Hauge, Peetz, and Barskaya

Last night, the Financial Women’s Association held its Annual Dinner and Women of the Year Awards at the Grand Hyatt New York. Each year the FWA honors an outstanding woman in the private and public sectors. This year’s private sector honoree was Karen Peetz, CEO, Financial Markets and Treasury Services, BNY Mellon. The public sector honoree was Gail J. McGovern, President and CEO, The American Red Cross.

Trish Regan, anchor and reporter for CNBC emceed the event. Having hosted for the past two years, she always saw the importance of honoring women. But now, recently having given birth to twin girls, she said the awards took on further significance, causing her to reflect on “the challenges they’ll face entering the workforce.”

Additionally, many of the speakers of the evening reflected on the importance of nurturing and encouraging the next generation of financial women. Mentorship was the prevailing them of the evening, as the FWA’s new Volunteer of the Year award honored the Co-Chairs of its Mentoring Program. The awards honored two of the organization’s outstanding young mentees as well.

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By Gigi DeVault (Munich)

I was doing fine until I released the whale bath toy into the bubbles from the Jacuzzi jets. I was fulfilling a working mother’s recurring dream. It goes like this: I slide into the frothing water—my shoulders are the tip of a languorous berg. I pour edelweiss nectar from the two delicate bottles of St. Germaine nabbed from the mini-bar; the faux cut-glass catches the glow of flickering tea lights lining the tub. Over the rim of my glass, I can see the rainbow-colored lights of the Santa Monica pier framed by the window of my upgraded suite. My colleagues are tucked away in a utilitarian hotel in downtown Los Angeles. This is my alone time, when for one brief interlude before the phone next rings, life can be perfect. Except that, the floating rubber bath toy brought an image of my daughter’s sweet face into my inner sanctum. “Mine, Mommy,” she would say, scooping up the bath toy in her dimpled three-year old hand.* Then there is a knock on the door. “Housekeeping.” Even here, hiding on the beach, I am found.

And what about the person with the disembodied voice that calls out to me on the other side of the door? If her life is as busy as mine, will she find a way to retreat and claim some blissful time alone? I want it to be so.

Is work-life balance just another one of those luxuries we covet – like the items in the Desire & Acquire exclusive shopping service accessed through the American Express Departures magazine? “In many ways, yes,” wrote Lisa Belkin in her New York Times column, Motherlode. “Only those with both financial security and some control over their work lives”—Belkin’s readers insist on this distinction— “have the freedom to recalibrate it.” Just what is required to recalibrate one’s work life?

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By Tina Vasquez (Los Angeles)

In September of last year, The Glass Hammer informed readers of the first ever Accounting MOVE Project, which was spearheaded by the American Society of Women Accountants (ASWA) along with Joanne Cleaver, president and founder of the research firm Wilson-Taylor Associates. The project and its accompanying report aimed to find out exactly where the glass ceiling is – and it succeeded admirably. It was revealed that a large percentage of female accountants abandon public accounting firms at the senior manager level.

The 2010 Accounting MOVE Project, released today, documents why women leave the profession. Cleaver and her team conducted hundreds of interviews with women at different stages in their career, as well as with academics, firm employees, and recruiters (among many others) in order to provide a 360 point of view of the industry and find out why its failing to retain its female talent. The study indicates that while that women account for more than half of all firm employees (51.4 percent), only 40 percent of them hold senior manager positions and only 17.4 percent become partners. What’s keeping women out of the top ranks?

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By Elizabeth Harrin (London)

“This new century needs a new generation of leaders who are more transformational and embrace their feminine qualities,” says Dr Samantha Collins, Founder of Aspire, an executive coaching and leadership development consultancy that has recently released a report into successful leadership styles. “The old school style of many politicians and corporate CEO’s is on the way out and transformational leadership behaviours are on the way in.”

“In this latest research it appears that the financial and political events at the end of the last decade have given us pause for thought,” says Catherine Shovlin, Director at Customer Interpreter, a strategic research consultancy which co-produced the report.

The report, Tearing up the Rule Book: A New Generation of Leaders for 2010, introduces the new measure of Leadership Intelligence (LI). LI measures rate your ability to be a successful leader, and what makes a successful leader in today’s economy is not what you would necessarily expect.

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