Pamela Peace: Principal & North America Client Management, PGIM Fixed Income

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Pamela Peace“The world is different now and leadership looks different,” says Pamela Peace, “Today anyone at any level should be afforded a trusted space to have a dialogue with their manager about the support needed to be successful.”

Peace talks about the values she holds dear, lessons learned throughout her career and how she has developed as a leader in ways that feel true to her goals, ambitions, and most importantly authentic to who she is as a person.

As a Senior Client Manager for PGIM Fixed Income, Pamela recently expanded her role as a leader within the organization, taking on responsibilities as lead manager for PGIM Fixed Income’s North America Client Management team: a role which she notes is intentionally focused on creating valuable partnerships for clients and opportunities for teammates in Fixed Income to deliver excellence in client relations.

Pamela reflects on driving change and rising above dissenting voices. “It is vital to perform well at our core duties to be viewed as credible and effective. What makes an individual a true leader? One who motivates and inspires others to perform well at their core duties, has the courage to push for change, and holds the unique ability to cultivate diverse perspectives.”

Her perspectives as Co-Chair of PGIM Fixed Income’s Culture Council highlight her commitment to amplify the organization’s cultural values.

Values She Holds Dear: Diversity of Perspectives

Having worked in fixed income and asset management for over twenty-five years, and with PGIM Fixed Income for the past seven years serving international clients in several regions of the world, Peace thrives on interacting with a range of people and cultures, from language to food. Even more, she loves experiencing the diversity of perspectives that come forth, and she learns broadly from every interaction in her job.

“We are a global organization. When we think about different investment strategies, we must consider every aspect of the world. We must take in various inputs – we must look at the world holistically, make decisions based on our analysis, clients’ expectations, what the markets are doing, geopolitical climate, regulatory, etc. These are just a few of many inputs that go into framing our decisions,” she reflects. “As a Client Manager, for a global asset management firm, I bring a wider awareness into everything I do. I believe it is core to my job and how I live in a global society.”

Peace is motivated by watching the people she leads develop uniquely in their skillsets and the legacy her commitment to talent will leave. “I’m so excited to see how the PGIM Fixed Income North America client managers, which consist of different generations, experiences, and cultures, are going to come together to bring forward new ideas for client engagement,” she says. “Our team embraces the view, ‘we can do hard things for our clients’, and if we believe we can do hard things together, that means we’re all thinking and bringing in ideas, and that’s going to be an exciting adventure.”

Lessons Learned: The Values of Humility, Constant Learning and Service

On advice for those developing their talents, she is open about her own path of development, “Trust me, I have made a lot of mistakes where I have had to say, that was not a good decision. Now, how can I actually take that and learn from it?” says Peace. “Humility allows me to understand where I am in my learning journey and acquiring more knowledge has been something I’ve had to own and develop personally.”

In her very first job at a naval base, she worked under an educator, who was a computer scientist, who imparted upon Peace that she could learn anything once you accept your ability to learn it. That woman, she noted, looked like her. Long before that, her mother, who raised eight children spanning twenty-two years as a single mom after becoming widowed, showed her the merits of hard work.

Combining those influences, Peace is a self-confessed constant learner who takes night courses to stay abreast on new topics in management and leadership. She’s presently taking courses to continue to improve on being an effective leader, as well as pondering the EMBA journey. Early on in her career, she learned there was value to admitting what you don’t know and being receptive to educational opportunities was essential – and that has stayed with her.

“I think vulnerability was important to getting me to this level in my career at PGIM, “she notes. “Also, having grace, humility, determination, and the curiosity to learn at any point in life are key attributes everyone should channel.”

She would add that being in service of others is a core value that has carried her through work and life: “My job is to serve others, and I wake each day reminding myself of that fact. In my job it is – PGIM’s clients first, the people working alongside me and those that I’m responsible for.”

In her personal time, she volunteers with aged people in underserviced areas and learns deep lessons from the elders she serves.

Lessons Learned: Leading as a Partner in Growth

A few years back, Peace had the experience of leading the London team and realized a lot about adjusting her communication and leadership style. Through that experience, she recognized the value of “meeting individuals where they are” to take them where you see they can go. This required adjusting her approach as a leader. When it comes to supporting her team now, Peace seeks to collaborate with those she leads on their development goals.

“The discussions I have with the individuals that work with me directly are very much: I am your advocate. I am your support. Let’s talk about what you need and where I think you need to grow. Then we’ll work together,” she says. “It’s an intellectual dialogue about development and being a partner and advocate in the space. It’s more of a leadership of equals as opposed to that of a hierarchy. Let’s come along as a partnership, and we’ll both get there and grow together.”

Every year in the annual reviews, Peace asks her direct reports to tell her one thing they want to learn or develop during that year, and she helps make that happen.

“They are accountable and feel as though they have ownership of their careers and development,” says Peace. “I’m there as a guide, support, and bumper when needed. That’s a valuable leadership skill that has worked for me.”

Not only does she see her own role as being supportive, but at this stage in her journey, Peace sees it as important to communicate to her own bosses what support she is going to need from them to be successful. Having the direct conversation cemented their willingness to commit that support.

“It’s important to be able to trust and communicate to your leaders: here’s what I need from you and what I need you to help me with,” she says. “That has made the difference for me in my career. And that is not wisdom that one must wait until they are well into their careers to acquire anymore. Remember, what I said at the outset of this interview, the world is different now, and leadership looks different.”

Both parties must agree and hold each other accountable but creating the space to have the conversation matters: “I know, it is a hard thing for some people to understand and accept – I must trust you enough to say, here’s what I’m looking for and here’s what I need. As managers, we must work to create the space for trust, and be ready to receive and act on the needs request.”

Developing as a Leader: Promoting Inclusion and Inspiring Women

Peace wants her team members to feel she brings positivity, openness, inclusivity, and a space of trust, where they can bring their best talents forward.

Inviting inclusion daily might mean giving people, who do not always get the opportunity to speak up on a call, a direct invitation to share their opinion or to lead a discussion. It is also being interested in her team as individuals outside of work. As Co-Chair of the PGIM Fixed Income Culture Council, she’s responsible for executing the values of the organization and creating a safe and inclusive environment built on collegiality, trust, and an unwavering commitment to clients among other positive attributes.

“Part of my responsibility, as a Co-Chair, is to model those values,” says Peace, “which includes bringing together our differences. Valuing people with different backgrounds and different skills to create diversity of thought to execute our mission, which often involves making a lot of subtle connections.”

Going back to her early career before PGIM, Peace lived the experiences, as a black woman, of being the “background individual,” there but not getting the opportunities, not receiving the speaking role, being trivialized. “Having had these experiences, I can say to young women who are coming into their careers, including my own daughter, you don’t have to take it. You do not have to shrink to the biases or comments that make you feel less than – change the norm and the direction of conversation,” she states. “Challenge the behavior appropriately – Ask the question, what does that really mean? Express when you’re offended and why, be prepared to have the conversation, receive the apology and extend grace if appropriate.”

She notes that she usually gives the benefit of the doubt and in most cases, believes there is value in having the hard conversations, because those questions often expose blind spots and lead to achieving a wider, more compassionate understanding of other’s lived experiences.

Developing as a Leader: Embracing Who You Are as a Person and Professional

Taking up distance running after age 40, Peace has completed four marathons and several half-marathons, and considers running outdoors to be spiritual.

Growing up in the middle of eight children gave her early life lessons in responsibility, navigating different personalities, taking care of each other, collaborating and valuing family – including her husband, adult son, and daughter.

She’s animated by new food, great wine with friends, the house she and her husband are remodeling, and she loves to dance. Peace recently cherished a holiday moment of karaoke and dancing with her daughter for the first time since her daughter was a child: “She is definitely smarter and has more rhythm, and that’s okay with me.”

It’s Pamela Peace’s lived experiences both inside and outside of work that define her as a leader and more precisely as someone who motivates and inspires those around her each day in service of PGIM’s clients.

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Spotlight on Change: Black History Month

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Black History MonthFebruary is Black History Month—a dedicated time to, in part, shine light on all the challenges people of color have faced historically and continue to face in a modern context. In today’s social setting, Black women still face several unique challenges in life and in business. In fact, statistics paint a realistic picture of just how many challenges Black women confront to achieve professional success, especially as business owners.

  1. There are more than two million Black-owned businesses in the United States, but women own only 35% of these. In addition, businesses owned by Black women earn significantly less income than businesses owned by other women.
  2. Less than four percent of all startups are founded by Black women. Although this figure doubled between 2016 and 2018, it is still far below other groups.
  3. Businesses founded by Black owners receive less than one percent of the total venture capital invested in this country, and only a small portion of that amount goes to companies led by Black women.

Despite the myriad of challenges women of color have faced, however, many have overcome them to achieve tremendous success and have inspired new generations of Black women to pursue their dreams.

Among the ranks of highly successful Black women at the helm of prosperous companies is Zandra Cunningham, who founded Zandra Beauty when she was just 10 years old. Now her products are found at major retail chains, including Target.

Farissa Knox is the CEO of RLM, a leading full-service integrated marketing and communications advertising agency. On the first day of Black History Month 2022, RLM announced its new social impact program called the RLM Reading Nook Initiative.

This initiative includes a five-year commitment to help women and girls in their local communities across the US and even abroad. To accomplish this goal, RLM is partnering with organizations that prioritize reading and are committed to ensuring all future female leaders have full access to books and education.

These collective efforts are purposeful about empowering girls with the freedom that comes through literacy and educational insights often required for professional success. Throughout the coming five years, RLM intends to raise and/or donate $500,000 in literacy education and hard materials to girls around the world.

Knox believes the Reading Nook Initiative is vital in the quest to help young Black women achieve success. “Women and girls across the globe are still being told by lawmakers and family members and everyone else in between what they can and cannot do, or what’s right or wrong for them,” she says. “I am an activist for women’s freedom, and I believe the number one way to freedom is through education. The more we know, the more we take power into our own hands and make decisions for our own lives. I want that for all women, and especially for Black women.”

To accomplish this purpose, Knox believes it is important for successful Black women to tap into their power and add value to the world for the following three reasons:

1. To change the minds of those who might have a deficit-based view about Black people and/or Black women and their ability to thrive in the world. There is still a lot of latent racism and sexism in modern society, and we have seen that ugliness more prominently in recent years. However, there are far more unexpressed—and sometimes even unacknowledged—biases that significantly impact the ability of minority groups to achieve success.

These hidden biases and stereotypes present formidable barriers. One such barrier has been Black business owners’ longstanding lack of access to venture capital. Even when the data says otherwise, stereotypes persist about the ability of Black business owners to successfully lead their companies as well as about the credit-worthiness of individuals. The only way to change these perceptions is to refute the narrative head-on—a necessity that underscores the importance of developing highly visible initiatives that demonstrate the competence, intelligence, and leadership abilities of women, particularly Black women.

2. So that young girls and children of color can see live examples of great leadership working in their communities, and they can be inspired to do something great too. Representation matters. If you don’t think it does, consider this: If you ask any American to name a few successful business owners or leaders, most could name at least five without giving it a second thought—but if you look at their list, you will most likely see names such as Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk, and Mark Cuban. If you specifically ask them to name a female leader or business owner, they might come up with one or two names at best. But most people in this country would not be able to list a single successful Black woman-owned company or CEO without doing some research.

Perhaps more significantly, most people wouldn’t give this fact a second thought. However, this lack of representation in the upper rungs of company leadership is a fact that Black women and girls live with every day. They don’t see the potential for success every day, but they do see the barriers to achieving that success every day. Those barriers are a substantial and unavoidable part of their lives—and that is why it is so important for successful Black women to be highly visible.

3. To ensure that we share our wealth, resources, and prosperity within the Black community and strive to change the narrative so our youth know they can avoid becoming a statistic. Once again, succeeding in this effort boils down to fostering hope and vision.

As a society, we need to start focusing on the many positive developments happening among Black youth in our country. They are capable of great things, but in many instances, they are discouraged from even trying because the statistics are not in their favor. When successful Black leaders can use their resources to help tip the scales to a more equitable environment for Black youth, it leads to new opportunities and tremendous growth for these young people, both in the near and long-term future.

That’s why the Reading Nook Initiative with RLM is so important. It provides an avenue through which to help young Black girls empower themselves with knowledge and to recognize their potential to achieve any dream they might hold in their chosen profession. When these young leaders can envision a successful future, then the sky’s the limit on what they can accomplish.

By Rikki Roehrich

(Guest contributed articles do not necessarily reflect the views of theglasshammer.com).

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Geline Midouin: Chief People Officer, Shearman & Sterling LLP

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“As you arrive to a real senior level, you will start to understand that people are going to have a hard time disagreeing with you. They tend to give you filtered information,” advises Geline Midouin. “If you know that, you can be much more deliberate and intentional in terms of how you ask questions, to make sure that you’re getting the real story and understanding different perspectives.”

While energetically pacing at her standing desk, where she prefers to work in the mornings, Midouin talks to valuable lessons she’s learned at entry, mid-level and executive level positions in her journey – and the excitement of sitting in a people-oriented seat amidst the talent and inclusion challenges of today.

Joy of Purpose

Born in Haiti, Midouin came to the U.S. at three years old. Her Caribbean family consisted of doctors, nurses and medical professionals, so when Midouin shared she was going to pursue a liberal arts bachelor’s degree in psychology, her mother asked her how she was going to eat. Her family believed getting an education was about job security and thought obtaining a non-tangible degree wouldn’t help.

With a master’s in Organizational Behavior from Teachers College at Columbia University and having held several leadership positions across industries in the field of people and talent – from consulting to broadcast media to healthcare advertising to big law – Midouin feels inherent joy in how she approaches her work.

“I have a sense of purpose in really helping people to bring out the best in themselves to serve the greater good, whether it’s business, our clients or our community,” she says. “I’m motivated by purpose and doing something beyond myself to create a legacy.”

Midouin has always been curious by what motivates people and why they do things – and she loves driving impact and innovation, which catalyzed her move into Big Law a year ago with Shearman & Sterling, in the new post of Chief People Officer. In this position, she’s charged with having an umbrella oversight and influence on all people-related functions at the firm.

An avid reader, she is a curious thinker who draws inspiration from many places to look at issues from different lenses. She emphasizes that in today’s shifting world, it’s important to stay curious: “I ask a lot of questions. I don’t want to hear ‘I can’t’ from my team, but rather I want us to ask, ‘well, why can’t we?’”

“We’re moving away from managing structures and instead focusing on helping people manage their expertise and their careers, so they grow both personally and professionally,” says Midouin. “How can we not just provide information, but actually engage people and then measure the things we’re doing in terms of impact, so we can prioritize?”

Part of Midouin’s mission is to continue to thread diversity and inclusion through the firm’s culture: “Like the head of the orchestra, you’re able to see how things work from a more holistic view. That becomes a secret sauce in working in a more inclusive way,” she says. “You have to integrate inclusion through recruitment and professional development, so having it under one umbrella enables me to bring the key people to the table to have the right conversations and access to resources, to work in a more cohesive manner and make changes that move the needle.”

Early On: The Confidence To Speak and Go For It

Having been the only woman and/or person of color in the room often, Midouin has learned to not be intimidated by the perception from the room that she speaks for all black women or people of color (which she notes is impossible as not all individuals of any group think the same).

“I’m one person with one point of view. So I’ve had to make sure, whether I’m the only woman or only person of color, that I’m comfortable with myself so that I can share my authentic voice,” says Midouin. “You don’t want to waste that opportunity to speak, and you also want to make sure that you share a point of view that reflects authentically who you are.”

Midouin calls her confidence to speak up a learned behavior, as very early in her career she had a critical moment where she diminished her own voice. Two weeks into a new company as a junior employee, she walked into a meeting and the CEO asked what she thought. Taken aback, she caveated her response because she was new, and he replied that he asked her because he wanted a fresh perspective.

“I never did that again because I was questioning my right to give an opinion,” she reflects. “If you’re in a meeting, you’ve earned your right to be there. People are bringing you there for a reason and they want to know your opinion. And people may disagree with you too, and that’s okay, as that’s part of what gets you to a variety of views at the table.”

Noting that we often learn the most through mistakes, Midouin also recalls hesitating to go for a position because she lacked a couple of the qualifications, while watching a male colleague who possessed only a couple of them go for it. When her manager pushed her to apply, she got the position. She now realizes the “confidence gap” was at play for her.

“After I got the position, they told me it wasn’t necessarily about what I knew. It was that I asked the right questions and showed that I’d be able to figure it out,” she recalls. “Sometimes we talk ourselves out of a risk or putting ourselves out there, because we feel like we’re not good enough or that we have to be overqualified. I really encourage people to have the confidence to push themselves and take more calculated risks.”

Mid-Level: Managing People Who Are Different To You

Another key learning moment in Midouin’s earlier career was shifting from an individual contributor to a manager. The transition from being measured for your individual results to your ability to motivate the team was a wake-up call for her when a 360-degree performance review arrived: “The people who were on my team that thought more like me, loved me and my style, but the feedback from the people who were not like me was very different.”

Midouin learned that she had to pay attention to individuals and adjust her management style depending on what they needed. While she is a problem-solver who can deal with ambiguity, bring chaos to order and prefers not to be micro-managed, she realized others need structure, a more methodical agenda and more “touching base” time to flourish.

“People tend to begin by managing people how they like to be managed. You have to learn to be thoughtful and intentional about managing people that are not like you,” says Midouin. “And then, it’s not only making sure you’re hiring varied people of different styles, but also asking yourself if you are catering to all types of styles that you have on your team. Or, are the only people that are excelling, the people who are just like you?”

Executive Level: Leading with Self-Awareness

When it comes to success in the C-suite, Midouin emphasizes the value of self-awareness – including knowing what you’re good at, not good at and surrounding yourself with a team complementary to your skills.

Midouin also notes how critical it is to not surround yourself with people that only validate your viewpoint, but rather those who have the courage to disagree and give an authentic view. One time she said something intentionally ridiculous, observing that people try to be agreeable to senior figures. After no one disagreed with her, she gently chided her team with “come on.”

“I will purposely invite my team to play devil’s advocate and give me a contrary point of view, because that’s what you need in an organization. Let’s argue the opposite point of view – the one we’re not looking at,” she says. “If you’re in a team where you’re not getting dissenting points of view, you should be worried because you’ve probably hired too many people just like you and you’re looking at things in a one-dimensional way. If that is happening, ask yourself if you are creating a safe space where all people can really share their point of view, or do you need to help pull out some of the less expressed views?”

Motivating in Today’s Context

In these times when inclusion is in demand, and the Great Resignation has led to talent wars, it’s a unique moment to be in Midouin’s seat, with an increasing focus on retention and reducing turnover.

“The biggest difference is about motivation – historically you’ve competed against other organizations and now you’re competing against ideology and alternate careers and lifestyles and priorities. Because of the pandemic, people are rethinking what place work should have in their lives. Then you have generational shifts too,” she says. “Now we have to think about how to attract and retain a workforce that wants something different. What is that difference? How does that fit with your employee value proposition? And how do you shift that?”

As one example of alternative approaches, Midouin notes how Shearman & Sterling is leveraging its alumni as recruitment ambassadors, as research shows that when you hire people through a referral, they tend to stay longer than other types of hiring. Therefore, the recruitment strategy is already incorporating a consideration of retention. In addition to a direct payment, alumni also have the opportunity to gift their referral to one of a dozen charities.

Giving Back Where It’s Needed

Midouin’s family passion is tennis. In order to teach her youngest son, who is on the autism spectrum, tennis, she and her husband were driving 1.5 hours to Queens, NY to have him participate in Aceing Autism, a program that uses the Applied Behavior Analysis (ABA) method to teach tennis to children on the spectrum. When Midouin discovered that New Jersey, where she lives, had the highest per capita representation of autism, she and her husband introduced a six-week clinic through the tennis club in their local community, which they run twice per year. Midouin is also on the board of directors for MJHS, one of the largest not-for-profit health systems in the region.

“It’s about impact, and how do you leave the world a better place?” she says. “Finding a way to give back is actually more pleasurable for me.”

By Aimee Hansen

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Mariah Turner: Associate, PGIM Private Capital

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Mariah Turner“If it’s always the loudest voiced people who are taking up space, some of the more insightful opinions get lost,” says Mariah Turner. “I like to think that I’m someone that tries to champion the softer voices in the room.”

Turner speaks to showing up in a room and the community, as both a team player and a leader who amplifies the voices around her.

Finding Balance Within Finance

Having grown up with a father in finance, an economics degree from Harvard University, and a couple of consultative internships under her belt, Turner sought a position in investment management right out of college. More than three years ago, after a year and a half at Allstate, she joined PGIM Private Capital (PPC) and transferred from Chicago to the London office last year.

Initially drawn to sociology out of a fascination for how and why people think and behave the way they do, Turner combined her interest in human behavior with her attraction to finance. She enjoys considering why people make economic decisions and what factors influence the choices they make ̶— a valuable perspective when assessing investment prospects.

“I’m definitely someone who is intellectually curious, and in this industry, every day is different,” says Turner. “There are new challenges and discoveries with each transaction and type of company you’re evaluating. This keeps the work fresh and exciting, which motivates me to learn and do more.”

Turner notes that entering into the workforce five years ago, she knew she was looking for a balance with family and personal life – as her own parents modeled through their involvement in church, community, and after-school activities when she was growing up. “Lifestyle balance can be particularly challenging in the finance world, so what motivated me to come to PPC was knowing that I’d be in a role, in a space in finance, where I could still have that balance.”

Showing Up in a Room and For the Community

“I’ve been very fortunate in that I don’t feel that my race or gender have really been factors in my career to this point. I think it has definitely been more performance-based,” Turner notes. “I participated in speech and debate in high school, and I played sports, so I’m very used to speaking in front of people, being very direct and voicing my concerns. If I didn’t have that personality or had worked in spaces that discouraged those behaviors, maybe my experience would be different.”

Turner admits she is more wary of the possible dynamics at play around race and gender when outside of the office, in external meetings where she might not know what kind of biases are present. This means she’s more hyper-conscious of how she presents herself to get the reactions she hopes for, which could mean changing how she dresses or does her hair. Turner says, “That is something that we, as a society, are going to have to deal with on a longer-term basis.”

Turner is impressed by the leaders who walk their talk day-to-day, be it in the office or the community. “I look up to people with authenticity and passion, who convey it not just with words, but with what they do –whether it’s actively reaching out to people who are more junior, actively seeking their advice, or introducing them to committees or organizations within industries to try to broaden their vantage point.”

Nobody has role-modeled walking their talk more than Turner’s mother. As president of the school-site council, she helped Turner’s elementary school become a distinguished California school. She also began a group in the school district, whose aim was to provide support and advocate for the needs of Black parents and students. Turner observed her mom continuously play an active role in supporting the wider community, a trait she hopes to emulate.

Championing Voices and Being a Team Player

Turner would like her colleagues to see her as a compassionate leader who helps to amplify all the voices in the room.

“If I’m leading a meeting, I like to cold call on people and get a pulse for what different people are thinking, because it’s often people who are more reserved or introverted who have very deep insight,” she says.

Another way she seeks to champion differing perspectives is by having one-on-one conversations, fostering a safe space for people to share their opinions in a more private setting. From here, she can determine how to help those individuals share their thoughts in a larger space.

A rugby player while in college, Turner joined a club rugby team in London and applies the lessons she learned about teamwork from her childhood and current participation in sports.

“Everyone needs to be on the same page and playing their role, and when one person isn’t, it affects the rest of the team,” she says. “This applies to both sports and in the workplace; it is critical to have good communication and know how your actions affect others. In those times when you aren’t feeling your best, I think it’s important to ask for and are willing to receive support from your teammates.”

“I also believe it’s important to be mindful of how your teammates are feeling. Actively asking how others are feeling not only makes them feel more part of the team, but also establishes a level of trust and morale that makes everyone perform better,” she says. “Being aware of how everyone else is feeling helps form a cohesive team because at the end of the day, we’re all working towards the same goal. If one person is having an off day, that’s going to impact the whole team. Knowing how to rally around and motivate that person not only helps the individual but brings the whole team closer together.”

Turner wants to be the type of leader that helps aligns individuals’ goals to the broader team and organization’s vision, enabling everyone to move ahead and progress together.

Being Strong and Giving Back

Growing up, Turner remembers hearing stories about her father’s family working as sharecroppers in Louisiana before they moved to California, her home state.

“Only two generations back, my grandmother was picking cotton in the fields and making dresses out of flour sacks. That’s a reminder the past is not as far back as we perceive it to be.”

The wisdom Turner’s grandmother imparted has influenced her perspectives, “She told me ‘whatever your husband knows how to do, you should know how to do, too.’ Her lessons in perseverance and being self-sufficient have motivated me to be independent.”

What’s in the decade ahead for Turner? She envisions herself with a family and continuing to be led by her curiosity. In Chicago, she was highly involved in volunteering, especially working with children–whether helping to provide healthy meals or reading to them–and was struck by the impact of food insecurity in her community. She now participates in community service through the Junior League of London by helping raise awareness about poverty in the city.

By Aimee Hansen

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Black History Month 2022: Why bell hooks was right

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bell hooksBefore the word ‘intersectionality’ was coined by Kimberlé Crenshaw in 1989, bell hooks critiqued a narrowed feminism that hailed from the white middle class living room and neither addressed interlocking webs of oppression nor recognized its own race and class privileges – therefore, blindly disregarding the multidimensional plights of non-white, underprivileged women.

Her message has become undeniably resonant over the last two years – and not the least of all, her argument that humanity would need to brave the revolutionary path of deep self awareness and self actualization, as she taught, “once you learn to look at yourself critically, you look at everything around you with new eyes”.

A Revolutionary Feminism For Everyone

With her death on December 15th of last year, bell hooks, born as Gloria Jean Watkins in 1952, left behind a legacy, as well as over 40 books in 15 different languages, of challenging and championing feminism.

In her book Ain’t I a Woman? Black Women and Feminism, she grounded her feminist approach in the struggles of black women. In Feminist Theory: From Margin to Center, she proposed a revolutionary feminism: “Feminism is a movement to end sexism, sexist exploitation, and oppression.”

Further, hooks wrote, “The foundation of a future feminist struggle must be solidly based on a recognition of the need to eradicate the underlying cultural basis and causes of sexism and other forms of group oppression. Without challenging and changing these philosophical structures, no feminist reforms will have a long-range impact.” Black feminist writer Barbara Smith wrote that anything less than a feminism that freed all women was “not feminism, but merely female self-aggrandizement”.

hooks also advocated that feminism was not men versus women, but all versus sexism, a conditioning both present in and oppressive to everyone. She wrote: “And that clarity helps us remember that all of us, female and male, have been socialized from birth on to accept sexist thought and action,” later continuing, “To end patriarchy (another way of naming the institutionalized sexism) we need to be clear that we are all participants in perpetuating sexism until we change our minds and hearts, until we let go of sexist thought and action and replace it with feminist thought and action.”

Emphasizing that oppression costs too much to everyone, including to those who overtly benefit from it, she called for ending sexism, racism, class elitism, and imperialism through not reform, but a revolution of self-actualization. She asserted any real movement of social justice to be based in the ethic of love, writing in her work Outlaw Culture: Resisting Representations, “The moment we choose to love we begin to move against domination, against oppression. The moment we choose to love we begin to move towards freedom, to act in ways that liberate ourselves and others.”

And yet with her departure, we still stand in our half-awoken adolescence of realizing the necessity of self-development she spent her life advocating for.

A Workplace That Is Still Damagingly Exclusive

According to authors in Harvard Business Review, women of color are still culturally encouraged to be grateful for what they have, discouraged when declining undervalued work or seeking greater power and resources, and often fear backlash. Meanwhile, the angry black woman stereotype “not only characterizes Black women as more hostile, aggressive, overbearing, illogical, ill-tempered and bitter, but it may also be holding them back from realizing their full potential in the workplace — and shaping their work experiences overall.”

Whereas anger is a normal workplace emotion, when  expressed by a black women particularly, it’s perceived (assumed) as a personality trait – rather than due to validating external circumstances, despite little substantiation for that perception. Meanwhile black women often find themselves stereotyped, kid-gloved or imposing tone policing on their own voices. Echoing hooks in regards to self-development, the researchers suggest an antidote to this is deeper self-reflection and empathy by those in the workforce.

Even well-intentioned leaders can put extra responsibilities and burdens on successful black women in the office. When black women are implicitly seen to speak as representative for a group, rather than for themselves, or when they are disproportionately committed to external opportunities as visible symbols of parading a company’s diversity, the pressure and time commitment can be overwhelming. Meanwhile, the stereotype of the strong black woman means managers are less likely to check in to see if they are doing okay with managing the workload. Couple that with it being societally instilled that black women will have to work twice as hard as others to succeed.

Not only this, but the perception gap creates a gaslighting of the workplace experience for black women – McKinsey notes that black employees are 23% less likely to see there is support to advance, 41% less likely to view the promotion process as fair and 39% less likely to feel the company’s DE&I program are effective, relative to white colleagues. Gallup found that black women are less likely to feel valued, treated fairly and respected in the workplace. Consistently, the experience of fairness and organizational commitment to addressing bias is lower for them, and they are also less likely to consider themselves as thriving.

When it comes to women of color and the multidimensional factors they face, the glass ceiling has been reframed as a concrete ceiling. Too often the corporate definition of leadership has proven to exclude women of color – with standards of what leadership looks still contingent upon traits most associated with white males.

If you question that, consider that a study has recently shown that black women are indeed penalized for natural hairstyles in an interview setting, as authors wrote: “Black women with natural hairstyles were perceived to be less professional, less competent, and less likely to be recommended for a job interview than Black women with straightened hairstyles and white women with either curly or straight hairstyles.”

The emotional tax black women are paying to be in workplaces rife with conscious and unconscious incidences of exclusion is not an abstract concept – it’s visible in functional MRI brain scans, which show that black women who have experienced more incidents of racism have greater response activity in the brain regions most associated with vigilance and anticipating incoming threats. This ultimately can have a trauma-like impact on health.

The researchers also state that “a disproportionately high amount of brain power may go into regulating, or inhibiting, their emotional responses to these situations” – which is consuming energy that could otherwise be put into well-being, thriving, creating and innovating.

Inclusion Does Rest Upon Collective Self-Development

So amidst the Great Resignation, black women are leaving the workforce in record numbers, with a track record of having outpaced all other women when it comes to daring the journey of entrepreneurship and achieving business growth within it.

With research indicating that “one of the fastest ways to accelerate change and effectively begin to address the racial wealth gap is to listen to and invest in Black women,” Goldman Sachs launched, in partnership with Black women-led organizations and others, the One Million Black Women initiative – committing $10 billion in investment capital and $100 million in philanthropic support to be focused on key moments, from early childhood to retirement, that offer the greatest possibility to narrow the opportunity gaps and positively impact lives.

Meanwhile, Gallup asserts that the exclusion experiences of black women in the workplace can be largely addressed by managers, as the crux of feeling engaged comes from coaching. Seeking to coach and sponsor those who are under-championed is where you begin – getting to know and support every person, in their individual strengths and challenges, is where engagement is created. Gallup suggests that to be inclusive, more workplaces need to train their managers to become coaches.

As summarized in the Journal of International Women’s Studies, hooks consistently advocated that only “the self-development of a people will shake up the cultural basis of group oppression.”

Haven’t the prominent themes of the last couple years – braving the difficult conversations, recognizing the unconscious biases in everyone, listening to the experiences of others, cultivating a personal growth mindset of being open to being wrong and learning – echoed the message of this visionary, who emphasized our interconnectedness and collective responsibility to expose the ideology of the status quo that exists in each of us?

As hooks wrote: “No level of individual self-actualization alone can sustain the marginalized and oppressed. We must be linked to collective struggle, to communities of resistance that move us outward, into the world.”

By Aimee Hansen

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Brandi Boatner: Manager, Digital & Advocacy Communications, IBM

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Brandi Boatner“You’ve got to remain true to yourself, because there are enough people telling you what you can’t do. I will always tell you what you can do,” Brandi Boatner tells young black women. “We’re going to make change together, but you have to be true to yourself. You have to be authentic. If you’re not, what’s the point?”

Boatner speaks to how the standards have changed for social media and social justice, owning your uniqueness as a black woman, opening the door for others and living through hard-earned resilience in New Orleans.

From People Person to PR Person

Boatner has always been a people person. Fascinated with physics, she started out as a physics pre-med major, until she realized being alone with lasers in the lab wasn’t her happy place. While she wasn’t drawn by the image of a public relations (PR) woman, Boatner was attracted to interacting with people and influencing behavior and has been enamored ever since.

“I love the work, I love the people, and using technology to impact and make the world better feeds my soul,” she says of twelve years at IBM. Boatner began when brands were just finding their footing in using social media to create awareness and drive business, and she’s been fascinated by how social media changed in the last two years as organizations had to discover how to communicate and live their values online.

“Once the pandemic happened, everyone had to shift their social strategies: it was no longer about product, but people. You had to be empathetic, sympathetic and not tone deaf to what was happening in the world,” she says. “Now you’re seeing more posts with purpose. You’re seeing the platform being used to stay in touch and informed, and to stay aligned to values.”

Brands Becoming Value Advocates

In the wake of George Floyd’s death, companies were given a wake up call to be more accountable to identifying, communicating and living their values, which also shifted her role when it comes to leading social justice communications.

“If in today’s environment, you as a brand are not sharing your values and what you believe in on social media, that’s problematic. If you are not speaking out against injustice, discrimination and bias, which we all have, that is problematic,” says Boatner. “Today, companies have to advocate not only for the brand but also for what their employees expect them to advocate for: What are your brand values? What do you stand for? What do you stand against?“

Born and raised in New Orleans, she has internalized Southern values such as approaching other with genuine friendliness, not prying on topics such as politics and religion, and looking to the brighter side for opportunity: “I say PR is the ER, because there’s always something happening. It may be easy to say ‘this is the worst thing to happen’, but I always ask, ‘what’s the lesson to be learned, what are we taking away?’ Yes, we will come to a resolution, but what can we learn and do differently?”

Elevating Social Justice and Action on DEI

Boatner is proud to have led the catalyst Emb(race) pledge, working with senior leadership, which launched on June 1st 2020, in which “IBM and IBMers stand with the Black community and call for change to ensure racial equality”- a campaign for policy change and opportunity creation “to help transform this moment of clarity into lasting change.” The effort has expanded to support other race and ethnic communities, including AAPI.

Launched in September 2020 to transform workplace dynamics, she’s been supporting key initiatives for the Transformation and Culture function, focused on growth, inclusion, innovation and feedback. The function’s mission is led by Obed Louissaint, one of her mentors and a black executive at IBM whose role became the SVP of Transformation and Culture.

“HR is a huge juggernaut,” says Boatner. “So how do you carve out a role specifically looking at organizational culture? I have the distinct pleasure to support Louissant’s team with external and social activities and help drive culture change within the company.”

Honored as a changemaker in 2021 by PRNEWS, Boatner observes 2020 brought an impossible-to-unsee reckoning: “It was time to have the uncomfortable conversations around racism and things that happen every day, like microaggressions, code-switching, as well as privilege, which I don’t see as a dirty word. I’ve been taking about D&I for a long time, but we weren’t having those conversations in this context before. People had to get comfortable with being uncomfortable to address these topics.”

In the past year or two, Boatner observes the game has moved from talk to a focus on tangible actions to drive change: “I do believe that we are making the right steps, but there’s just so much more work to be done because after 400 years, there’s a lot of areas for improvement and it’s not going to be ticking a neat checklist,” she notes.

Opening The Door For Others, Wider Yet

Since becoming the first black woman to serve as the National President of the Public Relations Student Society of America (PRSSA), Boatner has been attuned to what it means to have either the presence or absence of those who walk before you.

“I was the first one, which confused me for an organization that had existed for over forty years,” says Boatner. “At the same time, there were several black women who had led the professional society, so that told me that when I graduated, if I ever wanted to PRSA president, somebody had laid the groundwork before me. I wouldn’t have to be the first this time.”

Boatner feels representation is so important and is inspired, not dissuaded, to be the change: “Whether a lot of people look like me in Corporate America leadership, it has to start somewhere – such as talking to historically black colleges about why PR is a viable career. My attitude is when I am in a position of power, there are people to open the door for, because a bunch opened the door for me to be where I am.”

Among those who have inspired and empowered her, she includes black female executives Judith Harrison, Renetta McCann, Helen Shelton, Debra Miller, and more trailblazing women: “Let’s leave our mark, they showed me, so that’s what I am trying to do. But I’ve never wanted to be black Brandi. It’s Brandi, rockstar and badass, and she just happens to be black.”

Outside her organization, Boatner has had her moments of confronting thinly veiled racist interactions – such as having to make her position in the room clear (and it’s to speak, not get the coffee) or tolerate being handled with kid gloves (such as being presented negative news in a way that seeks to pre-empt or manage the angry black woman stereotype).

When it comes to allyship, she says you have to stop playing safe and stop sitting on the sidelines: “If you’re not an agent of change, you’re literally just a spectator. You won’t roll up your sleeves. It’s great you want to be an ally, but I would really love an accomplice – somebody who can get me into the spaces that I can’t yet get in and can change the way people think and look, because they’re already in that space.”

Being Your Authentic Whole Self, Above the Challenges

Boatner is more at home speaking to a crowd of thousands than a room of a dozen people. She wants to be seen as the Beyoncé of the business world: “I want people to be like, she is a force, she is effervescent,” she says (which she is). “But at the end of the day, I am the epitome of realness. What you see is what you get, and I’m a lot for people to take. I know I live at a twelve on a ten scale, and I’ve tried to come down to a six but that feels uncomfortable, so I decided I’m going back to twelve. That’s who I am and that’s a leadership quality.”

She also values realness and aliveness in those she works with: “I like people who work towards a common goal. I don’t want the naysayers – the we can’ts or the woulda, shoulda, coulda’s. I like people who inspire and empower.”

Boatner makes a point to reach out to black women to encourage owning their roots and raise their vision beyond the possibilities they see for themselves: “I always tell young black women that your blackness is part of your uniqueness. No one can take that from you. I feel as a race and ethnicity, we have a unique set of characteristics and traits as black women that are all our own. And that is something to be proud of and that is something to be shared and that is something to be recognized and valued. No one, I mean no one, should take that from them, including themselves,” emphasizes Boatner. “They are sometimes their own worst enemy.”

She notes that many things are and will feel stacked against you and you’re going to run into hard days, racism and bigoted people, but she urges young black women to let none of that define their possibilities.

Resilience in The Wake of Trauma

Boatner’s greatest passion in her life is her family in New Orleans, and it’s together with her family that she has faced her most difficult challenges.

Sixteen years ago, her family lost their home in Hurricane Katrina, after the roof blew off their house and they were forced to flee and hunker in the storm, salvaging ultimately only what had been stored in a fire-resistant lockbox by her father, such as her birth certificate. And just last year, and exactly sixteen years to the day of this first devastating life-changing experience, Hurricane Ida struck New Orleans and again took her grandparents family home (where her mother grew up) and flooded her mother’s hometown.

Watching in horror from New York and praying not to see her family turn up on CNN, Boatner felt helpless, triggered by the past trauma of Katrina, and desperate to get her mom to New York: “It was incredibly difficult to go through that, and if it wasn’t for my colleagues and best friends, I don’t think I would have been able to get through it. Here I am the woman always trying to make things happen, and I couldn’t do anything. It was crippling and suffocating.”

Boatner had to “dig deep” and being a mindfulness leader supported her, but she reflects it would have been easy to go down a very dark path: “Talk about resilience – my family and the citizens of New Orleans are made of tough stuff because we’ve been through something terrible, now twice.” She notes that people often want to glamorize the survivor story, but when you’ve lived it, you don’t want to relive, dramatize or be defined by it.

“I love my family, I love my Louisiana, I love my tribe,” she says, grateful today that despite the impossible loss, everyone is here and well.

By Aimee Hansen

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Unlearn, Learn and Relearn: The Key to Career Change and More Meaningful Work

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learn and relearnWith four in 10 women considering leaving their current roles, “Unlearn, Learn, Relearn” could well be the mantra for executive-level professional women looking to switch tracks to more meaningful work.

Despite the ‘passion at work paradigm’ being around for more than six decades, there are downsides to that approach. It could be a straight path to (self) exploitation, says journalist Sarah Jaffe in her book Work Won’t Love You Back. You may have heard the talk about it leading to even high-salaried staff burning out or tackling depression in the workplace.

Unlearn

Canadian academic Galen Watts, based at the Centre for Sociological Research in Belgium, writes in The Conversation that the passion pursuit could be underpinning the Great Resignation currently sweeping through the world.

He suggests first ensuring you have a robust social safety net before searching for more meaningful work. That means valuing work and your family, friends, and hobbies, not prioritizing one over the other.

Your next professional move should see you focus on work-life balance. Here’s why that’s important: McKinsey’s Women in the Workplace 2021 report shows half of female senior leaders are burned out, about 42% are exhausted, and about 32% are chronically stressed.

Before you agree to a job offer, do more than your usual due diligence in researching the work culture of the organization.

Learn: who are the key players for Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) in your target industry

“Set your standards high for would-be employers regarding their diversity, equity and inclusion strategies and activities. Too many organizations focus on just the optics rather than making a difference aligned with a stronger purpose,” says Nicholas Pearce, Clinical Professor of Management & Organizations at the Northwestern University, Kellogg School of Management.

He advises looking for companies that:

  • Link their DEI efforts for individual and collective purpose
  • Prove their DEI achievements through transparency
  • Work with similar organizations to progress humanity

Those exemplars may well rise to the top anyway, as those just paying lip service will “abandon their DEI efforts”, says Pearce.

Relearn: The side hustle or internal path to entrepreneurship

You might have a hobby, interest or small business you’ve been nurturing while in full-time employment. Beware the stereotypes that may be deflecting you from entrepreneurialism.

A recent study published in Entrepreneurship Theory and Practice found that one career path doesn’t fit or describe all women. It debunked the swathe of previous research that took a broad brushstroke to all professional female entrepreneurs marking them as less-economically motivated in their concepts of success, and less qualified as managers to run businesses.

The published study found that women entrepreneurs varied, more than converged, along a “single universal prototype”. It drew on career data from more than 800 female graduates from a U.S. business school over six decades. Those researchers advocate for a career path perspective or framework that sees entrepreneurship as a series of pathways or activities over time.


Carve your own entrepreneurial path, but be aware of what stereotypes you may come up against, such as when you pitch for start-up investment, as according to Crunchbase, just 2.3% of venture capital funding goes to female-led start-ups.

If you still have a side-hustle itch, consider if your current employer has a program to identify and support corporate social intrapreneurs. Nancy McGaw, a senior advisor at the Aspen Institute’s Business & Society Program, describes such intrapreneurs as on-staff and on standby to drive needed changes.

Take the initiative rather than wait to be tapped on the shoulder. McKinsey’s Women in the Workplace 2021 report points to a ‘broken rung’ still existing – the first step up to manager level. It means companies are inadequately laying foundations for women’s sustained progress to more senior levels. In short, women are under-represented across the higher ranks of the corporate ladder, as you no doubt know.

You’re not just after a ‘job’

You might reconsider confining your career move to ‘job titles’. If you have experienced your day-to-day role verging further and further away from your ‘job description’, think how to build skills for the next role.

You can keep up to date with our nation’s demand for skills, knowledge, and abilities via the OECD’s Skills for Jobs interactive website. Here you can zero into categories of skills that interest you. Here’s how I see them roughly split into skillsets:

  1. Analyst: analytical, reflective, critical thinking, digging deep into the data
  2. Linker: human-face including the human-computer interaction
  3. Sentry: security (cyber and physical), safekeeping
  4. Artist: creative, entrepreneurial, right-brain, communications
  5. Career: health, wellness
  6. Maker: fixing and maintaining
  7. Civic: keeping the status quo, public service, foundational
  8. Sustainers: care for the earth, resources

To ensure your next move is more meaningful to you, take heed of lifelong learning – the overarching theme for unlearning, learning and relearning.



Nicholas Wyman is CEO and Founder of IWSI America. He has sought novel ways to connect youth with the jobs of the future. Wyman believes the ‘learn by doing’ approach has much to offer in a new world straddling the fault lines of a ‘skills mismatch’ and has innovated market-driven solutions to address the long-term workforce issues faced by employers, education institutions, and governments. Wyman has also built a global conversation around the need to change the status quo in job skills training. His research work and thought-leadership articles are widely published and internationally recognized, and he’s the author of Job U: How to Find Wealth and Success by Developing the Skills Companies Actually Need. He is an international expert in workforce development issues and models. Wyman has an MBA and has studied at Harvard Business School and the Kennedy School of Government and was awarded a Churchill Fellowship.

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