35 Under 35: Orla Beggs, Principal, PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP

orla.png by Pamela Weinsaft (New York City)

An Oxford-educated Northern Irish woman goes to London then New York and becomes a principal at one of the world’s largest professional services firms in less than 11 years. On sabbatical, she goes to South America—did we mention she also speaks Spanish?—to work with underprivileged women and orphaned children. She runs, plays tennis, plays the piano and has a passion for the theatre, Spanish culture and cosmology. She also serves on two committees within her firm, both of which support the work of women within the organization. Overall, it’s an impressive profile.

Ms. Beggs started at PwC as an actuary immediately following her graduation from Oxford University in 1997. “I got an unconditional offer to join Oxford and you don’t really refuse that. I wouldn’t have studied math at any other university. But because the offer came from Oxford, you accept graciously (and then begin to question your entitlement to a place in one of the world’s most prestigious universities).”

As a math major, she wasn’t prepared to go into academia. “Frankly, I wasn’t done with studying. So the actuarial profession appealed to me because it enabled me to work 4 days a week and then have the 5th day off to study for the professional qualifications. So it seemed like quite a nice compromise to take a job with PwC and qualify as an actuary in the process.”

But she quickly realized that actuarial work wasn’t as interesting to her as mergers and acquisitions. “M & A work is varied and provides an opportunity for the actuarial profession to have a big impact owing to the large defined benefit pension plans whose financials implications are oftentimes not understood…[a]nd working for a firm like PwC gives one access to an A-list client base.”

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Voices of Experience: Tina Hallett, Partner, PricewaterhouseCoopers UK

tina_photo_1_.JPGby Elizabeth Harrin (London)

This afternoon, Tina Hallett is going to the culmination event of one of her coaching sets. Hallett is a Partner at PricewaterhouseCoopers UK and she knows how to make connections.

Hallett works in PwC’s Change Consulting business, specialising in government departments. She started her career as a chartered accountant, then moved into tax, before joining the People & Change practice.

Now her day job focuses on getting the best out of people, not numbers. She set up Coaching Squared, an initiative that brings together top middle managers from public and private sector organisations and places them in co-coaching partnerships for nine months.

“I met with the Ministry of Justice [formerly the Department of Constitutional Affairs],” Hallett explains. “They were setting up a women’s network.” At the time, Hallett chaired PwCWomen, and the government department wanted to learn how it was done. “Gus O’Donnell, the then Cabinet Secretary, was very keen on cross-private/public sector initiatives.” As the discussion progressed, it became clear that it was in both organisations’ interest to do something together. Twelve women from each organisation met at a half-day event on co-coaching and paired up.

Since then, Coaching Squared has “grown and grown from those early roots,” Hallett says. “There were six organisations involved the first time; now we have about 30 and cover four strands: women, the disabled, minorities and gay and lesbians.”

Partly, the organizations self-select and, in the private sector it’s often word of mouth that leads to the first approach. The actual coaching programme doesn’t take up a lot of time, as the women taking part manage it themselves. “I go to the first event to kick it off, see them again half way through, and at the end, to stay engaged,” she says. The women then take responsibility for their own development and set their own activities. One, for example, work-shadowed a human rights expert in the Ministry of Justice. “It’s a new buddy in a work context,” Hallet says. “Often at work you only meet people from your own organisation.” The Coaching Squared programme allows participants to broaden their horizons in a way that wouldn’t otherwise be possible.

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Eating Well While Working

iStock_000005697170XSmall_1_.jpgBy Heather Chapman (New York City)

It’s all too easy to skip eating a proper meal these days; the long hours at our desks, on the phone, or in meetings leave us promising ourselves that tomorrow will be different. We’ll make time to go to the grocery store tonight, get up just a bit earlier to buy something, or will actually take time for lunch. Too often though, that plan gets pushed off until ‘tomorrow’ and we’re left without anything healthy to eat and several more hours ahead of us. It’s a worrying habit – one that can leave you tired, stressed, irritable, and hungry.

The whole cycle becomes worse when you factor in that many people don’t make the time for breakfast either. Not only does breakfast give us the fuel to start a new day, it also helps us maintain our weight. When we skip a meal, our body switches to starvation mode and slows down our metabolism as a means to compensate. Then, when we try and catch up at the next meal, we tend to overeat in an attempt to ingest enough calories to make up for the missing meal. Unfortunately, our bodies don’t work like that and by trying to catch-up we end up making things worse.
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Voices of Experience: Christine Komola, Senior Vice President of Corporate Finance for Staples

By Liz O’Donnell (Boston)

Christine Komola spent a recent Thursday morning at the dentist with her daughter. “But I missed her last appointment,” she says. Komola, Senior Vice President of Corporate Finance for Staples, says you need to be “very, very organized” to manage work/life balance. “I like to be spontaneous” she says, “but I learned I have to be deliberate in what I do. I am very scheduled and I pre-plan. Scheduling was a learned behavior for me.” Komola considers herself to be lucky. She enjoys what she does and who she works with and she counts on her business associates and even her clients to help her manage the demands of work and life. In fact, she credits flexible bosses and a strong team with her ability to navigate the demands of work and life. “The world is so virtual, it’s unbelievable,” she says referring to the non-stop demands of working for an international organization. “The computer, the Blackberry and the cell phone are always on.”

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Top Women to Follow on Twitter

iStock_000006561903XSmall_1_.jpgby Elizabeth Harrin (London)

Do you tweet? Twitter is a micro-blogging tool that allows you to ‘tweet’ anything – as long as it fits within 140 characters, which is the length of a standard text message. That is what has made it so popular, as you can send and receive messages by phone, or if you prefer via instant messaging or a website. People use it to update their friends with how they are and what they are doing. On the receiving end, you can choose people to receive updates from – your family, celebrities or interesting commentators.

Curious? Once you have a Twitter account you can both update your own status and receive updates from other people whom you have chosen to ‘follow’. Yes, Twitter comes with a whole new language. Since logging on for the first time recently I have learnt about following, tweeting and retweeting, hashtags, @ responses, direct messages. There isn’t space here to explain how to use Twitter to its full advantage, but there are plenty of websites dedicated to just that.

There is a lot of noise on Twitter. People send updates about their last cup of coffee, and British comedian and presenter Stephen Fry made headlines recently when he tweeted about being stuck in a lift. The information comes to you in real time format, but that doesn’t make it interesting. So how do you know who to follow? The best advice is to choose people who interest you and whom you have come across from another source. Bloggers, for example, may blog once or twice a week (like me) but tweet on a daily basis. Using Twitter you will get instant notification of new blog posts but also useful, short titbits more regularly: things that aren’t shared on the blog. I have wasted many an evening reading the profiles of the people being followed by someone I am following. If you follow my meaning.

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Voice of Experience: Kim Harris Jones, Senior Vice President and Corporate Controller Auditor, Chrysler Corporation

KimHarrisJones._copy_1_.jpgby Tina Vasquez (Los Angeles)

The “Motor City” as it’s affectionately called, is home to Motown, the American automobile industry, and to Kim Harris Jones, the first African-American female Vice President in Chrysler history. “I was born and raised in Detroit and when you’re born and raised in Detroit, Michigan, it’s not hard to be brought into the auto industry. My father retired from General Motors as an assembly line worker, my sister worked at Ford, and I’ve had many other family members who worked in the auto industry, so it wasn’t a big leap,” Jones said.

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Intrepid Women: Sense of Safety in My Own Skin

selfdefense.jpg by Kelley Vollmer (New York City)

Since moving to Manhattan, self defense had been something I’d always meant to learn, but I kept finding excuses as to why I couldn’t take a class: it didn’t fit into my schedule; I didn’t know which course to take; or it was just too expensive. I told myself that since I lived in a safe neighborhood and made smart choices, I was fine. But, routinely, I’d find myself in situations – from men walking by me with catcalls to walking by myself late at night after work – in which I would feel vulnerable and fearful. It was at those times that I would remind myself that I needed to take a self defense class.

One night last summer upped the ante for me. I responded to an ad on Craigslist for free concert tickets. Of course, I now recognize how supremely naive I was but, at the time, my only thought was that the tickets were third row center for one of my favorite bands. The guy even claimed to not be looking for a date, saying he was too old. Even though he gave me “uh-oh” feeling the moment I met him and kept his fists clenched throughout the evening (in addition to having a curious bulge near his ankle and asking inappropriate questions about my sexuality), I stuck out the concert because I didn’t want to be rude. At the end, I thanked him for his generosity and left or, rather, attempted to leave.

When I said I was heading to Brooklyn, he said he had a car and could drive me as he was going that way. When I said, “No, thanks I’ll take the subway,” he responded with, “I’ll go with you.” I was feeling very uncomfortable so I sprinted into the chaos that is Times Square after all the Broadway shows let out.

Without looking back, I ran into the subway and down to the train platform right as an express train was pulling up. I jumped onto the train and sat down in the only available seat in a packed car. As I was about to sigh with relief, I felt a presence. I discreetly looked up and saw the old man from the concert – he had followed me onto the train and was now hiding behind someone so I would not see him.

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Mover and Shaker: Maria Weaver Watson, Director of Strategic Marketing, Interactive One

MWeaverWatsonphoto3_1_.jpegby Anna Collins, Esq. (Portland, Maine)

As Director of Strategic Marketing at Interactive One, Maria Weaver Watson is responsible for leading all consumer and trade marketing and public relations for a company that provides the #1 online platform for a broad swath of the African American community. Watson is also the great-great grand daughter of abolitionist Frederick Douglass, who has continued her family legacy by giving back to the community through an active involvement on boards and organizations including Standup for Kids, iMentor and Council of Urban Professionals.

Watson’s work at Interactive One, which serves more than 9 million users, is delicately connected to her community involvement. In fact, these two aspects of Watson’s accomplished life are openly inter-related. When Watson considered joining Interactive One, she found herself attracted to the company’s mission to serve the African American community through online content and social media. Today, she feels very strongly about her role at Interactive One, explaining “I’m actually making a difference to the community, and that is personally rewarding.”

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Board’s Eye View: African-American Women on Fortune 500 Corporate Boards

by Pamela Weinsaft (New York City)

As we reported last week, there are still significant barriers to African-American women rising in Corporate America’s ranks. Women of color—like many women—suffer from a lack of strong or existing strategic networks and work/life balance demands. Additionally, they are hampered by a lack of opportunity—the Catalyst Census of Women on Boards of December 2008 showed that the number of women in general and women of color in particular remained stagnant—and by inaccurate perceptions of African-American women’s capabilities.

Of the 471 companies surveyed, nearly one-fifth had at least one African-American woman on the board. Of the 15.2 percent of directorships held by women at Fortune 500 companies, only 3.2 percent are held by women of color.

If the truth expressed in past Catalyst studies—that the more women on corporate boards, the more likely there will be women in upper management of the organization—holds true for other under-represented groups, the following extraordinary African American women who sit on corporate boards will, by their presence and accomplishments, help create a climate conducive to including other women of color in the C-suite.

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Voice of Experience: Tay C. Via, Partner, Coblentz, Patch, Duffy & Bass LLP

Tay__Via_1_.jpgby Anna T. Collins, Esquire (Portland, Maine)

Tay C. Via, partner at Coblentz, Patch, Duffy & Bass LLP in San Francisco, entered the legal profession in part due to advice from one of her professors at the University of California, Berkeley, where she received her undergraduate degree in Political Science and Economics in 1987. Peter T. Jones, a lawyer who specialized in international trade, encouraged her to pursue graduate education “in anything,” regardless of whether she was clear on her ultimate career path. Professor Jones was not the first mentor to emphasize the importance of higher education to Via. Her grandfather, a blue collar worker, also believed that higher education was vital to success. He taught her to not be “in awe of anyone,” since anyone can succeed with education and hard work.

Via followed the advice of these two mentors, gaining not only a higher education, but an impressive work ethic. After receiving her law degree from University of California, Boalt Hall School of Law in 1991, Via got her start at Morrison & Foerster, where she gained expertise in real estate development and land use law while working on the San Francisco International Airport Expansion Project. Over time, Via aimed to focus on large public/private projects in and around San Francisco, which led her to Coblentz, Patch, Duffy & Bass LLP in 1994.

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