On Presidents Day this year enjoy a selection of our profiles from 2016.
Image via Shutterstock
Voice of Experience: Sarah Churchman, Talent, Inclusion and Wellbeing Leader, PwC UK
Mover and Shaker: Karyn Cavanaugh, CFA, Senior Marketing Strategist, Voya Investment Management
Voice of Experience: Susanna Charlwood, Partner, Shearman & Sterling’s Litigation Group
Voice of Experience: Marie Louise Kirk, Partner, Goldman Sachs
By Aimee Hansen
Across the past twelve months, four African-American leaders have stepped down from positions of high visibility in the business and political world.
What’s most striking about these few departures is the size of the gap created by them, highlighting an African-American representation among women in leadership that remains far too small and a diversity movement that remains far too narrow.
The large gap left by losing a few powerful African-American leaders is a wake-up call to widen our diversity, not just in intention but in individual practice and in outcome.
This year’s Fortune’s Most Powerful Women 2016 continued to feature Rosalind Brewer (#19 – CEO and President, Sam’s Club and Walmart), Anne-Marie Campbell (#20 – EVP, U.S Stores, Home Depot), and Ursula Burns (#25 – CEO and Chairman of Xerox), with Beyoncé displacing Taylor Swift (#51).
But the 2017 list will look different. Last May, Ursula Burns, the first and only African-American women to run a S&P 500 company, announced that she would step down from her CEO position after splitting Xerox into two companies. After Rosalind Brewer’s recent retirement news, black women – already scarce – will now be absent from the helm of major U.S. companies.
Meanwhile, former FLOTUS Michelle Obama has left the high profile visibility of the White House (although her voice may well remain in the spotlight) and Loretta Lynch has ended her term as the U.S. Attorney General.
These four women (Obama, Lynch, Brewer, and Burns) accounted for over 50% of the African-American names on Forbe’s World’s 100 Most Powerful Women 2016.
Losing four black women from highly visible, influential leadership positions wouldn’t be so striking except – in the context of so few peers in positions of power – it simply is.
The percentage of women CEOS among Fortune 500 companies dropped to only 4.2% in 2016 (from 24 to 21), which is a hit for all women. The near absence of minorities amidst that 4% testifies that diversity’s approach to advancing women remains very monolithic.
Black women remain caught in the blind spot of intersectionality, and while naming the problem helps, it does not address it. As Melinda Marshall and Tai Wingfield, authors of “Ambition in Black & White: The Feminist Narrative Revised,“ write in the Harvard Business Review, “At the intersections of race and gender, both then and now, black women have labored unseen, even to those lobbying for their advancement.”
As a recent AAUW report highlights, “the specific ways in which they (black women leaders) are disadvantaged clearly differs from the better-understood ways that white women leaders are dis-advantaged.”
The diversity movement falls short of advancing women when we too often ignore the rich diversity of needs, realities, and challenges experienced by different women, and work to address them.
As research has shown, black women are (three times) more likely to aspire to leadership roles than white women and half as likely to attain one.
As summed up by a 2016 report in the Journal of Business Studies Quarterly, some of the myriad of factors holding African-American women back from the C-Suite include dual bias at the intersection of race and gender (a net that affects everything else), the impact of stereotypes on perceptions (as an example, African-American women are often perceived as aggressive in communication), a lack of career opportunities to showcase skills, having to prove competency more than colleagues, a lack of strategic feedback, workplace isolation and ‘outsider’ status.
But one of the strongest barriers for black women is the lack of access to powerful social networking with influential senior executive leaders, which requires a certain level of ‘insider’ status.
According to Wingfield and Marshall in HBR, black women “have mentors and strong support networks but lack sponsors—leaders who will talk them up behind closed doors, steer plum assignments their way, and defend them against detractors.”
Black Women Executives Research Initiative Revisited by the Executive Leadership Council, the first longitudinal study of black women executives (BWEs) in corporate America (2007 and 2015), gleamed insights into both the challenges and experiences of 59 senior leaders across the eight year period.
The importance of creating and maintaining sponsorship relationships, and building a network of allies, was emphasized by BWEs.
As one interviewee said, “I believe you almost have to have somebody in the room where the conversation is happening that says, ‘this is the person who can make the contributions and be valuable.’ If you don’t have that it’s very hard.”
Research by Catalyst has demonstrated how black women and men who experience a heightened sense of “being different” based on their race/ethnicity within the workplace suffer an “Emotional Tax” that can include impaired sleep, a sense of always being on guard, speaking up less, reduced innovation and creativity, and feeling less psychologically safe in contributing their own voice at work.
However, a sense of inclusion reduces the Emotional Tax, and increases psychological safety, such as feeling leaders and team members ‘have your back’, that mistakes won’t be held against you, and that co-workers are not going to try to undermine your efforts – in other words, a corporate environment in which anyone can feel comfortable in taking risks, not just the majority.
Absence from networks also affects black women entrepreneurs. Despite the fact that African-American women are the fastest growing group of entrepreneurs, their endeavors tend to lack major investment backing or significant outsider funding.
The Executive Leadership Council report also found that 27% of BWEs had advanced in their careers (since 2007), and over 60% did so while in Profit & Loss roles. Yet 46% of BWEs left their companies to start their own business or moved to a different company, sometimes losing ground.
In-depth interviews revealed four factors that were most influential in career developments for these leaders: 1) alignment of values, 2) agility and re-purposement, 3) sponsorship, and 4) relationship-building as politics.
The primary reason for satisfaction among BWEs in their work was alignment of values on an industry, corporate culture, positional or interpersonal level – and the primary reason for dis-satisfaction, and hence job movement, was a deterioration of alignment.
A key career strategy for BWEs, referred to as agility and repurposement, was an ability to move rapidly between challenges to foster “continuous learning, cross-functional, boundary-spanning work and intentional, if not always planned, career expansion.”
Many successful BWEs were keen to take assignments, even adjacent opportunities and glass-cliff appointments, that ultimately advanced their learning, broadened their expertise, and gained visibility and network connections.
As written in HBR, leadership which aims for real diversity must purposely disrupt silos in the workplace, creating more opportunities for intersectional visibility.
As Wingfield and Marshall write, “Leaders must create a culture in which people at the intersections of functional or affinity identities have equal access to their attention or equal opportunity to earn it.”
And as champions of diversity, we must disrupt the insidious silos that exist within the diversity movement and within. For each non-minority woman in a place of leadership, we can ask if we are doing our part in including African-American women in social networks and enabling opportunities for visibility?
Are we checking our own relative privilege and our own blindspots? As much as we want equality, are we practicing it within the power and influence we hold?
While theglasshammer is putting a focus on African-American women in leadership during February’s Black History Month coverage, minority women are living the lesser-understood intersectional challenges every single day, and we must make a daily practice of staying awake to that.
2017 marks the 10th year anniversary for glasshammer2.wpengine.com as we begin to crank up our virtual presses again to inform, inspire and empower you as professional women navigating your careers. We aim to help you by providing you with information, expert opinions and advice which you can use in the best way you see fit. We specifically help you in your individual circumstances by coaching you and connecting you to each other via our events.
This week we offer 5 of the best articles that I have enjoyed as publisher in 2016. In case you miss great articles, we will highlight our picks every 6-8 weeks to recap them this year based on what we feel is most useful.
https://theglasshammer.com/2016/03/09/beating-bias-technology-changing-recruiting-game/
https://theglasshammer.com/2016/02/25/why-you-should-avoid-overwork-to-be-effective-in-your-job/
https://theglasshammer.com/2016/06/02/resilience-storms-critical-leadership-development/
https://theglasshammer.com/2016/03/02/stereotypes-at-work-do-women-buy-into-them-just-as-much-as-the-next-guy/
https://theglasshammer.com/2016/09/14/pack-your-bags-why-you-might-want-to-get-ahead-by-going-abroad/
Enjoy our content as all of this is made possible by our site sponsors and supporters.
A big thanks to current and founding sponsors Goldman Sachs, PWC and Shearman and Sterling
To loyal sponsors for many years Voya and Accenture and to WEX for joining us.
Thanks to Citi, Amex, Paamco, BNY Mellon and others who have sponsored events along the way on a consistent basis.
Thank you to our team here at theglasshammer – Louise our content manager, Cathie our profile writer and Aimee our journalist at large, Melissa who was our main editor/writer for 6 years, Jane, Erin, Pam, Jewells and finally Jill who all did so much to help us get here and to all the freelancers and contributors who have in the past and still continue to make this a great read!
Enjoy, and here is to a great 2017!
Sincerely,
Nicki Gilmour, Publisher and Founder of glasshammer2.wpengine.com
By Nicki Gilmour, CEO and Founder of theglasshammer
To review 2016 in context of women at work and the progress being made for professional women has been like a textbook case study for me as an organizational psychologist who works in diversity. I hope I can share with you how we can go forward and change the way we do this work. It is obvious that there is work to do and yet I am so incredibly anxious of the capacity of most people to ensure this moment is a launching pad for real progress and not the moment that we spiral down and turn the clock back thirty to hundred years. It truly could go either way. Progress is everyone’s responsibility to take and accountability has to be there- change starts here.
Recap the past ten years (see here for 2015, 2014, 2013, 2012, 2011, 2010 Year End reviews for a macro, multi-year view) to see how things aren’t changing over a fair time period. In one sentence, progress for women’s equality at work, based on promotional and pay parity for same work done and all things being equal, is just not there. This year, hasn’t seen much progress either and the fact is at board level there are no more women in board seats than there were ten years ago, unless mandated by quotas seen with an increase in countries that have a mandate in place (i.e. not USA). Senior management figure changes aren’t all that either and most women (and men) will tell you that they are working harder than ever.
A striking research piece of evidence is seen here in the 2016 PWC’s Annual Corporate Directors Report which includes responses from 884 public company directors, 83% of whom are male and 17% of whom are female. Overall, the findings state that 97% of respondents who think female board representation should be between zero and twenty percent were male board members. Worth noting, 3% of those who think that are female board members themselves. Then, the survey shows about a quarter of respondents said they believe there are a significant number of qualified diverse candidates out there with 93% of female directors saying that they at least “somewhat” believe that there plenty of qualified non-male, non-white candidates out there. “Somewhat” is not exactly resoundingly confident is it? And that implies that everyone thinks that there is an abundance of male candidates that are entirely ready for a board because somebody sits in these seats. I hate to tell you folks but we are all still holding up this blind spot of perceiving men to be more ready for leadership by virtue of being a man only. The emotions and desires driving “facts” are that maybe people want men in leadership roles because I have mentioned many times, women can be as equally sexist as men and sometimes even more so for many reasons including securing their own place in the pack.
How do we really create a meritocracy?
Do people want meritocracy? I do not believe all people do want meritocracy as the results of the US election show with 61% of white women who voted in the US election deciding that they do not want equal pay for the same work done as the man beside them and other actual policies that impact them directly. Then, these same women are turning a blind eye to sexism, sexual assault, racism and homophobia in some effort to believe that they do not rate basic protections of themselves and others as highly as other things. Except, what are these other things? Because upon examination there are no other things. It is not economic stability that is being sought and it doesn’t take a psychologist to tell you, it is the status quo of the white patriarchy that is being maintained by the very group best placed to disrupt it.
Do you think these women will ensure you do not have barriers at work if they believe that they deserve them for themselves in life? You tell me? Why does this happen? Why do “good people” do things that have a serious negative impact on other humans directly and knowingly? Look for your own cognitive dissonance and address the nuances in your behaviors that make you feel better but actually make you favor men over women as leaders and experts. What is cognitive dissonance? It is when you have a value or a belief and then you do something that doesn’t line up with that belief or you hold conflicting beliefs and feel that you need to align them. For example, you are against drink driving as a value but drive home from your holiday party drunk. You didn’t like this action or thought so then, you try to reduce the dissonance by devaluing the item, action or person and in this case like saying, “It was only a straight road for one mile and I only had two drinks, I was fine”. In reality, your belief is cancelled out by your actions that you then justify. We all do this but if you truly want to be an inclusive, fair champion of a level playing field for yourself, women, LGBT and people of color at work then turn the mirror towards yourself for a second because you can stop this process and you can live your diversity and inclusion values just as you don’t have to drive drunk.
Much like the research that I mention frequently called “Think Manager, Think Male” where men and women constantly rank male managers (as a group, not known individuals) as more competent, productive, stable, is your brain playing tricks on you. It is what you have been socio-conditioned to believe in part so of course this work of undoing all your paradigms and “what you Granny told you”, is not going to be easy.
For those who do want meritocratic conditions what will 2017 hold?
I think there are several things we can do as people reading this to move the needle for gender parity and general fairness to everyone. Also, from a career perspective you can choose your path, do not forget that!
Firstly, work for good companies who work hard at systems and culture to ensure an inclusive, progressive culture. Signs to look for when picking a company to work for are women at the top, middle and everywhere else. Good policies around families with men taking advantage of these policies and not just women as this will mean it’s not a one- gender policy in practice. Healthy, happy people and fair and clear talent systems are a must. It is not a coincidence if there are literally no LGBT or people of color working there. It is not a coincidence if women are not in the middle or top of the house. Look for great leaders who do what they say they will do and have a value set that shows that they value you and all that you can bring to work, such as Lloyd Blankfein at Goldman Sachs when he made his marriage equality video. PWC’s Bob Moritz and Denis McNally have both walked the talk on promoting women to the highest positions in the firm. Accenture’s Pierre Nanterme has shown a lot of commitment to parity and is now involved in the newly formed Paradigm4Parity group. Watch leaders make their beliefs for equality translate through the firm in lived values by themselves paying more than lip service.
Secondly, keep it human. Tell your stories to help the people around you understand what diversity and multiple realities look like. Jennifer Brown, a colleague, competitor and comrade in arms to the mission as well CEO and author of her new book “ Inclusion: Diversity, the New Work Place and the Will to Change” puts it nicely,
When we share our diversity stories, it draws others to us who are looking for leaders who understand, who have paid attention, and who show their commitment to valuing diversity and creating an inclusive space around them where everyone can bring more of their full selves to their careers.
At least it is on the table, we know sexism is still here
Although it is bittersweet and mostly horrible to have such a fascinating case study of 2016 to show the lack of progress, at least it’s now issues are undeniably on the table. As Sophie Walker, Head of the Equality Party in the UK stated recently on the topic of new Prime Minister Theresa May doing nothing so far for gender parity, “At least now we don’t have to debate if misogyny exists. We don’t have to debate sexism,” she said. “I’m so used to starting interviews with people who begin by saying, ‘women are equal, come come, there isn’t a problem’.
Anyone who has any grasp on this can agree that 2016 has explicitly shown us, there is a problem.
It is not easy to understand why Teresa May is making little effort to advance women in the UK. Like many female leaders, there is often a strong need to reject such issues to gain credibility if the system and all the players are men and historically masculine behavior is rewarded. Assimilation can often be the only strategy, sadly. Vicious circle this sexism business, eh?
My advice to you is to see things for what they are and if you cannot, then go deeper, do the work to evolve and make the decision if you are a status quo protector or a change agent. Own it. Do not tell me you want to lean in and advance and then constantly make sure that you reinforce gender stereotypes and maintain barriers and biases for yourself and others. It simply is tedious otherwise to go through the motions because I cannot help you, if you cannot help yourself. I see a lot of people being a part of the problem, somewhat unconsciously to be fair and it is all of our jobs to change society, to be fair and kind. Involve the men on a very real level. Identify your male gender champions, they are usually the smart guys who see the business and human value of this equality stuff such as my new friend Adam Quinton or the guys at our Engaging Men event. Your job starts with educating your boys and breaking toxic assumptions of how it is to be a man. Empower your girls and break gender role stereotypes from day one.
Make 2017 a good one.
Happy Holidays from me and theglasshammer team
By Aimee Hansen
Image via Shutterstock
If you scan Fortune’s 50 Most Powerful Women in 2016, you will be hard-pressed to find a Latina executive, amidst an overall drop in female CEOs to 4% in the Fortune 500 in 2016.
According to a 2016 report from the American Association of University Women (AAUW), Hispanic women make up 6% of the workforce but only 1.3% of senior-level executive roles in the private sector.
According to the Heidrick & Struggles Board Monitor, “the share of new board appointments for Hispanics (male/female) remained flat for the seventh consecutive year” across the Fortune 500. 4.7% of new directors on average are Hispanic each year, and only 4.0% in 2015.
What makes this even more striking is that new director appointments reached a seven-year high in 2015 (up by 60 appointments from 2014), and women appointments stagnated too. During a recent record (and opportunity) year for new appointments, diversity lost out.
The report indicates a resurgence of selecting new board members from “the usual suspects” (sitting and retired CEOs and CFOs took 73.2% of new seats). Only nine of the Fortune 500 CEOs were Hispanic in 2015, which doesn’t bode well for diversity if the “usual suspects” continue as the primary candidate pool for board appointments.
Meanwhile, a Mercer report predicts female representation at executive level in Latin America to out-pace North America by 2025, rising from 17% (2015) to 44% (2025).
A Perplexing Incongruence
The glaring elephant in the room is that the population, and consumer purchasing power, is rapidly changing, and Fortune 500 boardroom composition shows little proof of catching on.
The gap in representation of Hispanics in corporate leadership has the potential to create a dangerous gap in diversity of thought and insight, driving a deeper wedge between business leadership and consumer composition. Hispanic purchasing power was projected to have increased in the U.S. by 50% from 2010 ($1.0 trillion) to 2015 ($1.5 trillion).
Not only are Hispanics the largest ethnic minority in the country, but according to the government report “Fulfilling America’s Future: Latinas in the U.S., 2015”, 1 in 5 women and 1 in 4 female students are Latina.
Entrepreneurial Power
Scan the entrepreneurial landscape, and you’ll find a different picture: women are the new face of entrepreneurship, and Latinas are playing a strong role in leading that change.
According to the 2016 State of Women-Owned Businesses Report, there are an estimated 11.3 million women-owned businesses in the U.S., a number which has grown five times faster (45% increase) than the national average (9% increase) over the past nine years.
Nearly 8 out of 10 new women-owned businesses launched since 2007 (2.8 of 3.5 million) have been started by women of color, with the greatest growth among Latinas.
According to the report: “As of 2016, there are just under 1.9 million Latina-owned firms, employing 550,400 workers and generating $97 billion in revenues. Between 2007 and 2016, the number of Latina-owned firms increased by 137% – the highest increase seen among minority women-owned firms.” Trending back 18 years, the 2015 report showed that the number of Latina owned businesses has increased by 224%.
Make no mistake. Latina women are carving their own paths to business leadership.
Playing Down ‘Being Latina’
As the AAUW report authors state, “There is no monolithic ‘women’s experience’ of leadership. Women always have a race and an ethnicity, so a discussion about gender without reference to race and ethnicity (or vice versa) is simplistic and can be misleading.”
A recent Latina@Work study of over 1,000 Latina professional women released by People en Español, sought to understand the experience of Latina women in today’s corporate workplace.
The report found that, “As trailblazers among their families, they are simultaneously breaking cultural barriers and managing cultural expectations, which results in a feeling of ‘otherness’ both at work and at home.”
In the study, 80% of women agreed that “At work, I want to be seen as who I really am, including being Latina.” But many of the women struggled with managing how they are perceived at work, including not being seen as “too Latina.”
Women played down their accent and played up their university degrees. They also moderated appearance more than average. 31% reported having to dress more conservatively than co-workers to be taken seriously (versus 21% of non-hispanic Caucasian women), and 35% reported feeling the way they styled their hair impacted their success at work (versus 25%).
Hispanic women were also twice as likely to agree they have to work twice as hard because of their cultural background.
Intersectionality of Barriers
Latinas and Black women are the most underrepresented at senior leadership levels.
The AAUW report highlighted the intersectionality of barriers and bias: “Not only do women of color confront race and ethnic discrimination that white women do not face, they also experience gender bias differently than white women do—and they experience racial bias differently than do the men in their racial or ethnic group.”
Latinas have a unique set of preconceived biases around leadership perception. For example, “among college and university faculty, Latinas who behave assertively risk being seen as ‘angry’ or ‘emotional,’ even when they reported that they were not angry—they just weren’t deferential.”
According to the report, 60 percent of faculty Latinas reported a backlash against expressing anger, and they tended to shoulder most of the office housework.
As feminist and media-challenger Kat Lazo reflected to The Huffington Post, prominent and narrow media stereotypes have the ability to damage both perception and self-perception, and reinforce barriers to leadership: “What we see in the media right now is a limited version of our humanity.” Lazo stated, “So we internalize these messages and we put limits to who we can be in terms of our professions, in terms of our own identity.”
But nothing is one-dimensional. Lazo highlights that even “Latinx” (a gender neutral alternative) have to check their own privilege.
Amplifying Leadership Presence
In a Latinas Think Big article about developing and amplifying leadership presence, Sandra Tibbs, founder and CEO of Neverest Solutions, writes about cultivating and amplifying leadership presence:
Find your authentic leadership voice – Navigate through the stereotypes, cultural scripts, biases and arising inner conflicts to embrace your whole story and find your own voice.
Create a shared sphere of influence – Cultivate a sphere where listening and connection leads to stronger, and more influential, leadership.
Build resilience in yourself and others – Something every Latina leader will do as she challenges the status quo, and can help to nurture in others.
Tibbs writes about Latina leaders who own their presence: “They are irrefutable leaders who have a presence about them that is unique, authentic and strong. They know exactly who they are, and what impact they want to have. And, they don’t apologize for either. Their leadership presence enables them to overcome stereotypes, biases and even their inner obstacles so they can devote all of themselves to designing the lives they want.”
It is strongly evidenced that Latinas will keep on unapologetically rising to lead business, with or without that coveted access pass from the Fortune 500.
The choice for the corporate world when it comes to cultivating Latina participation in leadership would appear to be this: either catch on, or inevitably you’ll be playing catch up
We will be taking a short publishing break from our daily publications and we will be back with you again on July 11th.
By Aimee Hansen
With June, we turn to Pride Month on the diversity calendar, so let’s focus our spotlight to recent progress on advancing LGBT inclusive business cultures and LGBT executive leadership.
Recently, state law setbacks to the LGBT community (and human rights) have one positive side effect: they’ve led to a collective backlash from companies and employers who have united to defend LGBT rights.
Repeatedly, companies have been asserting to state lawmakers that upholding LGBT rights is a necessary condition for attracting and maintaining the best talent for businesses.
Since North Carolina passed an anti-discrimination law that failed to protect against discrimination based on sexual orientation or gender identity, over 200 business leaders – including CEOs and executives of major companies such as Apple, Bank of America, Citibank, Ernst & Young, Goldman Sachs, Facebook, IBM, Microsoft, and more – have signed an open letter to the state governor calling for a repeal to the “HB 2” law, stating that “such laws are bad for our employees and bad for business”.
Canceled plans by Paypal, Deutsche Bank and performance artists are estimated to have cost the state “tens of millions in dollars of losses”. Meanwhile, companies also joined in activism with an open letter to state leaders in Mississippi to repeal “HB 1523”, which gives individuals or organizations license to discriminate against LGBT people based on religious justification.
In the Harvard Business Review, author Andrew Winston points out that business has been ahead of the public curve when it comes to LGBT rights. Winston notes that over half of Fortune 500 companies were offering domestic partner benefits ten years ago when only 35% of Americans supported gay marriage (and 55% opposed it), and that today corporate adoption of anti-discrimination policies based on gender identity (66% of companies) outpaces public acceptance of transgender rights.
In the case of LGBT rights, Winston argues the moral imperative of non-discrimination in the workplace and the economic motivation to thrive with diverse customers are so understandably linked that business is “pro-actively influencing societal norms.”
Influencing policy is part of the equation, but building an LGBT-inclusive culture is another thing. When LGBT employees do not feel free to be themselves, when they feel they have to “hide in plain sight”, it’s proven costly not only to employees but to business.
When diversity is celebrated and genuinely fostered, not only individual productivity but company productivity seems to benefit. According to a recent report by Credit Suisse, the stock of companies that exhibit LGBT diversity outperform the stock of companies that do not.
LGBT diversity was factored by companies that have openly LGBT leaders and senior management, are voted as leading LGBT employers, or have many employees in local LGBT business networks.
The LGBT basket of 270 companies outperformed the MSCI ACWI by 3% annually since 2010, as well as outperforming a custom basket of companies in US, Europe and Australia by 1.4% annually.
The correlation of LGBT diversity with performance is important, since according to the report, 72% of senior LGBT executives say they have not come out at work, which is not surprising when it’s still legal to fire someone based on sexual orientation in over twenty states and based on gender identity in over thirty states.
Celebrating diversity at the very top, for the first time in the three years since its introduction, a woman topped the 2015 list of the 100 Most Powerful LGBT Executives in the World, named by OUTstanding and the Financial Times.
Inga Beale is the first female CEO of Lloyd’s of London and openly bi-sexual. As she told The Guardian, “It’s not about me. It’s about what you do for other people. For me, it’s so important because you need these role models.”
According to OUTstanding as reported in Entreprenuer, recognition is critical since closeted LGBT employees are 70% more likely to leave a company within the first three years.
The list of LGBT power executives, for which activism outside of the workplace is also taken into account, included several from the finance world, including Accenture’s Sander van‘t Noordende (10), Citi’s Bob Annibale (28), Goldman Sach’s Gavin Wills (36), and PwC’s Andy Woodfield (78) and Mark Gossington (82).
Speaking to the inclusive culture fostered at Accenture, Sander van’t Noordende has said, “Only when people are comfortable in their workplace will they be able to get the best out of themselves,” advising individuals to not only value their difference, but also find a company that values their difference too.
Stanford is also stepping up to encourage aspiring LGBT executives to value their difference. Stanford Graduate School of Business introduced the Stanford LGBT Executive Leadership Program, which will first take place in late July 2016 and is accepting applications until June 24th.
With a focus on fostering authentic and impactful senior LGBT leadership and network building, Stanford states, “This is the only Executive Education program of its kind offered by a leading business school to address the significant gap in leadership for lesbians, gay men, bisexuals, and transgender people in the C-suite.”
According to program co-director Tom Wurster, the one-week training is ideally aimed at “the LGBT executive with a minimum of 10 years professional experience and 5 years of management experience who is preparing to take on more significant leadership roles.”
More visible leadership within more significant leadership roles – out and proud and C-Suite is the call.
By Nicki Gilmour, CEO and Founder of theglasshammer.com
Theglasshammer convened 100 senior women from traditional and alternative investment management companies last Wednesday 1st June 2016 for the 8th Annual Top Women on the Buyside breakfast panel and networking event. Nicki Gilmour CEO and Founder of theglasshammer.com opened the session with a welcome and an urge for the audience to continue to be change leaders for a culture of trust in their firms and beyond so that the industry can continue to attract women as investors and as participants.
The panel consisted of Judy Posnikoff, Managing Director of Paamco, Donna Parisi, Partner and Co-leader of the Asset Management Group, Shearman and Sterling, Nili Gilbert, Co-Founder of Matarin Capital Management, and Katina Stefanova, CEO and CIO of Marto Capital. Antony Currie, Associate Editor of Thomson Reuters Breaking Views moderated the discussion with candid questions that the panel answered with deep expertise to the peer audience as well as a sprinkling of humor at times.
Themes this year included disruption and innovation as drivers of results with the obvious challenges this year being the risk management of political, economic, credit and operational risk issues in this US election year.
It was agreed that volatility is high, uncertainty a constant and alpha diminished with a backdrop of limited historical data on how to invest in an environment of low interest rates. It was also agreed that all types of disruption, good and bad, was rife with developed countries still trying to ignite their economies post credit crisis. Risk would definitely dominate the short and medium term thoughts of investors. Fintech was also mentioned as an important element of future innovation in the industry without real precedents and an uncertain regulatory environment.
Katina Stefanova began with an overview of the macro environment and framed some issues,
“We deal with political, social and economic risks when assessing investments and this year is a unique year as we are at a pivotal point .We live in a world with over $200 trillion dollars of debt and with such uncertainty, it is not surprising that there is political volatility and that becomes a big issue for markets not just for investing but also for people building businesses. There has been a huge amount of disillusionment with traditional investment strategies, and other popular strategies such as risk parity in last few years. Volatility is here to stay and so it’s about figuring out how to navigate volatility and building that into your application.
It is time to develop alternative solutions.”
Judy Posnikoff concurred with the increased volatility issue stating
“The environment is quite different from 30 years ago when investors could achieve high enough returns with one asset class (fixed income). One of the difficulties of today’s uncertainty and meager expected rates of return is that institutions and individuals are having to take on more risk than they would like to in order to meet financing requirements such as pension liabilities.”
Nili Gilbert commented on unusual nature of the current macro environment stating,
“Negative interest rates and deflationary environments should be something that is taken seriously and it is hard to be informed by history on this. Due to a lack of comparable historical precedents, it is necessary to be thoughtful and insightful rather than just look to historical analysis or a purely data driven approach. “
Katina Stefanova agreed that the environment is unprecedented and the biggest risk is that we are at point when monetary policy is no longer effective. She added,
“Central banks have little power to stimulate or slow down economies. It is time for more aggressive fiscal policy and governments are going to have to play a bigger role. “
Donna Parisi picked up this point when asked about the role of regulators and the change of government in November with the moderator questioning could a new President undo the work done by regulators post credit crisis?
Donna commented on the legislative risk that could come from an election cycle,
“I think Dodd Frank is too far down the road, the rules are so deeply embedded regardless of who takes the White House in November and regulators are
not done trying to fix the lack of transparency that exists in the markets.”
Donna also mentioned that from her perspective that upcoming challenges for the industry would be liquidity mismatches and leverage issues.
“Since funds are more and more becoming intermediaries for lending post credit crisis, there are issues around leverage and the role they should play.” She suggested that regulators are worried that asset managers could be the next too big to fail crisis.
“The regulators are still struggling with information gathering despite the huge volume of data that is required to be reported. They don’t feel like they have enough transparent data to adequately assess liquidity and leverage risk and its impact on the broader market.”
Katina joined this point with her comments that regulatory consequences are not always well understood, and in many ways the government has not eliminated risk but rather transferred it to other institutions.
Nili mentioned that changes in the sell side and how it is regulated can ultimately affect stock price movements and have impact for portfolio managers. By way of example, she cited Reg FD (Regulation Fair Disclosure) as an event, which changed how sell-side analysts released communications, and as a result changed the efficacy of “earnings revisions” as a tool for stock price forecasting.
Other topics discussed included opportunities and creating value for the investor such as changing fee structures. Judy and Nili discussed how it was important for investors to have transparency around how much they had to pay in the search for alpha. Nili also shared her philosophy on finding opportunities stating four main concepts as buying fundamentally good businesses, valuation, shareholder friendly management teams and shorter-term catalysts such as price and volume analysis.
“When we were coming out of the financial crisis, it was a great time to be a value investor because in that environment of fear, there were many cheap stocks. Since then, we have seen investors regain their confidence and so it’s not as an attractive a time as before to be a value investor. Momentum investing is an opportunity that we saw do very well in 2015. What works changes all the time and it is crucial to understand behavioral biases in the markets for optimum results.”
Katina concurred, “ We have factors such as technology, a shift in socio-demographics and this economic environment and the current political volatility that creates a great opportunity for disruption. The question is where will that disruption come from? “
Citing Alibaba as an unexpected money management entity that has grown fast. She added, “It is about access, a platform to retail investors will change it all and it will come”.
Donna added that current incumbents in the market had a competitive advantage when it came to FinTech innovation given their regulated status. However, industry incumbents are at a disadvantage when it comes to being true innovators or disrupters. The rising importance of technology in the industry and the scalability of investment strategies as a result create significant risk for something to go wrong and a resulting regulatory response.
With so much to talk about, and with great questions from the audience, the discussion is hopefully continuing in offices across the world as we speak.
Thanks to our panelists and moderator and engaged audience for another great event!
“It’s second to none in importance today in business, the skill of being a whole leader, an inclusive leader.” The Glass Hammer talked to Mike Fenlon, PwC’s Global Talent Leader, about PwC’s Aspire to Lead program.
Now in its third year, Aspire to Lead is a PwC series on leadership and gender equality that provides university students and professionals with inspiration and practical insight on developing leadership, from the perspective of inspiring leaders.
“Aspire to Lead is all about development,” Fenlon told us. “We’re not talking about what you need to do to as the CEO. Here are the skills that Day One will be relevant and make a difference for you, women and men.”
In addition to an annual video webcast that reached over 107 countries this year, PwC runs development and skill-building workshops and discussions with students year-round and across the world.
The first live webcast featured LeanIn.Org Founder Sheryl Sandberg and President Rachel Thomas. The second focused on “The Confidence to Lead,” and featured Confidence Code authors Katty Kay and Claire Shipman and Eileen Naughton, Managing Director and VP of Google UK and Ireland.
This year, the event was hosted by the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences, and featured Award-winning actor Geena Davis, Founder of Geena Davis Institute on Gender in Media, Dawn Hudson the Academy CEO, and Director Jennifer Yuh Nelson. The panel provided insights from Hollywood on gender portrayal and taking your career to centre stage.
Fulfilling potential – being an inclusive and awake leader
“Aspire to Lead is about fulfilling potential,” Fenlon told us. “It’s absolutely critical for us to create an environment where everyone, men and women, can fulfill their potential and be whole leaders, inclusive leaders, and that means both individually and in our teams. That’s literally at the heart of our development framework.”
“One (aspect of inclusive leadership) is that I’m demonstrating self-awareness,” explained Fenlon. “In the context of working across differences, that means a commitment to understanding my own (unconscious) blindspots.”
“I’ll give you a few words,” he said. “Engineer. Scientist. Venture capitalist. Executive. Surgeon. Leader. Accountant. CEO. Literally, who do you see? What the research shows us is that who you see is skewed towards a male image, for both men and women.”
“The point is when I see you, do I see you as someone who possesses the potential to be a leader,” said Fenlon. “Am I going to connect you with people who I think will be valuable? Am I going to assign you to work that will stretch you and develop you? Will I take some risks because I see potential? This is about seeing potential.”
One of the discussion materials that’s been used in the program is an animated video in which a woman shares an idea in a meeting and goes unnoticed. Minutes later, a man shares the same idea and it’s hailed as “a breakthrough”.
“That shows a blind spot as a leader,” Fenlon said. “Am I awake, am I tuned into the dynamics of my team, to creating an atmosphere where everyone can contribute their ideas and everyone’s heard?”
“So when we talk about whole leadership,” Fenlon explains, “we start by saying I have to develop my self-awareness around who I am, around how my life experiences and culture have shaped how I see the world, and how I see others, and my ability to recognize talent. Is there anything more important in business than the ability to recognize talent, to spot talent?”
“If you’re asleep, if you’re blind, you’re really captive to your own biases and cultural assumptions, which just aren’t true,” Fenlon said. “If I’m awake, I understand, I’m seeing what’s in front of me, the dynamics in my team, who is speaking, who is being heard, who is contributing. I’m awake to the potential of my colleagues, of the people in my team. I see it. I’m excited by it. I’m creating opportunities for people to fulfill their potential. I’m aware of my blindspots. This is important for women and men.”
Speaking about the 2016 webcast, Fenlon says, “Our focus was the representation of gender in the entertainment and the media, and how that shapes the assumptions we make and those blindspots. We used that as a metaphor for ‘how do I write my own script, how do I demonstrate the confidence to be center stage, how do I launch my career in a way that I’m positioned to fulfill my potential?’”
The forum demonstrated how women can reject cultural scripts to write their own.
“Think of it this way,” said Fenlon. “Stereotypes are scripts that other people have written for you…You show up, day one of the office. Well, here are the three standard scripts, if you will, and they reflect massive blindspots. They may reflect all sorts of assumptions that are widely inaccurate about who you are and what you can do. But they’re the traditional scripts.”
“Jennifer Yuh Nielson is one of the very few women directors in Hollywood,” said Fenlon. “When she leads, and this is part of the power of the discussion we had, she leads as an introvert. She’s very focused on listening. She’s not the stereotypical director… She didn’t take the scripts that may have been handed to her. It’s about authentic leadership, playing to your strengths, and different styles of leadership than maybe what are stereotypically associated with men. It’s not just about being more like stereotypical male masculine models. And what can men then learn, in turn?”
As one of the ten founding IMPACT partners for HeforShe, an important aspect of Aspire to Lead is that it brings both men and women together to work on gender equality together.
“When we did our session with Sheryl Sandberg, I bought all sort of books and I was handing them out,” said Fenlon. “I was talking to women colleagues and they were organizing Lean In circles, reading books, going to lunch and going to talking about it, going to conferences. And meanwhile what were men doing? Very little, is the answer.”
“I wrote in one of my blogs, ‘Is gender equality women’s work?’ Obviously, that’s rhetorical,” said Fenlon. “If we’re going to achieve gender equality, inclusive leadership, we all have a role to play here, and for men to become inclusive leaders, to fulfill their potential as a manager, as someone who can spot talent, who can bring out the best in others, who can bring out the best in a team, it means I’ve got to exercise self-awareness. I’ve got to look and acknowledge my blind spots. I’ve got to diversify my personal network. I have to learn to make sure I’m calling out all voices. I have to bring equality home.”
“The question is: who do you see…?”
“Aspire to Lead reflects our commitment as a culture,” said Fenlon. “We want students to have a really valuable development experience and in the process develop whole leaders, develop the leadership skills of students, help them prepare to launch their career, and to drive gender equality.”
Getting personal, Fenlon shared, “I brought my daughter to Hollywood Boulevard, and I took a picture of one star. You know these stars that have yet to be named? The question is: who do you see in that star? When you think about talent, when you think about a software engineer, when you think about a doctor, surgeon, accountant, lawyer, executive, venture capitalist, who do you see?”
Across the bottom of the symposium page for the Geena Davis Institute on Gender in Media, are the words: If she can see it, she can be it.
What Fenlon is driving at here is a critical complementary point. If we can all learn to see the potential of it already in her (or stop being blind to it), we can help her to be it, too.
Contributed by Aoife Flood. Based in Dublin, Ireland, Aoife is Senior Manager of the Global Diversity and Inclusion Programme Office at PricewaterhouseCoopers International Limited.
Did you know that we are experiencing a time of unprecedented – and as yet unmet –demand from female employees for international mobility?
Across the world, forward-thinking organisations are using international mobility experiences to develop future leaders and advance the careers of key talent. Yet despite unprecedented female demand for these assignments, women currently only account for 20% of international assignees.To boost awareness of this shortfall, celebrate the international career aspirations of women and shine a light on what organisations can do to help make these aspirations a reality, PwC is marking this year’s International Women’s Day by launching a new research-based report called Moving women with purpose.
The report highlights a number of other critical diversity disconnects beyond the wide gap mentioned above between female demand for mobility and the reality in the workplace. For example, the overwhelming majority of multinationals in our study told us that global acumen skills were a critical requirement for advancement into leadership positions at their organisations (77%) – and 67% of large multinationals said they use global mobility to develop their succession pipeline of future leaders. Yet only 16% confirmed that the number of female international assignees in their organisation was proportionate to their overall percentage of female employees.
Furthermore, only 22% of global mobility executives stated that their organisations’ diversity and mobility strategies were aligned. Even more worryingly, the same small proportion – 22% – said they were actively trying to increase their levels of internationally mobile women.
So it’s clear that organisations are using international exposure and experiences to develop and advance their key talent. But it’s equally clear that more action is urgently needed to close a significant mobility gender gap. To do this, CEOs must drive an agenda where women are both aware of – and also actively provided with – the critical experiences they need to progress their careers, including international assignment opportunities. Also, to respond to and capitalise on the demographics of the modern workforce mobility, mobility programmes can simply not be operated in a silo. Global mobility, diversity and talent management strategies need to be connected and coordinated to support companies’ successful realisation of their international business and people strategies.
Another disconnect that PwC’s research report highlights is a glaring lack of role models for female mobility. Less than half of the women we interviewed agreed that their organisation has enough female role models with successful international assignment experiences. And this shortcoming is negatively impacting companies’ wider female talent and global mobility programmes. In fact, both women and global mobility executives identified it as the second highest barrier inhibiting more women from undertaking international assignments.
To close this role model gap, international employers need to use the mantra ‘you can’t be what you can’t see’ as a catalyst to drive more gender-inclusive mobility. The 71% of female millennials who actively desire international mobility want to be able to look up and around them to see women who have already had such experiences at their organisation, and who have seen their careers benefit as result. If women can’t see such role models, then organisations will struggle to attract or retain female talent, who will look to other employers to provide them with the international opportunities they crave.
Speaking personally, I was very lucky to undertake a mobility experience at the age of 25 to PwC’s Boston office – and for the near-decade since then I’ve worked with an international mandate. So I know just how life-changing a mobility experience can be. I can’t imagine any other way that I could have benefited from such rapid and profound personal and profession development in a relatively short space of time. This is one of the reasons why our report includes profiles of several female role models from PwC and other international businesses.
We’d also like to share with you our Moving women with purpose role model video, which showcases a diverse range of PwC women talking about their international mobility experiences. If you are a woman considering undertaking an international experience, or perhaps hesitating about taking the plunge, it’s definitely worth a watch.
