Tell your career story! It matters.

We believe it’s important to tell your career story around the digital campfire and why visibility matters for professional women.

We are looking to profile more amazing women on theglasshammer.com this Fall and would love for you to tell your career story around our global digital campfire. We believe visibility matters more than ever in these remote times. We want to inspire other women and help you stay front and center in your firm and to your industry. We are looking to profile professional women in SVP or Managing Director roles as well as rising stars so if you are a VP or director please get in touch also for consideration. Thematically, we have our annual Latina Leaders series coming up for Hispanic Heritage month, and every October we profile women in technology roles and teams. We are super interested in sharing your story with other women in any role in financial, professional services, technology or Fortune 500 firms. You do not have to fit the themes, but you do have to be willing to tell your career story!

The Story of theglasshammer.com

In many ways theglasshammer is my story, because I have dedicated more time and attention to the topic of gender in the workplace, leadership and organization development regarding “diversity” than to anything else in my life. When I launched it thirteen summers ago, back in 2007, I had no idea that the journey would be so interesting, so enriching intellectually and at times so emotionally wrenching.

I had just wrapped up the sale of efinancialcareers.com to venture backed Dice Inc.  I had come to the USA in 2004 from the UK headquarters to launch and run the US arm of the business. I came up with the concept of what become theglasshammer.com in 2007 after seeing a gap in the market for women to feel as confident as men to apply to the highest paid jobs in financial services and “go for it.”

I knew that women existed in all levels of financial services and that there was a visibility issue. There were panels of male talking heads, interviews by male experts written by male journalists, and the straight white man in a pinstripe was still firmly the default. It was a generation ago, and much progress has been made but it feels like we are still only just on the brink of deep change. Most firms are not much further on, and some are just starting the journey. Back then in 2007, millennials were just entering the workplace and diversity work for most was a version of box-checking Noah’s Ark – two women, two people of color and two LGB (not even T) people in the whole firm. If they achieved that in optics, some leaders thought they were in good shape.

The reason that I decided to launch theglasshammer.com was simple; I knew there were others like me. Other women navigating their career, high-performing ambitious women who just needed to know they were not alone. Being a country manager and head of the business at efinancialcareers was certainly a big responsibility. Like many other people who are promoted into big jobs in their late twenties, I had been the main rainmaker in the sales team of the Financial News in London and the Chairman had seen my naked ambition and knew where to put it to good use. I was a young, female Managing Director, a foreigner, openly gay with a strong instinct to call out nonsense where and when I saw it. I had three things going for me: I knew how to build brands and sales operations from scratch, having done it with the Financial News in the original team. I had long term vision and good instincts. And, I didn’t really know I was a “girl,” meaning no one had openly or covertly tried to oppress me due to my gender. Like so many young women until a certain point, I had no sense of “not possible”. But, by the end of that experience, as a Managing Director and young ( and only female) board member, I had navigated successfully and uncovered, yet couldn’t name what I later realized were systemic issues regarding gender. It was not by accident that the acquiring company had not one single person of color or openly gay person in the entire firm and that the one female in senior management was paid one third of the salary of the other members, revealed when they went public to all.

Within the first two years of theglasshammer.com, I wanted to understand for real what I saw and felt. I knew quickly that we needed more than career advice, i knew women where asking for what they wanted and that they were already leaning it. It was the system that was letting them down. I went to Columbia University in 2011 to study for an Executive Masters in social-organizational psychology with a specialization in change leadership to put real theory to the applied test. Highly recommended, life changing and I made some friends for life in this year long program.

Equality and equity happens in the human behavioral sphere and workplace culture matters. However, how systems and talent processes are built and maintained make the difference in how to incentivize the well intended, fair people and prevent the nonsense from the bad players  who so often make insidious behaviors acceptable.

Data points are always good. If you suspect dynamics that aren’t about you personally, look at how many women are on the board and how they are paid against male peers for measurement. Ask questions around talent processes. Understand how work gets done, who gets rewarded and why and what gets tolerated.

In 2012, I started coaching women and men as I realized that advancement is often to do with understanding the system as it is today. While we are working on what we want it to look like tomorrow, critical mass and good leadership behaviors from the women and men at the top right now, matters! And, upon returning to Columbia University to complete their coaching program in 2016, I was so fortunate to be educated again on a new discipline, developmental psychology.  Each person who has been shaped by their experiences and it is how they develop a lens on that process that matters for real growth. You will never hear me say “all women” or “all men” as I truly feel privileged to help humans on their journey wherever they start or want to go to.

On bad days, I bellyache that the progress has been slow on the macro level for getting rid of mindsets that prevent all people from thriving on merit. But more often, I see that progress is real. I know that the 5,000 profiles on theglasshammer.com have contributed to making professional women visible to the world. I have coached hundreds of women who feel that they have gotten further and more out of their career than just going it alone.

At the end of the journey, I hope the word diversity leaves as this work is about stopping seeing the baselines as male or white. It is about getting rid of stereotypes and doing the work to understand what differences of all types means within each person and for each person. It is about personal, professional and organizational development.

Join our digital campfire and inspire other professional women!

Write to jennifer@theglasshammer.com with “Profile me” in the title if you wish to be considered.

If you wish to be coached by me or one of my selected associates, email nicki@theglasshammer.com

We run sessions for ERGs and High performing teams also.