Hispanic Heritage: Latina Women are Ready to Lead. Are Companies Ready?

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female leader

This article forms part of our Latina Leaders celebration in honor of Hispanic Heritage month in the USA.

As we celebrate Hispanic Heritage Month 2015, Latina executives remain scarce in the corporate landscape. But ambition to lead, and ability to bring leadership advantages, are not scarce.

Walmart’s EVP and COO Debra Ruiz ranks 28 in Fortune’s current 50 Most Powerful Women in Business 2014 list. Latina Style celebrated ten executives in February, with Calline Sanchez, VP of IBM Enterprise, taking Corporate Executive of the Year 2014. Ana Dutra made history when she was appointed the first Latina president and CEO of the Executives’ Club of Chicago.

But with the growing influence of Latinas, there are too few, even dangerously too few, Latinas helping to steer companies.

In 2014, Latinas in the USA workforce (9,838,000) comprised 14% of female jobs. 26.1% were in management/professional occupations, holding 8.8% of women’s positions. 9.4% were in management, business, and financial operations, holding 9.1% of female positions. Latinas are the most under-represented females in managerial and professional jobs.

While Catalyst 2015 data indicates Latinas make up 6.2% of S&P 500 employees, they hold only 3.1% of first/mid-level positions, 1% of executive/senior level positions, and no CEO positions. Hispanic women occupied only 4.4% of S&P 500 women-held board seats in 2014, less than 1% of total board seats. The HACR CII data echoes the same numbers of non-representation.

Is the Path to Entrepreneurship More Accessible?

As written by Samantha Cole in Fast Company, “Women need to see someone else succeed—to know that their dreams are possible, and attainable by someone who’s not so different from them.”

For Latina business women, the majority of public role models aren’t somewhere up the corporate ladder. They’re braving the path of entrepreneurship.

Nely Galan, first Latina president of a U.S. Television Network turned media mogul notes deep cultural barriers to success in traditional pathways. She says Latina women are “a secret weapon to the economy” and encourages them to take business into their own hands to harness the economic pull they hold.

At its own risk, corporate America may be sending the same message.

According to an entrepreneurial report from the Center for American Progress, female-owned businesses increased by 59% between 1997 to 2013, while Latina-owned businesses increased by 180% during this same time, with 944,000 Latinas running their own businesses and turning $65.5 billion in receipts. Currently at 17%, Latinas will make up a fourth of the American female population by 2050.

Women entrepreneurs see it as an opportunity to be their own boss, have greater control over their destiny and pursue their passion. But roadblocks also lead Latinas onto the entrepreneurial path.

The report notes many challenges in organizations raised by all women of color that, despite the very real risks, may encourage Latinas to go it on their own. Across accountancy, securities and law, barriers included a lack of role models, low access to high-visibility assignments and client-facing opportunities important to career advancement, marginalization by stereotypes and exclusion from networks.

Stepping Into Latina Leadership – A Sum Greater Than Its Parts

The key to the advancement of Latina professional women is a corporate culture that supports it.

“[You] need to be in a company that embraces women,” Ileana Musa, managing director and Head of Global Client Segment and Strategy for Merrill Lynch and Chair of Women of ALPFA, recently told the Latin Post. “That gives you the resources and creates an environment where you can thrive.”

2015 Latina Style Top 50 companies are making progress, especially financial players in the top ten ranks including Accenture (#4), Prudential (#5), and Wells Fargo (#8). But we still await more tangible and visible outcomes in executive representation.

On that note, Musa also recommends that Latinas take risks and use their cultural assets in rising to leadership, rather than allowing their leadership potential to be defined by the circumstances.

Musa stated, “I don’t think Latinas recognize their strength and influence.” She spoke about cultural strengths in leadership. “From an early age we learn to bring others in, we work well in teams,” she said. “It is cultural, using that strength is a huge [advantage] in the workplace.”

Research also reflects that Latina leaders experience distinctive challenges but on the flip-side they possess culturally-derived leadership assets.

Latina leaders face an intersectionality of identities – being Latin, a woman, a leader. Many Latinas are actively connected in their culture and seeking to integrate at work. The whole is distinct, greater, more complex and more connected than the sum of its parts.

Qualitative research into Latina leadership has illustrated core challenges such as lack of mentors, lack of opportunities, and cultural and family obligations. These factors can also contribute to creating internal barriers to leadership.

But distinctive challenges comes with distinctive advantages. What Latina women bring to leadership is much greater than the sum of their identities.

Bonilla-Rodriguez observed that Latina leaders self-define towards transformational leadership, motivating followers to become leaders themselves, and participatory leadership, enabling group democracy and making everyone accountable for results.

Research participants believed effective Latina leaders possess five categories of characteristics:

  • High Integrity—Ethical, honest, moral, responsible, and trustworthy.
  • “Marianismo”— compassionate, good listener, understanding, service oriented and willing to sacrifice
  • “New Latina” — ambitious, assertive, competitive, hard-working and determined
  • Transformational Leader—team-building charismatic, collaborative, politically savvy, leads by example, good communicator
  • Visionary—creative, committed, flexible, passionate, and risk taker

Research suggests that Latina leaders translate distinctive cultural implications– such as “marianismo” – into their leadership style by being empathetic and nurturing team leaders. Latina leaders have self-reported to be natural and skilled networkers, able to build connections beyond boundaries, leverage them towards achieving, and harness community.

Visible Change

The influence of challenges faced by Latina women along their leadership journeys cannot be separated from the leaders they become – leaders that overcome obstacles, make things possible, bridge cultures, and transcend roles.

If you’re a Latina leader in finance, STEM, or any other field of influence, your visibility matters if women are to follow in your footsteps. As stated by Dr. Frances Colón, Acting Science and Technology Adviser to the U.S. Secretary of State, “They can’t be you if they can’t see you.”

But with the inherent power of Latina leadership, it seems to us the big question may not for long be: When will Latina women rise to executive leadership in major, existing firms?

It may instead be: How will they come to change leadership as they rise?

By Aimee Hansen

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Voice of Experience: Natalie Eckford, Managing Director, Cambridge Associates

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Natalie Eckford“I am a black woman from Jackson, Mississippi, and that experience gives me a valuable, unique perspective. I shouldn’t shy away from that difference,” says Natalie Eckford. “I’m using my education and my skills to make my stamp on justice and equality, and I’m really proud of that.”

Eckford describes her career path as traditional – developing a solid background in finance by joining an investment banking firm right after earning her undergraduate degree. She then moved back to Mississippi, where she worked for WorldCom in its broadband division. “Even though I was still in finance, my work at WoldCom was completely different. In banking, I worked with prebuilt models to try to make the deal fit, but at WorldCom, I had to build the model to fit the situation. I was learning how to run a company.”

In addition, she had much more interaction with people, which was lacking in her former role as an Investment Banking analyst. When evaluating potential M&A deals for WorldCom, she had to understand how every department would be affected. “I actually had to get out of my chair and talk to people,” Eckford says, adding that it was an important development in her career skills.

After attending Harvard Business School, she landed at Cambridge Associates, which was the perfect fit for her. At Cambridge Associates, Eckford helps institutions navigate the global markets, access profitable investment opportunities, and grow their endowment capital. “My role here takes all the skills I’ve been building and utilizes them to help further missions in which I really believe,” she says. Her clients include nonprofits that work in education, community development and civil rights advocacy.

Eckford feels she is following the model set by her parents, both of whom earned their degrees during the Jim Crow era and used them to combat inequality and poverty. “The example they set was that I had a responsibility to use the privileges with which I had been blessed to try to help someone else, and I’m proud of what I do to help my clients access capital to further their important missions.”

The passion for the work she’s doing has its roots in her undergraduate thesis on women-focused microfinance as a means for broader economic development. She says that she has always been interested in how you can make investments that have a double bottom line – not only are you making an impact that is visible, but you are doing it through a market orientation. She says that she is seeing a broader use of impact investing in portfolios, though it’s still in the early stages. “There are more funds being created to bridge the gaps in income inequality and education through new technology, and a growing number of these funds are being led by women. It is a very exciting time.

Learning To Speak Up

Eckford recognizes the power of sponsors, citing that advocacy as the reason that she earned her initial spot on the real estate investment banking team. Someone for whom she had interned on another team championed her, alerting the decision makers that Eckford had really made a difference on their team and had potential to be a value-add for the group. “I’m very thankful that I have had advocates, but we also need to do it for ourselves – we need to shed the fear of telling our colleagues how we’ve added value to the company.”

And she says that young women should not be afraid of taking risks. She looks back on her business school experience and how most of the women in her class took jobs within very established companies or industries, whereas many of the men were looking for positions with independent groups, angel investors or start-ups. “They were not afraid to go to a place that had been unproven and because of it, many of them have been able to benefit from valuable experiences learned when you are part of a small team working to grow a business or when you have an individual investing in your career because your success is tied to the business’s survival.” She cites her time working for a start-up group at WorldCom as a risk like that: “I was coming up with the ideas and that really impacted my viewpoint on the rest of my career.”

“They were not afraid to go to a place that had been unproven and because of it, many of them have been able to benefit from valuable experiences learned when you are part of a small team working to grow a business or when you have an individual investing in your career because your success is tied to the business’s survival.”

Over the years, Eckford has learned that it’s not enough to just work hard – that women need to promote themselves and develop a network of allies who will help promote them. “As a black woman I had worked so hard to just fit in over the years, it felt unconscionable to try to stand out,” she says, “and yet, you get to a point in your career where it’s critical if you’re going to progress. Most likely, your male counterparts are not holding back.”

She says that speaking up and sharing your unique perspective is what will make people remember you. “I’ve worked so hard to get the seat at the table, and when I got promoted to managing director I really thought about how I wanted to use that.” Eckford knows that even if was her stellar resume that got her in the door, it is the sum of her experience that differentiates her in meetings.

She knows that her clients appreciate the different perspective and voice that she can bring and believes that all organizations can benefit from incorporating diverse perspectives to their governing bodies. She firmly believes that women need more board representation. “Even as we look for more diversity in portfolios, that decision tends to be determined at the board level. We have to have a more diverse board calling for diversity in our portfolios.”

Walking the Walk

Eckford is active in a group at Cambridge Associates that founded a Diversity Council, which encompasses employees of different ethnicities, genders and sexual orientation through all levels of the firm.

She knows that her firm is interested in the business case for diversity – and that clients care. She says that in the past year, they’ve talked frequently about the barriers for women and minority managers. “We’re making progress, but there’s a lot of work to be done,” she says.

As if her busy professional life wasn’t enough, Eckford also makes time to give back outside her firm. “Nonprofit boards have always been a passion throughout my life.”

By Cathie Ericson

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