rhiannon Wood, Senior Manager M&A Private Equity, PricewaterhouseCoopers

women on boardsWhen Rhiannon Wood began in PricewaterhouseCoopers’ audit department as a graduate in 2004, there was no way for her to know that she’d be part of the world’s largest professional services firm’s most pivotal global program. Though she’s spent the last six years in the firm’s M&A tax team working with a variety of private equity houses and corporations on international transactions, it wasn’t until this year that she was asked to join PricewaterhouseCoopers’ Genesis Park program, designated for the firm’s top five percent of senior performers.

“I’d say it’s the biggest thing that’s ever happened in my career,” Wood said. “It’s a 12-month program that enables us to spend six-weeks working on personal development and strategic projects for our global board. It really feels like being a part of change for our business in the UK and globally.”

Wood’s six-weeks were up in September and she says the most important takeaway was the focus the program had on authenticity.

“There are a lot of discussions happening about what it means to be authentic or how to be an authentic leader, but what does that really mean? Oftentimes it’s just talking in concepts,” Wood said. “In the program, we spent a lot time focusing on the question of what is authenticity. We discussed how knowing your own values is central to the idea and how we can spot values in others and perhaps most importantly, how to live by our own values on a personal and professional level in order to be a more authentic leader.”

Now that she’s completed her time in the program, Wood says that the most exciting thing she’s working on is helping the firm invest in the future and the “next generation of leadership.”

“PwC is trying to be at the forefront of the industry when it comes to leadership, talent development, and diversity. It’s an exciting time to be with the firm. So many people are receptive to these groundbreaking ideas,” Wood said.

Don’t Let Your Plans Get In The Way

As a senior manager reflecting back on her first years in the industry, Wood says she wishes that she would have understood earlier that there is no one way of doing things. Ambition, she says, is a good thing, but becoming too fixated on your plan rather than on the journey can prove to be problematic.

“You can let your plans get in the way of unexpected opportunities that come across your path,” Wood said. “You need to recognize things as opportunities, rather than diversions. In the end, you’ll regret what you didn’t take, not what you did.”

Embracing Strong Personalities

Before entering M&A, Wood also says it’s important to understand that it’s a field inhabited by strong personalities and strong opinions, both of which require working with and navigating around.

“The most overlooked portion of this job is the people management piece,” Wood said. “There are a lot of ideas as to what an ideal transaction should look like versus what it actually looks like. You have to get stakeholders on board with everything you do and sometimes that means working with 20 stakeholders with very strong personalities and different agendas. The end goal is the same for everyone, but it makes getting a transaction done incredibly tricky. It’s just a matter of getting where we all want to be.”

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Women’s Power in Numbers: How Sponsors and Protégés Can Band Together

iStock_000006712763XSmallBy Natalie Runyon, Shelley Beason, and Michele Hush

On the evening of November 20, Thomson Reuters and Wells Fargo Securities co-hosted a “Manhattan Mixer”, bringing together clients with senior female executives from both companies. Both Thomson Reuters and Wells Fargo are distinguished by their commitment to advancing women’s careers.

Together, these companies created an empowering night for women.

The event also had an interesting twist: senior women leaders were asked to invite a protégé. It is important for the advancement of emerging female leaders to have access to influential senior women. The “twist” on inviting protégés gave these women the opportunity to build personal connections with senior leaders based on a common goal: women’s advancement.

The keynote speaker was Diane Schumaker-Krieg, global head of Research, Economics, & Strategy at Wells Fargo Securities. An influential leader who believes in empowering other women, Schumaker-Krieg has been included in American Banker’s “25 Most Powerful Women in Finance” for the past four years, with the latest recognition coming in September of this year. Schumaker-Krieg is a strong advocate for women and passionate about supporting their career development.

The main takeaway from Schumaker-Krieg was her assertion that “women have power, especially when they band together.” During her remarks, the global head touched on her own career path and the importance of speaking up at the right time.

The event was also packed full of career tips for women’s advancement in business, strategies for sponsorship, and advice on developing power networks. For sponsors, Schumaker-Krieg recommended they reach out to emerging women leaders to ensure their ideas are heard. Sponsors were also encouraged to diversify their portfolio of protégés, advocating for two or three talented women rather than focusing on one.

For protégés, Schumaker-Krieg shared advice she learned through her many years in the trenches. A few of the key takeaways from her keynote included being great at what you do. While this sounds obvious, it is the most important thing you can do to get noticed. Ask for more responsibility: be sure to have specific ideas for how you can contribute in deeper, more expansive ways. Also, be creative/think outside the box and don’t be a wallflower; participate in all meetings, even “optional” ones. Volunteer to represent your team on important department or enterprise-level initiatives. Prepare ahead of time so that you can meaningfully advance the discussion. Also, promote the success of others. Your generosity will be remembered. To build your support network, reach out to groups within your company and outside your line of business. Learn what they do and how you can help them succeed.

During the event, new associations were made, and existing connections were reinforced. Each individual was challenged to make new contacts and to meet up with them in the month following the event. Indeed, events like these are the foundation for women expanding their power networks and supporting each other in advancing their careers.

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Voice of Experience: Clare O’Brien, Partner, Shearman & Sterling

OBrien-CWelcome to M&A Week on The Glass Hammer — we’ll be profiling successful M&A business women all week long!

By Tina Vasquez, Editor

In the past three months alone, Clare O’Brien has been to London, Paris, Rio de Janeiro (twice), and Abu Dhabi. Traveling around the world isn’t unusual for a leading M&A lawyer with international clients, but the depth, breadth, scale and scope of her work as a partner at global law firm Shearman & Sterling is stunning.

O’Brien’s client list includes such global names as Ardagh S.A., Boston Scientific Corporation, Bunge Limited, Corning Incorporated, Danone, Lafarge S.A., Mubadala Development Company, Quest Diagnostics, and SunGard. She is annually ranked as a leading global M&A lawyer and her crowning achievements include her work on behalf of SunGard in 2005, representing the company in an $11.3 billion private equity-driven acquisition, which garnered her The American Lawyer’s 2005 “Dealmakers of the Year” award, one of the highest honors an M&A lawyer can receive. O’Brien also represented Boston Scientific in its 2006 acquisition of Guidant Corporation.

O’Brien had a rough start in the States that did not foreshadow the success that would come.

“I grew up in Ireland, went to law school at Trinity College in Dublin, and became an attorney at 23,” O’Brien recalls. “I worried that if I stayed in Ireland, I would get stuck there, so I decided to pack up and head to New York in 1985, thinking I’d get a job at a law firm and stay a year or two at the most.”

O’Brien applied to 30 firms for a job – including Shearman & Sterling – and received 30 rejection letters in response. At that time, it was more unusual for non-U.S. trained lawyers to apply for jobs at large New York-based law firms.

“The situation seemed bleak, but then I took and passed the New York Bar exam, which opened up some doors,” O’Brien said.

Making Hard Career Choices
Talent like O’Brien’s never goes unrecognized and before long, she was hired by a small firm based in New York City, the sole woman on a team of six lawyers. When a headhunter approached her with two job offers in 1987, she decided to take the one at Shearman & Sterling. Again, she figured it would be a one- or two-year commitment.

“I sometimes think that my career can be characterized by the absence of forethought,” O’Brien said with a laugh. “I came to New York without a big plan and here I am, 25 years later. I believe that I am still here, and still doing what I do, because I still like what I do, including – at least on some level – the unpredictability of being an M&A lawyer at a big firm.”

More Global Than Most
O’Brien’s achievements with Shearman & Sterling reflect its reputation as a trusted firm often brought in for its global expertise. She was recently involved in several significant transactions, including for Mubadala Development, Bunge Limited, Danone, Lafarge, and SunGard.

“While Shearman & Sterling is a major international law firm, my work is probably more global than most,” O’Brien explained. “Of course, there are many challenges: time zone differences, a hectic schedule, and long hours. Thankfully I have a very supportive husband, tolerant daughters, and a wonderful nanny to help take care of them.”

Remaining Resolute
Clearly, with a job as demanding as O’Brien’s, a great number of factors are out of her control, but there is one thing O’Brien is careful about.

“I rarely schedule client dinners or drinks,” O’Brien said. “If you have a family and a demanding job, you have to make choices as to how much ‘discretionary’ time you will spend on work-related activities. Given how much I travel, I try to avoid non-essential evening activities.”

O’Brien says she may not get to spend as much time as she’d like with her daughters, ages 8 and 14, but she believes there is value in the image she represents to them.

“When they grow up, I hope they will look back and know they had a mother who was successful doing something she loves. I think that’s quite powerful,” O’Brien said, acknowledging that it may also represent a degree of wishful thinking and rationalization.

Getting Ahead
At Shearman & Sterling, O’Brien says gender is not a barrier to success.

“In my 25 years with the firm, I’ve never encountered bias because of my gender,” O’Brien said. “The firm is very good at identifying and promoting talent, and I believe that women are given equal opportunity to succeed on their merits.”

Shearman & Sterling has a number of women’s initiatives, including an inclusion network called The Women’s Initiative for Success, Excellence and Retention (WISER), as well as a LeanIn initiative. It is also a member of 85 Broads, The Glass Hammer, and other organizations.

Advice for Young Attorneys
Over her many years with the firm and through many important client meetings, O’Brien has worked hard and applied “street smarts” to her client work. Sometimes the simplest things can create significant results, she says.

“I know this is going to sound silly, but if you’re the person at the meeting who actually has the documents that people want to discuss or refer to, it makes a difference,” O’Brien explained. “It’s amazing how often others don’t have the relevant documents and if you do, it means that you become an important participant in that meeting.”

O’Brien reiterates how important it is to like your work if you’re an M&A attorney. The long hours, unpredictable schedule, and huge workload will make you “miserable” if your heart isn’t in it. It’s also important, she says, to set limits.

“Be prepared to set limits for yourself because if you don’t, no one else will set them for you,” O’Brien said. “It’s OK to take time off. If you trust your work and the relationships you’ve built with clients, they will understand that you also have – and need to have – a life outside of work.”

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The Road to Success, Paved with Failure

iStock_000006308877XSmallby Terry Selucky

Imagine you’ve dedicated 15 years to a company — working your way up days, nights, weekends — then you’re passed up for a promotion. What’s your next step?

Or what if, after landing a dream job, you are demoted within a year? Do you resign, or do you work through it, doing your best to find the next rung on the ladder?

In the first case, if you’re Vera Wang, you switch gears and leverage your network to shape a new career. After being passed up for the editor-in-chief position at Vogue, Ms. Wang is now one of the most successful designers and entrepreneurs in fashion.

And if you’re Oprah Winfrey and get moved from co-anchor of the evening news to making local announcements in the morning, you make the most of your new situation. You meet your best friend (in her case, Gayle King). You do your job well. You use your new skills to land a job as a morning talk show host. Then you become one of the richest women in the world.

Failing never feels good in the moment. Especially if you’re a natural overachiever and perfectionist, accustomed to winning, you may think it impossible to bounce back after things don’t go as you’d have hoped. Yet experts point out several benefits to failure, plus tips on how to pull yourself up and focus after a professional disappointment.

Failure is Good for You
In Psychology Today, Dr. Nigel Barber points out the advantages of knowing how to fail. He writes, “An untested employee is like an untried soldier”, remarking that people who fail repeatedly develop valuable persistence. Thomas Edison is said to have failed a thousand times before creating the incandescent light bulb. Similarly, Steve Jobs released a horde of defunct Apple products such as the overpriced Power Mac g4 Cube and the buggy new MobileMe. Yet few people remember the failures while they’re zooming through Apps on their iPads. “With success”, as Dr. Barber writes, “people keep on doing the same thing. When they fail, they are forced to adapt and change … [Failure] rewires the brain and gets the creative juices flowing.”

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Voice of Experience: Emma McGuigan, Managing Director at Accenture

Emma McGuigan AccentureBy Tina Vasquez, Editor

Emma McGuigan has been with Accenture for 19 years, joining the organization shortly after obtaining her master’s degree in electronics from the University of Edinburgh. As managing director in Accenture’s technology practice, she says her career thus far has been “challenging, creative, and progressive.”

“It is challenging in that every day there are new hurdles to overcome and interesting problems to solve. It is creative, as I’ve learned to use my technology skills to find solutions to business issues as well as my people skills to build successful relationships and teams. It is progressive as I take on increasingly larger responsibilities and roles and make a larger impact,” McGuigan said.

Redefining Success
McGuigan’s area of focus is working with clients in financial services and the public sector, drawing on her extensive experience in building IT architecture and large scale delivery of projects. This, she says, is her proudest achievement. Impressively, McGuigan was promoted while on maternity leave and prior to that, she’d been working part-time for Accenture for two-years.

“I realized that to be successful, you don’t necessarily have to work a traditional five-day week,” McGuigan said. “I’m proud that I’ve defined success in my own way. Fortunately, Accenture supports its people with a variety of flexible work and career options.”

In her new role, McGuigan is focusing on an internal project that grants her exposure to many people on Accenture’s global leadership team. “I’ve found this opportunity to be incredibly insightful, and a great learning opportunity,” McGuigan said.

Getting the Most Out of Professional Relationships
McGuigan says that to get the most out of a professional relationship, you need to take the time to get to know the individual. “Don’t drive straight to the transactional outcome,” she said. McGuigan asserts that how people grow professional relationships will be different for everyone, but taking the time to learn about how people operate makes for better collaboration.

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How to Manage a Global Team Successfully

Asian Chinese Woman or Businesswoman in OfficeBy Melissa J. Anderson (New York City)

Today’s companies are becoming more and more global, with teams spread across continents and time-zones, languages and cultures. As telecommuting becomes the norm, managers have to understand how to supervise teams that are spread across the globe.

In a recent working paper on designing virtual teams, INSEAD professor José Santos explains that managing a global team is becoming a core leadership competency. In fact, being able to work with colleagues who are very far away is even more common for those in executive leadership roles. He writes, “While companies use virtual teams in many areas of business, their most important function is in high-level management. The top management teams of many global business units are fast becoming virtual teams. Indeed, the hallmark of a globally integrated company is its virtual top management team.”

If you aspire to a top level role, being able to work well with people who are in a different location – and manage teams of people who are spread far and wide – could be an important skill to add to your resume. Here’s Santos’ best advice for managing virtual, global teams.

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Are Your Emails Communicating a Lack of Confidence?

Studies show that men and women communicate differently when Your Emailsusing business email, but is the way you’re communicating clear and effective, or is the communication style of your emails leading to misunderstandings that undermine your position?

Look at the following emails. Which was more likely to have been written by a man and which by a woman?

Subject: Report
Sorry to chase you on this, but I really need that summary report by tomorrow in order to compile all the data on time for the meeting. If you could let me know when to expect it, that would be great. I really appreciate it.

Subject: NEED THAT SUMMARY REPORT ASAP
Thx

The first email writer starts with an apology, though it’s unclear what the offense is. The writer expresses a need for a late report, one that is holding up their work and threatening to make them miss a deadline, yet they are apologizing and appearing overly solicitous. This style is often employed by women in the workplace. Contrast this with the second email: it is brief and to the point, almost crossing the line into cold, but it’s clear what the writer needs. This style is typically employed by men.

What Is “Offensive”?
In a University of Waterloo study entitled, “Why Women Apologize More Than Men: Gender Differences in Thresholds for Perceiving Offensive Behavior”, researcher Karina Schumann concluded that women apologize far more frequently than men because women feel far more actions warrant an apology. Her theory held whether the test participant was the person apologizing or whether they were the victim of the offense, supporting the conclusion that women have a much lower threshold for deeming something an offense. Looking back at the email example above, consider the offense: is the fact that the writer needs a report to get her work done offensive? The answer may depend on gender. Men are less likely to think that chasing a report is inappropriate behavior, while studies suggest that women are more likely to feel the need to soften the language – and apologize – when asking for what they need.

The National Research Council Canada (NRC) study “Tracking Sentiment in Mail: How Genders Differ on Emotional Axes” data mined the publicly-available Enron email database, tagging words with certain emotions: joy, trust, fear, surprise, sadness, disgust, anger, and anticipation, noting both the gender of the sender and the recipient. The results were telling: women prefer to use words from the joy and sadness lexicon, while men tend to use words related to fear and trust. Specifically, women are using words like problem, misunderstanding, crazy, doubt, and guilty, while men are worried about a threat, predicament, confusion, or procedure. Both men and women used more words related to anticipation when speaking to each other across genders, which shows that to some degree, men and women are aware that they communicate differently and make some effort to adapt when speaking to the opposite sex.

The Power of Words
Saif M. Mohammad is a research officer at NRC whose work focuses on natural language processing, especially lexical semantics, the study of how and what the words of a language denote. According to the researcher, there isn’t enough information available to pinpoint why it is that there is a much higher use of anticipation words when communicating across genders than when communicating within. What the information we have does suggest, however, is that the words we use greatly impact how others see us.

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Voice of Experience: Min Chen, Managing Director, Head of Asia Corporate Finance, Head of China Real Estate and Lodging, Bank of America Merrill Lynch

Chen Min headshot 100713By Michelle Hendelman

Min Chen, Managing Director, Head of Asia Corporate Finance, Head of China Real Estate and Lodging, Bank of America Merrill Lynch, admits that she stepped outside of her comfort zone when she accepted the assignment to work in Hong Kong in 2006. But this is something she encourages all women in business to do. Chen said, “Women should seize every opportunity that is presented to them. It is important to be open to new experiences and to have confidence in your abilities.”

She continued, “This is also why it is important to master your skill set and know your fundamentals. You never know when you will be asked to take on something new.”

Career in Investment Banking

“Looking at my career as a whole, what makes me proud is the fact that I was able to successfully make the transition from working in the United States to moving to Asia and developing to build strong relationships with my clients here.” She continued, “My clients are very different in the US and Asia, and being able to make that transition – and make it work – has been extremely satisfying.”

Chen has always worked in investment banking, and right now she is most interested in being involved in the growth of the investment banking industry in Asia. “In the United States, the investment banking industry is well established,” she said. “But in Asia, the industry as a whole is in a much earlier stage than the US. Because of this, I think a lot about how to make sure our clients understand what we do and how to help them do business in international capital markets.”

“A new challenge, and an exciting assignment for me, is to make sure the corporate finance group is well organized and efficient. I want to ensure the team members are motivated by the new and exciting work they are doing, developing their careers, and making meaningful connections. Leading the team is something that is very near and dear to my heart.”

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