11 Tips From Latina Leaders on Self-Confidence and Self-Promotion

, ,

Latina leadersAs part of celebrating Hispanic Heritage, The Glass Hammer covers career insights and tips shared by Latina Leaders in business whom we’ve had the fortune to interview over the years.

In this retrospective two-part feature, we’ve mined the best experience-based guidance across our profile interviews with Latina leaders. As the theme of authenticity, self-confidence and self-promotion have been emphasized again and again, we focus entirely on facets of this critical message for part one of this feature.

1. Claim Your Self-Worth Early In The Game

Entering an industry or an organization where too few people look like you can be challenging, but there is never a more important moment to believe in yourself and claim your worth, emphasized Ivelisse Rodriguez Simon, Managing Partner at Avante Capital Partners.

“I wish I had known from the start of my career that I should have more confidence in myself,” said Rodriguez Simon. “Over time I’ve realized that you should never doubt your own capabilities. There may be obstacles, but you can do it. With a lot of luck, hard work and great mentors I’ve made it in this industry, which is hard for women, especially minority women.”

Update: Ivelisse Rodriguez Simon remains in this position, now with Avante Capital Partners for nearly 13 years.

2. Embrace All of Who You Are

Finding an authentic sense of self is essential for all women, but especially for young Latina women just starting out in their career, impressed Yvonne Garcia, as Senior Vice President and Global Head of Client Solutions, Investment Manager Services at State Street Corporation.

“It is critical to realize that the diversity of thought and cultural experiences that you bring are so valuable to organizations. Embrace who you are, make sure you find mentors and sponsors that will help you develop and grow as a leader,” advised Garcia. “Get involved in volunteer organizations like ALPFA where you will be able to grow and give back at the same time.”

Update: Yvonne Garcia was promoted to Chief of Staff to CEO at State Street in January 2019.

3. Stay Authentic To Your Truth

In tech for over two decades, Rocio Lopez, as IT Executive at Accenture, realized at a deeper level from Accenture’s Hispanic American Employee Resource Group (ERG) that she needed to be authentic about what she brought to the table as a talented Hispanic technologist.

Both passionate about advancing diversity and leading Latinx American talent attraction initiatives, Lopez said: “The one piece of advice I would give to anyone is to be authentic. For the longest time, I was trying to run in a different size shoe – actually a male size 8. It wasn’t until I met my ERG family that I realized I like my 7.5 size red high heels.”

Update: Now with Accenture for over 26 years, Rocio Lopez was promoted to Technology Strategy Lead NA Education Practice in January 2020.

4. Allow Your Unique Personality To Shine

By allowing her unique self to shine through, Laura Sanchez, Managing Director, Private Wealth Management at Goldman Sachs, found that she was better able to form more impactful bonds with clients and colleagues that helped to create a more fulfilling career.

“When you’re new – and I had also switched industries – you may be anxious about fitting in and looking like everyone else or acting like everyone else. But trying too hard to fit in can stifle who you are. To not be yourself for the majority of your day creates a lot of stress,” Sanchez reflected. “When I’ve been true to myself and let my own light shine through, that’s when I’ve been my best. That’s when I think the success started.”

Update: Laura Sanchez remains in this position, now with Goldman Sachs for over 27 years.

5. Become A Supportive Friend to Yourself

Believing that women had many advantages in the area of dispute resolution, including the ability to appreciation a situation from multiple perspectives, Ximena Herrera-Bernal, as Counsel in the International Arbitration Group at Shearman & Sterling, London, urged women to encourage the truth of their own voice in the room.

“It is imperative to believe in your abilities and to make your views appropriately known,” Herrera-Bernal said.“ When you’re doubting yourself, imagine that you are giving advice to a female friend who is experiencing the same issues. Then listen to your own advice.”

Update: After 16 years with Shearman & Sterling, Ximena Herrera has gone on to be a Founding Partner in Gaillard Banifatemi Shelbaya (GBS) Disputes.

6. Let Your Difference Empower Your Voice

The very thing that once inhibited you from using your voice is often what validates its importance, asserted Noelle Ramirez, Project Manager, Diversity, Equity & Inclusion at PGIM.

“I bring to the table my lived and learned experience as a woman, a lesbian woman, a Hispanic woman,” said Ramirez.“ The things that kept me quiet in the room before are the things making me speak the loudest in the Diversity, Equity & Inclusion space.”

Update: Interviewed earlier this year, Noelle Ramirez remains in this position, with PGIM for nearly 2.5 years.

7. Be Forward About Owning Your Work

It was a decade into her career before Paula Arrojo, Managing Director and Private Wealth Advisor, Investment Management at Goldman Sachs, figured out that she had to match her hard work with her self-promotion.

“Women often expect that if you work really hard you’ll be noticed and rewarded. But they need to realize how important it is to let the right people know what they’re working on and what they want next – what team, what clients,” Arrojo said. “If you want to go for it, you have to position yourself to have that credibility. Had I known to be more strategic in this area earlier, I would have saved a lot of time getting to where I am.”

Update: Paula Arrojo remains in this position, now with Goldman Sachs for 21 years.

8. Beyond Your Role, Build Your Personal Brand

After watching too many women voice their great idea only after the meeting finished, inhibiting their success from their hesitation to speak up, Patricia McCarthy, Managing Director at Goldman Sachs, emphasized the importance of being proactively seen and heard.

“When you have good ideas, you need to voice them and add value. Remember that your job is to contribute to your team, and that entails being confident and pushing yourself beyond what your perceived role is,” McCarthy noted. “More than achieving a title or promotion, my biggest source of pride is establishing a personal brand as an individual who can improve a process.”

Update: Patricia McCarthy remains in this position, now with Goldman Sachs for over 17 years.

9. Be Your Own Best Advocate

When it comes to advancing as you become more senior, Grissel Mercado, as Counsel at Shearman & Sterling LLP, emphasized you have to go beyond focusing on doing excellent work and build a profile.

“Young attorneys tend to focus on delivering excellent work, which is important, but also expected. You also have to seek out opportunities to network,” said Mercado. “Nobody is a better advocate for you than yourself. Women need to take more initiative. If you’re talking with the team before a call, mention a success, just as a man would.”

Update: With the firm for 14 years, Grissel Mercado was appointed to Partner at Shearman & Sterling LLP.

10. Self-Promote To The Leaders Above You

Take the shame out of self-promotion and instead learn how to do it by doing it, emphasized Ilka Vázquez, Advisory Partner at PwC US.

“I think it’s ok to brag a little about your impact and what you’re bringing to the table. We assume someone is noticing our great work and will reward us, but the reality is that you can speed up the process if you talk about your success to people who are influential,” Vázquez noted. “Your elevator speech gets better the more you give it and can help you establish a personal brand.”

Update: Ilka Vázquez remains in this position, now with PwC for 11 years.

11. Know That You Are Ready (Enough!)

Opportunity is the chance to grow into the role, communicated Neddy Perez, as Global Head of Diversity & Inclusion, Talent Management COE at McCormick & Company.

“Women are still socialized to put their heads down and work hard with the hope that someone will recognize your success. The reality is you have to become your own best advocate. As long as you feel comfortable with 70% of requirements of a job then go for it,” encouraged Perez. “No one is ever 100% ready for their next job; we just have to get comfortable with asking for what we want and going for it.”

Update: Neddy Perez remains in this position, now with McCormick & Company for nearly 3 years.

Look out next week for part two of this series on wisdom and insight from Latina leaders in business over the years.

By Aimee Hansen

/by

Alma Rosa Montañez: Chief Corporate Counsel, S&P Global

,

Alma Rosa Montañez “One of the big challenges for most people of color, and perhaps for many women, is individuating,” says Alma Rosa Montañez. “Being able to cast yourself as an individual by whoever is perceiving you, as opposed to whatever the perceived group stereotype might be.”

Montañez speaks to her journey as a woman bridging two cultures, the pain of being reduced to a stereotype, and what she did when a young woman intern tried to get her coffee.

Exploring Her Roots as a Lawyer

Montañez recalls first aspiring to be a lawyer at eight years old, when she was sitting in an immigration lawyer’s office with her family as they were finding a way to make a life in the U.S. But over the years, she’s considered that when you create your life in another country, you never know who you may have been if opportunity had existed back home.

“The funny thing about immigration is as much as you are drawn to America, and many of us are, for everything it has offered and hopefully will continue to offer, it’s still not the first option,” says Montañez. “If we all had the ability to make a life and a real path in the place where we are from, where we have these deep ties, we likely would choose to stay.”

As she moved through undergrad at Stanford University, Montañez came to understand more of her family’s personal migration story, which was catalyzed by the petrodollar crisis of the late 70’s & early 80’s. The crisis was ultimately traced back to imbalances at the negotiating table between sovereign borrowers and their lenders.

Coming out of Columbia Law School, Montañez chose to represent sovereign borrowers primarily in the oil industry working for the Mexican, Venezuelan and Brazilian governments while based in Mexico. This gave her an opportunity to explore what life might have looked like if she’d never emigrated. It would be her first attempt to bridge the space between her identity and her profession.

“I was drafting in Spanish and English, day in and day out. It answered a lot of questions about what my life might have been,” says Montañez. “I could skip generations of work in Mexico because now I was going back as an American, with Ivy League degrees, who sounds like a local and can function without feeling restrained by cultural stuff. But in many ways, I’m not from there anymore. I learned to become comfortable with the fact that I’m really not either Mexican or American – I’m both.”

Testing Herself in New York

Ultimately more interested in the workings of finances than oil and with some closure on personal issues, Montañez decided to test out her law chops back in New York City: “I wanted to find out if I was actually a good lawyer, not just a good lawyer in Latin America. If you took out my language skills, how would I measure up in New York?”

In 2006, she jumped into the deep-end of structured finance.

“You’re drinking from a firehose, billing 300 hours a month for many months a year, and not getting a whole lot of sleep,” she remembers. “But to be able to go from zero to running deals in the span of six months gave me the confidence to get past the imposter syndrome that accompanies so many of us who aren’t cisgendered heterosexual white men.”

Her journey hit a bump when the market crashed and the once steady lockstep career progression fell out from under her. She began some traveling, volunteering, learned Portuguese and tried to redefine who she was now.

Letting Go of Comfort to Evolve

As she was putting the pieces together, Montañez received what she describes as a call for a “purple unicorn”. It was for a role at S&P Global Ratings, for which a handful of lawyers fit the brief: experience in structured finance, ideally real estate focused, with Latin America language skills. She joined S&P in 2011, as Associate General Counsel, advising on everything from esoteric structured finance to sovereign debt, flexing all the muscles she developed in New York and again influencing outcomes in Latin America. For the first time all the pieces of her puzzle seem to fall into place.

Montañez grew to managing the team of lawyers advising on ratings in the Americas, but after five years that came to feel like cruise control and her drive to challenge herself returned.

She let go of safety and comfort and made a jump to S&P Global, the publicly listed parent company of the rating agency. She took a step back, giving up managing, to build a new skill set and eventually worked her way to managing and joining the GC’s leadership team, now on a trajectory to becoming a public company general counsel.

Becoming More Valuable As a Lawyer

“As a junior lawyer, your job is to impress with legal nuance and detail, the nitty-gritty of the legal analysis,” says Montañez. “When you become more senior, you get access to clients and to business people, so it’s about whether you can communicate and connect in a way that’s meaningful: being able to craft a legal narrative, not only for yourself and for the organizational needs, but also for your specific client and what they’re trying to achieve.”

Montañez notes that in any organization or practice, there’s the formal process, but also many informal processes that often take longer to navigate: “There are invisible gatekeepers at a lot of places. If you can figure those out, it’s a great asset. If you can make people’s lives easier by having a quick call or a conversation on the side, it makes you invaluable in a very different way.”

Learning To Belong Without Belonging

Montañez says that as a Latina lawyer, she is often confronted with potential biases : “My last name is Montañez with a tilde over the n. It’s not Montanez, but my anglicized name has been Alma Montanez for 30 years. When it comes down to the resume, do I add the tilde? If I do, does the person flipping through thirty resumes get put off by having to figure out how to say my name?”

Montañez notes that when people meet her in a meeting, they experience her as an individual. But from a piece of paper, questions and assumptions are created that have nothing to do with who she is. She also acknowledges the privilege of being able to individuate more easily because she doesn’t have an accent and is white presenting.

Still, weary of stereotypes and of being pigeonholed, she has shied away from leadership roles strictly in Latin America, notwithstanding how much of her career and development is tied to the region.

With only a handful of other women at her level of seniority and no other Latin American woman near, she’s learned to claim her seat for herself: “You have to learn to be comfortable being uncomfortable all the time. If I was waiting to feel comfortable in a room, I wouldn’t be in any of the rooms that I’m in. You figure out how to belong, without belonging.”

What Montañez has found most deflating along the way are the instances when people whom she has worked with for years learn she was born in Mexico and suddenly shift from substantive conversations to things like “wow, your English is really good” or “wow, you don’t have an accent” or “so then, are you a dreamer?”

The speed with which one transitions from a peer with a cultivated relationship and track record to a stereotype is astounding, dehumanizing and painful.

Valuing Your Voice and Not Getting the Coffee

“When there are no mentors who look like you, you figure out who you can take a little bit of learning from,” says Montañez. “I’ve had the blessing of being mentored by a lot of really amazing women and they have been my saving grace.”

“One of my coping strategies has been to make observations about the things that I need to avoid. Never in my life will I get coffee for anyone other than a close friend,” she notes. “I reamed out this poor intern once: she came in on her second day looking for something to do and she offered to get my coffee. I told her: ‘Absolutely not. You will not be getting coffee for anyone, ever. Never offer that again. If you get the coffee, you’re going to be the coffee girl, and I don’t know if you’ve ever heard of a coffee boy, but I haven’t.’”

Over the years, she has heard even the fiercest senior women speak to gaps in parity, even if seated at the table. It’s taught her that everyone struggles, and she makes an effort to bring that into her mentoring. “Some women of color and people with different cultural upbringings are often taught to respect the room and not to draw attention to themselves,” she says. ”It’s really hard to overcome that, but you start with reminding yourself that you have a unique perspective, and you actually do have valuable things to say.”

Through mentoring, she’s learned the value of validating other people’s experiences in dealings with bias: “Bias is like gravity. I don’t like it, but I have to deal with it. So if I’m going to move, I have to move, notwithstanding it. Yes, my load is heavier. Does that mean I stop, or does that mean I get stronger?” In acknowledging the weight her mentees are carrying, she hopes to support them through their own journey to get stronger.

She recommends mentees to begin with getting deeper in touch with their authentic and inherent value and values: “When you get in touch with your center, reaching out is from a place that’s more authentic, giving and more supportive. Anyone who feels supported in a genuine way is going to respond very differently.”

Making a Little Time Can Matter A Lot

Her law career has always kept her occupied and on call, but Montañez now also finds the energy to contribute to areas she’s passionate about.

In February, she was compelled to go from being a casual donor to joinng the board of directors of Mextica Organization, Inc., a Sunset Park based organization that supports essential needs in health, education, social, and legal issues for the Mexican and Latin American immigrant community in Brooklyn. She also supports The Squirrel Comedy Theatre, a non-profit people of color and LGBTQ+-led improv theater her sister co-founded.

Her professional skills help her serve these organizations. In making a little time to support causes and people she loves, Montañez is finding another way to unify her professional skills, her culture and her values.

By: Aimee Hansen

/by

Embracing Culturally Relevant Latina Leadership

, ,

Latina LeadersTheglasshammer is celebrating Hispanic Heritage Month 2021 with profiles of Latina leaders and feature themes.

When we look at the numbers among corporate leadership for Latinx executives, little has quantitatively shifted, but what is finally evolving is the talk around the journey: towards valuing culturally integrative leadership.

Latina Style called out the Top 10 Corporate Latina Executives of 2020, included Agnes Suarez, President & CEO of AIG; Leticia M. Sanchez, Executive Director and Market Director of Banking at JP Morgan Chase & Co. Customer Bank; Luz Esparza, Managing Director, Los Angeles of Accenture; Patty Arvielo, Co-Founder and President of New American Funding, and Patty Juarez, National Diverse Segments Director, Commercial Banking Group, Wells Fargo & Company.

But among 16 current Hispanic CEOS of the top S&P 500 companies, women hold none of those positions. Between 2000 and 2020, Latinx have made up only 36 of new Fortune 500 CEO appointments, and there’s been 41 Latinx CEOS, with only two being women.

While calling out Latinx tech leaders, Latin America Reports points out that Latin America itself has been now birthed 17 unicorns, 14 of which have developed in the last three years, and mostly in finance, insurance, and real estate.

Nit Reeder of Ernst & Young notes that Latinx entrepreneurs are leading the start-up scene, with over 40% of Latinx entrepreneurs being millennial and Latinas starting up businesses at five times the rate of their male counterparts. But the same time, even as far back as November, Covid-19 was closing a third of Latinx-owned businesses.

And in a broader glance of the Latinx working population, a recent Aspen Institute report emphasizes integration of the Latinx workforce into the digital economy—as the group highest at risk of digital displacement from automation.

Gaps in Both Perception and Opportunities

The IBM Institute for Business Value published a survey report called Untapped Potential: The Hispanic Talent Advantage, based on 1000 Hispanic leaders offering their perceptions on the opportunities and lack thereof in the corporate workplace during a 33 hour virtual jam session.

When it comes to perception of the Hispanic community, only 16% of participants felt the community is unified and nearly nobody (2.5%) felt the perceptions of the Hispanic community reflect the reality.

They found 41% of Hispanic executives say they benefited from formal mentoring or training but only a quarter of junior managers felt they had access to mentoring programs and only 31% had access to workplace training.

Only 1 in 5 felt empowered to overcome the professional challenges they faced.

The experience of prejudice or feeling they needed to work harder was very prominent. 87% of all participants had experienced racial prejudice, and 63% had experienced prejudice due to accent, language or speech pattern. 63% of the participants felt they had to work harder because of their Hispanic identity and 82% of Latinas felt they did not get the respect they deserve. Latina women were also more likely to cite discrimination based on gender (78%) than white women (67%).

Among the senior leaders, they were most likely to give value to strong communication skills, personal organizational skills, and business savvy in terms of capabilities that supported their success. “Success” was most likely to be defined as both “achieving financial security” and “creating positive change”.

The report notes that a key gap was between the value that mentorship had played in supporting the more senior Hispanic leaders and the lack of mentorship reported available in the perception of the junior managers aspiring to leadership, urging companies to create a hiring advantage by cultivating more mentorship and sponsorship opportunities for young Latinx talent.

Latina women with sponsorship earn 6.1% more than those who lack sponsors, and early on, it can contribute to more stretch assignments and promotions.

Culturally Relevant Leadership Development

Whereas misperception of identity and feeling penalized for it are brutal headwinds to face in the corporate environment, there is increasing encouragement for Latinas to focus on turning this to your advantage.

Recent qualitative dissertation research entitled Recognizing La Cultura: The Experience of Cultural Scripts in Latina Leadership out of the University of St. Thomas, Minnesota found that in different ways, cultural identity and firsthand experiences can be catalytic in informing leadership approaches and trajectories.

Cultural scripts included:

  • familismo: the importance of close, protective, and extended family relationships
  • marianismo: gender roles according to which women are expected to be selfless, self-sacrificing, and nurturing
  • personalismo: creating personal and meaningful relationships
  • colectivismo: the importance of belonging to a group and recognizing the needs of that group
  • respeto: high regard granted to persons because of their formal authority, age, or social power
  • simpatía: promoting pleasant interactions and positive relationships, while avoiding conflict and disharmony

Based on her findings, Patricia E. Conde-Brooks, the dissertation author, emphasizes that “culturally relevant leadership development needs to be encouraged in the Latino community,” meaning the integration of cultural assets as fuel in the leadership journey.

She found that Latina leaders sustain a strong cultural heritage, and that leveraging the positive aspects of these cultural scripts not only fosters pride and empowers Latina women, but can be leveraged as important leadership assets in your toolbox.

At the same time, overcoming the inhibiting influence of marianismo is part of the journey for some Latina women. And while self-promotion is often felt to go against the cultural grain, a survey into women’s fear of self-promotion found that “African American (44%) and Hispanic (47%) women are far less likely to downplay their strengths and abilities than white (60%) women”: influenced by their generally younger age profile.

One organization tapping into social and navigational cultural wealth to accelerate Latina women to the C-Suite is LatinaVIDA, whose mission “is to empower and equip Latina professionals to overcome systemic workplace barriers through culturally relevant leadership programs.”

Drawing from the key traits that define many successful Latina leaders, the organization focuses on fostering Visibility (getting noticed for your talent and leadership), Identity (strong comfort with personal and cultural identities), Determination (holding your personal vision despite challenges and barriers) and Action (a willingness to step up and take responsibility of all facets of your life).

LatinaVIDA offers a number of programs and events, including culturally relevant peer-to peer empowerment, mentorship, collaboration and leadership development.

By: Aimee Hansen

/by

Anna de Jong: Head, Client Advisory Benelux and Nordics, PGIM Fixed Income

,

Anna De Jong“A lot of people will tell you this or that can’t be done, and that goes for your personal and your professional life, but don’t take that as a given,” advises Anna de Jong. “Have the confidence and be strong until you get the answer that works for you.”

De Jong speaks about how the journey you take is what shapes you, the importance of knowing yourself and having the confidence to pursue the important questions.

What Defines You is the Journey You’re On

After growing up in a small village in the north of Holland, where she felt her limbs wanting to stretch even as a girl, de Jong adventured for a half year opportunity in London that became fifteen years between Merrill Lynch, Morgan Stanley and other firms, thriving amidst a diversity of people, experiences, inspiration and opportunities.

Just when she reached the point of considering a move back to Holland for family motivations two years ago, PGIM Fixed Income approached about her current role in the Netherlands, which met the professional trajectory she also wanted. With London life having felt as much like home to her, de Jong reframes the question of where are you from to what it’s really about.

“It’s not where you’re from that matters. It’s just a box that people want to put you in. Ultimately, it’s about the journey that you’re on and the journey that you take that opens doors, or closes them,” she reflects.

It’s About The Personal Factor

The people factor has always magnetized her to her work. “In my field of work, I work for my clients and prospects, and I need to very quickly understand who I’m dealing with and how to progress things,” says de Jong. “You must be able to read people quickly in order to be successful, and that still holds today. I think that human element is what makes me most content in my work.”

De Jong advises that when working closely with others, it’s important to know yourself so you don’t lose your own intentions in any deal or interaction: “I’ve learned you need to hold your ground. You must understand yourself in order to do well professionally, but also personally. That’s a journey I also help other people with: stick with your convictions, yet be open to learning.”

Being approachable is important to de Jong: “I don’t think in different levels. I’ve learned from all walks of life and different parts of business and people,” says de Jong. “I’m always available and listening to everybody around. I am genuinely interested in people, and I think if you can understand what’s going on, then a lot of things make more sense, and it also matters when achieving the right results.”

De Jong notes that while remote working has been validated, being together with your team and clients is invaluable for creating connection and work culture.

“Covid is a lonely time, I think,” she reflects. “And ultimately you spend so much of your time at work. It’s good to see people, but being behind a screen also hides a lot. There’s no longer an excuse for saying that we can’t work from home because we all clearly can, but it’s also important to be with colleagues and have face-to-face time.”

Knowing and Balancing Your Values

“Someone once told me that when your career takes off, something else is going to suffer. For a long time, I was convinced that you have to work very hard while other things would have to take a backseat,” says de Jong. “ I have become of the opinion that’s entirely untrue. You are actually more successful when you understand what is really important to you and cultivate personal satisfaction, as well.”

Years ago, a friend introduced de Jong to a four pillar system. The four pillars represent what is personally important to you and emphasize keeping what matters to you in a balance. She uses the analogy of a chair, it can function with three but ideally needs four legs to be fully stable. For de Jong, she values home and family, friends, work and health: “If one gets out of whack, it makes the rest volatile and you do not perform as well, personally or professionally. It can be a juggling act, but you don’t have to forget about what’s important in your personal life in order to succeed in professional life and vice versa. In a way, they all become one.”

When the work aspect of life becomes too much, de Jong feels it’s important and okay to speak up about that, and not fall into the cultural notion of having to keep everything separate. Personally, she doesn’t resonate with a sense of being “successful” that connotes “achieving the best results regardless.”

De Jong does not perceive that getting the result, no matter what the impact on others or personal life, can ever be success. Rather, she speaks more to harmony and co-creation from a place that is aligned with your internal values.

When it comes to her personal success, “I do my work with lots of pleasure and have happy clients who are keeping and raising assets,” she notes, “but it’s also being home with my daughter and husband. It’s as elementary as that.”

De Jong feels well-matched by the atmosphere at her workspace: “PGIM Fixed Income has this fantastic work culture, that when I joined just felt like a warm blanket – where people work together, give each other challenges and opportunities. It’s been really fantastic.”

With a desire to keep growing, she is curious about pursuing courses in ESG investing and being able to mentor even more in that space.

Guidance For The Journey

“Some guidance that really stuck with me is to ask the same question until you get the right answer,” she notes, having tried this out in areas like promotion as well as anytime you’re immediately told something isn’t possible. “I will continue asking a question until I get the answer that I think works best.”

De Jong tells mentees: “Know, embrace, respect yourself and dare to be different. You have to be yourself, because if you don’t know who you are, then you don’t know where you’re going. It’s the journey you’re on that defines who you are. Embrace that.”

She emphasizes accepting and learning and being willing to let something go when it’s not the right thing. The more honest and non-judging you can be with yourself and others, feels de Jong, the more trust you build and the more you create results together. She has always advised women to be kind to each other, as it can be especially tricky to navigate in banking or finance when you first begin as a woman.

The hardest experience she’s had was in a previous role when she returned from maternity leave only two and a half months after having her daughter, and found part of her region moved from her remit and no expanded team as anticipated. Reflecting, she realizes the feeling that she could only take such a short leave was a red flag in feeling supported.

De Jong feels both men and women can contribute to normalizing parental leave by embracing it, and notes that her own husband has been a huge support.

Vocalize and Invest In Your Needs

De Jong now realizes that earlier in her career, she was often too scared to really ask for what would fulfill her, and so she often got something else. She feels it’s important to be very clear when you’re not satisfied.

“I would get frustrated but nobody seemed to notice, and then I would hand in my resignation and people were so surprised and often disappointed,” says de Jong. “They would ask, ‘why did you not tell me before?’ And I seriously thought I had, but clearly hadn’t been very vocal about my dissatisfaction.”

De Jong enjoys her four-year-old daughter, playing piano and is still looking for an experience in Holland akin to the community volunteer hub she loved in London. Her favorite volunteer work has been a charity she helped create called Launchpad Labs, which offered workspace and mentoring to those with challenging backgrounds.

“Helping others is a great way to stay on your feet to understand the bigger picture and that helps in your personal space and helps with your work,” says de Jong, “It helps to ground those four pillars and understanding what is important.”

She emphasizes investing in yourself and your personal happiness, as well as listening to your body. She loves exercise, baking, and continuing to learn and grow.

By: Aimee Hansen

/by

Six Forms of Cultural Wealth You Can Leverage As a Leader

,

cultural wealthIn her model of community cultural wealth, Dr. Tara J. Yosso identified six forms of cultural wealth (aspirational, navigational, social, linguistic, familial and resistant capital) possessed and earned by socially marginalized groups, and countered the lens of cultural deficit.

Cultural wealth is defined as: “an array of knowledge, skills, strengths and experiences that are learned and shared by people of color and marginalized groups; the values and behaviors that are nurtured through culture work together to create a way of knowing and being.”

Affirming the cultural capital you’ve acquired as part of your road-tested skillset can be a compelling collective and personal narrative-flipper: factors that may have inhibited opportunities become empowering qualifications of your leadership ability. To walk into the room with a sense of cultural wealth integrated into your personal narrative could arguably reduce and reframe a sense of imposter syndrome.

In fact, Yosso’s model was initially designed to “capture the talents, strengths and experiences that students of color bring with them to their college environment”— but professional context, and even executive context, are even more compelling given you are further on the journey.

Here are the six forms of cultural capital and why they make you valuable as a leader.

Aspirational Capital

Aspirational capital is the ability to sustain hopes and dreams for the future amidst both real and perceived barriers.

As states the University of Portland UP Career Center, “It is the ability to envision a future beyond your current circumstances and work towards pursuing your dreams and aspirations.”

As Sheri Crosby Wheeler, VP of D&I at Fossil Group, told theglasshammer earlier this year when speaking to her own economically disadvantaged background: “I feel like it has given me the grit, the resilience, the fight, the get-up-and-go that I have to this day. I won’t see myself as ever being down and out, and I won’t stay in a ‘woe is me’ place, not for very long.”

The impact and success of Black and Latina female entrepreneurs, despite opportunity gaps, bias and barriers in the hallways of corporate America, bears testament to a mentality of sticking to a vision of realizing the dream beyond obstacles.

The ability to conceive of and hold to a vision beyond the current reality is not only essential to becoming a leader, but also what enables leaders to inspire entirely new visions and influence new realities.

Navigational Capital

Navigational capital is the ability to maneuver through systems and institutions that historically were not designed for you. Yosso notes that this capital empowers individuals to move within environments that can feel both unsupportive or hostile.

“I think you can approach a situation like that and feel like you’re the only one,” Gia Morón told us, on inviting herself into the NYC networking circle for the emerging legal cannabis industry, “or you can say, ‘I can invite other people and not be the only one.’”

As pointed out in Harvard Business Review by Marlette Jackson, PhD and Paria Rajai, the dedication many “first generation corporates” have to paying-it-forward and bringing others up through sharing the unspoken rules of navigating an organization is one way navigational capital comes into power. And for those who trail-blazed themselves, they bring that earned strategic and maverick gumption to what they offer.

“The most rewarding piece of my work is to create an opportunity and open a door, where traditionally that door may not have existed,” said Noelle Ramirez, Project Manager, DE&I at PGIM, about alternative recruiting channels, “to be able to put that spotlight on someone who might not have been seen and say, ‘I see you and there’s space for you here.’”

Social Capital

Social capital is leveraging existing community resources and connections in building a network in support of your goals.

The roles of social and cultural capital have been found to be key components in supporting academic achievement among Latinas. In one qualitative study of Latina women, the pursuit of higher education was truly conceived as a “family goal” in which sacrifices were made to realize the goal, and in turn the Latina women “considered their own educational advancements as advancements for the whole family.”

Recently, Monica Marquez, Co-Founder of Beyond Barriers, shared with us that years ago when pioneering a Returnship® program at Goldman Sachs that facilitated mothers back to work after their maternity leave, her team found Latina women were less likely to have opted out of work for home responsibilities than their white peers, because they had the strong family structure and childcare support within the family.

“The cultural nuance or norm of the tight-knit family, where it takes a village to raise a family, helped some women stay employed opposed to having to opt out,” said Marquez.

Linguistic Capital

Linguistic capital is the sum intellectual, social and communication skills attained through a particular language, history and experiences.

Linguistic research indicates that those who are bilingual or multilingual generally have more connectivity and integration in their neural networks, a sharper working memory, more cognitive reserve, better task-switching, more divergent thinking and are more adept at solving mathematical problems than monolinguals, for starters. Analyzing in a second language also reduces decision bias.

“I have the benefit of growing up in a different country and being exposed to different cultures, so that helps me to understand and work with cross-cultural teams,” Anna Thomas, VP at BBH, told us. “For example, in Asian culture, unless you actually reach out and ask, someone will often think it’s disrespectful to provide their view of things. I grew up in that culture, so I know and I can actually coax and ask someone to speak up. I can come from that angle.”

Yosso emphasized that cultures where oral storytelling is part of the daily cultural fabric bring “skills [that] may include memorization, attention to detail, dramatic pauses, comedic timing, facial affect, vocal tone, volume, rhythm and rhyme”, such as to narrative crafting and public speaking.

Familial Capital

Familial capital is the cultural knowledge and nuance obtained from family and community experiences, for example how the communal-orientation of many Latin cultures may predispose networking skills.

While crediting her parents for raising her in faith from a long line of ministers and pastors, Marie Carr, a Global Growth Strategist at PwC US, said: “I have confidence in and the ability to appeal to a force higher than myself. That’s helped me to be more patient, to put myself in other’s shoes, to not be so hard on myself. You have to be able to center yourself, because you’re often going to find yourself in an environment that’s not going to affirm you. So, the ability to affirm yourself is really useful.”

Familial legacy of challenge and strife can also compel compassionate leadership.

Megan Hogan, Chief Diversity Officer of Goldman Sachs, recently shared that her family’s journey from the Dominican Republic to find opportunity influenced her own pro bono passion of working with immigrants seeking asylum: “It’s always been important to me to advocate for people seeking refuge from persecution as a way to pay it forward and allow others to find those same opportunities.”

Resistant Capital

Resistant capital is the inherited foundation and historical legacy of communities of colors and marginalized groups in resisting inequality and pursuing equal rights. This includes embracing a resistance to stereotypes that are not authentic to your sense of self.

Overcoming barriers and challenging the status quo enables a leader-oriented lens of questioning conventional models and methods that aren’t working or may be problematic for long-term growth, according to the findings of HBR authors Jackson and Rajai.

“The narrative is often ‘I come from a low-income neighborhood, I was raised by a single parent, my father is in jail, my brother was killed, I didn’t go to an Ivy League school. I’ve got no credentials to lead…Who am I to run?” said May Nazareno, NE Director of Gifts at Ignite, to us, speaking of encouraging the inherent young female leaders from highly marginalized neighborhoods. “And we flip the script and say: who are you not to? We’re here to convince each young woman that her whole life is what makes her qualified to lead.”

By: Aimee Hansen

/by

Lara Aryani: Partner, Mergers & Acquisitions, Shearman & Sterling

,

“I think what junior lawyers need to understand is that the conversations you have with your firm about what you want for yourself are brief and fleeting, but they’re iterative,” says Lara Aryani. “Associates need to be having these conversations early, they need to build the ramp, so that it is there when they need to actually use it.”


Aryani speaks to the broad and dynamic nature of M&A, the importance of listening, modesty and asking, and being supported when it mattered the most for her family.

Conducting the Dynamic Orchestra

Aryani began working in both capital markets and M&A, and gravitated towards M&A when she moved to Shearman & Sterling in 2014, finding she loved the generalist and technically challenging orientation of the practice.

“If you’re representing a company as an M&A lawyer, you’re really advising them on everything,” she says, “you are the conductor of an orchestra that involves a whole range of legal expertise.”

Aryani notes you get to learn “enough to be dangerous” about many specialist areas while keeping a broad, dynamic overview and strong client interaction, which she thoroughly enjoys.

She admits that though her group has women associates and female partners, throughout her career she has often found herself to be the only woman in a negotiation room. M&A has a reputation for being male-dominated, though Aryani feels that this reputation might have become something of a self-fulfilling prophecy.

“Let’s be honest: there aren’t enough women in leadership positions, there aren’t enough women in M&A, there aren’t enough women in Big Law and there aren’t enough women in law, period,” says Aryani. “But there’s nothing about the technical nature of M&A that is more or less male or female friendly relative to other legal practices. Though it’s possible that cultures that exist outside of the practice of law may create a perception that deters women from the practice of M&A.”

The Importance of Resilience

As Aryani has become more experienced, she’s realized that being open, empathetic and socially adept can really make the difference between an ordinary and an extraordinary practitioner. But it also takes a little courage and vulnerability, and a lot of luck and support to scale a career.

“Everybody that survives in Big Law should be technically excellent, that goes without saying, but to thrive, it isn’t good enough to put your head down and simply be a technically good lawyer,” says Aryani. “It takes a lot of additional qualities to succeed in Big Law, but as a starting point, to make partner you need to put yourself out there and have conversations with the leadership that may feel uncomfortable and unfamiliar to you. No one can make it in this business alone, and so to garner support you need to be able to ask for it and by implication, be prepared to be scrutinized and rejected.”

“You don’t get what you don’t ask for, as the old adage goes. Hopefully, the worst thing that will happen is somebody will say no and forget about it. You are the only person driving your career, and it’s sometimes hard to remember that, particularly in private practice. People should be thinking more proactively about their futures rather than letting inertia determine it for them. They should also be having conversations about it a lot earlier than they think they deserve to,” she says.

Aryani observes people often hesitate to talk about future career prospects because they feel both uncertainty and that it’s too early to be appropriate to discuss. She argues the conversation is iterative and builds over time.

“You can’t just come in as a very senior associate and start building the ramp for the first time,” says Aryani. “We need to start having these conversations earlier, so that the process becomes more fluid, open and transparent, expectations are created and everybody can work from the same playbook. People will need to revisit these conversations regularly to ensure that expectations remain aligned and progress is being made. The process of professional development can feel painstakingly slow, so it may take a while before it feels like anything tangible has happened.”

“As important as it is to initiate these conversations and follow up on the goals that they establish,” Aryani says, “it is also important to figure out how you fit within the larger business framework and the extent to which your skills and ambitions complement and further the firm’s business goals,” she says.

The Value of Respect and Change in Relationships

Through experience, Aryani has found that in a practice where you’re interacting with and representing people from many different places – whether that be geography, language, culture or markets – it’s important to approach things with more respect and receptivity than she sometimes witnesses in the field.

“We are being hired for our expertise and for what we know, but everybody around the table has something to learn from everybody else, including those junior to you,” says Aryani. “I try to approach deal tables with an understanding that the way we do things is not necessarily the only way to do it, and I need to listen as much as I need to weigh in with my advice.”

Her approach to mentorship is to be open and to remember that while there is a hierarchal environment in private practice, that hierarchy is fluid.

“The associate hierarchy is very rigid, partners are always senior to senior associates, who are always senior to midlevels who are always senior to juniors. But people who have been around for longer understand that eventually these hierarchies can flatten or even flip, either within the law firm or because someone leaves and becomes a client,” says Aryani. “So as hierarchical as our structures are within the law firm, the relationships that we build with people throughout the hierarchy change and our orientation and position in that hierarchy, with respect to any one particular person, is absolutely subject to change, and will likely change.”

“Every year law firms move further away from their guild-like origins and the business aspect of the practice becomes more and more prominent,” she notes. “The relationships we have with our colleagues, counterparts and clients are important and need to be respected and cultivated not only because it feels like the right thing to do, but because it makes good business sense.”

Being Supported When It Really Mattered

Aryani had previously heard the startling advice from peers at other firms that being pregnant and being promoted were incompatible. With some disbelief, she notes: “I was advised: ‘get pregnant at the place that you don’t want to make partner, because once the partners see you as pregnant, they’ll never be able to see you as anything else.’

Fast-forward to four years ago, while with Shearman & Sterling, Aryani’s identical twin sons were born three months prematurely as micro-preemies. Weighing in at only 1.6 and 1.3 pounds, each needed to stay in the hospital, for six and nine months respectively.

After recovering from her C-section with disability leave, she asked about returning to the office to “preserve” her maternity leave for when the twins came home from the hospital. Instead, the firm encouraged her to stay with her kids through hospitalization and begin her formal maternity leave only once they came home.

Aryani returned to work 13 months after the birth: “My firm never pushed me to come back. They never had a conversation about cutting my pay. They paid me full salary and bonuses, and I had insurance. They were a hundred percent fully supportive and said: ‘Your family is what you need to be doing right now and we want to help. When you’re ready to come back, give us a call.’”

“I’m not saying that being a working parent in M&A or Big Law, no matter where I am, is easy,” she reflects. “But when it really mattered, my firm stood by me and my family. And so, that’s really important and meaningful.”

The time and attention Aryani and her husband were able to give their sons during those critical months made a huge difference in their survival, recovery and development. Each weekend these days Aryani and her family go hiking in the forests or mountains near NYC. The longest hike her four-year olds have taken this summer was 5 miles long, “with elevation!” she brags, “that’s more than most adults can do and they have to take twice as many steps!”

She finds it so therapeutic and relaxing she can’t believe it took all these years to really appreciate getting out of the city.

By: Aimee Hansen

/by

OP-Ed: 3 Ways Leaders Can Advocate for Workplace Flexibility

,

Lauren Winans Workplace Flexibility Over the past year, businesses in virtually every industry around the world have undergone dramatic shifts, while the remote workplace has redefined workplace flexibility. Like it or not, the global response to the COVID-19 pandemic has sparked the most rapid transformation of workplace dynamics in recent memory, not the least of which has been the shift regarding the traditional employer-employee dynamic.

Increased trends in technological automation and innovations have forced us as professional leaders to rethink most of our internal strategies. From the processes we use to hire and retain talented employees, to the ways we interact with them on the clock, and even down to the resources we provide them to excel in their performance, one thing has been made clear: the pandemic has left its impact not only on society as a whole, but also on the individual as an employee.

As employees have begun to advocate for their wants and needs within the workplace, it is our duty as leaders to provide them with the environment and tools they need to feel appreciated and valued. The best way to do this is to advocate for greater flexibility within your business and its culture. By advocating for the flexibility and greater overall wellbeing of your employees, they will feel more supported. This support, in turn, boosts the confidence of your employees, allowing them to feel more deeply valued in their own abilities, both within and outside of the workplace.

Here are three ways you, as a leader, can become an advocate for the flexibility of your workplace’s culture and its employees.

1. Embrace the New Hybrid Work Model

Some employers are reluctant to change and are resistant to new ways of working for them and their employees alike. They may think that methods which worked well for the past several decades prior to the pandemic can continue to work just as well more than a year later. Employers may have a fear of the unknown or a desire to focus on other priorities for their business. Ultimately, it all comes down to an organization’s leaders–if leaders can acknowledge that the dynamic between them and their employees has shifted, and changes are required, half the battle is already won. When that acknowledgement is avoided, true change becomes impossible.

Many employers are permanently implementing remote work and hybrid working arrangements, providing bonuses for employees who worked extra hours during the pandemic, conducting compensation studies to ensure their pay rates are competitive, and adding benefits like additional therapy visits, meditation, and mindfulness training. Some employers are also adding more paid holidays to their workplace calendar, encouraging vacation day use, or bringing in freelancers, contractors, and consultants to help with complex projects and increased workloads.

Implementing a hybrid work environment can benefit employers in many ways, not the least of which is the reduction in size of their real estate footprint, which lowers operating expenses. For instance, implementing a hybrid work model shows employees that flexibility in their workplace environment is a priority for their leaders, allowing those leaders to retain talented employees for longer periods of time. This hybrid environment allows talented employees to juggle their priorities (such as caring for children or aging parents) while remaining employed without the fear of having to choose between their personal priorities or their career.

2. Revisit (and Revamp) Your Hiring and Retention Strategy

The number one thing employers can do is to ensure workplace flexibility is to have a clearly defined talent strategy; one that includes an aspirational vision or mission that leaders and HR can use as a guidepost. That guidepost is then used to update, change, or create practices and rewards that are aligned to the aspirational vision of a company’s leadership, which should be well-known throughout the organization. It should be communicated clearly and often, praised when demonstrated, and discussed regularly in large company-wide meetings and small team meetings alike. Great, talented employees need to know what they are working for, what they are working toward, and that their efforts are recognized, appreciated, and rewarded.

The recent hiring crisis our nation is facing exemplifies this point. Our current shortage of workers is impacting the ability of HR teams to focus on enhancing their people strategy, resulting in higher turnover rates that lead to a larger amount of open positions that are hard to fill. It’s a vicious cycle that has led many organizations to bring in HR consultants who can help employers and their teams tackle greater workloads in a shorter period of time. However, many HR professionals themselves are completely burned out after everything the pandemic threw at them. Some are shifting career paths, moving on to companies that provide them with more support, or leaving the workforce entirely.

If business leaders and employers are able to successfully adapt to new ways of working, and thinking about work such as implementing a hybrid work environment, this allows them to increase the size of their talent pool–particularly for positions that are difficult to fill. Hybrid work models likewise allows for greater inclusion, making it possible for companies to employ those with disabilities that keep them from a traditional onsite office setting. By increasing the size of their talent pool, employers make it easier on themselves to recruit for positions that would otherwise be hard to fill.

3. Consciously Provide Employees Opportunities to Thrive

The events of the past year have made it clear that employees crave support from employers to help them better balance their lives. Employees want to work for strong leaders, want to contribute to something bigger than themselves, to take care of their families, and to maintain their health and wellbeing. All of these needs require flexibility on behalf of the employer, and while employers are not expected to meet all of an employee’s personal needs, making conscious choices to provide employees every opportunity to thrive is what helps retain great employees.

By focusing your company’s internal people strategy to create a more flexible workplace environment and culture, your organization can focus more on how to foster the wellbeing of its employees. Companies that are more focused on the wellbeing of their employees will find it easier to attract and retain talent, combat burnout, and increase productivity. When employees feel supported, they’re more confident in their abilities at work. It’s no wonder that employees are looking for employers who have been or are ready to embrace this dynamic.

Written by Lauren Winans, CEO – Next Level Benefits

/by