Voice of Experience: Lisa Atlas Genecov, Partner, Katten

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Trust your instincts and let them guide you, advises Katten’s Lisa Atlas Genecov.  Her instincts lit the way to a path that has allowed her to have a fulfilling career and simultaneously raise a family.

Finding Success Through Forging An Alternate Way

Genecov began her law career in Dallas as a Mergers and Acquisitions attorney, with stints at several large regional and national law firms.  After her youngest child, now 26, was born, she decided it was time to downshift for a period, and she began to work three days a week for a smaller firm. 

“I didn’t want to miss all those important milestones that my kids would have, but I didn’t want to stop working completely,” she notes, echoing a common theme among many working moms.  At the smaller firm, she found herself handling numerous healthcare transactions, along with her general M&A work, and realized how much she enjoyed it. She pivoted to the health care space, and it soon became 100% of the focus of her legal practice.

When Genecov decided to return back to a larger firm and a full-time practice three (3) years later, she maintained that specialty, eventually becoming the firm’s Health Care Practice Group leader.  Looking back, she has come to appreciate the fact that transitioning to part-time status led to the most rewarding shift for her career—not only did she have more time with her kids, but it allowed her the opportunity to try something new which propelled her practice into a different and very busy direction, just as health care reform came into focus and the Affordable Care Act was later signed into law, dramatically reshaping the country’s health care landscape.

About eight months after Katten opened its Dallas office in February 2018, Genecov joined the firm as Co-Chair of its National Health Care Practice Group. She came to Katten with two female lateral partners – Cheryl Camin Murray and Kenya Woodruff – both of whom she has respected and known for years but they hadn’t practiced together.  They established Katten’s first Health Care practice in Dallas, counseling health care providers in connection with major transactions and regulatory issues while working closely with the firm’s white collar attorneys on health care litigation matters. 

“I’m proud that I came together with these other partners to grow our complementary practices,” Genecov says.  “It’s exciting to be working at a growing and successful office of a well-respected national law firm and health care practice where I enjoy working with my colleagues every day.  And along with that, I’m proud to have been able to maintain a robust and satisfying career while raising two awesome kids who have become two awesome adults.”

Succeeding in the Balancing Act

In fact, Genecov believes that one of the biggest issues for women when choosing a place to work—whether it’s a firm, public service or in-house position—is to make sure you are well supported at your workplace, but also at home if you are planning to raise a family. 

It’s important to proactively find mentors and sponsors at the start of and throughout your career, she said.  “Look for mentors who are good at helping you in particular aspects of your career. If there’s a job that’s not working, find one that better suits your needs, and don’t be afraid of making a change,” she says, pointing to her own experience as the catalyst for a positive new path. “I wasn’t afraid to take an opportunity if it seemed like the right one.”

Along the way she has appreciated the people who have helped her, and for that reason Genecov says she always tries to be a good mentor to other women lawyers, some of whom are now in the C-suite in-house or in legal departments of large companies, of which she’s very proud.  

Diversity has always been a key value for Genecov. In fact, at her prior firm she was chief diversity officer, where she felt she was able to make a positive impact on retention and advancement.  She’s also invested in helping ensure the success of the next generation and pleased that Katten recently moved its Dallas office to the Uptown “Park District” area. “We are always looking for ways we can appeal to what younger attorneys value, and our high-tech, flexible office that focuses on green space will help us to successfully do that.”

In addition to her busy practice, Genecov is president of the Executive Committee and a founding member of the Center for Women in Law at the University of Texas, which helps to advance women at all phases of the legal profession.  For many years, she has also been an active volunteer and Board Member with the Jewish Federation of Greater Dallas.

Now that her children are adults, she and her husband continue to find meaningful ways to spend time together; often traveling to places, including Europe and Colorado, as well as enjoying sporting events and music closer to home.  “I’m so proud of my kids, and the best part is that we really enjoy one another’s company,” she says.

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2020 International Women’s Day: A Call To Take Individual Reins On Collective Equality

On March 8th, we again approach International Women’s Day, since 1911 a day for celebrating the achievements of women across social, economic, cultural and political spheres and for calling for accelerated actions towards gender parity. 

The theme for the 2020 event is “An equal world is an enabled world” – and the campaign hashtags are #EachforEqual and #IWD2020. Supporters are asked to strike the campaign ‘hands out equal pose’ on social media in order to spread the word for a stronger call-to-action globally.

As theglasshammer pointed out last year, both the celebration of achievements and shedding light on overlooked issues are valuable. But while one day of talking and hashtagging and ‘striking a pose’ creates salience and hopefully momentum, change asks for something less visible, less glib and even closer to home. The substance is in the message.

It’s not only about advocacy for systems and organizations and political bodies to change. It’s not only in the PR and action-based global campaigns. The call-to-action might both feel full circle and also frustrating, but it remains a big part of how change happens – especially in the places of privilege: We each have a daily, personal responsibility to create equality.

Beyond what we ask of governments or organizations, we can each work to advance the practice of equality in our own thought processes and actions. We can wake up more to the ways we each, on a daily basis, are often reinforcing the very discrimination and inequalities that we advocate against.

Gender Gaps Persist In Power and Visibility Across Spheres of Influence

A categorized breakdown by UNWomen.org highlights the immense gap between current reality and gender parity across several important fields of influence. 

It has taken 25 years for political representation of women to double to women holding still only 1 in 4 global parliamentary seats. The Fortune 500 reported a peak in Women CEOs in June 2019, but that milestone “peak” is less than 7% of 500 CEO seats. To date, only 53 of the 900 Noble Peace Prize winners have been women, with only 19 winners in the categories of physics, chemistry, physiology or medicine. Only 30% of STEM current researchers are women, and only 35% of STEM students are.

When it comes to media representation, the creative engine of our cultural narrative, women are one third as visible as men. A global media study across 20 years and 114 countries showed that “only 24 per cent of the persons heard, read about or seen in newspaper, television and radio news are women.” Women are also only 26% of persons covered in digital media and a decade-long stagnant 37% of news reporters. Only a pithy 4% of total stories challenge gender stereotyping. 

Entertainment, it seems, reflects reality in the relative skewed representation towards men’s voices and men’s experience. A popular films analysis across 11 countries found that only 31% of all speaking characters were women and only 23% had a female protagonist, perhaps not shockingly mirroring that 21% of filmmakers are women.

Women are not only scarce in positions of power and influence. We are simply less present in the cultural feed that influences so much of our conditioned perception.

UN Women “Generational Equality” Campaign Also Iterates Individual Agency

As stated on the campaign site, #EachforEqual is calling for ‘Collective Individualism’: “Individually, we’re all responsible for our own thoughts and actions – all day, every day. We can actively choose to challenge stereotypes, fight bias, broaden perceptions, improve situations and celebrate women’s achievements.”

The UN International Women’s Day 2020 campaign also reflects the ‘collective individualism’ theme: “I am Generational Equality: Realizing Women’s Rights,” with a continued focus on uniting all advocates for equality – regardless of race, age, country, gender, religion, ethnicity etc – but especially across generations.

2020 represents 25 years since the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action at the UN’s Fourth World Conference on women, which is “recognized as the most progressive roadmap for the empowerment of women and girls, everywhere” and set out to achieve global gender equality across 12 critical areas.

According to UN Women, this is a pivotal year for taking worldwide stock of progress made on women’s rights, and accelerating gender equality now.

The organization reports, “The emerging global consensus is that despite some progress, real change has been agonizingly slow for the majority of women and girls in the world. Today, not a single country can claim to have achieved gender equality. Multiple obstacles remain unchanged in law and in culture. Women and girls continue to be undervalued; they work more and earn less and have fewer choices; and experience multiple forms of violence at home and in public spaces. Furthermore, there is a significant threat of rollback of hard-won feminist gains.”

What Could Collective Individualism Look Like? 

“We are all parts of a whole,” iterates #EachforEqual. “Our individual actions, conversations, behaviors and mindsets can have an impact on our larger society.”

In resonance with #EachForEqual, UN Women states that change “isn’t just about big headline moments, legal victories and international agreements: the way we talk, think, and act every day can create a ripple effect that benefits everyone.”

On this point, the UN Women campaign has introduced “12 Small Actions with Big Impact for Generation Equality.” These include: share the (domestic, unpaid, parenting) care, call out sexism and harassment, reject the binary, demand an equal work culture, exercise your political rights, shop responsibly, amplify feminist books and movies and more, teach girls their worth, challenge what it means to be a “man”, commit to a cause, challenge beauty standards and respect the choices of others.

Hira Ali in Forbes also offers up four suggestions for activating #EachForEqual: create awareness about generation equality; support non-profit organizations for women; celebrate, support and collaborate with other women; and start mentoring girls early.

Most of all, when it comes to all belief constructs, we need to challenge where we’ve swallowed the story ourselves. While we cannot control or choose every thought that crosses the pasture of our minds, we can wake up to realizing that our thoughts, instincts, feelings, etc are unconsciously biased by internalized societal gendered conditioning. And we can know that this is further reinforced by systemic bias, so we’re often more supported to go down the well-trafficked path of bias. 

Paradigms are hard to shake. Often we neither realize insidious bias is in play, nor how it permeates our thoughts, our fears, our assumptions and our actions. As theglasshammer CEO Nicki Gilmour recommends, “Test assumptions for best results.”

This is part of why Catalyst’s #BiasCorrect Campaign, launched in 2019, actively focuses on helping “individuals identify and mitigate the biases that exist in our workplaces and within each of us.”

The overall IWD campaign message of 2020 seems to boil down to this: Call yourself to action, for the collective change. Anything that is systemic will eventually falter if more and more individuals no longer acquiesce, consent, conform or comply – in the many conscious and unconscious daily ways we do – to support the status quo.

This year’s IWD2020 theme is iterating that agency for change begins with intentionally becoming more equality, inside and out, in how you perceive and show up in the world.

Authors Bio: Aimee Hansen is a freelance writer, frequent contributor to theglasshammer and Creator and Facilitator of Storyteller Within Retreats, Lonely Planet recommended women’s circle retreats focused on self-exploration and connecting with your inner truth and sacred expression through writing, yoga, meditation, movement and ceremonies.

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Where the “Pink Collar” Has Been Flipped Up in Today’s Workforce

Pink CollarYou’ve heard of blue collar jobs and white collar jobs. A lesser-known concept in the world of labor economics is “pink collar jobs.” They’re the jobs that have traditionally and predominantly been held by women.

The term likely came about in the aftermath of World War II. As many as 5 million women entered the workforce between 1940 and 1945 to fill the roles left behind by men. When men came back from the war, women were largely relegated to teaching, service, and clerical roles. The term really took hold in the late 1970s when Louise Kapp Howe, an author who focused on social issues, published her book Pink Collar Workers, which explored the lives of nurses, secretaries, and teachers — industries dominated by women at the time.

There have been some momentous shifts — and other not-so-progressive shifts — in pink collar jobs since World War II. For example, based on U.S. Census data, the top six jobs with the highest percentages of women (90% or more) in 1940 included nurses, midwives, telephone operators, secretaries/stenographers, domestic service workers, and boarding housekeepers.

As you can imagine, the jobs in those top six spots today have changed dramatically. They’re much more focused on health and child care. Based on data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, they include pre-k and kindergarten teachers, dental hygienists, speech-language pathologists, dental assistants, childcare workers, and medical records technicians.

What’s particularly interesting is looking at which jobs have seen the biggest increases and decreases in the percentage of women between 1940 and 2019.

For example, jobs that have become “less” pink collar in the eight decades since World War II include tobacco manufacturers, textile manufacturers, janitors, musicians, and nurses. One of the most popular examples of fading pink collar norms lies in the nursing industry.

If you were to travel back in time to 1940, you would see that 98% of nurses were female (based on U.S. Census data). Today, that percentage has fallen to 89%. That 11-point drop might not seem like a big deal, but it is. Here’s why. Though women still dominate this traditionally pink collar field, more men continue to enter.

Experts attribute this trend to a number of factors. For one thing, there’s an incredible demand for health professionals, and there simply aren’t enough women to fill the demand. On the other hand, nursing schools have begun to rise above the gender stereotypes (that nursing has to be seen as a “woman’s job”), targeting men in their recruiting efforts and contributing to the de-stigmatization of the job.

Many jobs have also become “more” pink collar since 1940. One particularly strong example is the real estate industry. In 1940, 10% of women were real estate agents, according to the U.S. Census Data. Today, that percentage has ballooned to 59%.

There have also been significant increases in the percentage of women in highly technical fields, like law (3% in 1940 vs. 33% in 2019) and medicine (5% in 1940 vs. 41% in 2019), and service fields, like housekeeping (78% in 1940 vs. 89% in 2019) and restaurant hospitality (56% in 1940 vs. 71% in 2019).

Meanwhile, the data show that there have been only slight shifts between 1940 and 2019 in the percentage of women working as teachers and secretaries — and in private households.

It’s interesting to study these so-called pink collar jobs over time because the lines between pink collar and non-pink collar are rapidly blurring. Take a look at these Bureau of Labor Statistics projections for the fastest growing and declining industries in the U.S. through 2028.

The top four fastest growing industries (home healthcare services, outpatient care centers, individual and family services, and offices of health practitioners) are dominated by women. Meanwhile three of the four most rapidly declining industries (tobacco manufacturing, federal electric utilities, and communications equipment assembly) are dominated by men.

It only makes sense that, as so-called blue collar jobs decline due to factors like globalization, technology, and the shrinking of unions, more men will take on pink collar jobs, and more women will work in roles that society has traditionally seen as male.

As gender stereotypes and bias in the workplace dissipate, it’s important for companies to attract women by using gender-neutral language in their recruiting efforts. They should also promote pay transparency and offer work flexibility for both male and female workers.

Check out the full analysis of trends in pink collar jobs and accompanying data visualizations.

Author: Meredith Wood

Bio: Meredith Wood is a vice president at Fundera. She is frequently sought out for her expertise in small business lending and frequently contributes to SBA, SCORE, Yahoo, Amex OPEN Forum, Fox Business, American Banker, Small Business Trends, MyCorporation, Small Biz Daily, and StartupNation.

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Andrea Mygrant; Managing Director, Major Accounts; FIS Global

Andrea Mygrant While hard work is important, there’s another key predictor of professional success, says FIS Global’s Andrea Mygrant, and that’s the importance of your network.

“I saw that it was vital early in my career to make sure I had a great mentor who guided me  to prioritize meeting everyone I could—both within my firm and externally with clients—and then to keep in touch.” As she notes, it’s a small community and industry, and she has frequently seen people who have circled back into her life. “They have helped me build new relationships and boosted my progression,” she notes, adding that not everyone realizes how important it is to focus on building that strong network early on to help open doors throughout your career.

Client Service at the Core

Although Mygrant was pursuing a pre-vet track in college, she changed directions after an internship at financial services firm Brown Brothers Harriman which was her first time working in fintech and with clients.

Working at a global custodian firm like that provided an important perspective on how the entire industry worked, thus kicking off her new career path. Ever since, she’s been focused on client relationships, up to her current role where she builds those relationships at an executive level.

With an insatiable curiosity, Mygrant has always looked forward to the next big thing as there’s always something innovative happening in this space. Just recently she helped a large client she’s partnered with over the past two years successfully launch a complex, integrated solution.

“It had very high visibility in the organization.They were looking for a solution of different products to link together using tools that hadn’t been deployed in conjunction before,” Mygrant explains. “We were able to jointly put together the pieces, thus fulfilling a complicated deal with a lot of moving parts and unknowns.” They achieved a successful go live in January 2020. “I’m really proud that we were able to build something brand new that was important for them to be successful, resulting in such a satisfied client.”

In an industry that’s always changing, she’s currently observing the new “blurry lines” separating pure technology firms that are veering into territory occupied by financial institutions. “I’m watching big companies like Amazon or Google and seeing what they will do going forward. It’s vital to be quick to market, and they have the resources to do that.”

Giving Women the Support to Be Successful

As a new mom, Mygrant has been particularly focused on new challenges she’s encountered by being a working mom in the finance industry. Of course, she realizes that many things have improved over the past decade, from extended maternity or paternity leave to funding for IVF to the ability to ship milk when you travel. But here are still disparities—such as the fact that there might be a space set aside to pump, but it’s not always comfortable or convenient. And while some states are improving laws and implementing steps forward, she believes that it’s up to senior women in the workforce to help get the message heard throughout organizations. “Having key programs and options in place makes people want to come back,” she notes. “Support your employees and they’ll be loyal.”

Another way Mygrant sees that companies should support their employees is through robust mentorship programs. “I can’t emphasize enough how much my mentors molded and shaped me in the right way early in my career.” She now pays it forward to other women in her organization but is well aware that in a cost-cutting environment, formal programs may become downscaled or vanish. And that’s a shame she says, since helping guide young professionals is a huge win for companies.

Her advice to newer talent is to never be afraid to ask for what they need or to take chances. “The worst that can happen is that someone says no.” You will never feel 100% confident about something new and so you have to go for it.”

Baking as Relaxation

While free time is at a premium with a young child, Mygrant is still able to indulge in one of her biggest passions—baking. She is a member of a cookbook club and a baking club, and every year around the holidays, which also coincides with her birthday, she takes two days off and bakes upwards of 30 items for a huge holiday party and as gifts for friends. “Baking is a fantastic way to relieve stress and remove yourself from a job that today is a 24-hour endeavor, given all the ways we are connected. It’s a huge relief to do something I enjoy, and at the same time, it allows me to give back to my friends.”

 

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