Real Estate: A Hot Sector for Women

338624761_3b524b7463_m.jpgThough the real estate market has been down in the wake of the subprime crisis and resulting credit crunch, and foreclosures across America have been way up, the news isn’t necessarily all bad. Indeed, for more and more enterprising women, real estate has presented fascinating opportunities, from fast track career advancement to the security of home-ownership as a single woman. Here, we survey some trends in the field.

Though The Glass Hammer has noted in numerous other blog postings the slow pace at which women have broken the last glass ceiling and joined the elite group of C-suite executives at America’s Fortune 500 companies, there are a few areas where women in finance have made greater strides. One area is university endowment and private foundation management, where several high profile women have bucked the trend and have demonstrated that they can successfully manage and invest billions of dollars.

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Top 30 Under 30 with Cindy Ko of JPMorgan

Last week, The Glass Hammer interviewed Cindy Ko, a rising star in the prime brokerage division of JPMorgan, who happens to work in a chain of three female supervisors. We caught up with Cindy about how she got her current job and what it was like to work on a team of strong women in finance.

Cindy spent some time during university working abroad in Asia. She graduated from Syracuse University in 2001 with a B.S. degree, double majoring in Finance and Management Information Systems. She worked a few years at a previous employer before she took a break in Hong Kong and returned to New York in search of employment in 2005.

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Last Woman Standing: The Firing of Zoe Cruz

cruz_zoe_morgan_stanley.jpg“The real problem is that the proverbial glass ceiling is self-reinforcing. The traits that a woman must develop to duke it out on the trading floor are the same traits that will come back to haunt her as she ascends the ranks of management.”

This is the central thesis behind the extremely well researched and thought-provoking piece about the demise of Zoe Cruz, formerly the highest ranking woman on Wall Street before she was fired from her position as co-president of Morgan Stanley in November 2007, as the company’s exposure to the subprime mortgage crisis began to unfold. At the apex of her career, she was earning over $30 million in 2006, and was considered one of the most powerful women in the world and the company’s CEO heir-apparent.

The article, entitled “Only the Men Survive,” by Joe Hagan, was filled with ‘fly on the wall’ quotes about how high-powered aggressive women like Ms. Cruz are really regarded within their own companies. The quotes from insider sources revealed a startlingly frank and pervasive sexism towards women in finance.

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Should Employers Accommodate Working Mothers with Flexible Work Arrangements? Part 2

Contributed by Jacqueline Church

2203238558_fff5197352_m.jpgSorting it Out – Examining Ourselves First

A lot of women wrestling with issues of being a working mom have unwittingly adopted the role model of both their accomplished, career-driven fathers AND their accomplished, stay-at-home mothers. It doesn’t necessarily occur to them until the two things come to a head, usually with a call from the school nurse on the same day as an important client meeting. They desire corporate success, a happy, well-adjusted child, a spotless home and contented spouse. Only most don’t have a stay-at-home wife helping us out. And, increasingly, our partners have both expectations.

What choices are we making about our careers and our personal lives? How have we anticipated or planned for the natural arc of both, as well as their inevitable conflicts?
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BoardMatch Gives Women a Boost in the Boardroom

Contributed by Heather Cassell

FWE_E_Logo.JPGNora Denzel is very happy with her new seat on the board of directors of Overland Storage, a San Diego-based data storage company, she says.

Denzel, Senior Vice President of payroll services at Intuit, Inc., found her board seat with the assistance of BoardMatch, a program run by Forum for Women Entrepreneurs and Executives (FEW&E), a Palo Alto-based organization for female executives.

“It’s been a wonderful experience,” says Denzel, who serves on two committees on Overland Storage’s board and is also the FWE&E’s BoardMatch coordinator. She says that, since the inception of the program in 2006, she has conducted a dozen board searches and is one of two women who found a seat on a board in 2007 through the program.

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New York City Launch of “Why Women Mean Business” at PwC

111515924_cd0b07f0c2_m.jpgOn April 7, 2008, PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) hosted a New York City launch party for the book, “Why Women mean Business: Understanding the Emergence of Our Next Economic Revolution,” by Avivah Wittenberg-Cox and Alison Maitland. Highlights of the event included a lively panel discussion on the changing role of women as global business leaders, chaired by Chrystia Freeland of the Financial Times. The two authors shared the state with three insightful male business leaders: Bob Moritz, US Assurance Leader at PwC, Alan Siegel, Chairman and CEO of Siegel+Gale, and Thomas Cooley, Dean of the New York University Stern School of Business.

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Goldman Sachs Rolls Out 10,000 Women Charitable Initiative

On March 5, 2008, Goldman Sachs launched a new philanthropic initiative called 10,000 Women. The program will provide 10,000 women in developing countries and emerging markets with educational opportunities in business and management.

The program will partner with American and European universities, along with business schools in developing countries to develop shorter, more flexible programs that are tailored to the needs of women in developing countries, many of whom have significant child care and family responsibilities as well as cultural, social and economic barriers that make it difficult for them to pursue higher education through traditional channels.

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New Study Looks at Women Leaders in New York Companies

656924000_ed810cc6b3_m.jpg On Tuesday morning, February 26, 2008, the Women’s Executive Circle of New York (WECNY) held a kick-off event to launch their seminal research report, “2007 New York Census: The State of Women Business Leaders in New York State.”

The research study examined the number of women serving on boards of directors and as high-level executives at the top 100 companies in New York. This exciting research was sponsored by KPMG, Seyfarth Shaw LLP, Citi Smith Barney, and RR Donnelley, in partnership with Cornell University. The full study can be accessed on the WECNY website.

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Goldman Sachs Sponsors a New Directions Program for Women Returning to Finance

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A few weeks ago, we ran a story about the Pace Law School New Directions program for lawyers returning to practice after taking some time off. It turns out that a similar program exists for women returning to careers in finance. Sponsored by Goldman Sachs, the program is also called New Directions. The Goldman Sachs program began in 2006, and the Pace Law School program was launched in May 2007. At The Glass Hammer, we are just pleased that such excellent opportunities for returners exist in both law and finance. Last week, we had a chance to sit down with Elana Weinstein, Vice President in the Office of Global Leadership and Diversity at Goldman Sachs, and discuss their New Directions program.

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UK Report: Sexual Orientation Discrimination at Work

Contributed by Rebecca Chong, Rooks Rider Solicitors. Erin Abrams contributed some information to this article.

“Heterosexuality isn’t normal, just common,” British artist and gay activist Derek Jarman once quipped. Although the general population has become increasingly aware of sexual diversity in the workplace, particularly since the Gay Pride movement took on a more moderate face in the 1980s. It helped to raise the positive profile of gay men and lesbians when respected celebrities came out of the closet. For example, Rosie O’Donnell and Ellen DeGeneris, high-profile lesbians, are popular talk show hosts who have been involved in a variety of advertising campaigns.

However, even though people in the LGBT (Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender) community are increasingly accepted as such at work, there is still a disturbing trend of defining individuals by their sexual identity. Unfortunately, the stereotypes based on a person’s sexual orientation that have emerged, and that are perpetuated by the entertainment industry, sometimes permeate the workplace and affect employer’s perceptions about who is well-suited for a job and what kind of employee that person might be.

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