Women in L&D Leadership: Why Aren’t There More?

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women in l&dLearning and development (L&D) is an industry where women are considered to thrive, but that reputation is shockingly more substantiated by the abundant representation of women entering the field than the slimmer percentages in leadership roles. 

As leveraging L&D expertise becomes more critical to propelling women into senior roles amidst reskilling/upskilling demands across industries, can the L&D field address its own gender ratio flip at the leadership level?

Female-inclined Field, Same Leadership Gender Gaps

By the disproportionate numbers entering into the field, women are clearly drawn to leading on education. A recent survey showed that both education and human resources were among the top five areas for job satisfaction for women. Gallup research has previously found that women slightly outrank men on accepting and empathizing with others as well as being able to recognize and develop people’s potential, natural matches for the L&D field.

Training Industry research has also shown that women in traditionally “female” fields (such as L&D) are more likely to have access to training in strategy and negotiation, key leadership skills, relative to fields like tech or government—which makes what happens at the leadership level more astounding.

L&D is often housed in human resources, where women comprise over 70% of managers, but that’s an inaccurate reflection of L&D senior leadership composition.

As called out by #womeninlearning, a movement began by Sharon Claffey Kaliouby and co-founded with Kate Graham to amplify the voices of women in the L&D sector, research by Donald H Taylor revealed that the more senior you go in the US and UK, the more absent women are in L&D roles.

While support and entry level positions were 67% female and 33% male, this ratio flips entirely at the senior level—where leadership positions are 69% male and 31% female.

The gender advantage toward women already dissipates at mid-authority roles (51% male, 49% female) and practitioner roles (53% male, 47% female), where the split is equal but men become overrepresented versus entry level numbers.

Additionally, Namely found that women entering human resources made nearly 11% less than male counterparts, the gap widening around age 45. In organizational and industrial psychology, the gap was 17.7%. A salary and compensation report from the eLearning Guild in 2018 found that women beginning e-learning roles in their 20s start with a 6% pay gap, which increases to 20 percent at 60+ years. Men also received double the average bonus given to women, .5% higher raises, and 16% more average total compensation, despite women in the sample having higher education levels.

One survey of L&D professionals by Training Journal showed that one in four respondents felt outright discriminated against because of gender, many feeling penalized for being a working mother. Greater were the race disparities. Chief Learning Officer data has shown that only 9% of learning managers are Latino, 5.6% are black, and 2.2% are Asian.

Looking to L&D To Advance Women Across the Board

While the L&D industry’s reputation as a women-oriented field conceals its own perplexing gender leadership gap, the industry is itself being heralded to lead the way on recovering lost ground on gender equality and making advances.

Amidst the vast and disproportional hit that Covid-19 pandemic response measures have had on displacing and exasperating disadvantage for women in the workforce, online learning is being championed as a primary ally in returning opportunity to and empowering women in professional roles.

“It is only when they have access to quality information and ways to decipher it that women can march ahead towards leadership roles in organisations,” writes Dr. S.K Nigam in HERSTORY. “And sectors like Corporate Learning and Development have a huge role to play in this.”

Training Zone in the UK observed that from the beginning of the first lockdown in March 2020, “the number of women enrolling in online courses tripled, with a 250% year-on-year increase in female enrollments across our business and management courses.”

Training Zone also found that since the pandemic, 75% of US employers are more likely to hire people with online education.

In addition to “seeing more women taking the initiative in using online learning to combat the impacts of the pandemic on their careers,” the organization emphasize that organizations need to assume this responsibility too.

A D2L survey reported an awareness gap around training resources: only 48 percent of women reported having access to online learning platforms at their company. But according to Nigam, an international survey indicated that among a sample of 300 companies, 59% reported they ran women-specific learning and development programs, the number going up to 79% among large enterprises.

Upskilling/Reskilling Demands are Elevating L&D’s Profile

Writing in Chief Learning Officer, Amy Borsetti, senior director at LinkedIn Learning Solutions, points to the LinkedIn Learning’s “2021 Workplace Learning Report” to affirm that “L&D is well-positioned to have a long-term, elevated role within organizations today, from promoting internal mobility to actively creating a more inclusive and equitable workforce.”

“One thing this year has made clear is that skills are the new currency in the workplace,” write Borsetti, later continuing, “From an organizational standpoint, creating a culture of continuous learning is a competitive advantage. Those organizations that seize the moment, and get this right, have a higher likelihood to outpace their competitors. It’s not just about learning itself — it’s about the outcomes.”

Whereas being seated in HR has arguably distanced L&D from the core business value and strategy discussions, Borsetti argues that the C-Suite has never been more actively engaged than it is right now. The LinkedIn Learning report found that over half of the 1,260 L&D professionals surveyed felt that L&D is evolving in prioritization from a “nice to have” to a “need to have.” And 63% of L&D professionals reported having a seat at the C-Suite table, a 27% lift within one year.

As Borsetti puts it in Chief Learning Officer, “The reality is, the shelf life of learning programs is shortening at the same or faster clip than the shelf life of jobs.”

The acceleration of pandemic response-correlated disruption, such as displacement and job creation from automation and the more autonomous work-from-home office, has made ongoing reskilling/upskilling both individual and organizational agendas. Meanwhile, attaining microcredentials and refining essential soft skills are on the rise too.

The report found upskilling/reskilling were the top priorities for L&D professionals in 2021, especially internal mobility: “The conditions have never been more right to prioritize skill development as the new corporate currency, level the playing field, create a more equitable workplace and achieve business results that wouldn’t be possible otherwise,” notes Borsetti.

But the question is not only what is needed, but how it should be done. What is garnering attention is exactly how L&D structure, content and approaches evolve to meet the current context in which education must engage, much of which was not considered amidst the whiplash reactivity to online education brought on by the pandemic.

Dr. Rumeet Billan, Chief Learning Architect at Viewpoint Leadership Inc, observes: “We continued to perpetuate our traditional understanding of what L&D is supposed to look like, instead of what learning is supposed to feel like.”

L&D professionals are speaking to how learning is evolving towards being more accessible and customized, self-driven and on-demand, context-relevant, bite-sized, blended, flexible, on-going and more akin in interaction to everyday work activities.

“Transformative learning is an art. Designing a training session is choreography – it’s a sequence that makes the learner reflect, feel, and draw connections that are applicable and practical to them. It’s an experience,” says Billan, who also adds: “The future of learning should look and feel different. We should be intentionally redefining the traditional notion of L&D, how we design and deliver content, and how a learner experiences training and development.”

Can L&D Lead its own Gender Equality Change?

“…I do believe what we’re doing here is opening people’s eyes. Once you see the imbalance, it becomes almost impossible to unsee it,” notes Kate Graham, co-founder of #womeninlearning. “Just look at the speaker line-up of any conference and you can instantly see if that organisation is paying any heed to gender balance and the voices of women.”

So as L&D rises in position in the C-Suite’s vision agenda and increasingly focuses on the learner experience to shape the design and delivery of learning, what kind of experience will be created for the women aspiring to rise to leadership in this very field?

By: Aimee Hansen

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Laura Ansloos: Company Head, apio

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Laura Ansloos“Training is very heavily criticized for its return on investment. Well, why is that?” asks Laura Ansloos. “What happens when the whole picture is not taken into account before training is deemed to be the answer to the problem? What may be working against training within an organization? What are the other forces at play within organizations that drive behavior change, or impact on individual’s performance?”

She continues, “Going down the trajectory of organizational psychology has given me the words to articulate these matters with my clients, help them see the plurality of some of the issues they are dealing with and to find ways to move forward.”

Ansloos talks about her passion for behavioral economics & organizational psychology, how the training issue is often a failure to diagnose the problem and why L&D truly belongs both at the leadership table and in problem-solving teams.

Reclaiming Her Own Trajectory

As often happens when you step on a certain track, the track can begin to take you along it—until you find yourself at the top of a trajectory you never set out for.

With a degree in biochemistry from McMaster University in Canada, Ansloos did not identify with the idea she held of being a scientist in a lab, so ended up pursuing medical communications, a specialist service within public relations and advertising that works with mostly pharmaceutical clients. She quickly fell into client management, gaining higher profile roles and bigger clients in little time and moving up through the business development and commercial leadership route.

Ansloos moved towards the e-learning industry by joining a leading learning solutions firm, Epic, where she managed multi-sector client portfolios such as Civil Service in the UK, Burberry, Diageo, Barclays Bank, EasyJet, and British Airways, helping them transform their internal learning & development offerings towards digital. Soon enough, and amidst a merger, she was Managing Director EMEA of LEO Learning.

“I reached what would be considered a pinnacle if you’re working in a client services career trajectory. But I didn’t love it,” she admits. “I remember always saying that I never want to be responsible for the money, but that’s the trust you build. That’s how it went and where it went to.”

Ansloos wanted to gravitate towards her passion of being more “hands on” with problem-solving around her client’s people and performance matters, and further away from managing the provision of services to clients. She’s been making progress in that direction by leading consulting on workplace learning and performance strategy with Ogilvy Health, heading up the Ogilvy Health UK company apio, and is currently attaining her Masters in Organizational Psychology at Birkbeck, University of London to go further.

Through the depth and breadth of her experiences in management, she’s developed an acute, insightful overview of why training is often set up to fail. Now she seeks to bridge her management and leadership background with adult learning, behavioral science and psychology to create meaningful behavior change intervention in the workplace.

The Missing Diagnostic: Is It Really a Training Problem?

As a new manager with a team of 25 direct reports, reading The Five Dysfunctions of a Team nearly 15 years ago is what first ignited Ansloos’ fascination in understanding behavioral motivation, the psychology of management and leading change. She then became interested in behavioral economics, with popular books like Thinking, Fast and Slow, Predictably Irrational and also Inside the Nudge Unit, which explores how the UK government uses behavioral economics.

“I was reading all this stuff and thinking, why don’t we use this in organizations? Why is this thinking not there?” she wondered, which led her to another question: “Why does training have such a bad reputation? Why is it so often ineffective?”

Ansloos points to the value of using behavioral science insights to inform interventions in individual performance or behavior change in the workplace. For example, we are more motivated by the fear of loss, due to its emotional impact, than we are by gain (prospect theory). We also have a tendency to do as others do, particularly if we identify with them (so called social norms). Armed with these sorts of insights, one can expose hidden opportunities to influence behavior change in the workplace.

For example, she was asked by a client to help provide an educational piece to their leadership team on the value of strategic partnerships. They needed their leadership’s advocacy and support, otherwise the rest of the organization would not understand why partnerships were needed. The challenge was that those partnerships were not yet delivering immediate or tangible commercial gains and came with risk, and so their value was being questioned and “ears and minds of leaders were closing”.

Ultimately, Ansloos and her team used psychology and behavioral science to frame interventions. They set out a value proposition for partnerships using a loss aversion frame: without partnerships, the future leadership position of the organization as an innovator was at risk. They used social/occupational norms and commitment devices to encourage leaders to go public to their peers and share their personal story on what convinced them to “give partnerships a chance to shine” and ask their peers to do the same. While the brief started with an educational request, the team ultimately intervened with psychology to reframe partnerships not as a long term gain but as a way to avoid material losses, and ensured that giving partnerships a chance was “the done thing” among leaders.

Bridging the Gap

Observing that small changes play a huge role in creating significant performance results, Ansloos sees more opportunity to bridge the gap between psychology and management: “Because I’m not an academic, I have that opportunity to help bridge the gap, because it is missing and it’s a very under-tapped area in organizations. We need that expertise of organizational psychology to help widen the lens of the relationship between people and work.”

The big “miss” she sees in L&D is the too often absence of diagnostics around the problem itself. Often organizations leap frog to training as a reflex. But if the issue is not a training (capability) problem to begin with, training will not solve anything.

Ansloos loves the simple and academically grounded COM-B model that says behavior results from capability, opportunity and motivation: “Using this kind of diagnostic lens you say, ‘this is the problem that the business is having, but we first need to see if it’s a capability issue, an opportunity issue or a motivational issue – and then design our interventions accordingly.”

She gives the example of R&D lab scientists in a pharmaceutical company who weren’t filling out timesheets that financial regulators required: “The organization just wanted to implement training on the time sheeting system. But by taking a behavioral lens, we helped them to understand that they didn’t have a knowledge deficit issue that scientists didn’t know how to timesheet. They had a motivational deficit because R&D scientists don’t see it as their job to be commercial entities.”

Rather than training on timesheet completion, which would never have helped, they did psychology-based nudge interventions, like making the task both simple and social, so that scientists witnessed each other doing it and followed along, using the social notion of the ‘in-group’.

“A progressive organization values and understands the mindset of always learning and has the ability to evaluate its systems, its own psychology, its policies, wider society and the expectations it operates within,” observes Ansloos. “It can diagnose what its issues are and where and when training or learning strategy is needed, and what other behavioral interventions may be best required to help solve problems, make better decisions or fulfill individual potential.”

L&D Belongs Across & Within Teams

“Having been in management roles for so long, I know how important it is to get these things right and how much it can bring to the table, so I really believe in this work,” says Ansloos. “I can explain things in a way that is easier to understand and relatable.”

She has been honing her ability to question accepted knowledge, not just relying on status quo but being willing to step back and ask ‘why are we doing it this way’.

This kind of critical thinking is often missing in organizations— this fear to challenge, or to ask a question in the spirit of actually trying to get to a better place,” says Ansloos.

She feels that L&D suffers from being a subset of Human Resources, which is female-dominated but with far too few seats at the leadership table. This is why the notion of the Chief Learning Officer comes in: “Learning is so central for individuals and the organization. Why isn’t it given a more strategic or louder voice in the leadership part of business?”

Ansloos notes HR is perceived as being less strategically tied to business or adding less value, so L&D gets these associations too: “But re-skilling is the number one priority for most CEOs or leaders at the moment. Well, that is learning and development.”

In her years of experience as a learning consultant, she has been surprised to find she is only working with the marketing teams on the client side, with a limited base of learning as extensive as knowing what their predecessor did.

“L&D should be across and integrated into all functional areas of a business. It shouldn’t be departmentalized,” notes Ansloos. “Training is often the first thing to be blamed, so it needs a competency and understanding that is centered and situated within teams that have a broader understanding of when, why and how training is effective.”

Asking Why

With one year to go in her organizational psychology degree, a wife and two children of seven and five years old, Ansloos keeps very busy these days.

In her children, she witnesses the ability to center themselves, question why things are how they are and challenge assumptions—and she plans to keep on encouraging it and learning from them, too.

By Aimee Hansen

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How Neurodiversity Can Enhance Your Organization

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neurodiversityRoben Dunkin, chief operations and innovation officer at PGIM, talks about the importance of neurodiversity in creating a culture of innovation in the workplace.

A Lesson From Mom

When she was just a little girl, Roben Dunkin received one of the biggest lessons that would later help shape her nearly three decades in the finance industry, most recently as chief operations and innovation officer at PGIM, the $1.5 trillion asset management business of Prudential Financial Inc. It was a lesson she learned from her mother, a teacher at a school for children on the autism spectrum. Meeting the children her mother worked with and seeing how she related to them was eye opening.

“The autism spectrum is such a broad range of so many different ways the brain works,” Dunkin says. “I could see my mom’s frustration, because the ability to communicate for some of these kids wasn’t there. But at the same time, I saw her compassion and patience. She found a way to understand what each one of them needed and she found a way to get through. She never gave up on anyone.”

That experience was something that stuck with her as she began her career in finance at Lehman Brothers, where she rose to global head of sales and investment banking technology.

“What I learned from my mom actually makes me a good manager—having that patience, and really trying to understand the different levels of how people communicate with each other,” Dunkin says. “It’s not just people with autism, everyone is so different and kind of quirky in their own way. Within my own family, we have a lot of dyslexia and ADHD. When you grow up with that around you, you learn that some people need extra time and attention to bring out their best. And their best might astound you. Not everyone understands that. They think if someone has one of those conditions, they’re not smart, or they’re not good enough.”

After Lehman’s failure in the financial crisis, Dunkin joined Credit Suisse and became a leader in the firm’s technology organization. In a position to influence the company’s talent strategy, she set her sights on changing management’s perception of what traits made a valuable employee.

The Great Untapped Population

“Everyone seems to understand now how important diversity is to a company, but too often, they overlook a large part of our population that is truly underserved, but also incredibly talented—one that crosses, race, religion, gender, sexual orientation and national origin,” Dunkin says. “People across the neurodiverse spectrum, which includes everything from Asperger’s and autism to ADHD and dyslexia, have to face a stigma. Their levels of unemployment are quite higher than the general population—as high as 80%.”

And yet, Dunkin points out, even if someone doesn’t have any of these conditions, they almost certainly know someone who does.

“Earlier in my career, one of my peers had a son who had Asperger’s syndrome and couldn’t get a job. And we talked about how so many people who are on the spectrum, their brains think differently—sometimes they can see patterns other people can’t, they go about solving problems differently, and that can be a good thing. We started just kind of brainstorming, asking, ‘What can we do about this?’”

The idea that Dunkin and her colleague eventually developed was to actively seek out neurodiverse individuals for a pilot program in data science—specifically, to identify anomalies in data surrounding trade fails. Trade fails can happen when there are mistakes in processing or mismatched information, and they can be a costly problem for a firm. One of the goals of Roben’s team was to discover if there were particular clients, types of trades, or other patterns that would help them identify where problems might occur. While AI and machine learning could parse huge amounts of data, the computers had their limitations. There were still reams of data to filter out.

Participants in the pilot program, as it turned out, were quick to find patterns others had missed. “They were able to look at the data and pinpoint the issue, pinpoint the problem. They had the ability to redirect the technology to ask the right questions. That’s such a specific skill set that most of us really have to learn. There seemed to be an innate ability in some of the people that we were working with to be able to do that,” Dunkin says. “It was just really impressive the amount of positive feedback that we got from people working with the individuals in the pilot program. And those participants—they were so thrilled to be employed and really contribute. It was so rewarding on so many levels.”

Dunkin doesn’t want to make it sound simple, because it isn’t. A lot of legwork went into making sure the program was set up for success.

The Right Goals, The Right People, The Right Projects

It’s the same work Dunkin is putting in now to establish the neurodiversity program at PGIM, with one big difference.

“We’re not looking to narrowly focus this on one area of the business,” Dunkin says. “Individuals on the spectrum have skills and interests that are just as diverse as their neurotypical peers, and we see this as something we want all our asset managers to be involved in and benefit from.”

That begins with a firm commitment from the top.

“Neurodiversity can be a very emotional topic,” Dunkin says. “Recently we had a panel with many of our senior leaders at PGIM, some with children who are on the spectrum, even leaders who identify as neurodiverse themselves. The head of our largest asset management business spoke at length about his two sons who have autism. We had hundreds of employees attend and it was game changing for a lot of people who were able to put their hand up and self-identify. We broke through a lot of walls.”

Secondly, for a neurodiversity program to succeed, managers need to be trained and prepared to work with individuals who may miss social cues. Those managers need to be clear about expectations and literal about tasks.

“Cues and signals that we might expect would be normal are not normal for a lot of people on the spectrum. So you have to ask questions differently—you have to be more nuanced, and can’t worry about body language and eye contact. Job interviewers and managers should be able to understand how to engage with people differently,” Dunkin says. “It’s important to learn where someone is on the spectrum and understand how to help them thrive and deliver their very best. Do they feel more comfortable emailing, do they not do well in a group setting? You want to always be learning how you can give and receive feedback so you can course correct relatively quickly.”

The remote work environment brought on by the pandemic has added to this challenge.

“In some cases, if you talk to some of the people who are on the spectrum, they’re loving remote work, because they don’t have to interact with people in person,” Dunkin says. “At the same time, for a manager, it makes it even more difficult to engage with that individual and make sure they feel included.”

Finally, Dunkin says you need to connect individuals with the right projects, with a clear business case and business value.

“You can’t necessarily put someone on a trading desk environment, but you can put someone on in a data science role. So it’s being very clear about matching the person and the right skill set with the right job and being really explicit about what you’re aiming to accomplish,” Dunkin says.

Why all this matters

“The financial services industry is struggling to hold onto talent,” Dunkin says. “And here is a talent pool that is able and willing to work, and has skills to contribute in the right roles.”

Her prior experience tells her the effort is worth it.

“It’s hard to find data scientists—you can’t train them fast enough. And we know there’s high attrition rates in data science—when you train them, they leave. But our neurodiverse employees in the pilot program were super loyal. We built a team of data scientists from scratch who were able to help us leapfrog ahead quite drastically to meet our goals. We’d done right by them, we gave them a chance, and they rewarded us by staying with the company.”

Dunkin believes that attention paid to neurodiversity in an organization has a much wider impact on company culture, leading to better outcomes for all employees.

“The pandemic has been a very challenging time,” she says. “We’re all uncomfortable, we’re all re-learning how to interact with each other, we’re all working differently. We all need compassion and patience. If we’re not using this moment to identify talented individuals inside and outside our organizations and do what we need to do to support them, then we’re wasting a golden opportunity.”

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Emily Leitch: Capital Markets Partner, Shearman & Sterling

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Emily Leitch “Early in my law career, I felt like there was an established hierarchy and I was hesitant to speak out of turn. I wish I’d broken that notion sooner and had more confidence in my own voice,” reflects Emily Leitch. For sure, respect is earned along the way, but I love seeing the confidence of the incoming female associates today and value their insights. I hope I had a small hand in creating more open dialogue for future generations.”

Leitch speaks to staying focused on your path, leveraging your unique presence and sustaining yourself through the long Big Law journey.

Gravitating Towards Capital Markets

Leitch began in investment banking out of college before deciding to attend University of Texas School of Law after two years. Exploring both securities and mergers and acquisitions (M&A), she felt more magnetized to becoming an expert in capital markets.

“I love that we get to interact with the heart of leadership of the company, and to hear not only about the transaction, but also their strategies and their business,” she says. “You come to know and understand the company’s business, so that you can describe it properly to investors, and ascertain the potential risks and opportunities.”

Not only does Leitch enjoy the high profile client interaction and broad business exposure, but because the intense transactional periods are often accorded in timing to SEC deadlines, she also feels the overall flow is less volatile than the peaks and valleys of M&A law.

Reflecting back, she was probably most surprised to realize how rules-based and regulatory in nature the practice is, which means constantly keeping up with changes in laws and regulations that come with different administrations and different agendas.

Joining Shearman in February, she loves that there’s always more growth and a new challenge: “This is not a career where you’re learning curve ever really flattens. It’s always on an upward trajectory and constantly being engaged intellectually has been something I really enjoy. And the people that I get to work with and am surrounded by — the associates, partners, clients — are all smart, motivated, wonderful, and well-rounded people.”

Staying Attuned To Your Own Development

“As a young associate, you hear ‘so and so billed this many hours’, ‘so and so got to work on that transaction’, and people can get really wrapped up in the competitive nature of it. But from the start of my career, I was pretty good at tuning out that noise,” reflects Leitch on what has contributed to her personal success: “I was good at keeping my head down, doing good work that I was proud of, and walking into the office every day thinking, ‘I’m going to do the very best I can do’.”

Making partner at just eight years and named by Law360 in 2017 as one of the top five lawyers nationally under 40 in the area of capital markets, her focus on her own work has served her well.

“I’m a good team player, so people generally like working with me. I think being naturally social has also helped a lot, as my network is really wide. I enjoy taking part in organizations and leadership teams and committees — from the legal profession to church to school — which also helps me keep some context in this industry,” notes Leitch. “As you grow in this business, it becomes so relationship-driven.”

She’s often heard the reflection that she is high energy, confident and strong, even when she hasn’t exactly felt that way — especially when she was juggling young children with returning to work.

A highly memorable moment of her journey was when, with two babies at home, she had reached a breaking point and was ready to side-shift to any kind of less demanding peripheral position. While informing Leitch that she just short of making partner, a head of her department encouraged her to hold on through the difficult phase and keep the course, and the team just needed to give her the support she needed.

“I’m so glad I held on, because when you make partner in this industry, it opens a lot more doors. If I had gone all that way to stop right before that finish line, my career would be totally different, and I wouldn’t be where I am today,” reflects Leitch. “But sometimes, as women you just you need that support. You need to vent to somebody or say I can’t do this. She was able to really help me through that, and I remember because it was absolutely career-defining.”

Leveraging Your Presence in The Room

While there have been many female associates across firms she’s worked in, Leitch has often been the only female partner in the room or even only woman at all, considering she works a lot with investment bankers, but notes that she didn’t use to notice it and has rarely focused on it — somehow seeing mostly male faces on Zoom has made it more salient.

“It’s not something that I’ve considered a bad thing, and frankly, I’ve probably considered it an asset and used that as an opportunity to stand out,” says Leitch. “I’ve been fortunate along my career to work with very supportive men, who are supportive of women and have helped me develop my career tremendously.”

While it might not be at a conscious level, Leitch is aware that even her presence in the room commands noticing, and feels perhaps that has empowered her to value and use her voice and her ability to influence.

“People see me as a female leader, and I think younger female associates have always looked up to me as a trailblazer in a sense,” she observes. “I’ve never really thought of myself that way: I just did my best work along the way and didn’t care if I was a man or a woman or who I was working with, but it’s nice to help bring other women up behind me.”

Remember It’s a Long Career Journey

“If I could go back and change one thing, it would be to ask more questions and to have more confidence approaching senior people,” says Leitch. “When I was the junior associate, I’d try to figure it out on my own or go to another associate.”

With the value of hindsight, she intentionally tries to be approachable and open.

Leitch has also learned through experience, and impresses upon associates, that while every transaction may feel like a dead sprint, it’s important to remember you’re in it for the marathon.

“It’s a long career and so easy to get wrapped up in the here and the now, especially when you start out,” she notes. “But you really have to remember — when you feel overwhelmed, when you’re in a transaction and it’s all-consuming — you have to be able to ride those waves and think from a long-term perspective.”

With time, she’s learned where to give it her all, which she often has, and where to put her boundaries up and give focus where it’s needed now, to make work-life integration work for her.

“Some days work has to come first. Some days, children have to come first. Some days my husband has to come first,” says Leitch. “We’re all balancing things in our lives, and the longer you do it, the more you instinctively know where the ball cannot be dropped that day.”

Leitch has enjoyed the opportunity to pick her nine year old son and seven year old daughter up from school everyday, as a result of the remote workplace. Much of her personal time is spent engaging in what excites them — from Astros’ baseball games to Tik Tok dance videos.

She’s all about her Peloton at the moment (a pandemic purchase) and as a creative outlet to her highly mental vocation, she feeds her life-long affection for theatre, finding pocketed opportunities to perform, including playful covers of Lady Gaga, Whitney Houston, Vanilla Ice and MC Hammer at Teacher Appreciation Days at her kids’ schools. With a mix of fun, family and a successful legal career, ‘you can’t touch her’.

By: Aimee Hansen

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OP-Ed: The Three Personality Traits Most Prone To Burnout

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burnoutFirst, let’s get one thing straight: burnout is not an individual problem; it’s an organizational problem that requires an organizational solution. Self-care has been the prevention strategy du jour for decades. And yet burnout is on the rise. Why? Because we’re ignoring the systemic and institutional factors that are the real causes of burnout – things like workload, lack of control, poor relationships, and other root causes that cannot be solved with yoga and vacation time.

If you are feeling burned out, know that it’s not your fault. But focusing on what we can do to help ourselves is the part we can control in a world full of the uncontrollable. And if you happen to exhibit one of the following personality traits, you are more prone to burnout.

Neuroticism

Neuroticism is one of the “big five” higher-order personality traits in the study of psychology. If you dig into the definition, it makes sense that this trait correlates to higher rates of burnout. Individuals who score high on the neuroticism scales are more likely than average to be moody and to experience such feelings as anxiety, worry, fear, anger, frustration, envy, jealousy, guilt, depressed mood, and loneliness. People who are neurotic respond worse to stressors and are more likely to interpret ordinary situations as threatening and minor frustrations as hopelessly difficult.

In her 2018 dissertation, “The Relationship Between Big Five Personality Traits and Burnout: A Study Among Correctional Personnel,” Sharon Maylor of Walden University found that neuroticism was the only personality trait that was associated with all three dimensions of burnout.

Conversely, it’s important to see the value in this personality type. We tend to give personality traits like these a bad rap, but there are upsides. People with the neuroticism trait tend to be:

  • Highly analytical and hyperaware of threats or dangers
  • Cautious and less likely to make impulsive decisions
  • More accountable and will take personal responsibility for errors

There are obvious potential benefits to tending toward neuroticism on the team, but you need to be mindful of the downside to avoid burnout.

Introversion

It is a myth that introverts fear or dislike others and are shy and lonely. This is not the case. They simply have nervous systems more suited to spending time in a calm environment with one or a few friends.

Although their nervous systems may be dissimilar to those of extroverts, that doesn’t mean that introverts aren’t just as effective. “Extroverts are routinely chosen for leadership positions and introverts are looked over, although introverts often deliver better outcomes. They’re not perceived as leadership material,” says Susan Cain, bestselling author of Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can’t Stop Talking, and a frequent speaker on introversion and extroversion in the workplace.

According to Cain’s research, the power of introverts can be identified in the following behaviors. They:

  • Tend to be more productive than extroverts and less likely to become distracted
  • Explore subjects in more depth
  • Are great listeners, which helps them in problem-solving scenarios
  • Are often creators; writers and artists are more likely to identify as introverted
  • Have a strong capacity for empathy
  • Are moderators and can calm stressful situations
  • Are more cautious and better at managing risk

However, since the physical office can be a highly social place, research suggests that introverted people are at greater risk of developing burnout than extroverted people.

Introverts working virtually in most situations, minus a global lockdown, are removed from the noise, the hustle and bustle of a buzzing office, the potential disruptions that cause a lack of psychological safety, and the pressure to conform to those office norms. What if we made workplaces free of these kinds of strain?

Just ask Cain, who shared in our interview, “The best workspaces allow people to move freely between solo and shared spaces. Sometimes we want to work alone. Sometimes we crave company. Sometimes we want both of these things in the space of a single morning. Why not design around these natural preferences? Radically open office plans don’t actually increase collaboration or decrease loneliness. On the contrary, they create giant rooms full of worker bees wearing headphones.”

Perfectionism

If you’re prone to perfectionism—specifically, perfectionism concerns— you run a high risk of burning out. Broadly defined, perfectionism is a combination of exceedingly high standards and a preoccupation with extreme self-critical evaluation. Scientists Joachim Stoeber from the University of Kent discovered that our desire and subsequent efforts to achieve perfectionism are acceptable as long as we can emotionally handle scenarios when we don’t achieve it. When we start to believe that everything we do must be perfect and anything less means a failure, or that others may judge us as a failure, then this becomes detrimental to our mental health.

Someone who struggles with perfectionist concerns may exhibit the following traits:

  • Maintaining a rigid self-evaluative style that looks at events in all- or-nothing terms, for example, you’re either a winner or a loser.
  • Overgeneralizing negative events by making a rule after a single event or a series of coincidences. For example, someone is passed over for a promotion, and the narrative is now, “I will never move up in this company.” These “always” or “never” statements frequently appear in a perfectionist’s vocabulary.
  • Ruminating about past failures. Being unable to let go of mistakes and assuming they will come up again in the future.
  • Having a strong need for self-validation, for example, always questioning their self-worth. In some situations, they will subconsciously seek out ways to prove they are “right.” They believe their self-worth is constantly threatened.

According to researchers Andrew Hill and Thomas Curran in their article “Multidimensional Perfectionism and Burnout: A Meta- Analysis,” “Perfectionistic concerns are associated with considerable strain that render individuals vulnerable to the accrual of stress and subsequent burnout. In summarizing current understanding of the perfectionism–burnout relationship, then, it is the harsh self-evaluative processes central to perfectionistic concerns that are understood to fuel the perfectionism–burnout relationship, rather than perfectionistic strivings.”

Authors Mick Oreskovich and James Anderson suggest that we need to consider the following, if we experience perfectionist concerns:

  1. Identify the difference between power versus powerlessness over people, places, things, and situations; if we stop trying to control everything, we will find more joy. It may be a challenge to surrender, but it is necessary to prevent burnout.
  2. Understand the differences between self-knowledge and self-awareness (self-knowledge is what we believe to be true about ourselves; self-awareness is seeing ourselves as others see us). These insights are rarely the same yet are equally important.
  3. Accept help.
  4. Take care of ourselves so that we can take care of others.

Jennifer Moss is an award-winning journalist, author, and international public speaker. She is a nationally syndicated radio columnist, reporting on topics related to happiness and workplace well-being. She is the author of THE BURNOUT EPIDEMIC: The Rise of Chronic Stress and How We Can Fix It.

{Reprinted by permission of Harvard Business Review Press. Excerpted from The Burnout Epidemic: The Rise of Chronic Stress and How We Can Fix It by Jennifer Moss. Copyright 2021 Jennifer Moss. All rights reserved.}

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Marcia Diaz: Managing Director, PGIM Real Estate

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Marcia Diaz “Wherever you are, get the best experience, keep developing your skills, and keep networking. Whenever you’re asked to do something, make sure you do it well,” says Marcia Diaz. “You’re creating your brand. Whatever happens next, make sure someone will want to pick you to be on their team.”

Diaz speaks to unexpected opportunities in the right moment, making both your work and your ambitions known, leveraging your position and the value in sometimes asking forgiveness rather than permission.

When One Door Closes, Another Opens (Again!)

What at first appears as a stable and steady thirty-year stint of experience in commercial real estate financial services with PGIM Real Estate was actually a little touch-and-go in moments of Diaz’s journey.

Beginning in retail and then obtaining her MBA at UC Berkeley, Diaz joined the Prudential Realty Group, following the track of getting initial experience at a big institution–to “see as many deals as possible, learn the fundamentals, and get some good grounding”–before planning to go onto work at a real estate developer.

Less than a year after starting as a junior loan officer, the market turned and she found herself working on foreclosures: “Pretty quickly, I was put in a totally different position than I thought I was going to be in, and it was so much more adversarial than the sales side. But I tell people it was like medicine. At the time, I didn’t like it, but it was the best learning experience for a new person in real estate–you learn all the things that can go wrong and you really come to understand the loan documents.”

A few years later, Diaz got into the heart of real estate, moving over to an asset management role and working on mega deals in LA and San Francisco. But as Prudential prepared to go public, the strategy included selling off the major assets she’d been working on.

Just as she had chosen a severance option, she received an invitation to join real estate investment banking in Prudential Securities. For three years, she gained experience in capital markets and M&A, though it felt too far removed from real estate to her. That’s when the head office decided to close down the investment banking group, and she received her second severance package.

As she pondered what was next, she received a second unexpected call, again from within the greater company. This time the offer was to head up the re-opening of the LA real estate office. She would be building and hiring her team and working with multifamily agency products. Since accepting, Diaz has remained on the debt side in originations in the LA office.

“It’s a been a very dynamic company with lots of changes and new opportunities – loan originations, dispositions, asset management, investment banking,” summarizes Diaz. “Every time I got comfortable in one of my roles, some new opportunity and challenge came up where I moved to a different role, and that’s kept me here.”

Real Estate Holds a Story


Diaz enjoys how approachable and tangible real estate is when it comes to the often abstract world of finance. She loves the story that is behind each asset: “Every property is so different and every one has a story. Even after thirty years, my favorite thing is still to go to a new market and hear the story from the developer and the owner and why they’re excited about it.”

“These people are such experts. They tell you why this specific corner is better than that corner and why they’ve laid out the development the way they have.”

Beyond the West Coast, she’s been able to explore London, Mexico and other new markets to feed her passion.

Do Your Best Work, But Also Make it Known

“My parents instilled in me that the only thing you can control is yourself and what you do, so make sure whatever you’re doing, you excel in it,” says Diaz, which she remembers applying even to the most meticulous of tasks in her retail days. “Focus on your performance and whatever you are doing, do your very best work and a lot falls into place.”

Diaz accredits her insistence on showing up with her best effort as to why her name was twice spoken for new opportunities in different parts of the organization. At the same time, Diaz learned that doing your best work is only half the equation. What came less naturally for her was self-promotion, as well as being direct and assertive about what she wanted and where she wanted to go. 

“During my career, there have been some people who I felt maybe weren’t as qualified as I was, but made it known what they wanted to do–whether a new responsibility or promotion–and I watched it happen for them,” she notes. “I learned you can’t just wait for things to happen. You’ve got to make them happen. Talk to your boss, raise your hand for opportunities, make sure people know what you’re interested in. Don’t let them just assume you’re happy to stay where you are.”

Diaz feels as though her networking was often by default. While that contributed to her opportunity offers, she could have benefited from doing even more: “Start your networking early on, and be proactive, strategic and disciplined about it. This business is so much about contacts and relationships and how you help each other out and refer business.”

Leverage Being Memorable in the Room

Having been in the organization for three decades, from the days when the boys club was shockingly overt at moments, through a time of greater social maturing, Diaz has often been the only woman at the working social event, meeting table or competitive pitch.

But generally recalling the notion of being around the table with twelve men, all dressed similarly and with similar names, it never escaped Diaz that while she was trying to remember “who was who” amongst them, she herself stood out.

So while it can be very intimidating, and Diaz jokes it would help if she was a golfer, she also has chosen to make standing out as a woman work for her, as opposed to seeing it as inhibiting her.

“When I was marketing to borrowers and brokers, I could be competing with five other guys (lenders) who had been in their office that day, but they’re going to remember Marcia. So I tell junior female team members to take advantage of that, but to remember you also must be clear and compelling in your pitch.”

Speak Truthfully and Directly

Diaz feels she has gained respect and trust as someone who will tell the truth, even when it’s difficult or controversial.

“To be a good leader, you need to be able to cheer your team on with all the good stuff. But to make changes and keep progressing, you also need to be willing to address the challenges and difficult matters,” notes Diaz. “I think people appreciate direct and honest feedback and ‘knowing where they stand.’”

Diaz observes that it’s far kinder to be truthful and direct even in critical feedback and to give someone the opportunity to receive and address it, rather than to avoid that conversation until it’s too late.

Grooming and developing talent has become a bigger aspect of her daily life the more senior she has become and is now the most important part of her position. From watching new hires rise to senior positions over decades with her, to understanding the dreams of university student mentees, it’s what she finds most gratifying in the work.

Ask Forgiveness, Not Permission (Sometimes)

As someone who identifies as a “rule follower,” Diaz has had a few successful, dynamic movers and shakers in her journey that passed on an important message: sometimes you just gotta ask for forgiveness, not permission. While taken to the extreme, it may become reckless, she sees the value in being willing to take some informed risk.

“The notion is that when you know things are right, you gotta go with it, especially in the world of transactions,” says Diaz. “That sticks with me, because I think that sometimes you need to have the confidence to recognize you have enough world experience and just go with it.”

As one of her retail bosses early on taught her, ultimately no one else is as close to your business or can tell you what’s best for it.

With so many unexpected twists and turns in her own journey, Diaz also emphasizes to her mentees that there are many things out of your control, so put your energy into doing your best where you are now.

So much of her professional fulfillment comes from in-person social interaction that Diaz awaits the day she can return to the field and hear more real estate stories directly.

She has already combined her love of tennis and travel by attending both Wimbledon and the US Open and would love to travel to France or Australia next to do the same. She grew up on the West Coast as a Pac-12 girl and loves college football season.

By: Aimee Hansen

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14 Key Career Insights From Latina Leaders in Business

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Latina Leaders in BusinessAfter sharing top tips on self-promotion from Latina leaders in business as part of our Hispanic Heritage month coverage, The Glass Hammer continues our two-part feature with more key insights from Latina leaders we’ve interviewed across the past years:

1. Value Those Who Show Up For You

If you want people to take personal interest in developing you, value the gift of energy and time they give, advised Cassandra Cuellar, Attorney at Shearman & Sterling.

“People are more than willing to have conversations with you when you show you appreciate their time,” said Cuellar. “Female partners whom I don’t even work with have reached out, which was so impressive that these busy women would welcome me and offer their support.”

Update: Cassandra Cuellar remains an Attorney in Shearman & Sterling’s Emerging Growth practice group, with the firm now for over 3.5 years.

2. Embrace the Learning Phase

You’re not expected to be an expert when you begin, emphasized Lina Woods, as Director, Global Digital Go-To-Market Leader at PwC.

“There were times of stress when I should have realized it was okay to learn along with everyone else,” realized Woods, ”and I see now that I could have harnessed that perceived vulnerability and realized you should just dive in and do your best.”

Update: With PwC for over five years, Lina Woods was appointed to Managing Director and Commercial Product Strategy Leader in June of this year.

3. Balance Intuition with Receptivity

Growing as a leader means both trusting yourself and being receptive to feedback, observed Priscila Palazzo, as Legal Director at WEX Latin America.

“While law might appear to be my main job, I also excel at understanding people and their behavior,” said Palazzo. “It’s important to be open to new ideas and thoughts, but especially to feedback. If you seek it out and reflect on it, it can help show you areas where you can grow and improve. As women, we tend to follow our hearts and intuition, but we need to balance that with feedback.”

Update: With WEX Brazil for over seven years, Priscila Palazzo is General Counsel.

4. Look Up And Around

You benefit hugely by looking up from your work and connecting, noted Anita Romero, General Counsel, Global Consumer at Citibank.

“When you’re first starting out, you’re so focused on doing excellent work that you don’t realize the many benefits of seeking advice from peers in your network,” said Romero. “People learn over time, but had I known that up front it would have really helped.”

5. Be Resilient With Your Vision

It’s easy to lose faith at obstacles, but Cristina Estrada, Head of Derivatives for the Latin America Financing Group, Investment Banking Division at Goldman Sachs, encouraged to keep the course.

“Pursuing what you are passionate about and chasing your dreams are key to having a successful career,” said Estrada. “Being patient is important though: there are ups and downs in everybody’s journey. Persistence and seeing beyond occasional difficulties pay off.”

Update: With Goldman Sachs for nearly 17 years, Cristina Estrada remains in her position.

6. View Detours As Opportunities

What appears as a career deviation may become your next adventure, guided Isela Bahena, Managing Director, Private Infrastructure Group at Nuveen Real Assets.

“It might seem scary, but looking back I see a lot of growth when I took those chances. There will be challenges, but sometimes the bridge is going to look different when you actually cross it,” said Bahena, known by junior colleagues for being calm amidst changes. “I tell them that’s because in the long run I always see them as opportunities.”

Update: With Nuveen Real Estates for over 3.5 years, Isela Bahena remains in her position.

7. Be The Change

Be the change the you wish to see, championed Elizabeth Nieto, as Global Chief Diversity and Inclusion Officer at MetLife.

“Women who have power can continue to push the envelope on women’s interests. We can complain about where we are or focus on what we’re achieving. Things may not be perfect in the corporate world, but we’ve accomplished a lot and we have to build from here,” encouraged Nieto. “Our daughters are watching us and making decisions about their lives based on how we make decisions about our own lives.”

Update: After nearly seven years at MetLife and a two year stint at Amazon, Elizabeth Nieto became Global Head of Equity and Impact at Spotify in March.

8. Create the Belonging

Women need to become aware of the barriers they impose upon themselves and invite each other in too, emphasized Yesi Morillo-Gual, as Founder and President of Proud To Be Latina.

“I started Proud To Be Latina because of some of the challenges I faced in my own career. These included things like not knowing how to navigate the landscape, not knowing about the unwritten rules, not having a lot of support, and also not really believing that I belonged because the majority of my colleagues did not look like me,” said Morillo-Gual. “There is a sense that we don’t belong, or that we have to leave who we are behind in order to advance our careers. We tend to question ourselves and our abilities.”

“I often hear women say that corporate America was not designed for them, and in response I tell them that corporate America may not have been designed for me, but I was designed for corporate America,” she added.

Update: Yesi Morillo joined Cushman & Wakefield as Director, Global Head of ERGs & External Partnerships in April.

9. Ask For Support

Getting past the notion of being the totally independent woman is hard but it’s also growth, shared Rosa Bravo, Business Development Director at Accenture, who started her career as an aerospace engineer.

“One of the things I wish I had known earlier is that it’s okay to ask for help. There are so many choices you have to make along the way, and you just can’t do it alone,” reflected Bravo. “I’ve been culturally conditioned to be a strong woman, to want to be able to do everything on my own. It took a few years to feel comfortable to raise my hand and ask for help when I needed it, but it made things much easier when I did.”

Update: Senior Technology Executive Rosa Bravo has been with Accenture for over 27 years.

10. Don’t Delegate Your Career Path

It’s important to design your own career rather than delegating that to your boss, asserted Valeria Strappa, as Head of Efficiency and Cost Management for Citi Latin America.

“What I think is important is to first be the designer of your own destiny and second, to learn that you might not necessarily get what you think you deserve, you will get what you are able to ask for and to sell for your results,” said Strappa. “A lot of times women think people will recognize their work. And they do, but that doesn’t mean you get what you were expecting for it. You have to be able to solve a big problem for a big leader and of course be able to stand up and show your results.”

Update: After a decade with Citi, Valeria Strappa has been with JPMorgan Chase & Co for nearly five years, and was appointed Managing Director – Head of M&A Integrations and Client Relationship Management in January 2020.

11. Embrace Change As a Catalyst

Change can be disruptive, but Elizabeth Diep, back when she was Senior Manager in PwC’s Asset Management Practice, challenged women to leverage it to advance their careers.

“Be open minded. There is such a changing landscape in this profession. We are seeing growth in Latin America, while in Europe, there are challenges now but absolutely something different is going to come out of it. It’s about being open to opportunities and not hesitating to take on new roles,” advised as Senior Manager, Asset Management Practice at PwC. “Every experience, whether good or bad, is going to help you grow. Don’t resist change. Change will help you become a seasoned professional a lot faster and a lot better.”

Update: Elizabeth Diep made Partner in 2013, and has been with PwC for over 21 years.

12. Leverage The Cultural Asset of Connectivity

Nellie Borrero, Managing Director, Senior Strategic Adviser of Global Inclusion and Diversity at Accenture, expressed that Hispanic women have an advantage in relationship building.

“We understand the advantage of relationships – it’s so embedded in our culture. That savviness and understanding of the importance of relationship building and maintaining relationships comes naturally to the Hispanic community,” asserted Borrero, who emphasized to network strategically: “And I would like to see young women do more of this: be able to reach out to the women at the top, and absorb that coaching and experience they can share. Become a sponge and absorb as much as you can. If they’re up there, they’ve found a way to make it work.”

Update: With Accenture for nearly 28 years, Nellie Borerro remains in her position.

13. Empower Yourself To Ask for What You Want

Twenty five years into her career, Marilyn Foglia, Managing Director and Head of Latin America at UBS Global Asset Management, realized it didn’t pay to be timid.

“I wasn’t always so persistent about getting my ideas on the table – but now I am!” Foglia declared. “If you’re too polite and wait for an opening to speak you may never get a voice. Don’t be afraid to ask for what you want. We women tend to think that if we work hard, we will be rewarded. But we have to ask for it.”

She encouraged women not to think of themselves as having less opportunities: “If you do that, you become afraid to voice your own opinion. Be sure to express your beliefs broadly. People will eventually hear you – that’s how you get recognized and move up the ladder.”

Update: With UBS for over 28 years, Marilyn Foglia remains in her position.

14. Find a Culture You Can Thrive In

Put the right environment at the top of your criteria when it comes to career-related decisions, advised Noelle Ramirez, Project Manager, Diversity, Equity & Inclusion at PGIM.

“Culture first. Seek out advice from people that are already there. What has their experience been? Do they feel comfortable? Do they feel like they can bring who they are to the table? If the answer is yes, that’s a good place to start. It takes away a lot of productivity and energy to not be who you are,” said Ramirez. “Go somewhere where you can be yourself. I’m very passionate in my delivery and it’s part of my culture. Making sure I’m in an environment where that doesn’t have to be shut off is important. Look for environments that are ready to receive you, because that’s where you’ll be your most productive, innovative, creative and strategic.”

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

We hope you enjoyed this two-part retrospective!

By: Aimee Hansen

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Monica Marquez: Co-Founder, Beyond Barriers

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Monica Marquez“It’s transfer of knowledge, it’s paying it forward, it’s saying ‘here are the unwritten rules that you need to know that not everybody is going to tell you’,” says Monica Marquez. “Why don’t you learn from my mistakes, and then maybe you can get here in half the amount of time that I did?”

As an Equity & Inclusion expert, Monica has previously worked in the cultures of Goldman Sachs, Bank of America, Ernst & Young and Google, with a focus on pioneering efforts to support women to advance through the most tricky parts of the career path.

Advancing the “Frozen Middle”

“I’ve had a natural affinity towards pursuing a career that focuses on diversity, equity and inclusion,” says Marquez. “The whole theme of creating opportunities and a sense of belonging, and helping people to accelerate their success, has always been core to what I loved to do and help organizations do at scale.”

Beyond Barriers takes a campus to C-suite approach: “What happens throughout a woman’s career trajectory that causes so much attrition from the entry level to the top? For more than a decade, over 50% women have been graduating from US universities and colleges, outpacing their male peers. How is it then, that only 8% of women hold C-suite roles in Fortune 500 companies?”

Marquez’s passion has been to understand the systemic barriers at play and how to navigate them to accelerate success: “Companies do a really good job of recruiting women in the early stages, but they don’t do a good job of supporting them and helping them grow and stay, often losing them as they are rising up.”

Despite so much front-end investment in talent, Marquez feels organizations often fail to support women through the “frozen middle” when the challenge of integration of work with new motherhood becomes a huge adjustment for many, and when attrition peaks.

She notes that many women are passionate about coming back until they return to experience being sidelined—so they are both pulled by their new responsibilities and pushed out by the organization. After the second child, the percentile of women opting out or taking a break goes way up.

Marquez has found that often a dance of projected assumptions goes on between both sides of the coin. Women often don’t feel their managers/organizations will be supportive of their boundaries or needs. Organizations often assume what women will want for themselves, or be available for.

“It’s partly the assumptions, stigmas, stereotypes, unconscious biases that managers and leaders have at play, rather than just open communication,” she says. “The conversation needs either the woman being confident and having clarity of what she wants and being able to ask for what she wants, or the leader asking the woman that question and giving her the opportunity to answer for herself.”

Marquez has seen that when the tough conversations actually happen, things like flex schedules and promotion plans can be arranged. It’s after all more efficient to support a woman to stay and keep progressing than to bring in somebody entirely new from scratch.

“Don’t be afraid to say this is this is what I want and don’t be ashamed of your ambition. You shouldn’t be told you either choose your ambition or you choose the family. It doesn’t have to be that way,” advises Marquez, who also points out: “Companies do invest a lot in development with women, but they sometimes have to be strategic and target the high performers. If you were to get to these women a lot earlier, you would have more mid-career women make it through to the top.”

Pioneering the Returnship® Program

Perhaps Marquez’s proudest accomplishment is the Returnship® Program she began back at Goldman Sachs over a decade ago, to help companies retain experienced women and to help women gently reintegrate back into work after maternity leave.

“Back then, there was a significant stigma if you left the workforce and tried to come back in. The gap was a huge mark on your resume, and usually employers would overlook you,” she notes. “There’s a hidden talent pool of women that companies are losing out on because you have this traditional bias against the resume gap. And we started thinking: how do companies hire in the first place?”

Marquez and her team adapted the internship experience and introduced the Returnship® program in financial services at Goldman Sachs. Across a 10-12 week stint, women came back into an office, usually taking on one focused, substantial project in a team who held an open position. Women were able to reacclimatize through a first dip back into work mode and teams received experienced help on standing projects. If the practical trial showed a mutual fit, full-time placement would result and regardless, both parties benefitted.

“In our first few pilots, we had a placement rate in the 90th percentile, and the majority of the 10% who didn’t get placed were women who chose to stay out, after realizing that they weren’t ready for full-time work,” says Marquez. “It’s the fulfillment of helping people gain opportunity when the doors are all closing that’s been my guiding passion.”

Being Latina in Corporate America

Marquez notes that Latina women face stereotypes based upon gender and culture: such as the loud Latina, the overly emotional Latina or the family-first domestic Latina mother.

She’s experienced herself that being a “first generation corporate” can be very isolating, allowing space for imposter syndrome and self-doubt, often because Latina women are the “only” Latina around in the context and because they often do have different influences and voices at home, sometimes intergenerational, due to the cultural loyalty to family.

Some cultural influences can be resourceful to help Latina women thrive and others can be limiting.

While women of color were less prevalent in the Returnship® program, the team found ironically (vs. stereotypes) that Latina women were less likely to have opted out of the workplace for home responsibilities than their white peers, precisely because they had a strong Latino family structure and childcare support within their extended family.

“The cultural norm of the tight-knit Latino family unit, where they maintain a sense of a village to raise a family, helped some women stay employed opposed to having to opt out,” notes Marquez.

On the other hand: “We come from various Latino cultures where work ethic is a really big deal: put your head down, work really hard,” says Marquez. “However, you learn quickly that in the corporate world, you’re going to get overlooked if you just keep your head down and work hard. You have to learn self-promotion and have the flexibility to go against the grain of what you’ve always been taught.”

And so, Marquez has created employee resource groups to help with opportunity/cultural gaps such as coaching soft-skills and self-promotion among first generation college or corporate individuals.

Acculturate, not Assimilate

Having always been fascinated with cultural differences and their influences on decision-making, Marquez impresses upon Latina women that “there’s a fine line between assimilation and acculturation”.

“You have to be very careful when you go into an organization that is predominantly white male cisgender-led that you don’t assimilate too much, to where you’re contorting yourself into a pretzel in order to belong. You want to keep some authenticity,” says Marquez. “I usually tell people that you have to acculturate and embrace every organization you belong to. They each have their unique culture and define success in a different way. You have to look at every organization like its own country that you visit every day.”

She suggests getting underneath what characteristics are driving success in your organization and then emulating those characteristics by adopting strategies that are right for you within the organizational “cultural” context, without compromising your own truthfulness.

For example, colleagues may go to the local pub to network, but it’s narrow-minded to think you have to stay two hours after work as the requirement to be successful. The value is developing relationships, and you can figure out a way to develop more depth to informal connections through breakfast and lunch invitations during work hours.

“It’s figuring out where you can set your own boundaries. You acculturate opposed to assimilate, and you challenge them on the ways it happens,” she advises. “The important thing is the relationship building. It’s not the happy hour.”

“Don’t assimilate and lose who you are. Instead, acculturate and hold onto those core values of your culture, because that also enriches the organization,” she notes. “The representation of diverse cultures brings about an organic diversity of thought that is needed to create bigger and better solutions for organizations.”

Less Certainty, More In-The-Moment Agility

“Women have a tendency to be very certainty driven, and they end up not taking as many risks and opportunities. It’s like that quote ‘doubt kills more dreams than failure ever will’,” says Marquez. “Women need to be much more open to taking the opportunity and embracing just-in-time learning, so they don’t rob themselves before they try.”

Marquez feels women disadvantage themselves by feeling they will be safe only if they already know everything. Whereas men’s willingness to put their name in the hat, dive in and then figure it out means they advance more quickly.

She recommends women weigh the risk and reward, and if they can live with the downside, just go for it: “Women will second guess and short-change themselves, but we are remarkable and extremely resourceful. You have to look at these opportunities and tell yourself, ‘I only check two boxes out of ten, but I’m going to put my name in the hat because this is my North Star. This is where I want to go’d.”

Noting that the average shelf life for a new skillset is now eighteen months, Marquez feels women should tap more into their natural agility to change and juggle, and embrace more just-in-time learning.

For her, a key component of accelerating gender equity is simply facilitating the transfer of knowledge: “If I knew then what I know now, I would have gotten here so much quicker and probably in half the time that it took me to become a senior leader,” reflects Marquez, who is doing all she can to bring others up behind her.

To learn more about how Monica and her company (Beyond Barriers helps organizations retain and develop female leaders), visit www.iambeyondbarriers.com.

By: Aimee Hansen

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