Anna Salek: Partner, Private Client Team Leader, Shearman & Sterling LLC

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Anna Salek“Junior level women lawyers sometimes ask me for career advice, and I find the reoccurring theme is that they do not have a good understanding of their professional value,” says Anna Salek. “Very often, women grossly underestimate their value.”

Salek talks about her genuine appreciation for cutting-edge legal work, the growth in a lateral move, the two-way street of value and daring to do what scares you.

The Gratification of Top-Tier Work

“I get immense satisfaction from solving complex problems,” says Salek, who enjoys tackling legal issues that perhaps no other firm has been able to solve sufficiently or that have never before even been considered.

As the private client team leader at Shearman & Sterling with over 20 years of direct experience, Salek works with high-net-worth individuals and families to meet their wide range of legal needs and specializes the areas of trust and estates, tax planning and not-for-profit law.

“I am lucky to work at a top-tier firm like Shearman where the clients are interesting and the legal work is challenging,” she says. “I love the cutting-edge work where often there’s no precedent and the client is relying on my judgment and experience.”

Salek joined Shearman in early 2019 to lead their private client team and was drawn there by the firm’s rich history, impressive client base and dynamic women.

Be Willing to Move To Expand

“I think women, more than men, are more prone to say, ‘they’ve been so good to me here’ and view moving on to another firm as being disloyal or ungrateful. Well, that’s fine that they’ve been good to you – they should be good to you,” says Salek. “But you should also be good to yourself and not be shy about exploring other opportunities.”

While the practice of trusts and estates is generally gender diverse, it is more often men who head up the practice, so replacing C. Jones Perry at Shearman when he retired as team leader was a strong leap ahead for women in leadership in law.

“I was very dedicated and happy at another top-tier-firm where I grew up as a lawyer, and I stayed there for a long time. But moving to another firm made me a better lawyer as it allowed me to grow in different directions than I otherwise would have,” says Salek. “Making a lateral move can help you grow professionally, but equally as important, you are bringing value to your new firm by contributing your own unique skills, experience and perspective.”

“I’m not suggesting women should job hop or even leave their job, but I do think everyone should consider it from time to time – even if only to confirm how good you have it. Men change firms more frequently than women, and it’s not a bad thing. With each move you’re not only likely to increase your compensation, but it’s also a huge personal and professional growth opportunity.”

Know Your Self-Worth

On a similar thread, the guidance that Salek consistently emphasizes to junior level women lawyers is to value themselves as professionals.

“You are valuable to your firm. It’s not just a one-way street. I find that women sometimes almost can’t hear that,” iterates Salek. “They’re reluctant to ask for anything—equity, more compensation. a flexible work schedule, for example – or give themselves credit. Reminding women of their professional contributions to their firm is what I end up doing in almost every single one of those conversations.”

The Relationship Side of Private Client Work

On top of being challenged by the academic intricacies of her practice area, Salek loves the client interaction and deep relationships involved in her area of law. She enjoys working with individuals and families, many of whom have been long-term generational clients of the firm.

“The clients I work with tend to be extremely interesting people,” says Salek, for whom “field trips” to clients’ homes and offices are as much a part of her job as being behind her desk.

“When people invite you into the world of their personal finances, they inevitably invite you into their family and personal lives,” says Salek who feels that women especially thrive in cultivating relationships and trust.

“Not only do you have to be a proficient lawyer, you need to be personable and trustworthy. There’s just an element of being trusted that’s not something you can learn and that quality has helped me a lot, second certainly to really knowing what I’m doing,” she says. “I have clients who are women who have said they picked me because they prefer to work with a woman, and I have had male clients who say the same thing.”

Do What Scares You

“My advice to junior lawyers would be: don’t shy away from things that intimidate you. In fact, seek them out. Do something that scares you every day,” Salek says. “I’m not talking about skydiving. I’m talking about challenging yourself. Don’t like public speaking? Do a webinar, go sit on a panel. Don’t think you know enough about something? Help a client with that particular issue or publish an article about it. Shy? Invite someone you would like to get to know or learn from for lunch or coffee.”

Salek credits her own integration of this advice for having made her into a more confident lawyer today.

”I feel women especially don’t like to be outside of their comfort zone, but that’s the only place where you can grow,” she says. “It’s really important to push your own boundaries.”

Practicing Work-Life Integration

A rewarding aspect of her work has been the pro bono cases where Salek has been able to champion people and organizations in critical financial wins, where she sometimes gets as involved in interpersonal dynamics as with her private clients.

Salek finds that for her, work enters home life and home life enters work, so she embraces the work-life integration approach of keeping both in even keel, rather than “the two-iPhone approach” of work-life balance, which she feels is a false separation of parts of life that live inside of the same universe.

She is married with two teenagers, a daughter of 16 and a son of 14, and notes one silver lining of the pandemic is that people who were technology-resistant have been forced to embrace technology, opening up more remote working possibilities.

Salek is an avid, hands-in-the-dirt gardener. Her favorite season is spring, and she finds that “observing the earth awakening is so good for the soul.”

By Aimee Hansen

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May Nazareno: Northeast Director of Major Gifts at IGNITE

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May Nazareno “Who you are right now in this moment is a gift. It is an offering that is meant to be shared, and you really don’t know how it sparks another person from the other side,” says May Nazareno. “What I’m trying to always ask is: can I create space, within myself and anyone I engage with, can I create the space for us to be truthful and real?”

Nazareno speaks to activating leadership in girls and young women, catalyzing change through storytelling, and how the world needs all of who you are.

Fundraising For The Future Pipeline Of Female Leaders

In her role, Nazareno creates a community of stakeholders across the Northeast who helps IGNITE “build a movement of young women who are ready and eager to become the next generation of political leaders.”

Founded in 2010 to address the lack of political parity in the US, the national organization seeks to increase the number of women as elected officials, appointed to public boards and commissions, and in supporting leadership positions that make it possible for women to occupy those political spaces. By creating multiple entry points for young women to advance in political leadership, IGNITE pushes for a large-scale solution that has the capacity to flood the political pipeline.

Currently, with a team of 17 women who operate under a budget of less than $3 million, IGNITE is the only non-partisan organization in the US that provides sustained community-based training and support to nearly 13,000 + women and girls across 36 states. Currently, a top ten finalist for the $10 million dollar Equality Can’t Wait Challenge, IGNITE’s goal to train 100,000 women each year starting in 2025 could be in reach.

Her Own Bittersweet Experience In Leadership

For Nazareno, advocating for IGNITE is personal. “I had never seen myself as a political person, nor did I think that being part of the student government was an option for me when I was in high school or college.” She admits she fell into student government while in college, “because someone asked me to,” and that the opportunity to run for her university’s vice president position: “was entirely because the secretary of the Student Union just said to me: ‘what do you have to lose?’” Nazareno was met with a lot of resistance from her male peers – and even from other women. “It was the late 90’s and everyone’s questioning if you’re qualified enough.”

Despite Nazareno winning her election by a landslide, and during her tenure, raising significant funds and forging interconnectedness between different cultural and identity-based groups – she faced a hostile environment with no collective support behind her. “What makes IGNITE personal is that the typical IGNITE woman comes to our programs with a desire to solve problems in her community – rarely with a desire to run. And yet, when she goes through our trainings, she learns how to push past her fears of being isolated and pitted against the boys club – because we help her create a ‘girl gang’ of support. I often think what if IGNITE was around when I was in college? What would have happened to my life if I met other women like me, and got the mentorship and the networking needed to navigate a political life? Undoubtedly, I would have considered public service as a calling.”

Though highly encouraged on the path, Nazareno admits she was burned out. Her experience as an elected student leader at her university was surrounded by so much divisiveness – that while she considered pursuing law school – she turned to study playwriting.

“What I cared about the most was figuring out how to foster a shared interconnectedness between students who were passionate about their own identity politics. What were the things that we could understand and respect about each other rather than focusing on what drives us apart? And I knew that law wasn’t going to answer those questions. I didn’t want to tell people what to think. I didn’t want to get caught up in ‘I’m right’ or ‘you’re wrong’. I wanted to come from a place of encouraging deep self-reflection,” she recalls. “At the theatre, you watch conflict and see both sides of the story. You sit in the audience and decide for yourself.”

Catalyzing Dialogue Through a One Woman Show

To the disbelief of her parents, Nazareno rescinded her law school applications and set off to Seattle to become an actor, despite warnings that she’d be cut off from her family.

“I had a bag of clothes and a few books, my laptop, and my yoga mat – and there I was in this hostel in downtown Seattle when 9/11 hit. My Dad used to work at the World Trade Center…,” she laments. “And yet, everyone around me saw this moment as an isolated NYC problem.” She perceived it as both a national and international affair and watched as knee-jerk political reactivity took hold.

“I was impacted by the need to find a way to break through the bubble, not even having words for that. It’s 2001, we have no idea what’s happening, but you hold onto your bubble – to whatever you can to salvage any sense of normalcy,” she said. “The bubble cracked for me in 2003 when I had a family member who was the personal aide to Sérgio Vieira de Mello, the Brazilian United Nations Special Representative for Iraq, go missing.”

De Mello’s death in a hotel bombing in Baghdad and the presumed death of her family member, who then reappeared, catalyzed her to write a one-woman show entitled Dead Woman Home that she took to Seattle, San Francisco, Off-Off-Broadway in New York, and the Philippines. Nazareno’s intention was to challenge the depersonalized perceptions and opinions about war and the Iraqi people that could justify an almost instant reaction to go to war.

“This was my very first play and I wrote it almost twenty years ago. At the time, I wanted to ask audiences: do we realize the implications and the unnecessary incalculable loss of innocent life? Can we sit with that? If I was sharing this play now, what I really want to ask is this: today we live with growing hatred towards others – and often because there’s nothing left to feel anymore. Who among us still have the courage to love?”

Nazareno wanted to hear what people thought about our occupation in Iraq and connected with teens in juvenile detention centers, vets, and high school and college students from low-resourced communities. She intended to reach new audiences who didn’t have access to theatre and create space for civic dialogue that would inspire social action. Indeed, her play galvanized a group of grad students in the Philippines to submit policy strategies to the UN.

“When I met those grad students, I could have never predicted that kind of response to my play. It finally hit me: stories have the power to change people’s perception of themselves and the world around them.”

Flipping The Story to Empower Perspectives

After two years of touring, Nazareno returned to the U.S. and decided to try event management and fundraising. “I was proud that my show broke even during its run. I didn’t have any formal training in the logistics of producing my show. Everything about me was just scrappy and I wanted to formally learn how to raise funds.”

Nazareno landed a job at Stanford, where she was taken under the wing of Lorraine Alexander, who mentored her. “I was lucky. Lorraine was my first teacher and along the way, I met Theda Jackson-Mau and Kim Gerstman who also showed me the ropes. Learning from them ultimately changed my life. I realized that everything up to this point was preparing me to tell stories that inspire people to question their position in the world and what they can do with that position,” says Nazareno, who took a step away from the politics of theater. “In many ways, that’s been the throughline of my work. We all have stories, and our stories give us the capacity to influence and lead, but what does it mean to be a leader and how can we lead in a new way?”

“We are all part of the solution for a more just world,” says Nazareno. “That’s what I’m trying to get across in my work. When I was a teenager, I heard Mother Teresa speak at St. Patrick’s Cathedral and I was moved when she told us that God doesn’t have hands, but our hands.” Nazareno is adamant about IGNITE because the organization trains young women who come from historically marginalized communities to develop their leadership potential and recognize how their lived experiences are essential to creating a democracy that represents our country’s diversity.

“The narrative is often ‘I come from a low-income neighborhood, I was raised by a single parent, my father is in jail, my brother was killed, I didn’t go to an Ivy League school. I’ve got no credentials to lead and zero cash. Who am I to run?” says Nazareno. “And we flip the script and say: who are you not to? We’re here to convince each young woman that her whole life is what makes her qualified to lead. Right now, out of the 520,000 elected offices across the country, women hold 30.5% of municipal offices, 30.9% of seats in state legislatures, and 26.5% of seats in the US Congress. If we dramatically broaden our audience, and just 0.1% of young women run in the next decade we will dramatically increase the pool of female candidates in America.”

“Women are the backbone of our democracy,” Nazareno adds. “We have to shift our understanding and challenge this notion of ‘leadership material.’ We need to show young women that their leadership is needed and there’s a path to realize their ambitions. If we can do that, we can change the way we think about women leaders in America.”

“Right now, there are many people – mostly men – who sit in local government who have little or no visceral sense of what it means to live day-to-day in the communities where our young women live. This is why we train young women to realize that they are the best representation of what their community needs and what needs to change.”

“We’re at this tipping point where it’s abundantly clear that if we want our country to continue to thrive we have to invest in child care, mandate equitable pay for women, keep children and women safe from domestic violence and gun violence as national priorities, and make access to healthcare a fundamental human right – among a whole host of other things. Who knows these issues better than women? That’s why we must elect more women to get a seat at the political table, and that’s why IGNITE gives girls and young women the tools, networks, and resources to succeed in this environment. Not only will they run, they’ll win. And not only will they win, but they stay in the game…” says Nazareno. “In the midst of COVID, 13 IGNITE women ran for office across the country last year. This year, 21 IGNITE women have declared their candidacies. – That’s why I wake up every morning truly inspired.”

Showing Up As Who You Are

Nazareno feels the pandemic has been another huge catalyst to breaking our bubbles, realizing our interconnectedness, how deeply woven our lives are and how dependent we are on one another. Amidst so much divisiveness, she sees that we’re all presented with this question: how are you going to show up to this moment?

When it comes to reflecting on her journey and what motivates her day-to-day, it’s exactly that question. Nazareno’s own father came from humble means and wanted to become a cinematographer. But with his mother’s disapproval, he became the engineer he was expected to be. Nazareno dared the opposite.

“What I carry from his story is that while we make sacrifices and concessions along the way, we can’t forget the spark that lives inside us – especially now. As I see it, that spark is the essence of who you are. And it’s a choice to share it with others or hide it. How am I showing up? What am I bringing to the table?” she questions. “Am I really bringing me, or am I consciously dimming my spark, and if so, for whom – and why? And is it worth it? Or can I trust that bringing all of me – whatever that is in this moment – is enough?”

By: Aimee Hansen

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Grace Lee: Treasurer & Head of Financial Planning and Analytics, S&P Global

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Grace Lee“I’m completely open to, and actually encourage, my team telling me when I’m wrong. I invite them to convince me that I’m wrong. I love that!” says Grace Lee. “I want us to have the best ideas, and that’s only possible when we are all contributing, debating and challenging each other.”

Lee speaks to ramping up the opportunity for responsibility, why motivating others makes the real difference in impact and why the ability to have a constructive relationship with healthy debates means you must be willing to challenge and be challenged.

Following The Call To Responsibility and Impact

“You do things for three years and then you look for a new challenge,” laughs Lee, recalling what the Head of HR at a previous firm said to her. She is motivated by massive strategic challenges with fast growth curves—and the desire to manage more responsibility while seeing the direct impact of her work.

Having planned to become a lawyer because of her love for formulating a thesis, supporting an argument and conducting a robust debate, Lee deferred law school to follow the investment banking hype out of Columbia University, and took an analyst position in Asia.

While in Asia, she discovered that she was far more drawn to the financial analytics and investor storytelling components of investment banking versus the work she partnered on with international corporate lawyers when on deals.

“The thing that I appreciated about certain aspects of investment banking is you can see the direct impact of your work. When working on an IPO of a company, if the competitive analysis and valuation work you’ve done is compelling, you should see that play out in the markets. Similarly with M&A, if investors deem that the merger makes strategic sense and the valuation is reasonable, you see that reflected in the price performance of those companies,” says Lee. “For me, seeing direct impact is so important.”

After three years in Asia, she moved back to the U.S. headquarters of the same investment bank. Subsequently, she went for a rewarding full-time Harvard MBA, which allowed her to focus on learning and traveling. She highly recommends a full-time MBA, rather than an EMBA, if you have accrued both the experience and finances to give yourself the opportunity.

After Harvard, Lee moved to the equity research group within the same investment bank. The firm had just acquired an asset management firm and she was able to join its financial institutions research team, where she was able to build upon her experiences in investment banking but now, formulate her own theses on which companies made most sense to buy vs. sell. After another few years, she thought “instead of analyzing these companies and the strategic direction that they go, I’d love to participate in the strategy making of a company and see how that transpires.”

She took a big leap to Voya Financial, helping to lead the IPO of the U.S. business for what was formerly ING, a top global financial powerhouse before the crisis.

“In my early 30’s, that was a really transformational experience. We were basically in a start-up environment, but for a massive company with leading businesses,” says Lee. “Before IPO-ing the company, we had to create the story of how the sum of the businesses made strategic sense together, and were far greater than the individual parts.”

When that role eventually evolved to maintenance, Lee moved onto a couple Executive Chief of Staff roles at other firms, before landing at S&P Global, which she came to be familiar with as her mentor from a prior firm had recently joined the company.

Merging Strategic and Analytical Outlook

“Coming from an investment banking and equity research background, we were trained to formulate both the high-level strategic picture, as well as be comfortable with the underlying analytics that support the strategy. For example, the investment case wouldn’t hold for a certain stock if the secular trends for the industry were all deteriorating. It’s valuable to be able to both see the big strategic picture and back that up with analytical horsepower,” says Lee.

Lee feels the ability to influence people is important and something she has honed, as is staying abreast of the macro-environment.

“Our job isn’t static, so to constantly keep educated on how the economy, markets and world is evolving is important,” observes Lee.

Inspiring Greatness In Others

Through both executive coaching and mentorship, Lee has realized that while striving for personal achievement has delivered her this far, the true opportunity for incremental growth and impact now lies in inspiring greatness from others.

One of her mentors shared that a mentor once advised that if you’re operating at 100% as a high achiever, it takes a lot of work to ramp yourself up to 110%. But if a whole team is operating at 70% of their performance potential and you are able to elevate the team to 80%, the incremental impact of that shift is much, much greater.

Lee has embraced this philosophy, particularly as in recent roles, her direct reports and management responsibilities have increased. While she still rolls up her sleeves and does her own modeling or formats her own PowerPoint presentations from time to time, she realized that her impact is no longer measured solely on her performance, but on the camaraderie and achievements of her broader team. “The joy I used to get seeing the price performance of a successful IPO I worked on, I now get watching my employees grow and succeed.  Some of the greatest compliments I have received recently were from my staff who have told me about the profound impact I have had on their professional development.”

More deeply embracing empathy and the softer skills is part of her current leadership approach, qualities which she admits wer not central to her personal achievement mindset.

“Earlier in my career, I focused on quick and seamless execution,” she reflects. “I didn’t much appreciate the softer skills, but now that I oversee a range of initiatives, it is impossible to be that strong individual contributor across all of these. I am also recognizing that what I need to do is empathize and elevate those I work and partner with, as collectively we can all achieve more than any single contributor,” says Lee.

She also notes that leaders she most admires, including executive management at her current company, demonstrate these skills and she feels inspired by them to always do her best.

Setting the Tone And Encouraging Women’s Voices

As a Korean-American woman, Lee is often a unique face as finance in corporate America tends to be white male-dominated. But growing up with a younger brother, all male cousins and having two sons, she isn’t necessarily out of her element.

“At my level you don’t see that many females, but that has not been a deterrent for me. My personality is a bit more direct, and I think that resonates more with my male colleagues,” says Lee. “That being said, the people I’m closest to and develop the closest relationships with are female. The higher you go, there’s fewer women but we really support each other.”

Naturally assertive herself, Lee will often encourage or even nudge her female reports to speak up. “In the reviews I give them, I tell them ‘I know you share good emails and insights with me, but I think everyone would benefit from you sharing those ideas.’”

In the virtual meeting room, she will take the initiative to volunteer other women to speak, mentioning that she knows her female coworker (by name) has ideas to share on this topic. She also IMs with managers and peers when topics come up, either to bounce off possible points or let a colleague know her input would be valued on this topic.

Being Willing to Challenge and Be Challenged

Lee emphasizes the value of being willing to challenge, as well as being willing to be challenged as a leader. “I have strong opinions, but I am the very first person—if you tell me why I’m wrong and give me data points— to say, ‘I’m wrong. Let’s shift.’”

Equally, she is unafraid to challenge her current boss, when she has a different perspective on how to approach an issue. “He’s a very logical man and he doesn’t want ‘yes people, because they add less value than people who will think strategically and then push back. I appreciate this about him and have tried to emulate this in my own management style.”

Lee thinks one of the best and important decisions she’s made is choosing a husband who is also an advisor and coach to her. She also appreciates that he always challenges her, and keeps it real and her grounded. She enjoys spending quality time with him, her six and nine year old sons and also watching Korean dramas.

By Aimee Hansen

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Lindsay Rosner, CFA: Principal at PGIM Fixed Income

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Lindsay Rosner “What’s guided me throughout my career is looking for people who are both happy and genuinely interested in what they’re doing,” says Lindsay Rosner about her career journey. “I want to see that personal happiness factor.”

As a fixed income investor, Rosner can talk about the credit markets all day long, but when it comes to professional development she speaks to investing in yourself. For her that means taking your seat at the table and not being afraid to bring your whole self to work.

During the pandemic, she’s seen more kids, dogs, and spouses than she ever imagined could enter the workplace, but those interactions have helped bring a real human element to business, and for Rosner that’s a step in the right direction.

Insisting on Personal Happiness Factor

While every job has its grunt work – she remembers taking breakfast orders as a Wall Street intern – Rosner looks for work that enlivens her and the people around her.

“I started on Wall Street right out of college. There were some unhappy people,” she recalls. “Fortunately, I worked with quite a few clients who were happy. So, I tried to find myself a job that would prove both professionally challenging and personally satisfying.”

Rosner loves constantly learning, addressing problems, finding solutions and being part of developing and implementing new products.

Recently, she’s animated by exchange traded funds (ETFs) in the fixed income space, allowing access to diversified investments with lower dollar amounts, as well as Environmental Social Governance (ESG) factors and increasingly ESG funds. While governance has always been fundamental to the bottom-up credit analysis conducted by Rosner and her PGIM Fixed Income colleagues, she enjoys being part of the broader ESG conversation which increasingly has shifted to include not only an emphasis on governance, but also social and environmental criteria.

ESG factors are more and more part of the conversations Rosner has with her institutional and retail clients, but also part of the conversations credit analysts are having with Chief Financial Officers and Treasurers because those factors can and do impact the cost of financing.

Investing in Your Value Equation

Early in her career, Rosner was positioned in the equities division of Lehman Brothers as the firm was going under. She found herself in a precarious position that she has not since forgotten and that has informed her decisions.

“Two years out of college on the trading floor means that you are only beginning to understand the markets and risks of positions. You’re deftly quick in putting together the morning meeting packets, have mastered ordering lunch for 40 people and frequently assist senior traders; However, you aren’t in the driver seat yet.” she states. “When Lehman was facing bankruptcy, I saw all the more senior people who I’d been assisting every day interviewing to get their lives figured out, and I quickly learned I needed more marketable skills and a wider network.”

As Barclays purchased Lehman Brothers, Rosner was never out of a job, but realizing she was on her own was a harrowing experience that taught her a valuable lesson: “I will never put myself in a position again where I don’t have the skills. If something happens totally out of your control, you have to be ready.”

Despite many views on the trading floor that a CFA designation was not necessary for a trading role, Rosner attained her CFA as a personal insurance policy and to fortify her credentials. Rosner has since chosen to keep her knowledge and skillset wide, rather than niche.

“Even within your organization, you have to think about the opportunities for specific roles or jobs through the lens of what is best for you,” she says. “For me, I’ve always chosen to pursue roles that are broader.”

Claiming Your Seat at The Table

Rosner emphasizes that you have to actively claim your seat at the table and occupy it with your whole self.

“If you want to be involved in the conversation, you don’t sit in the seat in the back of the conference room,” she asserts. “If there are not more seats, you should pull your chair up to the table and get involved to the appropriate degree.”

Rosner admits she has leaned towards over-preparation in claiming that seat.

“Diversity is not where I’d like it to be in the industry. That’s not only from the gender standpoint. It’s racial diversity as well. I care tremendously to see that change,” says Rosner. “With fewer senior women, I always over-prepare. If that comes across as confidence, I’ve made it look easy. But the fact is, I have a lot to prove.”

But she has also learned to embody her own skin fully.

“You get to a point in your life where you realize you have to be yourself. The path forward isn’t going to happen unless you are,” states Rosner. “That means bringing all of you to the table, not being ashamed to talk about having children, etc. There are times where I will question if the analogy I use, or story I tell, will resonate with the room, but you have to be yourself to be successful.”

Bringing Your Whole Self

“I speak loud. I use my hands. I’m pretty emotive. I have a lot of facial expressions. I bring a little bit of my personal life into my work life, whereas some draw a hard-line,” says Rosner. “I just think, this is the whole me. You need all of it.”

When starting out, she remembers taking training classes for client lunches. “There’s so much importance placed on professionalism, and some of it is so contrived,” she observes. “At the end of the day, these are people too who you’re working with.”

Rosner has long invited back her sense of self-deprecating humor to the office, as part of what helps build connection and relationships, and part of her own professionalism.

“You don’t connect with people when it’s all buttoned up. I love being a storyteller, telling a story and making people laugh,” she says. “We all have those relatable, funny moments and experiences and people will remember those interactions.”

“You’re not always going to connect by talking about a company’s balance sheet. Instead, be vulnerable. Being yourself allows others to be themselves,” she notes. “People value that you remember their kid was going to an important doctor’s appointment and ask what occurred. That’s being real.”

Building Your Village

“I think everybody needs a village. So much is building that village of men and/or women who support you, professionally or personally,” notes Rosner. “It’s all give and take. You have to help somebody in order to get it back.”

While she’s found you can learn from any partnership, Rosner has often benefited the most from the informal mentorships where “often you don’t realize it’s a mentorship until later,” even when the benefit might be tough love.

“Everyone can offer something. There are different times in your career where you’ll need different people so it’s important to keep those contacts,” she notes. “You may not need them for three years, but in a moment you realize that person is the perfect person to give advice on this issue, and you reach out to them.”

On the flip-side, Rosner notes that seeing people who she mentored do well is as rewarding and fulfilling as if it were her own success.

Working From Home

With a three year old and a twenty month old at home, Rosner has enjoyed and needed the flexibility of the remote workplace, whereas the previous expectation was full team presence on the trading floor. The pandemic has put into consideration whether that’s as critical as once believed.

Rosner notes that the remote workspace has brought more recognition and valuing of a perspective that women have always been able to offer.

“Women really have a pulse on what’s going on in the family and the balance sheet of basic consumers in the country,” says Rosner. “You can bring that kind of knowledge to bear, and it’s actually valuable in my work setting now.”


She’s also found the remote workplace means she can be available more easily to chat with others when it comes to mentoring and networking, and even more so with those outside of her organization.

Rosner loves spending time outdoors with her little ones and is enjoying the arrival of spring.

By Aimee Hansen

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Anna Thomas: Vice President, Private Banking Technology at Brown Brothers Harriman

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Anna Thomas“It’s all about people. Projects, systems, everything else goes away. You might even forget what you were executing back then,” says Anna Thomas, “but people connections can remain even after 25 years, and that is very fulfilling.”

Thomas speaks to managing work and family, the value of executional and relational strengths and how bias often feels like what goes unsaid.

Managing Career And Family

As a lover of mathematics entering into computer science, Thomas worked with a Professor to research computer simulations of ancient mathematical algorithms based on Indian Vedic scriptures when she worked in MIT India.

After coming to the states to attain her Masters in computer science and a few years of work in tech in the telecommunications industry, she moved to apply her skills within the financial services world. But a week into her job at J.P. Morgan, initially as a consultant, she discovered she was pregnant with her second son. The manager at that time was very supportive and continued to give her larger opportunities.

After a C-section, she planned to take a three-month maternity leave, but the firm was going through an intense merger, and they asked if she could return after six weeks. So even in 2003, Thomas found herself remote working on a desktop computer that had been sent to her home, with the close support of her mother with her new baby.

After moving up to VP in Barclays and changes of firm, Thomas took on a Global VP role at Experian in which she managed 200 technical professionals across 13 worldwide locations. She traveled for work, spending only one week each month at the home office in New York. Her husband agreed to take a job close to home to make it all work.

“I had a very supportive husband and very independent kids too,” she says. “When I think about it, I’m don’t even remember how we did it all. My sons were able to do everything other kids did (ice hockey, karate, baseball, soccer) and mom still had a demanding job.”

Preserving Weekends For the Family

Thomas said her secret was not only designating the weekends solely for family time and home, but also making sure she was “home every day” in another way.

“I still wanted them to have home cooked Indian meals and the heritage,” she recalls. “So I would block off Sunday and bulk cook different dinner dishes for the whole week to eat while I was away.”

“Also, I made personal days off and when I was here, I was committed, not on my Blackberry,” she recalls—whether volunteering to read at her son’s childcare or going on a field trip as a volunteer and getting to know her son’s friends and having them over on the weekend.

Skills of Success

Much like her Sunday approach or how she plans out family vacations, Thomas puts a lot of her business success and leadership capacity down to her strategic and executional strength.

“My passion is to plan, lead and execute,” she says. “You stay disciplined and that’s how you can actually get through whatever you need to do.

Simplification has been another asset to her leadership style.

“Being a woman, you come with a different perspective and empathy, a diverse way of looking at decisions,” says Thomas. “You sit around the table and sometimes there are very complex ways of thinking. It’s often easy for me to make it practical and lay out simple, practical solutions.

“Everything starts with the end in mind—everything has to be for the business. I am very client-centric. If I do something, is this going to be valuable for the client? And that’s how I start thinking about anything, any solution,” she says. “How do I get there? What are the issues in between? Everything else becomes the means to get there. How do I go in steps?”

When it comes to failing, Thomas recommends to be agile with failure too.

“I want to see what happens, and if I am going to fail, I want to fail fast, learn from my mistakes and get up and run again,” she says. “Everyone is going to fail at some point. Everyone is going to have their bad projects. Try to just do it in small cycles, learn fast, and then apply your learning and keep moving.”

No Matter the Work, Leadership is About People

Thomas emphasizes that even in a technical or product development role, what you are really working with is people. She feels parenting transfers to help, too.

At the end of the day, any technology, finance, or other field that you’re talking about, is ultimately about the people who do the work,” she says. “To understand people—have empathy with different perspectives, different personalities, and awareness of context—is critical to your success.”

Due to her background, Thomas offers a keen sensitivity to, and ability to navigate, cultural differences.

“I have the benefit of growing up in a different country and being exposed to different cultures, so that helps me to understand and work with cross-cultural teams,” says Thomas. “For example, in Asian culture, unless you actually reach out and ask, someone will often think it’s disrespectful to provide their view of things. I grew up in that culture, so I know and I can actually coax and ask someone to speak up. I can come from that angle.”

For her, the most nourishing part of work is the “people agenda” and mentoring.

“Something I’ve learned is that a mentor-mentee relationship is always a give-and-take. You are teaching and learning from everyone at the same time,” she says. “There’s no age or experiences that are little. There is a perspective of a person. I have the breadth because I managed a number of things, but down the road, you may have the depth of something I can rely on.”

Bias Can Be The Untold Factor

Thomas has often been the only woman in her technology-based team. One of the things she has experienced as an Indian woman in technology is that ethnic and gender bias is not always easy to point at, but often feels like the elusive thing going unstated.

“When you’re put up against a promotion, you’re in the top two, you have nine out of ten credentials and someone else only has seven out of ten and they get it, you wonder. I rarely have that explained, and I’ve had that experience more than once,” she says. “It’s an untold thing. If my performance exceeds all expectations every time, why not? It’s often unclear what the breaking criteria is.“

She has at times received vague feedback as to skills she would need for a role, as other women have spoke to. In a past firm, when a boss she’d worked with across two firms appointed her to a CTO role because of her change-agent capacity, she experienced a senior male peer visiting her office to attempt to intimidate her away from the role.

“I reported him and I kicked ass taking on that role,” she says. Not surprisingly, she has found that attempts at suppression only comes with visibility and achievements.

In any organization, Thomas looks for opportunities to constantly stay current and update her self and her technology proficiency. Growth is a critical objective for her and she has learned to move on from situations where that is thwarted.

Enjoying Home

Thomas is currently enjoying home life with her husband and her 15 year old son. She likes doing the small mundane things she didn’t always have time for all those traveling years, whether errands to the store or Netflix binges. She still keeps her Sunday meal preparation routine, and her 19 year old son requests his favorite Indian dishes from childhood when he visits from college.

By Aimee Hansen

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Nneka Orji: Chief Operating Officer, Morrinson Wealth Management, UK

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“So many outcomes are often the result of sometimes small decisions that aren’t constructively challenged with another perspective,” says Nneka Orji, who is willing to be that voice in the room.

Nneka speaks to speaking up when it’s uncomfortable, why mentoring is a key part of people management, and the value of knowing who you are.

From Consulting to COO

After acquiring a Masters of Engineering degree from Oxford, Nneka went into consulting in 2010, first with Accenture and then with Deloitte UK.

Born in India and having grown up across Nigeria, France, Trinidad and the UK, Nneka loved the variety of working with different people and cultures to address diverse problems at a challenging pace.

She earned frequent promotions across her ten year stint in management consulting. As she kept learning, the lifestyle of business travel suited her.

During her time at Deloitte UK, she did a secondment as Chief of Staff for the Chairman’s office. Considering him her first sponsor—a leader who cared, pushed and supported— Nneka gained insight into the mechanics of being in an influential position, running a large organization and interacting with leaders.

She joined Morrinson Wealth Management as Chief Operating Officer in 2019. Nneka highlights that it’s a misconception that she works only with people with great wealth. Often she’s working with clients who are trying to make the earnings they have work best for them.

“They’re trying to plan ahead and look at: How can I make the most of what I’m earning? How do I build a life that’s in line with what I want to deliver for my family, for my loved ones?” she says. “Giving them the financial education, awareness and savviness to manage their own finances and to live the lives they want is really fulfilling.”

Daring the Discomfort of Using Her Voice

While accustomed from school and engineering to being in male-dominated environments and often the only black person in the room, let alone black female, Nneka says that the playing field of financial services has still compelled her to thicken her skin, become more assertive and use her voice.

Several times, she has braved speaking up in a tough moment—both in support of fairness for others and for herself.

Nneka recalls one compelling example from her consulting days when she was in a meeting focused on the consideration of candidates for promotion. When she heard more senior colleagues vaguely describe why a certain female manager was not ready for promotion—such as from a “gut feel” or because of “cultural fit”—she challenged her seniors to be specific, direct and transparent.

“I said, ‘Why is it gut feel? Why do you think she’s not ready? Have you actually given her feedback?’” says Nneka, recalling they hadn’t. “I said, ‘It’s not fair on that individual to give these vague responses. We need to be really clear. She wants to progress. If there’s concern, it’s only right that we tell her, rather than effectively leading her on.”

“I was definitely challenging beyond the point they were comfortable, and I walked out of the room knowing I had pushed,” she recalls. “It’s not that I had anything to gain personally, but I felt that it’s only fair to everyone to have someone to speak for them, on their behalf. If I was in her situation, who would stand up for me?”

While she could have deferred to her senior colleagues, Nneka chose a clear conscience. Nneka reflects the discomfort was likely because she was touching on affinity bias or another elephant in the room that may have been unconscious, but so often proliferates the status quo.

“These kind of decisions affect people’s careers, successes and progressions, how much they’ll get paid and how much they can save and invest and so on,” states Nneka.

Speaking up for herself, Nneka has stood her ground amidst men twenty years her senior, only to earn their respect from her work. She also once directly expressed disappointment in a senior partner’s response and leadership when after three years of working for him, she approached him to talk an issue with one very difficult female client and his immediate suggestion was she must have done something wrong to invite the conflict.

“I feel it’s important to make sure it’s clear what you will stand or what you are willing to accept, in terms of basic respect,” says Nneka.

Supporting Others To See Their Potential

“I haven’t had formal mentors to be very honest,” says Nneka, though she has leaders to bounce perspectives off of. “But you can put together the strong points that you see in different leaders and create almost your own fictional mentor in that way.”

She’s inspired to emulate the leaders whom she looked forward to working with—who pushed her in the best way and with whom she came to learn more about herself and her abilities.

“I do see mentoring as a core part of managing, because you can manage as a task manager and the tasks will get done,” Nneka notes. “But what I’m trying to do is to be an inspiring leader. I try to instil a sense of raising aspirations; maybe a team member started their career thinking this was your limit, but actually they have so much more potential, if they want to do more.”

Nneka values communication and saying or hearing it like it is, so nobody suffers in silence while their needs go unknown.

When Nneka took on managing others, she didn’t realize how rewarding it would be. “When a team member comes and says I’ve developed so much over the past year because of your influence, it gives me a strong sense of fulfillment.

Nneka has been a formal mentor for over a decade, with the Social Mobility Foundation, working with graduate mentees with a socially or economically challenged background, and also with the Cherie Blair Foundation For Women, working with entrepreneurial women in countries like India or Kenya or Israel.

These experiences have enriched her so much, she also considers them “reverse mentoring”.

“I like to see how different people think and how different people’s life experiences have shaped who they are, and how that informs their thinking,” says Nneka. “There’s something about learning about someone else’s perspective on life, and being open to finding out something that you might not have known. That’s the thing I love the most.”

Knowing Who You Are

Nneka feels her support system, both her family and working with people who have her best interests at heart and gave her a platform, has supported her fast growth.

She recommends being “intentional about choosing who you work with”—seeking out people who accept you for yourself and push you in a good way while having your back.

She feels that early on, her parents helped her to know who she was, down to pointing out the reality that she would often be unique in the room—as a black female in the schools she was in, and in her working life, especially as she moves up in leadership.

“Some people would say you shouldn’t necessarily point out or emphasize the difference,” reflects Nneka, “but I think it was so helpful in terms of me knowing who I was and who I am, and being true to myself. Of course I wasn’t always as confident in this respect and I’ve grown a lot since, but being comfortable in your own skin, in terms of your own history and culture, is critical. As long as you know who you are, you know your motivations, your boundaries and you make decisions in line with these.”

Nneka has worked some long hours, and suspects that subconsciously she has been motivated to overwork as a proactive measure against casual suggestions of gender or ethnic minority initiatives playing into her promotions, a frustrating undermining of accomplishment that black women are more likely to be subjected to.

“Sometimes you don’t have to work as hard as you do to get the outcome that you want,” she has come to realize. “I think that’s probably a lesson I am still learning.”

Nneka loves to travel, workout, dance and listen to both crime podcasts and inspiring podcasts during long walks in the sunshine—such as Oprah Super Soul Sunday, HBR Women At Work, The Wallet, The Tim Ferriss Show.

She’s inspired by “people who find their purpose and commit to positively influencing communities – small or large”.

By Aimee Hansen

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Grace J. Lee: Litigation Partner, Shearman & Sterling LLP

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Grace J Lee“As I was progressing within the BigLaw structure, the most important thing was not defining my success by the way that some tend to view it,” says Grace Lee. “I resisted my initial tendency to buy into the notion that if I didn’t make partner, that was somehow failure, or spoke to my skillset or my value.”

Lee shares on defining your own success, aligning with your personal priorities, and challenging the stereotypes of who you need to be in the role.

From Literature to Law

Lee contemplated a path in comparative literature, but was hesitant to commit to a life in academia. She also had been considering law school and discovered that law fulfilled her interest in causes for justice and allowed her to apply her literature skillsets.

“As a comparative literature major, I did a lot of exercises in explicating texts—you take a passage from a literary work, consider why the author chose the words they did, and where it fits in the broader context of the work,” says Lee. “In legal work, I was interested in interpreting words—words in statutes and court decisions. And making arguments about how certain language should be interpreted, based on word choices and the context, to support a thesis.”

Now in her 15th year at Shearman & Sterling (S&S) in New York and D.C., she is an industry expert—working with financial institutions and corporations on securities and antitrust litigation, commercial litigation, and regulatory investigations.

Defining Her Own Success

“Don’t buy into how other people define success. If you have a view of where you want to be in five or ten years, stay true to that,” says Lee, “as opposed to feeling like you need to be or do something that might be completely divorced from what makes you professionally and personally satisfied.”

While attaining partnership was a meaningful step in her career, it does not define her success, and she points out that many smart, successful people do not opt into or attain partnership.

“I think success is a very personal thing. For me, being able to have the different spaces of my life come together is success,“ she notes. “I’m able to have a career that I find fulfilling and kids who are fairly well adjusted. My kids see that what I do is not at their expense, and that my professional space means something to me.”

Aligning With Your Personal Priorities

For her personally, becoming a parent changed and clarified her priorities in a way that she never anticipated.

“I had a vision of the type of parent I wanted to be, and the type of lawyer I wanted to be,” says Lee. “I also realized that if I couldn’t be the parent that I wanted to be, then I wasn’t going to be happy even if I succeeded as a lawyer, and that became my guiding principle.”

To make this work, Lee did her best to fulfill her visions of both roles. She prioritized coming home to put her children to bed every night, and then working a second shift, often late into the night. “What that meant was that what could have been a work day that ended at 9 or 10 pm if I worked through the evening in the office became a work day that often ended well past midnight, because I took the time to go home, spend a little time with them, and put them to bed.” But for Lee, the personal sense of having given something the best that she could under the circumstances, was what was the most important.

“In order for me to not be resentful of the fact that I have a demanding job but instead grow in it, I had to make sure that I wouldn’t look back 20 years from then and feel that I had sacrificed my values as a parent to be a lawyer. I gave my best to both roles so that, many years from now, I hopefully wouldn’t feel that I had pursued one at the expense of the other and question those choices.”

Knowing her choice is her own, she emphasizes that your own priority is never wrong, whatever it is—it’s about aligning your life with your self-discerned priority.

“The trouble is when you’re trying to do something that doesn’t align with your values just because you feel like you have to do it,” says Lee. “I think that’s where the discord and the struggles really materialize.”

Lee finds it helpful to introduce the two parts of her life to each other. “After a long week, the physical office building was not the place I would have chosen to go to on a weekend. But it was important for my kids to be able to visualize me at work during the day, where I spend more time than I do with them.” So on some weekends, Lee brought her kids into the office where they would walk through the halls, sit at her desk and pretend that they were working. Lee also naturally incorporates her job as a parent in her conversations at work.

“Some people—especially women at least as I have observed—shy away from talking about their kids at work because they think they will be taken as less committed. I want people to understand that I have another demanding job that I absolutely love. It’s important for me to feel that my work is a safe space where I can talk about my kids, and the challenges and the demands of parenthood instead of pretending that I don’t have those issues.”

That openness has also paved the way for real meaningful discussions with mentors who have helped her navigate the intensity of BigLaw while striking the balance she personally seeks.

“So many great partners who have been mentors and friends over the years really helped me as I was trying to figure out my priorities and my definition of success. They didn’t just tell me what to do to get to the next step in BigLaw. They asked me what I wanted in life and in my career and shared their personal stories. Those discussions could get very granular—like, ‘What are your stressors? Let’s identify what they are, and see if it’s solvable.’” Even when the stressor was outside of Lee’s control, being able to identify it helped more than just feeling stressed.

Her mentors have also often become her sponsors, advocating for her and helping her to advance in the organization and with clients.

Growing Through The Process

“Take on as much as you think you can reasonably handle. And then stretch that a little. See how that works. And if that works, stretch it a little more. Do the very best to not turn down work,” says Lee, who focuses on the notion of building her personal value rather than billing hours.

“My brand and my value come down to my experience. The level of experience and breadth of different types of cases you get because you’re working more and stretching a little is huge. That experience becomes a big part of your value as a lawyer.”

For Lee, it’s not a particular case or moment that has been rewarding for her, but the relationships and overall growth that come with the process of working with her teams and clients to solve issues. “It’s the journey from Point A to Point B, from Point B to Point C, and so on, and then seeing the growth from Point A to Point X. It’s not any single moment, but it’s many blocks of moments of where I was and where I am now.”

Being Yourself, Not an Expectation

Though Lee works with many women, the industry and partnership ring are more male-dominated, so she values that her own trajectory helped to set an important precedent.

“It’s natural to look for someone you can identify with in the role you want to be in. I hope that I might be able to be that person for some.”

Just as Lee rejects the notion of adopting anyone else’s idea of success, she also challenges the notion that you have to be anyone else’s version of a lawyer.

Especially as she became more senior, Lee confronted expectations about how a successful lawyer looks and acts—such as the stereotype of litigators being loud and argumentative—but those expectations didn’t always match the ways that Lee speaks or acts.  Lee believes that you don’t have to fundamentally change who you are, or embody certain mannerisms every day, to be an effective advocate. “Having people from different backgrounds and with different tendencies in the leadership roles helps dismantle that and challenge that notion.”

Playing By Ear

Lee played the violin as a child, and as a parent follows the Suzuki Method with her children, which teaches children to pick up music through exposure and repetition before actually reading music, akin to how they pick up their mother tongue before they learn how to read.

With the method being based upon a parent-teacher-child triangle, Saturdays and even family summer holidays have often been focused around music classes and Suzuki camp. “It’s a refreshing change of pace. In my kids’ violin instructions, we are much less concerned about how quickly they can master something than we are at how perfectly they can learn it. An entire month can be spent dedicated to making sure they can play one musical phrase correctly.” Lee also loves how music brings her family together, including playing violin duets with her children.

Rounding back to literature, Lee is looking forward to reading a book she picked up some months ago at a local bookstore. “It was a ‘blind date’ book where the book is wrapped and you don’t know what it is, but it instead lists other books of similar sentiments. I loved the idea of it and all of the books that were listed on the wrapper, so picked it up with a lot of anticipation.”

By Aimee Hansen

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Mary Inman: Partner and Head of International Whistleblower Practice, Constantine Cannon LLP

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Mary Inman“It shows you how powerful a single voice is in this world,” says Mary Inman, who specializes in representing whistleblowers under the U.S. and Canadian whistleblower reward programs. “I think that’s our love as humans for the David versus Goliath story. We still want David to prevail, or at least be heard.”

With an innate penchant for fairness and justice from childhood, Inman says her family could have predicted she’d become a lawyer.

She entered law with the “amorphous notion” of wanting to do good in the world and affect positive social change. What was not clear, even coming out of law school, was what kind of lawyer she would be.

An Unexpected Expertise

After a couple of years clerking for federal judges in Maine and New Hampshire and one year inside Big Law at a large commercial law firm, a headhunter extended her a novel opportunity—join the new San Francisco office of a boutique firm specializing in representing whistleblowers.

Inman went from a passing familiarity with the subject matter to spending 17 years honing her craft with Phillips & Cohen, before joining Constantine Cannon in 2015, now splitting her time between its San Francisco and London offices.

“At the beginning of my career, there were only a handful of whistleblower reward laws. I’ve been incredibly fortunate to have chosen a field that has grown exponentially. The success of the whistleblower tool in aiding law enforcement efforts has spawned more and more whistleblower reward programs,” revels Inman. “My practice allows me to aid individual whistleblower clients, while at the same time helping them expose industry-wide frauds—so it’s the best of both worlds.”

With 24 years of specialization, Inman is an author, regular speaker and recognized expert in the area of U.S. and international whistleblower reward laws, with their focus on frauds in financial services, healthcare, automotive safety and government procurement as well as tax evasion, bribery of government officials and money laundering.

Encouraging Whistleblowers to Speak Out

Though whistleblowers are often ostracized, Inman asserts they play a critical role in maintaining the healthy ecosystem of an organization.

“Companies have an autoimmune response to whistleblowers, seeking to expel them from their system,” notes Inman. “However, research confirms my anecdotal experience that they’re actually the good bacteria that keeps a company healthy. Because they have the temerity to speak up and alert you to problems before they metastasize into a public relations nightmare, whistleblowers should be viewed by companies for what they really are — forward indicators of risk and an invaluable part of a company’s risk management system.”

She compares it to interpersonal relationships: “Only someone close to you, who really cares about you, will tell you the hard truths.”

Most countries’ laws focus on the employment law aspects of whistleblowing — whistleblower protection from retaliation and reprisal after they have spoken up, allowing whistleblowers to challenge unlawful retaliatory dismissal, demotion or blacklisting.

U.S. and Canadian law differs in that it also connects whistleblowers with the law enforcement and regulatory agencies who can act on their information and redress the harm. Agencies like the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), Ontario Securities Commission (OSC), Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC), Internal Revenue Service (IRS), Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) and Department of Transportation (DOT) roll out the welcome mat for whistleblowers. Each agency has a designated Whistleblower Office specially designed to receive and vet whistleblower tips. Credible tips are sent to the agencies’ enforcement attorneys who frequently use the whistleblowers’ information to launch an investigation. If the agency goes on to impose a fine or otherwise sanction the wrongdoer, the whistleblower is entitled to a financial reward in an amount that is a guaranteed percentage of the fine levied or sanction imposed (e.g., the typical award range is 10 to 30 percent).

“What a whistleblower actually wants is someone to do something about the wrongdoing she’s uncovered,” says Inman of her clients. “The North American reward programs ensure that the whistleblower’s concern will be taken seriously and dealt with by the regulatory authority. This active solicitation and empowerment of whistleblowers, using supports like mandatory financial awards and designated whistleblower offices, has put agencies like the SEC on the map with their successful deployment of whistleblower information to impose over $2 billion in fines on companies violating the U.S. securities laws and Foreign Corrupt Practices Act. Other agencies have taken notice and reward programs have been spreading rapidly both within the U.S. and across the globe.”

The Courage of the Individual Voice

Inman notes that our childhood conditioning creates internal conflict—we were all encouraged to speak up when we saw something wrong and yet we were discouraged from “snitching.”

“Everyone has had a whistleblower moment—a time when you spoke a hard truth, then something negative happened to you, so it can be difficult to figure out what to do when you’re in the heat of that moment,” she says. “Whistleblowers are those people who can’t abide by it, and actually turn off the personal warning signals that stop so many of us—such as the practical need to keep our jobs, a refusal to risk what we’ve worked and trained for and not disrupting our family lives.”

By the time her clients come to her—whether for a financial, healthcare or manufacturing fraud, or other corruption—they have usually had their voices silenced. Inman finds it rewarding to welcome those who have been marginalized, to let them know they’re not alone and to validate their reality in a moment when they’ve often been gaslighted and pushed to doubt themselves.

“There’s something really profound about taking someone who’s ‘in extremis’ and hopefully putting them into a place where they feel empowered again,” she says.

Inman sees it as her responsibility to go beyond being a legal advocate and to help her clients step back and consider what is at stake, not only for the individual whistleblower but for their families as well. With that wider consideration, they can undertake their personal risk/reward calculus and figure out what, if any, action is right for them.

“Once you’ve blown the whistle, you can’t unring that bell,” she remarks. “It’s a life-altering event.”

“Very few companies want to hire known whistleblowers,” notes Inman, who has recently campaigned to challenge companies to walk their talk. “If you truly believe in speak up and it’s not just lip service, then hire a former whistleblower. What says more to your employees that you value speak up than that you have purposefully hired someone who did?”

The Power of the Collective Voice

“Even though you’re the lowest in the pecking order, trust your instincts; you’re often in the best position to know that something’s wrong,” she tells fresh-eyed business students when she guest lectures in business ethics classes.

From the recent Ukraine whistleblower on the Trump Administration to the Me Too movement, Inman has characterized this as a time of “unprecedented speak out”—citing research that says people are speaking out in record numbers since the Covid-19 pandemic began.

She thinks that technology has played a role, with the development of anonymous reporting tools and sites such as WikiLeaks and GlobaLeaks fueling a brand of leaktivism that has allowed crowdsourced journalism models like those employed by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) to use this data to fuel impactful investigations like the Panama Papers, Luanda Leaks, and FinCEN files, to name a few. She also cites speculation that the rise of the remote workplace leaves workers feeling less connected and for new hires leaves little opportunity for the casual indoctrination about turning a blind eye that can be subtly communicated in the office. She also thinks there’s collective frustration that “the top 1% has become increasingly untouchable.”

“Speaking out is an act of rebellion, of people saying ‘no more’,” says Inman. “It gives me hope and restores my faith that the voices of individual citizen watchdogs can be heard and continue to serve as our first and last line of defense against fraud and corruption.”

Inspiration From Cross-Disciplines

“Don’t just stay in your lane and look at thought leaders in your field,” says Inman. “Adopt a multi-disciplinary approach. Teachings far flung from the legal world have been the most valuable to my career.”

As her husband is a filmmaker, tech and film are two peripheral realms from which Inman derives creative catalysis.

As an example, Inman was inspired by the Callisto app (technology to combat sexual assault)—created after the documentary film “The Hunting Ground,” which focused on the epidemic of campus date rape.

If a student does not want to file a report, the app allows them to confidentially record an assault incident within the Callisto database for possible future reference, in a form of information escrow. But the app also facilitates collective action, allowing the student to be contacted again to reconsider speaking up collectively in the event others subsequently make reports about the same assailant.

Inman was inspired to consider the possibilities of this approach for whistleblowing.

“You’ll take inspiration from the strangest places,” says Inman. “Don’t expect it in your industry. Expect it in the unexpected places.”

Rise to Those Opportunities

“My most defining life lesson is to accept every challenge and say ‘yes’,” says Inman, whose whistleblower practice pushes her out of the risk-aversion common to lawyers. “I’m inspired by my clients. Every day, their moral strength and bravery pushes me to step up my game.”

In the “scrappy creative environment” of the entrepreneurial, contingency-fee plaintiff side of law, Inman has learned to “fake it until you make it.”

“Just take the opportunity and watch yourself rise to the occasion. You’ll surprise yourself,” says Inman. “A lot of people are paralyzed because they’re too worried about making mistakes. Embrace your mistakes. If you’re making mistakes, you’re doing something right, you’re taking risks and trying on something new. That’s where the growth happens.”

One of the risks Inman took was to advocate for taking on a “small case” involving an odious practice in what her instincts told her was a corrupt company. It later turned out to expose an industry-wide fraud and was a very rich lesson in validating her intuition.

“What I learned is that when a place is that corrupt, that’s not the only bad thing that they’re doing. As we investigate, that corruption is going to expand,” says Inman. “I love the psychology of what makes people decide to cross that ethical line.”

Your Voice Matters Because You’re A Woman

Inman accredits her grandmother, a county clerk of court, as her original mentor. She used to take her to court and whisper, ‘We need more women lawyers.’

Reflecting back on University of Pennsylvania Law School, Inman now realizes what a powerful mentor Professor Lani Guinier was for her (now at Harvard Law School)—because she was a passionate woman that deeply inspired Inman to throw herself into her vocation.

“At a formative phase like law school, it’s so fundamental that you have a woman who inspires you,” says Inman. “I don’t think at the time I assigned as much significance to it as I do now.”

Since then, most of Inman’s mentors and champions have been men with daughters. She is passionate about mentoring, including speaking to her sons’ classmates about being a woman in law.

When it comes to empowering her own voice, Inman takes license from the research that public companies with women on their boards are more effective than those who don’t.

“That gave me the empirical data that my voice is valuable precisely because I may have a different perspective. I feel more compelled to speak out because I’m often the only woman in the room and I often offer a very different perspective,” states Inman. “It makes intuitive sense that we’re better when we’re challenged and have different points of view. So being a woman has encouraged me to speak up and share my mind, especially in male-dominated situations.”

Her sons are 19 and 14, and she’s been taking up surfing lately to share time with them. Inman’s other passion is yoga, and the alchemical practice of sitting with discomfort and staying present.

By Aimee Hansen

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Alison Hoover: Partner, Banking Transformation Leader and Advisory Diversity & Inclusion Leader, PwC U.S.

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Alison Hoover“It took a long time to shake imposter syndrome. I’ve shifted my perspective now to believe that being a woman is an asset,” says Alison (Alie) Hoover. “It’s not just this sideline thing. It’s as much part of who I am, the same thing as being smart or outspoken.”

Hoover talks about going part-time after motherhood, growing her leadership confidence and how she is approaching diversity by championing the upside.

Braving the Part-Time Conversation

Four years into consulting, Hoover went on for her MBA at Kellogg School of Management. She joined Diamond Technology Partners, the hot tech boutique, after and continued on with PwC, when Diamond was acquired in 2010, where she is currently the banking transformation leader.

But her career almost ended abruptly after she had her first baby. Hoover returned to the office, after 12 weeks of leave, on a Monday morning in 2002. By Wednesday at 5pm, she had quit her job.

“I literally threw all of my stuff in the trash, all the notebooks and articles and old project folders.” And she recalls saying, “There’s no way I can do this. I have this baby. It’s impossible.”

After moving to Washington, D.C. to be near family, she decided on her daughter’s first birthday that she did want to work, but part-time. She decided to brave the conversation where she was a “known commodity.”

Hoover phoned a Diamond partner in Chicago and proposed to be their person on the ground in D.C., to help build the firm’s newly started public sector practice, at three days a week. Successful, she ended up being the first to pilot a part-time work arrangement.

For seven years, Hoover worked part-time, upgrading to four days a week once she became a director because “I felt like at three days a week, I could be an individual contributor. I didn’t feel like I could effectively manage other people.”

While still in her part-time stint, she had a second daughter and became a Partner at PwC.

“Honestly, if I hadn’t had the opportunity to work part-time, I don’t think I would be in consulting at all anymore,” she reflects. “Maybe I made partner a year or two later. I’ll never know, but the flip-side is I wouldn’t be here at all. I wouldn’t be sitting in a leadership position.”

Asking, Receiving Support and Valuing Yourself

“You have to ask for what you need and what you want,” Hoover notes. “No one’s going to be mind reading that you need it and give it to you. Sometimes, you have to lay these things out.”

Hoover not only had to ask for part-time, she also had to train her teammates to consider when she was available and not. It also helped that her husband is a huge supporter of her and has been an active co-parent, and she notes that having people around her—a husband, parents, colleagues, partners—that believed in her, maybe even more than she believed in herself, mattered.

Her bosses even reflected to her that she could work at 80% and still get as much done as others, so she didn’t need to sweat the clock.

When she made partner, Hoover remembers a PwC leader advised her: “’You are a partner now. Work when you want to work. Do the work that you need to do, and don’t worry about the rest.’”

Hoover had to get past the hesitation of asking for support from others by reminding herself of the value she added, and that giving and receiving support were more than reciprocal.

“When you’re giving it, it’s what you’re supposed to do, it’s your job,” she comments. “When you’re asking for it, somehow it feels like a favor. I think that’s how we’re wired.”

Stepping Up To a Leadership Mindset

Prior to becoming a partner, Hoover remembers wondering aloud where the senior women were to support her. Someone in the room called out: “You’re a director, you’re pretty senior now. Who are you turning around and reaching to?”

It was a teachable moment.

“I realized that I had been so self-focused, wondering where the help was above me, that I hadn’t considered that someone might actually be looking to me to help them,” admits Hoover. “There’s the little factor of that voice, ‘Who am I to help anybody else?’”

Hoover realized that even if you still have your own learning curves or insecurities, others are taken their cues from you as a leader. You have accrued guidance to give to others.

“What you realize, more and more, and especially as a partner, is that while you might feel like the same person in your own head,” she says, “your positional authority and tenure creates an obligation, and there is something valuable you have to share.”

When appointed to lead the banking transformation team, Hoover was tasked with leading more senior and more experienced partners. Initially, she stepped tentatively into the role, until a boss pulled her aside and reiterated she had been chosen for a reason.

“Sometimes we all need that kick. It gave me more confidence,” she recalls. “He was giving me permission, in fact a mandate, to lead these other partners.”

“So much of consulting is built on expertise and knowing the most about a given topic, but there’s so much about leadership that is not just about knowledge but behaviors and other skills,” Hoover notes. “That was a mind shift for me, that I didn’t have to know everything about everything to lead other people.”

She prides herself on her integrity of word, ability to get things done and adeptness in leveraging her network for other people’s benefits.

“I think one of my biggest and best skills is being that connector who is bringing things together, connecting ideas and people, to help them advance whatever their agenda may be,” she says.

Affirming A Culture of Inclusion

“As one of the fewer women leaders, I feel a great responsibility to be present and accessible and visible,” says Hoover, noting it’s a personal choice, as often the responsibility for showing up for diversity falls too much on the shoulders of the under-represented.

Hoover is also PwC’s U.S. Advisory Diversity & Inclusion leader, and she falls into stride when talking on D&I. Having significantly less than 50% women in the partnership ring (PwC transparently publishes their diversity report) is one priority.

“My focus is twofold. There’s the very public, very visible things like representation. Who are we hiring? Who are we promoting? Who are leaders?” says Hoover. “But I think so much of those outputs is the result of the small, everyday decisions that the majority, for the most part, are making. Who gets staffed on a project? Who gets called on in a meeting? Who makes the dinner reservations? Who talks first? Who gets the chair at the head of the table? Whose e-mail are you responding to first?”

Hoover threads that conversation across conversations and decisions—suspecting those “everyday nudges help to tweak behaviors that over time add up to massive impact. “

“It’s often much more who are you helping versus who are you hurting, because I think 99% of the time, people are not intentionally discriminating,” she pinpoints. “How do we harness the good intentions of our leaders to create a more inclusive culture on a regular basis, and change all of the things that people unconsciously do that are not increasing inclusion? A lot of what I’m very focused on is subtler culture dynamics. Like, what does it feel like to go to work every day? How much do you believe in your ability to succeed and to make an impact?”

She indicates that her approach to that conversation is to positively reinforce the inclusive-habits that leads to organizational wins—more “carrot” than “stick”.

“How do we tell those stories where people are actually doing better or winning because of their inclusive behavior? Every time we get that note from a client impressed at the number of women present and speaking in the session,” she says, “I want to celebrate the successes, advancements, achievements and accomplishments.”

As well as accountability metrics, Hoover emphasizes the importance of top leadership in driving cultural change.

“I think everyone’s looking for that silver bullet around implementation, and cultural change is always a challenge, regardless of what element of culture you’re trying to change,” observes Hoover. “But those key decisions—tone at the top, who are your leaders, who and what you’re celebrating, transparency—go a long way.”

Outside of work, Hoover loves to cook homemade meals, spend time with her 15 and 18 year old daughters, keep up with politics and enjoy the outdoors as much as she possibly can.

By Aimee Hansen

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Leah Meehan: Enterprise Data Governance, Measurement and Reporting, State Street

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Leah Meehan“The most important thing is to listen to your gut. Whatever it is, the voice in your head, there’s something that just drives you,” says Leah Meehan. “I have zero regrets in life because I’ve made every decision I had to make with the best information I had at the time.”

Meehan also talks about translating between worlds, the most important time you’ll ever invest in, diversifying your personal board of directors and creating balance through a fake commute.

Listening To Your Gut

With a master’s degree in criminal justice from Boston University, Meehan’s path threw a curveball. After about five years of working as a Correctional Program Officer, Meehan knew that civil service was not for her.

She did not resonate with the annual cycle of indiscriminate pay raises for which performance was irrelevant. She was one of four women out of a class of 84, and often had to remind herself that she had earned her place there as a woman, just like everyone. But what leaving really came down to was the undeniable knowing in her gut and heart.

“I started talking about leaving, and people thought it was crazy because the retirement package is so good and the stability and pay are good,” she recalls. “But it was one of those things in my gut that I knew I had to do, no matter, and I’m so glad I did.”

Once she first crossed to the private sector with Fidelity Investments, Meehan was involved in employee background investigations and from there she moved to analyzing behaviors related to money laundering. From there, she eventually moved towards her current focus on data governance, now with State Street.

Translating Between Two Worlds

With data and analytics becoming an even bigger part of our lives, Meehan’s work is moving and expanding, faster than ever.

She loves the ability to reach through the hard evidence of the data to prove or disprove something that the client perceives, sometimes opening up a whole area of insight they had not even considered.

“I’m a visual person and when you visualize data, it’s amazing how that can get across to people in different ways and in different languages. It doesn’t matter if you’re an introvert, an extrovert, a data person or not,” Meehan says. “When you see a visualization you know what that means—there is an art to that.”

To craft a compelling story for her clients with the data, she has to be able to listen closely and bridge the numbers with what is important to them.

“If you’re not gearing your data towards your audience, it can be totally lost on them, or falsely interpreted,” says Meehan. “You have to understand what the client is doing, what’s important to them, what their end goals are, what their process is, how they view success or failure and then you need to interpret that in the data.

“I think my job over the last 15 years has developed to be an interpreter between the technical and the business side,” she continues. “That middle section is where I live.”

Investing In Fostering Connection

Meehan feels that the most valuable mentor-mentee relationships she has developed over the years are those that came together informally, through meeting casually and recognizing a connection.

“I’ve also been lucky throughout my career to have several people sponsor me, and I mean they would go into a room and fight for me—a job, a raise, a promotion, taking on a new project,” she says. ”I’ve been fortunate to have that, and I’ve also worked hard at fostering those relationships.”

Meehan recognizes that with work to do and often pending deadlines, dropping everything to go for a half hour coffee can sometimes feel like time not well spent.

“But to me, it’s the most important time,” she iterates. “If you make those personal connections with people, it will help you down the road, personally and professionally.”

Even now, she finds nothing more rewarding as a manager than watching her team members grow and advance to dreams they have aspired to, no matter where it might take them.

“I encourage that, and to think I had a small part in their progress makes me happy,” reflects Meehan. “When I see my team doing well, spread out over the years at various firms doing what they love, and still coming back to me to let me know how they are or to ask for references, that’s what makes me the most proud.”

Diversifying Her Board of Directors

Meehan is a big believer in cultivating your own personal board of directors—the people that you can call on as advisors from a personal and professional standpoint. Recently, she’s been focusing on bringing in a greater diversity of perspectives to bounce ideas off of.

“I realized the people I go to often are very similar to me, so when I go to them for advice, they’re probably going to give me what I want to hear,” she observes. “So I have one person on my board who has been a friend for a long time, and he tells me ‘how it is’. He does not hold anything back, to the point it sometimes upsets me, but he’s helping me to move ahead; I need more of those people, to diversify my board.”

Creating Balance in Covid Times

Certainly the remote working office has impacted office dynamics, including going from wearing a suit everyday to yoga pants. But the stronger impact for Meehan has been on her work-life balance.

“In the beginning of Covid, we thought we were the lucky ones because all of our friends with kids were really struggling with homeschooling,” says Meehan, speaking for her husband and herself. “But then we went through a period where we worked more online, and our work-life balance got thrown completely off.”

Meehan realized that her friends with children at least had some consistent schedule of making dinner, putting kids to bed. Her husband and her did not have the external pulls on attention, so could work into the night and barely make dinner.

“We had to take a step back and create some boundaries,” says Meehan.

In her remote home office in Boston, she has now created a “fake commute” at both the beginning and end of her workday to mimic the transition of her twenty minute walk to work—she goes on a walk and may do yoga or meditation. She blocks off an hour in the middle of the day as well for herself, and has dinner with her husband.

Together they share a passion for travel, have summited Mount Kilimanjaro a few years back and are bound for Antarctica in 2023.

By Aimee Hansen

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