Beverly Jo Slaughter: Managing Counsel, Wells Fargo Advisors

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“It doesn’t have to be weighty. We don’t have to solve the problems of the world all of the time, but we do need to take the effort to have conversations that begin to reach out,” says Beverly Jo Slaughter, managing counsel at Wells Fargo Advisors.

“I find that when we have an open dialogue, we learn that we are more alike than we are different. It gives us the opportunity to look at the world through somebody else’s eyes—and that’s huge, just huge.”

Match Your Work To Natural Talents

Slaughter’s dream to be a lawyer in a major corporation was so strong that she decided to return to college to earn her juris doctorate degree from Fordham University School of Law during her early forties, just as her kids were beginning to leave the nest.

“I remembered distinctly walking into orientation and looking at people who were not too much older than my own children,” she recalls of being an “alternative student.”

Today, Slaughter heads a team of lawyers and paralegals in the financial services industry, and often reflects on the notion of “never working a day in her life.”

“A big part of job satisfaction is determining what talents and skills you possess naturally,” she observes, “and then how you can fashion that into a career.”

“I like written and oral advocacy. I like advising and advocating for a position whether it’s through, litigation or advising,” Slaughter says. “I enjoy setting out a position and deciding what benefits, advantages and downsides there are, too. I believe that you need to have a nuanced approach.”

While the love of advocacy was present as a paralegal and other positions she held prior to law school, only at Wells Fargo Advisors has Slaughter found the level and breadth of intellectual challenge she craved.

“It’s not only advocacy but also getting your arms around a new problem or an issue and coming to understand it and master it,” she says. “That’s fascinating to me.”

Slaughter is a proponent of heading off conflict before it arises, by being an even better advisor than an advocate.

“I always wanted to be a litigator, but, to me, the best litigator in the world is an advisor,” she discerns. “The other part of my job is to help us avoid litigation and to use those resources to be a better company and to better serve our clients.”

Shape Your Role For Your Fulfillment

“Although I’ve had the same job title since 2008, I have not had the same job,” notes Slaughter. “I’ve been blessed to have the capability to shape my roles in a way that has satisfied me and helped me grow.”

She thrives on getting involved in opportunities where she learns about a new subject matter. One example is taking on a case through which she cultivated an expertise in litigation practices when working with tribal law and tribal court, and developed an understanding of some of the specific issues around financial affairs for tribal people.

“It was my way of going from 0 to 50,” reflects Slaughter. “But it was also my way of enriching my job and continuing to offer better value to the company.”

“I’m a person who believes that you have a great deal of influence and power when it comes to making your job fulfilling for yourself and for increasing your value,” she iterates.

Be A Resource and Advocate For Others

Taking the opportunity to help others realize their worth and navigate their path is her favorite part of leading a team—such as appointing adept paralegals to project management, which showcases the skills they’ve mastered that are very applicable on the business side.

“When you see somebody’s face light up because they found a new skill that they’re good at,” she says, “and they begin to realize the tremendous opportunities that are available to them at a company like Wells Fargo Advisors—that’s a kind of satisfaction like no other to me.”

Slaughter recalls an intriguing piece of advice she received from a mentor decades ago: you will get very far in the world if you are nice.

“I came later to understand what she meant,” says Slaughter. “If you are authentic with people —and interested in their good, in their issues, in the things that are difficult for them—often times you can develop a marvelous work relationship, and you become a go-to person.”

She has found the willingness to be that person of counsel has helped her become someone others come to with issues in confidence and to seek ideas for resolution. It has also positioned her team at the table from the start, having a voice as policies and projects are being crafted, not after decisions are made.

“Quite frankly, that’s who you want to be,” says Slaughter. “You want to be the go-to person who is known as the individual who will get it done and who appreciates the contingencies of the business.”

Be Coachable And Enjoy Your Successes

Along with hard work and helping others, she feels another critical element of success is being coachable and celebrating your value.

“You have to reach out and ask people for help in identifying places you can perhaps get better,” Slaughter notes, “and it takes a great deal of bravery to admit that you can be wrong or less than perfect.”

But being genuinely open to your growth means also being self-aware of your worth and value, and standing in it.

“The biggest thing I think I took away from mentors and coaches over the years was to learn to give a value to myself,” Slaughter reflects. “External recognition is a wonderful thing, but we all have to learn to give recognition to ourselves, to recognize when we have done well, to celebrate our value and feel confident that we bring it to the table.”

She recommends pausing to appreciate what you do well and acknowledge successes because that will carry you through the challenges.

“I think humor is extraordinarily important,” she adds. “The ability to laugh, and sometimes at one’s self, is crucial. Often times that can be a bonding agent. There’s a lot of life that’s really joyful and to be celebrated.”

Brave the Diversity Conversation

Slaughter’s most fulfilling experience came while speaking during a series of company presentations around diversity, equity and inclusion.

In that moment, she crystallized the realization that diversity is difficult, but as a black woman in corporate law, she has been successfully bridging the difficult conversation for her entire career— reaching out to people who appear different than her, or have different backgrounds, in order to build those relationships.

“Diversity, equity and inclusion to me is often times the willingness to recognize your initial communication may not be perfect,” says Slaughter. “But in the end, most people will respond to you in an effort to continue the dialogue.”

“That was a really freeing moment for me,” she says, having been widely thanked by colleagues for reflecting that back.

Slaughter loves reading, crossword puzzles and is passionate about literacy for children and immigrants— the gateway to self-education so you can dream and even overcome disadvantage and adversity.

Growing up in Harlem and passionate about travel, a crowning moment for Slaughter was standing with her husband in front of the pyramids in Egypt and reveling at how much dreams, even when they seem out of reach, can be yours.

Wells Fargo Advisors is a trade name used by Wells Fargo Clearing Services, LLC, Member SIPC, a registered broker-dealer and non-bank affiliate of Wells Fargo & Company.

By Aimee Hansen

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OP-Ed: Going Back to “Normal” or Creating A “New Normal”?

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Kate IslerI, for one, don’t want to go back to normal. We have an opportunity this month, during Women’s History Month, to assess the current state of women’s equality around the world and make the appropriate and overdue changes to create a new normal. As I look around today, there is no question that the global pandemic has had a disproportionate effect on women and that the gains made over the past three decades have been all but wiped out in the past 12 months.

Women, and especially mothers, are leaving the workforce at unprecedented rates to shoulder most of the childcare and home-schooling responsibilities caused by the pandemic, resulting in unemployment numbers that set us back to the 1980s. But almost more alarming are the “getting back to normal” discussions I hear every day. The normal that so many are talking about nostalgically were not equitable or profitable for women, especially women of color.

Policy matters. Changes being debated on the state and federal level matter. One recent example, in particular, stands out: The Idaho state legislature voted down a bill that would have given the state access to $6 million in funding (approved by the Trump administration) for early childhood education. The opposition to the funding included comments from Idaho Representative Charlie Shepherd (GOP) who stated during the debate, “I don’t think anybody does a better job than mothers in the home, and any bill that makes it easier or more convenient for mothers to come out of the home and let others raise their child, I don’t think that’s a good direction for us to be going.” Mr. Shepherd later apologized for his remarks, but his words still ring heavy and hard. Until state and federal policy makers see, accept, and support the fact that most families have two incomes, and that women desire to live fully realized lives, we are going to continue to fight this shift back to the undesired “normal.”

We are at a historic inflection point. We have an opportunity to create a new normal. Women comprise over 50% of the population and are responsible for 85% of the consumer purchasing decisions. Plus, research has proven time and time again that increased diversity has a direct correlation to increased profitability for businesses.

The way forward is not backwards.

Women working together can seize this opportunity to create new work environments that allow the other half of the population to thrive and flourish. The way forward includes:

  1. Women supporting women. This doesn’t mean that we always need to agree, but we need to support one another. Purchase from women-owned businesses. Mentor a younger woman colleague. Talk explicitly about barriers and successes so other women don’t think they are alone in this work.
  2. Dispelling the myth that there is only room for a few women leaders. There is always room to increase the numbers, whether that is in the boardroom or at the table. Bring your own chair if there isn’t one. And always bring a spare chair with you to meetings, in case your colleague forgets hers.
  3. Be explicit about what you need to be successful in a work environment. For far too long women have kept quiet about what they need and been made to feel singled out and isolated. You are NOT the only one.
  4. Realize that you have power and even more power with a team. So often women feel that they are powerless based on circumstances outside of their control. Gender equity is a team sport. Build or find your team and work together to achieve your vision. There is power in numbers.

Don’t settle for going back to “NORMAL.” This is a once-in-a-hundred-years opportunity to reset the table. Let’s build on the work that has been done by countless women and men to take a major step forward in cultural evolution.

 

Kate Isler is the Co-Founder of TheWMarketplace, an economic engine for women, as well as the Co-Founder of Be Bold Now, a non-profit focused on accelerating gender parity. With over 20 years of international executive leadership experience gained working for Fortune 100 companies, Kate’s journey of leadership, challenging the status quo, overcoming adversity and breaking gender stereotypes motivates and inspires. She shares her incredible story and insights in her memoir, Breaking Borders (HarperCollins Leadership), available everywhere books are sold.

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Mariella Greco: Gender and International Development Advisor

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Mariella Greco “In difficult moments in the development world, I draw on what I learned from the intensity of the trading room,” says Mariella Greco, a global leader in gender, development and finance. “The motivators are different, but those same skills make me a better leader in the not-for-profit sector.”

Heeding the Call

Having majored in international relations in university, Greco was magnetized to international development.

But after a short assignment at Canada’s Permanent Mission to the UN in 1990, she put her call to international service on hold and accepted a domestic position with the Royal Bank of Canada back in Windsor, Ontario, her hometown, staying near her mother during her parent’s difficult divorce.

When family matters settled, she left Windsor to pivot back to international affairs, but in banking. She succeeded in a tough dealer training program that she landed as the only woman on the Canada desk. Nicknamed “Stella”—and with the occasional “what-a-guy” pat on the back—she learned to hold her own as one of very few women dealers in the bank’s main trading room.

But Greco still felt the pull to international development and began volunteering for Plan International in Canada.

When she began at the Royal Bank, she promised herself (in writing, along with other life goals she recorded in a book) that she would revisit her path in time: within 5 years, she would either try international development or stay the course in finance.

“My head was like don’t be stupid,” recalls Greco, “but my heart was still feeling this call.”

Giving up a hard-won position in the global headquarters of Canada’s biggest bank for an NGO job with a 50% pay cut was both risky and daunting.

“So for a year I went home everyday and asked myself, ’Is this a day where I feel I want to go, stay or am I neutral?’ I literally logged it,” she explains. “Like the markets, my feelings about taking the leap had highs and lows. I tried to find balance with a daily risk-reward analysis about what I wanted in life. At the end of the year, I added it all up, and bottom line—there were more days where my gut said GO.”

Greco heeded the math and left for a “planned” two year break from banking that became two decades working in international development, while living in five countries, traveling to 50 countries and gaining proficiency in several languages, before returning to Canada with her family in 2018.

Transferable Leadership Lessons

Calm Under Fire

On the trading floor, Greco learned that as important as being a good winner was, so was being a good loser.

The EVP who interviewed her for the dealer job asked her, “Can you speak your mind to your boss, and give your opinion knowing his is different, even if he is yelling because of market volatility? Can you speak up then, too?” She said yes, and she did because it was the expectation.

“They wanted to know if you can stand the heat and carry on, even when stress is overwhelming and you’re losing money,” says Greco. “Loyalty to the team meant sharing differing opinions, and it also meant closing ranks when final decisions were taken.”

This insight and learning to stand the heat helped her to be a strong leader in many challenging situations, and to do so while also caring for her team’s wellbeing (physical, mental and socio-emotional), such as in humanitarian crises.

“The most rewarding experiences are sometimes the hardest ones,” says Greco, such as the Category 5 hurricane response she led in Nicaragua (earning her one of her official Medals of Honor).

Also, ensuring child safeguarding and gender equality were part of each and every Plan staff member’s performance objectives was rewarding too, because it positively impacted both the quality of their work and the personal lives of her team.

Speaking Truth to Power and Holding Midterm Vision

Honed in the trading room, several bosses have told Greco that her strong voice is her “superpower”.

When pregnant with her first daughter, Greco learned that expatriate women in her organization didn’t receive maternity leave, even as she was unexpectedly promoted shortly after giving birth. As her contract was subject to U.S. labor laws, she was limited to six weeks of “disability leave” after birth, because maternity leave might be interpreted as discriminatory against men, creating liability risk for the organization.

“I was shocked that giving birth was deemed a disability in an organization dedicated to children and gender,” shares Greco.

Not only did that seem wrong, but also that it was only 6 weeks of leave, especially when compared to the year that mothers may take off in Canada.

Greco began a five year internal campaign that gave birth to a maternity leave policy that was more coherent with the organization’s mandate. In doing so, she helped remove barriers for younger women aspiring to both leadership and motherhood.

“Some things you can take a short-term view on, but for other things you need to play the long game, even if you can’t see around the corner,” Greco reflects. “Be willing to also sow seeds and nurture change for positive impacts that may only blossom after you are long gone.”

Greco values learning to speak truth to power early in life. Reflecting on a “Me Too” incident she had early in her career, Greco recalls the unconditional support of her male bosses when she reported being harassed by a senior executive, who was also way over their heads.

“I had stood my ground with him and let my bosses know the next day, but I also asked them to refrain from intervening unless he bothered me again,” remembers Greco. “They were so outraged that instead of doing what I asked, they made it known to their leadership that they had my back.”

When the “Me Too” movement gained prominence, she realized how rare their reactions were. So she wrote her ex-bosses and asked them to sit their daughters down and tell them that story “so they know how stand-up their dads were and so they know the standard of support they should expect if it happens to them.”

“That whole experience (good and bad),” reflects Greco, “helped me better support others who faced this.”

Multidirectional Career Moves

Greco made yet another non-traditional career move in 2019, pivoting towards government this time.

“People too often think their path must be up, up, up, like that’s the only direction worth going” she observes. “Had I been hostage to that mentality, I would have missed an amazing journey. I feel the same way about the journey ahead”.

She likens working in government to learning about a whole new world: “It is a bit like being paid to attend a university program, continuing to work and add value, but influencing for change more subtly.”

Empowering Girls to Lead

Greco credits her successes—whether as a trainee or as a Country Director—to both fortune and her willingness to try.

In Plan, Greco was steadfast in her efforts to advance gender equality and promote the leadership potential of girls. Ahead of Plan’s #GirlsTakeover on International Day of the Girl on October 11th, Paraguayan colleagues warned that national leaders would never cede their positions to girls, given entrenched gender attitudes and the political environment.

Greco decided she would try, anyway, at least with one Minister. When she phoned him, he quickly agreed. So she called another, and then another, planning to stop when one Minister said ‘no’. None did.

That year, Paraguay’s Cabinet, Senate, Congress, Supreme Court and even the Central Bank were led by girls. It catalyzed the President to create a Council of Girl Minsters, inspired Paraguayan girls to dream bigger dreams and it helped chip away at arthritic gender stereotypes. The next year, ministers were asking her to be involved.

“Without that risk tolerance built into me, whether inherent or strengthened in the trading room, I probably wouldn’t have asked” says Greco. “Don’t squander your opportunities out of fear of a ‘no’. Try. ”

Which Organizations Will Dare?

Greco discusses gender and COVID-19 impacts with her daughters, even the 140,000 U.S. job losses in December 2020, in which women netted 156,000 losses vs. the 16,000 net jobs gained among men.

Women fill so many jobs deemed “essential”—yet are disproportionately bearing the economic brunt of the pandemic, whether in job losses, being underpaid or exiting the workforce for unpaid family responsibilities. Paying wages commensurate with essential work and implementing measures that close the wage gap could slow the loss of women from the labor force, but Greco feels the solution space of gender impacts needs more innovate thinking for systemic change.

“Incremental change is safe but too slow,” observes Greco. “Taking some risks to accelerate long term gains is long overdue.”

Basics like paid maternity leave and flexible arrangements for family responsibilities (the brunt of which continue to fall to women) are critical, but additional measures that fast-track women back onto their career should help them regain momentum too.

When faced with women exiting the workforce (be it a result of the pandemic, family responsibilities or wage gap disincentives), do employers just lament and accept it, or do they step up and flex what’s possible to keep their talent? Can organizational playbooks and rules historically written by men be modernized through a more balanced lens?

Greco looks to organizations with deep pockets to pilot such changes that matter, lean into some risks and help pave the way for others.

The True Pipeline

After witnessing so many empowered girls inspiringly take to leadership, and the impact on their personal sense of agency, Greco reframes the pipeline when it comes to future change.

“Younger people are more powerful, engaging and influential early on,” she says. “It’s not only about a line of new and energetic ‘replacement’ candidates to fulfill status quo positions, but rather an idea stream with young and unencumbered perspectives that will evolve our vision and how we do things.”

“Avoid the typical training that ‘indoctrinates’ young talent in how things are done, because if we listen better, we just might realize that they have the most forward looking solutions,” she advises. “Consider stewarding and facilitating emerging talent and ideas. That’s what’s going to tip it, for those willing to ask—to listen to differing opinions and to courageously take calculated risks.”

By Aimee Hansen

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Four Steps to Making Professional and Personal Life Change in 2021

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Nicki GilmourOur lives changed one year ago this week, in ways we could not have predicted. Most professional women lost the office, the commute and socialization with clients, coworkers and friends in New York City, London or wherever we live and work around the country and the world.

Cities emptied as many relocated to the countryside or the suburbs. Mothers took on 15+ more hours a week of domestic work and childcare, and some left work due to the strain. Others experienced a workforce reduction that cut across every sector in one way or another.

In an unprecedented year, many of us have felt shock, pain, loss and grief in different ways for different reasons. As most changes to our world endure, this brings another level of internal processing and feelings.

In a time where the external context has felt both uncertain and unfamiliar, many of us have felt more compelled towards reconnection with our center, our internal compass and our animating purpose—What do I value? What do I want to envision and create? Where do I want to focus my energy and attention?

These questions matters, now as much or more than ever. Here are four steps to support in the process of re-evaluation:

Step 1: Feel the feels.

Let yourself feel everything, but know that you are not your emotions, rather that you experience these emotions.

“Emotional Agility” is important. Being able to recognize and name how you feel and know that you can see it objectively, and not only experience it subjectively, means understanding that you are not the emotion.

Emotions are data that can help you understand what next steps are right for you. The amazing Dr. Susan David at Harvard has worked extensively on helping people understand that if we put our emotions to one side to embrace false positivity, we lose our capacity to deal with the world as it is, instead of as we wish it to be.

In her TedX talk, she recounts that over the years, when people say they don’t want to try something or they prefer to avoid disappointment or they want fear and shame to just go away, her humorous response is: “I understand, but you have dead people’s goals.”

David offers a free quiz to begin the journey of becoming more astute about your emotions, and her bestselling book is a great way to start getting in touch with your emotions as your guides.

“Normal, natural emotions are now seen as good or bad,” she states. “Being positive has become a new form of moral correctness. It’s unkind and ineffective.”

Ignore the societal call for relentless positivity and keep it real, so you can be honest with yourself about how you feel. You will be happier for it and more guided towards genuine contentment and joy, because you listened to yourself.

Step 2: Take Care of Inner Business.

“Wherever you go, there you are” is the saying.

Who are you? Do you behaviors line up with what you say matters to you? Or, what are you committing to, instead? How do you show up for yourself?

In her excellent book Act Like a Leader, Think Like a Leader and in her body of work on transitions, including during Covid (quick read here), Herminia Ibarra suggests that in the messy business of getting to where we want to go, we should consider not only our current selves but our future possible selves also.

“Possible selves are the ideas we all have about who we might want to become. Some are concrete and well-informed by experience; others are vague and fuzzy, nascent and untested,” writes Ibarra. “Some are realistic; others are pure fantasy. And, naturally, some appeal more to us than others.”

List your skills, your values and who you want to be. To self-assess your driving inner forces around recognition, fairness, and autonomy, for example, take the SCARF free quiz to see where you fall on the spectrum of these behavioral motivators.

Harvard’s longest running study on adult development suggests that while we say we want money and success, those who live the healthiest, happiest and longest actually share one essential experience —having deep human connection. That includes with ourselves.

Why not use the shake-up of this liminal time to shine an investigate light in the places where you have been on auto-pilot and check-in if you are still living in alignment with yourself, now?

Step 3: Commit to the Changes You Want to Make.

In this blurry time, I invite you to take stock as professional women to review what is working for you and what needs to simply change—in both your inner story and your outer physical world.

Change is hard and neuroscience and psychology shows us that we tend to stick with what we know through routines, even if the habits aren’t that useful to us anymore. Trying to live like we did before is pretty impossible, but being resilient and adaptable amidst whatever this new decade brings in our world is key.

It is the mental or even professional pivot, not the hanging on, that will empower you. Pivoting is something that we are all doing, whether it is small adjustments to how we work or a big transition into a new career altogether. Ibarra has always argued that we are all in transition at work, but we just don’t know it yet.

Businesses who have pivoted during the pandemic have seen the best results when they protect their core, while innovating slightly to meet needs of a changing customer. Company culture and brand purpose matters the most—who are you and what do you stand for?

If businesses are taking stock of these questions, take the same permission slip: Who are you, now? What do you value, now? Where do you wish to set your vision and put your energy, from now onwards?

Step 4: Elevate Your Development With a Coach.

I know this is going to sound strange, but as an executive and leadership coach, I effectively spend four to eight hours per day inside other people’s heads. Like in the movie Being John Malkovich, I become privy to the inner voices that we all have, and it is fascinating to witness the “truths” that we all tell ourselves.

We all have a bunch of constructs, albeit different ones, that make up our default operating system. Your brain, mostly your unconscious, is running the show and is building data models day and night via associative process. This comprises your worldview or mental model, literally the lens through which you experience your life—unless seen, challenged, disrupted and revisioned.

We’re often blind to what creates our limits and blocks. We all have goals, but we need to surface our subconscious gremlins, who are trying to thwart are best-laid plans for change by creating hidden competing agendas.

A great model for approaching this internal work by yourself is available in the book Immunity to Change, which really is a life-altering read that I have discussed at length here on the site. Imposter syndrome runs rampant with successful overachievers, and I have not met one client yet who doesn’t have some deep fear of failure, wobbly sense of worthiness, or hidden insecurity or shame.

But you don’t have to be beholden to these gremlins anymore, and you don’t have to overcome them alone, either.

You can do so much to clear the debris and make real change uninterrupted by your subconscious fears. Neuroscience research has now caught up with what social psychologists have been hypothesizing on for decades: The brain is high elastic or plastic and even the most entrenched behaviors can be modified.

Ibarra and others suggest that coaches are key to the process of making the changes you most hunger for: Firstly, in talking it all out. Secondly, in helping you make real and actionable plans. Thirdly, in acting as an accountability partner and advocate to be in your corner as you navigate the course to new territory.

Are you ready?

If you would like to work with Nicki Gilmour as your executive coach, she has some (daytime only) spots left or we have a cadre of vetted professional coaches available (some have evenings available). Please click here for an exploratory call.

Packages start at $799 for 2 sessions, 5 sessions for $1999 and ten sessions for $3,899.

by Nicki Gilmour, CEO and Founder, Evolved People (theglasshammer.com)

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Renad Younes: Regional Managing Partner for the Middle East, M&A and Project Development, Shearman & Sterling LLP

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Renad Younes“If you look at the Shearman & Sterling office in the Middle East, it’s a truly diverse office which represents the region in which we are operating,” testifies Renad Younes, who joined the firm over two years ago.

From Abu Dhabi, Younes speaks to how she prioritizes relationships in her advisory work, as a female leader in the Middle East with pride in diversity and inclusion.

Relocating Back to The Middle East

After growing up in Palestine, Younes moved to London to complete her higher education at the London School of Economics in 2003. She stayed in London for ten more years—working, getting married and having her first child.

The London scene magnetized her to the work of large law firms, and she quickly found that international M&A and projects work was closely related to her keen interests—navigating cross-border transactions, collaborating with diverse people and working with different laws, transactions and involved parties to meet their needs.

In 2013, Younes made the move to Abu Dhabi to be closer to her clients in the region. Relocating also meant that she was closer to family.

Younes continued to practice law as she also began to raise her family. Able to balance her working life and family without putting her career on pause —Younes made partner in 2014.

“Being a successful career woman doesn’t mean sacrificing your family life,” says Younes, who had her second child in 2016. “You have to put your mind to it and be organized – but it’s not impossible to have a successful career just because you’re a woman or a parent.”

Younes reflects on diversity at work: “inclusivity at work, while it’s perceived as a gender issue, is actually much broader than that. It’s about creating an environment which is supportive of all people so that it’s not impossible to balance your work and personal life. That is what I have been fortunate enough to experience.

“At Shearman & Sterling, our commitment and focus around diversity and inclusion remains non-negotiable,” she continues. “I think the ongoing pandemic has shown just how important it is that our workplaces are inclusive of the responsibilities we all have, regardless of gender. Whether you’re a parent or caring for parents, or simply have other interests and responsibilities, we all have demands outside of work.”

Mediating Within Complex Relationships

“I work with commercial enterprise clients and government organizations who typically have a social responsibility emphasis,” Younes notes. “I am quite aware that the image attached to M&A is that you’re only focused on business, but it’s just not the case in our day-to-day job.”

She observes that the clients that work with her at Shearman & Sterling are highly involved in the community aspect and awareness of what they bring to where their business is operating, which animates her as well.

“Helping and empowering the community through developing their natural resources for example is fulfilling for me as a lawyer,” says Younes, who mediates between governments, government owned companies, international companies and communities—supporting communities, governments and corporations towards what they aspire to achieve.

“I think the technical legal aspect is very interesting,” she says, “but the human interactions, working with different cultures and political structures and governments, draws me the most to what I do.”

Staying Close to Your Team and Your Clients

Younes reflects on her role as a more senior lawyer and a member of the firm’s executive management: “As I become more senior, it’s about having a successful team that enables us to execute complex transactions and deliver whilst creating the right environment for those coming through,” she notes. “It’s about the importance of our team, both collectively and as individuals.”

Younes knows that managing a successful team is about “creating and implementing a meritocracy- not an autocracy in which there is one voice and people follow. Nor is it a democracy in which nothing can be achieved without an equal weight to every single opinion—but a meritocracy that encourages different perspectives and explores the various opinions of all team members in proportion to their merits.

“It is ultimately what makes us successful,” she continues. “Having a team that shares the same values and views is wonderful, but you also want people that challenge and push each other so that you encourage creativity. Great teams do both equally well.”

As to the clients, for Younes, being an M&A lawyer is not just working through the next deal, but about nurturing a long-term relationship and becoming an advisor to her clients.

“I think of myself as a member of the client’s team. One of my aspirations as a lawyer is not to be perceived as an external supplier of services, but to become a trusted advisor,” she says. “It’s a personal relationship—clients want to call the person they trust will give them the right advice that is tailored for them.”

What has surprised her is that she never stops being fascinated and compelled by the work. Each year, she sets out with more momentum and aspirations, even as the work demands have become more difficult with seniority.

“It doesn’t matter how many deals you have done, how much work you have on, there is something new everyday and something new that you learn, whether from clients, transactions, team members at Shearman or in other firms, including opposing counsel,” she says. “You have to stay on your toes and continue to be relevant. That’s great, as it keeps the job fascinating and interesting.”

Being in the Company of Senior Women Leaders

“The perception is that M&A and projects is a male-dominated field, but that has not always been my experience. Many of our clients are diverse and we have many senior very successful female clients,” says Younes. “The diversity progress that I have witnessed in the market in the past few years has been very encouraging.”

Younes is especially proud of her Shearman & Sterling team, and how well they have maintained team cohesion over the last year while delivering results to clients.

“I’ve only been with Shearman & Sterling for two years, but it’s amazing how diverse the firm is – the number of female partners, female associates, different cultures and diverse perspectives. There’s a genuine attention and commitment to diversity and we have implemented a number of initiatives that are aimed to increasing diversity and inclusion in the firm,” she observes.

“It’s not just talking about it, it’s actual implementation, and not just because of the stats,” testifies Younes. “We genuinely believe it’s important to have different perspectives in the meeting room.”

Looking Towards Our Possibilities

Most of Younes’ spare time is spent with her family.

While it’s a big adjustment and many are struggling, she thinks the flexibility realized by the remote office will hopefully serve to empower women and indeed everyone juggling work and personal commitments.

Looking at the future, she is excited about our human capacity for innovation and the possibility of communities being catalyzed to come together to create new solutions amidst the collective challenges in the world right now.

By Aimee Hansen

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IWD 2021 Wake-Up Call: The Pandemic Response Has Worked Against Women.

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During the month of International Women’s Day (IWD 2021), we confront a global reality: no recent year has devastated women’s lives like the one we’ve just lived through. And it’s still happening.

The IWD2021 theme is #ChoosetoChallenge: “A challenged world is an alert world and from challenge comes change.”

Starkly put, the pandemic response has exemplified “a lack of gender perspective” resulting in 47 million more women facing poverty. The International Labour Organization has given warning that the “modest progress” made on global gender equality across the years will disappear due to COVID-19.

The damage of the pandemic response has not only made obvious the real danger in the inevitable blindness of default male leadership.

It has also bolded and underlined that the world has not been a level playing field for women for far too long—a paradigm in which gains in “equality” are molasses slow and hard-won progress can slip away within the blink of a year.

A Wave of Women’s Disempowerment

UN Women points out that 2020 marked the 25th year anniversary of the Beijing Platform for action, which was intended to be “groundbreaking for gender equality”, but instead now represents a rollback.

A recent report by UN Women found that as a direct result of pandemic-related unemployment and lost earnings, women’s poverty rates have increased by 9.1 percent worldwide and the poverty gap between men and women is widening after years of decline.

Women are losing what was already sparse ground in executive leadership and a pithy share of entrepreneurial funding. Women are increasingly unable to stay in work while caregiving and taking pay losses. Dozens of millions of women in developing nations have been dropped into economic, safety and health fragility.

A blatant wave of global women’s disempowerment has taken place due to the COVID-19 pandemic response, drastically impacting quality of life for millions of women. The measures have had distinctly gender-regressive effects, setting women back by decades.

The words “pandemic response” are intentional because these impacts are not from the pandemic itself, but from the response measures that have been implemented—neither inherent nor unavoidable. Treating the pandemic and the response measures as inextricable is blinding to a more empowering narrative of exploration of greater choices or different measures.

Many Spheres of Losses for Women

“The pandemic is deepening pre-existing inequalities, exposing vulnerabilities in social, political and economic systems which are in turn amplifying the impacts of the pandemic,” writes the UN Women policy authors. “Across every sphere, from health to the economy, security to social protection, the impacts of COVID-19 are exacerbated for women and girls simply by virtue of their sex.”

Disproportionate Job and Pay Losses

More likely to be employed and over-represented in the informal sectors—such as retail, hospitality, food, agriculture and tourism—women have born the brunt of pandemic job losses. 70% of unemployment has been in the informal sector, in which security for job losses are rare or non-existent.

While women comprise 39% of the global labor force, research by the McKinsey Global Institute in July found that they accounted for 54% of early pandemic-related job losses. A UN Women report at the end of the second quarter of 2020 showed that women were 1.7 times more likely to be out of the labor market. Since February 2020, 2.4 million women dropped out of the U.S. workforce, 33% more dropouts than men (less than 1.8 million).

And the gendered effect is becoming more marked—80% of September labor drop-outs, as school began again, were women (865,000) and this rate continues: in January 2021, 275,000 women dropped out, at nearly 4x the rate of male job exits (71,000). As of October, women in India were dropping out of the workforce 2.5 times faster than men.

While women in European countries are fairing better at staying employed due to more stimulus spending and protections, analysis across 28 countries revealed women’s wages have dropped more (6.9% vs. 4.7% for men)—with drops in Germany (8.6%) and UK (12.9%) being nearly double those for men.

Escalated Unpaid Work

UNESCO reports 87% of students (1.52 billion) and over 60 million teachers have been homebound, with mothers disproportionately shouldering that change. As women are forced to turn their efforts toward unpaid work, they lose access to paid work, in a rate far higher than men who have children in the household.

Women comprise the majority of single-parent households. There’s a gross imbalance in domestic unpaid work (women do 3x as much as men—4.1 vs 1.7 daily hours), with less social and economic protections. Speaking globally, full lockdowns have a disproportional impact on women’s mobility, especially school closures.

As a result of the pandemic response measures, it was estimated in May that time spent on family responsibilities increased by 30% for women in India. In June, a report found that U.S. women were spending ten to 15 hours more per week on caregiving responsibilities than before—creating the emergence of a “double double shift” in dual-career parent couples, where mothers are 1.5 times more likely than fathers to spend an additional 3+ hours on household work a day than prior to COVID-19.

“The COVID-19 global crisis has made starkly visible the fact that the world’s formal economies and the maintenance of our daily lives are built on the invisible and unpaid labor of women and girls,” states the UN Women policy report.

Basic Vulnerability in Developing Countries

Beyond job loss and escalated unpaid work, women in developing economies are less likely than men to have a bank account, have only 77% as much access to personal finances and have 17% less access to the internet. The financial access gap is exacerbated in this increasingly digitized bank environment.

Food insecurity and hunger are anticipated to double in low and middle income countries. Women also face exponentially increased gender-based violence while often being “locked down” with their domestic abusers, with disrupted or inaccessible support services.

As a direct example, a study from Nairobi showed highly gendered impacts to Kenyan youth—over half of women reporting financial reliance (54%), both young men (45%) and young women (53%) being unable to meet basic needs, and more young women becoming reliant on transactional sex partnerships to do so (36%), with half of young women (49%) reporting an increase in intimate partner violence since COVID-19.

Lost of Ground in Leadership, Academia and Entrepreneurship

In the academic world, higher education, school closure and increased childcare has witnessed women’s “research outputs plummeting during lockdown while men’s have increased”—amplifying longstanding gender inequalities in access to grants and promotions.

While women made up only 5% of chief executives globally before, a new report has shown that companies are defaulting to hiring male CEOS and recruiting fewer women. And while women founder teams received only 2.8% of investments in 2019, that paltry all-time high has dropped to only 2.3% of VC funding in 2020.

Disproportionate Impacts on Black and Latina Women

“It appears that the pandemic is affecting the already built-in racial/ethnic and gendered structural disparities in the labor market in an even more pronounced way, especially for women of color,” said researchers in the Journal of Economics, Race and Policy.

Throughout the pandemic, unemployment has hit women and people of color, meaning the intersectional effect for women of color is the sharpest. In April 2020, national unemployment was 14.7% but 16.9% for black women and 20.2% for Latina women. In August 2020, black women had recovered only 34% of pre-pandemic jobs, relative to 61% for white women.

Unemployment for black women (11.1%) and Latinas (11.0%) was twice as high in September 2020 than prior to the pandemic. As of January, black women were still 8.5% unemployed and Latina women 8.8% unemployed, with the national average at 6.3%.

Impacts that will Outlast the Crisis

E-bola in Liberia demonstrated that while men’s lives bounced back after preventative measures subsided, the detrimental impact on women’s livelihoods endured.

Of the 12.1 million job losses for women in the U.S. between February and April 2020, only slightly more than half had returned as of September. Research has shown that workers who lose employment during a recession experience “highly persistent earning losses” in the fallout.

“The large impact of the current recession on working women has consequences that will long outlast the recession itself,” writes researchers. “Given that women have lost many more jobs than men in this recession, earnings losses will push down the average earnings of women in the economy and raise the gender pay gap.”

Default Male Decision Making in the Covid-19 Response

Early last year, theglasshammer wrote about the default male world. Now, the pandemic response measures have shown how default male world decision-making has created massive detrimental impacts for women in a very short amount of time.

As written in a blog post on LSE’s School of Public Policy, “Not only do we know little about the impact of the pandemic on women, the people making key decisions on how to manage it are overwhelmingly male.”

Only 25% of health leadership positions (less than 5% of these in low and middle income countries) are female, while 70% of the health workforce and 90% of frontline workers are women. LSE writers argue this created a complete disregard in policy for the needs of women, precluding the exploration of more diverse, holistic and inclusive approaches.

Only 3.5% of COVID-19 decision-making teams have gender parity, with 85% of task forces being comprised of mostly men. Fewer than 1 in 5 of social policies and labor measures taken across 200 countries were gender sensitive.

An MP committee in the UK called out that government policies had been “repeatedly skewed towards men.” And the “gender perspective is unfortunately often the first thing to be disregarded” in crisis response situations, said Swedish Foreign Minister Ann Linde.

Bold new fiscal packages and corporate policies, many of which would have seemed unthinkable before the crisis, have been enacted with remarkable speed,” wrote McKinsey partners and co-authors in Foreign Affairs, “While these initiatives have helped to stabilize the global economy during a once-in-a-lifetime emergency, far too many of them have failed to sufficiently consider the half of the world’s population that is arguably more critical to a full economic recovery: women.”

Will We Choose to Challenge?

In a default male patriarchal world, the pandemic response has evidenced that if leadership is not actively working for women, it is in fact actively working against them.

When will we harness the real power of being the invisible engine of the world, and give our support to a paradigm only if it honors and respects the belonging of all people here?

Deep down, don’t we all know the truth that if the world doesn’t work for everyone, it doesn’t work for anyone?

UN Women notes that “Women will be the hardest hit by this pandemic but they will also be the backbone of recovery in communities. Every policy response that recognizes this will be the more impactful for it.”

The organization recommends 1) ensure women’s equal representation in all COVID-19 response planning and decision-making, 2) drive transformative change for equality by addressing the care economy, paid and unpaid, 3) target women and girls in all efforts to address the socio-economic impact of COVID-19.

“Achieving gender parity in leadership and decision-making positions is the first step towards achieving equitable and sustainable global health security,” argues the LSE co-authors.

Stepping back, if we were talking about the impacts on women’s lives as much as case rates, would the world populace—especially women—be abiding the same measures?

Would we be engaging in a more nuanced discussion about preservation of health, lives and quality of lives? Did we even pause to have that discussion?

Would we choose to challenge the changes of a trigger-fast crisis solution we have so quickly abided, and the real impacts it has created?

In a rush to mass implementation, might the solution to any problem carry even greater problematic consequences?

These are all the questions we aren’t asking enough—and women are paying the price.

By Aimee Hansen

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Thought Leader: Silke Muenster, Chief Diversity Officer, Phillip Morris International

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Silke MuensterDiversity can drive innovation and innovation can drive diversity. This is a sentiment shared by Silke Muenster, Chief Diversity Officer at Phillip Morris International (PMI), a self-described ‘German mathematician’ but an interesting, committed and fierce change leader who goes way beyond any formula when she speaks passionately about diversity.

“Diversity is numbers, but inclusion is what makes diverse teams work.” She continues, “It is the culture that makes inclusion work and then innovation can happen. Innovation is fundamental to our vision at PMI of creating a smoke-free future. There are one billion smokers in the world, and our company is undertaking a huge task to make smoking cigarettes a thing of the past. Imagine the diversity that lies within our adult customer base so this is something we want to represent also inside PMI.”

Silke recounts how at university and in a large portion of her career, she was always surrounded by men from school classes to the senior management meetings she attended in Germany. Her career journey started at Coca-Cola where she stayed for twelve years and she joined PMI in 2011 as director, Market and Consumer Research, and then was appointed Vice President, Market Research in 2012.

In March 2020, she became PMI’s first Chief Diversity Officer (CDO) starting on the ‘first day of lockdown’ in Switzerland, in a year that would lead most people to reflect on the role of companies in advancing equity and furthering inclusion and diversity in society, and the future of work. Silke was working on this exact topic of “smart work” when COVID-19 hit, and sees real opportunity for everyone to have flexibility, now that the theory that remote work is not only possible, but possible for the vast majority of employees in many companies, has been truly road tested.

When she took the role of CDO, she felt that it was an excellent time to start. She noticed that it was clear that people wanted to talk about the topic and wanted to reflect on their priorities due to pandemic-induced changes of circumstances and the happenings in the world at large that occurred in 2020 – notably, the extension of the Black Lives Matter movement and the growing awareness that came to the forefront of social justice issues.

Diversity And Inclusion

“There has been a tendency for people to think that Diversity and Inclusion is about everyone being nice to each other, but D&I is about creating room for people to speak up so that everyone’s voice is heard.”

Silke believes that it is crucial for people in the company to have the right discussions but that the organization needed to first create the psychological safety to start these conversations. She believes that not everyone has to be an expert, but rather a willing participant, to engage in the conversation about how they would like to see the world in the future.

“Discussions can be had, and conflict can also occur, but ultimately those discussions can be therefore very productive.”

Silke believes that inclusion has benefits for everyone and on her list of things to ensure she and other senior leaders do, is to find a way to empower every employee to enter into the discussion about how to improve inclusion and advance our diversity –to ultimately better our organization and our business— no matter who they are, where they come from, what they look like, who they love, their ability or any other dimension of their identity.

“Different views need to be heard. I&D is something for everyone to participate in. Everyone has to drive this agenda as everyone will benefit. It starts from the top as it needs total commitment that it is a valued task to undertake.”

When she reveals what she is working on, she mentions that this is where she does delight in the numbers, as she has seen the needle move from 29% of women in management in 2014 go to 37% at the end of 2020—with the number of women on PMI’s Senior Management Team doubling from 8 percent to 16 percent in the space of 12 months (since January 2020 until year-end).

“We make gender diversity a company-wide goal and part of leaders’ efforts, and we make sure internal talent processes align. We also have worked hard to create Employee Resource Groups and have updated policies, such as most recently ensuring that we have a more inclusive minimum global parental leave principles which include men and women, and ensuring everyone is covered regardless of sexual orientation. I am also proud to say we have just signed The Valuable 500 and are committed to bring disability onto our 2021 agenda in a much bigger way.”

The Hard Conversations

“Diversity work is a journey and I personally have done a serious amount of reading to learn what I didn’t know and was interested in growing my understanding in this domain. To do this work, to take the journey, you have to start somewhere and have discussions, perhaps hard conversations that include talking about how the playing field is not level. Senior managers have to show vulnerability, which runs deep of course.”

Silke speaks of her thoughts around mentoring and sponsorship freely, revealing she is a very passionate mentor herself and believes that mentoring is the best way to start a sponsor relationship as the chemistry can truly evolve. She feels strongly that pilot programs are the best way to see if certain programmatic efforts work specifically for PMI so that the success of the program can be evaluated and then implemented widely for optimal success.

“It is not about ‘fixing’ women; rather, it is important to recognize that there are specific barriers that women face when it comes to career advancement and we want to make sure to create the right solution that actually helps.”

Silke reiterates her desire for specificity and not a broad approach and believes that she is now a coaching convert also.

“If you had of asked me twenty years ago about coaching, I would have not been convinced, but I have seen how well this can work, especially when there are specific challenges identified, then coaching can really help women and men alike.”

Hope for the Future

Silke hopes that diversity and inclusion stops being such a hard topic in the future but understands that much like quitting smoking cigarettes, that change comes from new behaviors and habits often underpinned by educational facts, incentives via good policies and shifting of cultural norms for everyone in the society.

“If I was to hope for one thing to happen, it would be that everyone gets fully involved so that they can feel and see the joy of belonging for themselves and others; that they can feel the joy of being seen and heard when the speak up at PMI; and that they find benefits in an inclusive environment no matter who they are.”

by Nicki Gilmour, CEO and Founder, Evolved People (theglasshammer.com)

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OP-Ed: Actions Not Ads on International Women’s Day 2021

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Nicki GilmourThe workplace design of the future is happening before our eyes, as we approach International Women’s Day. What elements of our professional lives will stay, go or morph is a fascinating topic with many facets—from office space to cyber security to creating community, networking and relationships, if things stay mostly virtual.

What wins are to be had for professional women at this historic juncture? Will this seismic shift ultimately enable structural changes that level the playing field for better diversity and inclusion at work, or are organizations letting disproportionately burdened women slip through the cracks?

Nothing has been brought more sharply into focus than the at-home employee experience, since Covid19 arrived to our cities, towns and places of work about one year ago, creating an almost immediate need to be remote. Just like that, everyone had to figure out how to work, when to work and even, if they could work.

One year on, many smart corporations are reflecting deeply about the employee experience and the future of work. There is a massive opportunity to create the physical and psychological space that people need to thrive and succeed at work, to recognize now what most professional women already knew—that everyone is not in the same boat in this storm. Nuances matter.

In 2020, social issues migrated into work and all the lines blurred. 2021 will only see more of this.

But will corporations finally integrate diversity and inclusion as cultural thriving and treat it with task expectations for all employees? Will they embrace a mindset change with committed actions? It takes courage to tackle the status quo with more than words.

Putting principle into action, Goldman Sachs will only take companies public if they have women on their boards. That is walking your talk and making behavioral and mindset change real.

Actions Are Better Than Words

As we celebrate International Women’s Day 2021 on 8th March, the theme this year is #choosetochallenge—with a hand in the air symbolic gesture—when bias rears its head or when women aren’t heard. While it’s an important message and sentiment, awareness is only the first step in anything, at best, and firms must create real change for all constituents.

Frankly put, work doesn’t work for many people right now.

It is now in plain sight that women, and professional women, are suffering more from the effects of the Covid pandemic, with the US having the biggest amount of women leaving the workforce, followed by Japan. Losses will be hard to recover from. Phrases like shecession may sound glib but the numbers don’t lie, with NPR reporting that women are back to 1988 levels of workforce participation. We want systemic and behavioral change.

Defining your values, really knowing who you are and connecting brand to purpose is the first step. The second step would ideally be walking the talk with actions. Interestingly research shows that sometimes talking the talk is vital to get to finally walk the talk.

Companies who know who they truly are will be able to embody their values better than companies who don’t know where they stand. Nothing became more urgent than to know who you are as when Black Lives Matter entered the workplace last year with employees requesting firms to know who they are.

Acting on your words and connecting meaningful purpose to your employee experience, as part of brand integrity, is what we need now.

If your company was a person, would you want to hang out with them? If they were your friend, would you trust that they would do what they say they believe in?

Seven Suggestions For Acts, Not Ads

So, if your firm wants to actually support you this International Women’s Day, there are simple actions that could show they are serious.

Here are some actions that organizations could take to live their espoused values and step up as leaders:

#1: Give women the option of a paid day off work on International Women’s Day.

Microsoft announced today that employees would get more paid leave due to the pandemic to alleviate having to be everywhere at once, since exhaustion is real and burnout is at an all time high. Working mothers in particular are at their wit’s end.

Several years ago, REI closed its stores on Black Friday and told its employees to live the company slogan “Go Outside” by introducing #Optoutside.

#2: Address the pay gap in your firm for real.

The wage gap, reinforced by static and traditional gender roles, plays a big part for women leaving work. Eve Rodsky, author of Fair Play, and Darcy Lockman, author of All the Rage, both explain the myth of equality between men and women in division of labor at home.

As an organizational psychologist, my take is how you operate at home, and whatever belief system you operate on, is what you take into the office with you—including impressions for both men and women of their gender role and the expectations and boundaries that come with that.

Consider that in 69% of US households where opposite sex partners live together, men are the highest earners. And, weirdly even female CEOs earn less than male counterparts in similar companies.

#3: Make it mandatory that meetings cannot be scheduled between 5.30pm-7.30pm.

These hours are usually dinner, bath and bedtime for employees with kids. Working dads will thank you also. Boundaries are important. Flex work is the new black with fewer taboos now that we know we can use technology easily from almost anywhere.

#4: Ask everyone if products and programs work for them.

Microsoft has included gamers with disabilities to test their games. Needs are different. Test assumptions by asking your constituents what they think.

#5: Ask people if they want to stay remote.

Tsedal Neeley, Harvard Business School’s Naylor Fitzhugh Professor of Business Administration and author of Remote Work Revolution: Succeeding from Anywhere, believes, “We’re definitely going to see a much bigger population working remotely. All the satisfaction comes when people are given a choice. Choice and autonomy are crucial for people to appreciate remote work and the chance afforded them.”

Equally, some people truly do want to return to the office soon, and the future design of the workplace for safe innovation and community has never been more timely. Innovation literally needs fresh space now.

#6: Walk your talk. Get serious. Grow.

Figure out what your real values are and how to live them as a leader of an already diverse workplace. Diversity management is a strategic capability.

#7: Let leaders be vulnerable.

Cancel culture kills vulnerability and prevents learning. We are all on a journey. Allow for correction, remorse and redemption—as we can’t grow if we aren’t given oxygen. And, context is everything.

Equally, know when you see a systemic flaw that tolerates or even creates incentives for ego-wars, control-dynamics, power-grasping and fear-based motivations to win. Change the system so these norms are not the status operating quo.

Will 2021 finally be the year that companies align internal talent process, and create real and meaningful pathways to inclusion and equity for professional women?

Actions not ads. Finally?

#Actsnotads. #IWD

Check our “Acts not Ads” work here: We deploy behavioral psychology techniques to employer brands to see if they really know who they are (values) and then, how they act (behaviors) so that employees can believe them. Audio and visuals have to match.

by Nicki Gilmour, CEO and Founder, Evolved People (theglasshammer.com)

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Julie Gottshall: Partner and Chair, Employment Litigation and Counseling Practice, Katten

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Julie Gottshall

When she was first starting out, Katten’s Julie Gottshall would not have predicted she would spend nearly her entire legal career working for a single large law firm. In a profession with many options, and an era that often rewards job changes, Gottshall believed she would join different employers and maybe even take some time off the career fast track. Instead, Gottshall found a position that enabled her to grow and balance, and decided to stick with it.

Sometimes, says Gottshall, the best opportunity is the one you already have.

Finding Her Niche

Gottshall’s career has been a steady climb. After graduating from George Washington University Law School, she decided that moving to Chicago would be her “great life adventure,” despite the fact that she had no obvious connection to the city. She initially eschewed the largest law firms, choosing to start her legal career at a midsize firm that she hoped would provide a more appealing lifestyle. But when she was a fourth-year associate, two partners with whom she worked closely joined Katten. She moved with them to continue her career focus on employment counseling and litigation, a practice she has solidly established and now leads.

Gottshall felt drawn to employment law for the human element of the practice, and the opportunity to keep her corporate clients out of trouble but defend them if they nonetheless found themselves facing a lawsuit. At Katten, Gottshall handles a broad spectrum of employment issues, including worker mobility (e.g., non-compete implementation and enforcement); employee separations and reductions in force; worker classification and wage/ hour compliance; handbook and policy implementation; workplace investigations; and discrimination and harassment prevention. She has litigated in numerous state and federal courts at both the trial and appellate level, and before all manner of government agencies. She also acts as an impartial third-party arbitrator on the Employment Panel of the American Arbitration Association, where she has decided cases involving breach of contract; discrimination, retaliation and harassment issues; and other workplace matters.

Gottshall likes to quip that one of her most impressive professional achievements is to fly deftly under the radar, since she works hard to keep her clients on track and out of the spotlight.  Always one to look for practical solutions, she describes herself as a counselor first, an attorney second, and a litigator last. Still, she knows her way around a courtroom. She is particularly proud of a whistleblower case she argued and won before the Illinois Supreme Court – a victory that was the culmination of 11 years of work. After she prevailed in the lower court only to see the decision overturned on appeal, she sought certiorari, becoming one of seven out of 237 petitions the Illinois Supreme Court agreed to hear that session. The high court ruled unanimously in her client’s favor, marking a noteworthy victory for her client and a favorable precedent for other employers.

Gottshall finds employment law is a particularly exciting space right now, given the current remote work environment during the pandemic that has prompted employers to reimagine the workplace and what it will look like in both the near and distant future, as well as presented challenges regarding workplace safety, sick leave and furloughs and layoffs.

Mastering the Balancing Act

While the legal field continues to evolve in its support for personal life choices, Gottshall finds that women still face a constant challenge in finding the right balance. “We are called upon to take on so many roles— some that we need to do and some that we want to do,” says Gottshall. “It’s up to each person to decide how to allocate her time and navigate how much is spent on family and other pursuits, versus how much is poured into a career.”

Still, Gottshall has found Katten conducive to personal as well as professional growth. As she notes, a long tenure at a single firm allows you to build credibility and good will. Your colleagues know your work ethic and contributions, which better positions you to set boundaries and request flexibility. She encourages the use of maternity and paternity leave and other options such as Katten’s sabbatical program, designed to help promote work-life balance. “I applaud women who lean in, but also take advantage of the programs offered, especially today as companies realize they have to adapt to keep their top performers,” Gottshall said. Like most women, Gottshall tries to multi-task when she can. In fact, she once leveraged her maternity leave to take a mediation course to further her career. “Women should determine the best course for them, their families and careers.”

Gottshall appreciates opportunities like the Katten Women’s Leadership Forum that can support women attorneys’ desire to create bonds with other women and fulfill the responsibility to be a mentor.

Part of her balance also comes from using her skills in her community. For example, she has been a school board member for eight years, which she sees as an important commitment. “It’s a gratifying way to leverage my professional knowledge while giving back,” she says.

With one daughter in college and another in her senior year of high school, Gottshall and her husband are looking forward to determining what it means to be “empty nesters.” For now, they enjoy paddle sports and indulge in their passion for travel, especially visiting national parks.

“You have to be mindful of your priorities,” she said, “and look for the joy in everyday pursuits so you don’t lose sight of perspective in all the things life offers you.”

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