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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Beverly Jo Slaughter: Managing Counsel, Wells Fargo Advisors

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“It doesn’t have to be weighty. We don’t have to solve the problems of the world all of the time, but we do need to take the effort to have conversations that begin to reach out,” says Beverly Jo Slaughter, managing counsel at Wells Fargo Advisors.

“I find that when we have an open dialogue, we learn that we are more alike than we are different. It gives us the opportunity to look at the world through somebody else’s eyes—and that’s huge, just huge.”

Match Your Work To Natural Talents

Slaughter’s dream to be a lawyer in a major corporation was so strong that she decided to return to college to earn her juris doctorate degree from Fordham University School of Law during her early forties, just as her kids were beginning to leave the nest.

“I remembered distinctly walking into orientation and looking at people who were not too much older than my own children,” she recalls of being an “alternative student.”

Today, Slaughter heads a team of lawyers and paralegals in the financial services industry, and often reflects on the notion of “never working a day in her life.”

“A big part of job satisfaction is determining what talents and skills you possess naturally,” she observes, “and then how you can fashion that into a career.”

“I like written and oral advocacy. I like advising and advocating for a position whether it’s through, litigation or advising,” Slaughter says. “I enjoy setting out a position and deciding what benefits, advantages and downsides there are, too. I believe that you need to have a nuanced approach.”

While the love of advocacy was present as a paralegal and other positions she held prior to law school, only at Wells Fargo Advisors has Slaughter found the level and breadth of intellectual challenge she craved.

“It’s not only advocacy but also getting your arms around a new problem or an issue and coming to understand it and master it,” she says. “That’s fascinating to me.”

Slaughter is a proponent of heading off conflict before it arises, by being an even better advisor than an advocate.

“I always wanted to be a litigator, but, to me, the best litigator in the world is an advisor,” she discerns. “The other part of my job is to help us avoid litigation and to use those resources to be a better company and to better serve our clients.”

Shape Your Role For Your Fulfillment

“Although I’ve had the same job title since 2008, I have not had the same job,” notes Slaughter. “I’ve been blessed to have the capability to shape my roles in a way that has satisfied me and helped me grow.”

She thrives on getting involved in opportunities where she learns about a new subject matter. One example is taking on a case through which she cultivated an expertise in litigation practices when working with tribal law and tribal court, and developed an understanding of some of the specific issues around financial affairs for tribal people.

“It was my way of going from 0 to 50,” reflects Slaughter. “But it was also my way of enriching my job and continuing to offer better value to the company.”

“I’m a person who believes that you have a great deal of influence and power when it comes to making your job fulfilling for yourself and for increasing your value,” she iterates.

Be A Resource and Advocate For Others

Taking the opportunity to help others realize their worth and navigate their path is her favorite part of leading a team—such as appointing adept paralegals to project management, which showcases the skills they’ve mastered that are very applicable on the business side.

“When you see somebody’s face light up because they found a new skill that they’re good at,” she says, “and they begin to realize the tremendous opportunities that are available to them at a company like Wells Fargo Advisors—that’s a kind of satisfaction like no other to me.”

Slaughter recalls an intriguing piece of advice she received from a mentor decades ago: you will get very far in the world if you are nice.

“I came later to understand what she meant,” says Slaughter. “If you are authentic with people —and interested in their good, in their issues, in the things that are difficult for them—often times you can develop a marvelous work relationship, and you become a go-to person.”

She has found the willingness to be that person of counsel has helped her become someone others come to with issues in confidence and to seek ideas for resolution. It has also positioned her team at the table from the start, having a voice as policies and projects are being crafted, not after decisions are made.

“Quite frankly, that’s who you want to be,” says Slaughter. “You want to be the go-to person who is known as the individual who will get it done and who appreciates the contingencies of the business.”

Be Coachable And Enjoy Your Successes

Along with hard work and helping others, she feels another critical element of success is being coachable and celebrating your value.

“You have to reach out and ask people for help in identifying places you can perhaps get better,” Slaughter notes, “and it takes a great deal of bravery to admit that you can be wrong or less than perfect.”

But being genuinely open to your growth means also being self-aware of your worth and value, and standing in it.

“The biggest thing I think I took away from mentors and coaches over the years was to learn to give a value to myself,” Slaughter reflects. “External recognition is a wonderful thing, but we all have to learn to give recognition to ourselves, to recognize when we have done well, to celebrate our value and feel confident that we bring it to the table.”

She recommends pausing to appreciate what you do well and acknowledge successes because that will carry you through the challenges.

“I think humor is extraordinarily important,” she adds. “The ability to laugh, and sometimes at one’s self, is crucial. Often times that can be a bonding agent. There’s a lot of life that’s really joyful and to be celebrated.”

Brave the Diversity Conversation

Slaughter’s most fulfilling experience came while speaking during a series of company presentations around diversity, equity and inclusion.

In that moment, she crystallized the realization that diversity is difficult, but as a black woman in corporate law, she has been successfully bridging the difficult conversation for her entire career— reaching out to people who appear different than her, or have different backgrounds, in order to build those relationships.

“Diversity, equity and inclusion to me is often times the willingness to recognize your initial communication may not be perfect,” says Slaughter. “But in the end, most people will respond to you in an effort to continue the dialogue.”

“That was a really freeing moment for me,” she says, having been widely thanked by colleagues for reflecting that back.

Slaughter loves reading, crossword puzzles and is passionate about literacy for children and immigrants— the gateway to self-education so you can dream and even overcome disadvantage and adversity.

Growing up in Harlem and passionate about travel, a crowning moment for Slaughter was standing with her husband in front of the pyramids in Egypt and reveling at how much dreams, even when they seem out of reach, can be yours.

Wells Fargo Advisors is a trade name used by Wells Fargo Clearing Services, LLC, Member SIPC, a registered broker-dealer and non-bank affiliate of Wells Fargo & Company.

By Aimee Hansen

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Mariella Greco: Gender and International Development Advisor

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Mariella Greco “In difficult moments in the development world, I draw on what I learned from the intensity of the trading room,” says Mariella Greco, a global leader in gender, development and finance. “The motivators are different, but those same skills make me a better leader in the not-for-profit sector.”

Heeding the Call

Having majored in international relations in university, Greco was magnetized to international development.

But after a short assignment at Canada’s Permanent Mission to the UN in 1990, she put her call to international service on hold and accepted a domestic position with the Royal Bank of Canada back in Windsor, Ontario, her hometown, staying near her mother during her parent’s difficult divorce.

When family matters settled, she left Windsor to pivot back to international affairs, but in banking. She succeeded in a tough dealer training program that she landed as the only woman on the Canada desk. Nicknamed “Stella”—and with the occasional “what-a-guy” pat on the back—she learned to hold her own as one of very few women dealers in the bank’s main trading room.

But Greco still felt the pull to international development and began volunteering for Plan International in Canada.

When she began at the Royal Bank, she promised herself (in writing, along with other life goals she recorded in a book) that she would revisit her path in time: within 5 years, she would either try international development or stay the course in finance.

“My head was like don’t be stupid,” recalls Greco, “but my heart was still feeling this call.”

Giving up a hard-won position in the global headquarters of Canada’s biggest bank for an NGO job with a 50% pay cut was both risky and daunting.

“So for a year I went home everyday and asked myself, ’Is this a day where I feel I want to go, stay or am I neutral?’ I literally logged it,” she explains. “Like the markets, my feelings about taking the leap had highs and lows. I tried to find balance with a daily risk-reward analysis about what I wanted in life. At the end of the year, I added it all up, and bottom line—there were more days where my gut said GO.”

Greco heeded the math and left for a “planned” two year break from banking that became two decades working in international development, while living in five countries, traveling to 50 countries and gaining proficiency in several languages, before returning to Canada with her family in 2018.

Transferable Leadership Lessons

Calm Under Fire

On the trading floor, Greco learned that as important as being a good winner was, so was being a good loser.

The EVP who interviewed her for the dealer job asked her, “Can you speak your mind to your boss, and give your opinion knowing his is different, even if he is yelling because of market volatility? Can you speak up then, too?” She said yes, and she did because it was the expectation.

“They wanted to know if you can stand the heat and carry on, even when stress is overwhelming and you’re losing money,” says Greco. “Loyalty to the team meant sharing differing opinions, and it also meant closing ranks when final decisions were taken.”

This insight and learning to stand the heat helped her to be a strong leader in many challenging situations, and to do so while also caring for her team’s wellbeing (physical, mental and socio-emotional), such as in humanitarian crises.

“The most rewarding experiences are sometimes the hardest ones,” says Greco, such as the Category 5 hurricane response she led in Nicaragua (earning her one of her official Medals of Honor).

Also, ensuring child safeguarding and gender equality were part of each and every Plan staff member’s performance objectives was rewarding too, because it positively impacted both the quality of their work and the personal lives of her team.

Speaking Truth to Power and Holding Midterm Vision

Honed in the trading room, several bosses have told Greco that her strong voice is her “superpower”.

When pregnant with her first daughter, Greco learned that expatriate women in her organization didn’t receive maternity leave, even as she was unexpectedly promoted shortly after giving birth. As her contract was subject to U.S. labor laws, she was limited to six weeks of “disability leave” after birth, because maternity leave might be interpreted as discriminatory against men, creating liability risk for the organization.

“I was shocked that giving birth was deemed a disability in an organization dedicated to children and gender,” shares Greco.

Not only did that seem wrong, but also that it was only 6 weeks of leave, especially when compared to the year that mothers may take off in Canada.

Greco began a five year internal campaign that gave birth to a maternity leave policy that was more coherent with the organization’s mandate. In doing so, she helped remove barriers for younger women aspiring to both leadership and motherhood.

“Some things you can take a short-term view on, but for other things you need to play the long game, even if you can’t see around the corner,” Greco reflects. “Be willing to also sow seeds and nurture change for positive impacts that may only blossom after you are long gone.”

Greco values learning to speak truth to power early in life. Reflecting on a “Me Too” incident she had early in her career, Greco recalls the unconditional support of her male bosses when she reported being harassed by a senior executive, who was also way over their heads.

“I had stood my ground with him and let my bosses know the next day, but I also asked them to refrain from intervening unless he bothered me again,” remembers Greco. “They were so outraged that instead of doing what I asked, they made it known to their leadership that they had my back.”

When the “Me Too” movement gained prominence, she realized how rare their reactions were. So she wrote her ex-bosses and asked them to sit their daughters down and tell them that story “so they know how stand-up their dads were and so they know the standard of support they should expect if it happens to them.”

“That whole experience (good and bad),” reflects Greco, “helped me better support others who faced this.”

Multidirectional Career Moves

Greco made yet another non-traditional career move in 2019, pivoting towards government this time.

“People too often think their path must be up, up, up, like that’s the only direction worth going” she observes. “Had I been hostage to that mentality, I would have missed an amazing journey. I feel the same way about the journey ahead”.

She likens working in government to learning about a whole new world: “It is a bit like being paid to attend a university program, continuing to work and add value, but influencing for change more subtly.”

Empowering Girls to Lead

Greco credits her successes—whether as a trainee or as a Country Director—to both fortune and her willingness to try.

In Plan, Greco was steadfast in her efforts to advance gender equality and promote the leadership potential of girls. Ahead of Plan’s #GirlsTakeover on International Day of the Girl on October 11th, Paraguayan colleagues warned that national leaders would never cede their positions to girls, given entrenched gender attitudes and the political environment.

Greco decided she would try, anyway, at least with one Minister. When she phoned him, he quickly agreed. So she called another, and then another, planning to stop when one Minister said ‘no’. None did.

That year, Paraguay’s Cabinet, Senate, Congress, Supreme Court and even the Central Bank were led by girls. It catalyzed the President to create a Council of Girl Minsters, inspired Paraguayan girls to dream bigger dreams and it helped chip away at arthritic gender stereotypes. The next year, ministers were asking her to be involved.

“Without that risk tolerance built into me, whether inherent or strengthened in the trading room, I probably wouldn’t have asked” says Greco. “Don’t squander your opportunities out of fear of a ‘no’. Try. ”

Which Organizations Will Dare?

Greco discusses gender and COVID-19 impacts with her daughters, even the 140,000 U.S. job losses in December 2020, in which women netted 156,000 losses vs. the 16,000 net jobs gained among men.

Women fill so many jobs deemed “essential”—yet are disproportionately bearing the economic brunt of the pandemic, whether in job losses, being underpaid or exiting the workforce for unpaid family responsibilities. Paying wages commensurate with essential work and implementing measures that close the wage gap could slow the loss of women from the labor force, but Greco feels the solution space of gender impacts needs more innovate thinking for systemic change.

“Incremental change is safe but too slow,” observes Greco. “Taking some risks to accelerate long term gains is long overdue.”

Basics like paid maternity leave and flexible arrangements for family responsibilities (the brunt of which continue to fall to women) are critical, but additional measures that fast-track women back onto their career should help them regain momentum too.

When faced with women exiting the workforce (be it a result of the pandemic, family responsibilities or wage gap disincentives), do employers just lament and accept it, or do they step up and flex what’s possible to keep their talent? Can organizational playbooks and rules historically written by men be modernized through a more balanced lens?

Greco looks to organizations with deep pockets to pilot such changes that matter, lean into some risks and help pave the way for others.

The True Pipeline

After witnessing so many empowered girls inspiringly take to leadership, and the impact on their personal sense of agency, Greco reframes the pipeline when it comes to future change.

“Younger people are more powerful, engaging and influential early on,” she says. “It’s not only about a line of new and energetic ‘replacement’ candidates to fulfill status quo positions, but rather an idea stream with young and unencumbered perspectives that will evolve our vision and how we do things.”

“Avoid the typical training that ‘indoctrinates’ young talent in how things are done, because if we listen better, we just might realize that they have the most forward looking solutions,” she advises. “Consider stewarding and facilitating emerging talent and ideas. That’s what’s going to tip it, for those willing to ask—to listen to differing opinions and to courageously take calculated risks.”

By Aimee Hansen

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Renad Younes: Regional Managing Partner for the Middle East, M&A and Project Development, Shearman & Sterling LLP

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Renad Younes“If you look at the Shearman & Sterling office in the Middle East, it’s a truly diverse office which represents the region in which we are operating,” testifies Renad Younes, who joined the firm over two years ago.

From Abu Dhabi, Younes speaks to how she prioritizes relationships in her advisory work, as a female leader in the Middle East with pride in diversity and inclusion.

Relocating Back to The Middle East

After growing up in Palestine, Younes moved to London to complete her higher education at the London School of Economics in 2003. She stayed in London for ten more years—working, getting married and having her first child.

The London scene magnetized her to the work of large law firms, and she quickly found that international M&A and projects work was closely related to her keen interests—navigating cross-border transactions, collaborating with diverse people and working with different laws, transactions and involved parties to meet their needs.

In 2013, Younes made the move to Abu Dhabi to be closer to her clients in the region. Relocating also meant that she was closer to family.

Younes continued to practice law as she also began to raise her family. Able to balance her working life and family without putting her career on pause —Younes made partner in 2014.

“Being a successful career woman doesn’t mean sacrificing your family life,” says Younes, who had her second child in 2016. “You have to put your mind to it and be organized – but it’s not impossible to have a successful career just because you’re a woman or a parent.”

Younes reflects on diversity at work: “inclusivity at work, while it’s perceived as a gender issue, is actually much broader than that. It’s about creating an environment which is supportive of all people so that it’s not impossible to balance your work and personal life. That is what I have been fortunate enough to experience.

“At Shearman & Sterling, our commitment and focus around diversity and inclusion remains non-negotiable,” she continues. “I think the ongoing pandemic has shown just how important it is that our workplaces are inclusive of the responsibilities we all have, regardless of gender. Whether you’re a parent or caring for parents, or simply have other interests and responsibilities, we all have demands outside of work.”

Mediating Within Complex Relationships

“I work with commercial enterprise clients and government organizations who typically have a social responsibility emphasis,” Younes notes. “I am quite aware that the image attached to M&A is that you’re only focused on business, but it’s just not the case in our day-to-day job.”

She observes that the clients that work with her at Shearman & Sterling are highly involved in the community aspect and awareness of what they bring to where their business is operating, which animates her as well.

“Helping and empowering the community through developing their natural resources for example is fulfilling for me as a lawyer,” says Younes, who mediates between governments, government owned companies, international companies and communities—supporting communities, governments and corporations towards what they aspire to achieve.

“I think the technical legal aspect is very interesting,” she says, “but the human interactions, working with different cultures and political structures and governments, draws me the most to what I do.”

Staying Close to Your Team and Your Clients

Younes reflects on her role as a more senior lawyer and a member of the firm’s executive management: “As I become more senior, it’s about having a successful team that enables us to execute complex transactions and deliver whilst creating the right environment for those coming through,” she notes. “It’s about the importance of our team, both collectively and as individuals.”

Younes knows that managing a successful team is about “creating and implementing a meritocracy- not an autocracy in which there is one voice and people follow. Nor is it a democracy in which nothing can be achieved without an equal weight to every single opinion—but a meritocracy that encourages different perspectives and explores the various opinions of all team members in proportion to their merits.

“It is ultimately what makes us successful,” she continues. “Having a team that shares the same values and views is wonderful, but you also want people that challenge and push each other so that you encourage creativity. Great teams do both equally well.”

As to the clients, for Younes, being an M&A lawyer is not just working through the next deal, but about nurturing a long-term relationship and becoming an advisor to her clients.

“I think of myself as a member of the client’s team. One of my aspirations as a lawyer is not to be perceived as an external supplier of services, but to become a trusted advisor,” she says. “It’s a personal relationship—clients want to call the person they trust will give them the right advice that is tailored for them.”

What has surprised her is that she never stops being fascinated and compelled by the work. Each year, she sets out with more momentum and aspirations, even as the work demands have become more difficult with seniority.

“It doesn’t matter how many deals you have done, how much work you have on, there is something new everyday and something new that you learn, whether from clients, transactions, team members at Shearman or in other firms, including opposing counsel,” she says. “You have to stay on your toes and continue to be relevant. That’s great, as it keeps the job fascinating and interesting.”

Being in the Company of Senior Women Leaders

“The perception is that M&A and projects is a male-dominated field, but that has not always been my experience. Many of our clients are diverse and we have many senior very successful female clients,” says Younes. “The diversity progress that I have witnessed in the market in the past few years has been very encouraging.”

Younes is especially proud of her Shearman & Sterling team, and how well they have maintained team cohesion over the last year while delivering results to clients.

“I’ve only been with Shearman & Sterling for two years, but it’s amazing how diverse the firm is – the number of female partners, female associates, different cultures and diverse perspectives. There’s a genuine attention and commitment to diversity and we have implemented a number of initiatives that are aimed to increasing diversity and inclusion in the firm,” she observes.

“It’s not just talking about it, it’s actual implementation, and not just because of the stats,” testifies Younes. “We genuinely believe it’s important to have different perspectives in the meeting room.”

Looking Towards Our Possibilities

Most of Younes’ spare time is spent with her family.

While it’s a big adjustment and many are struggling, she thinks the flexibility realized by the remote office will hopefully serve to empower women and indeed everyone juggling work and personal commitments.

Looking at the future, she is excited about our human capacity for innovation and the possibility of communities being catalyzed to come together to create new solutions amidst the collective challenges in the world right now.

By Aimee Hansen

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Thought Leader: Silke Muenster, Chief Diversity Officer, Phillip Morris International

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Silke MuensterDiversity can drive innovation and innovation can drive diversity. This is a sentiment shared by Silke Muenster, Chief Diversity Officer at Phillip Morris International (PMI), a self-described ‘German mathematician’ but an interesting, committed and fierce change leader who goes way beyond any formula when she speaks passionately about diversity.

“Diversity is numbers, but inclusion is what makes diverse teams work.” She continues, “It is the culture that makes inclusion work and then innovation can happen. Innovation is fundamental to our vision at PMI of creating a smoke-free future. There are one billion smokers in the world, and our company is undertaking a huge task to make smoking cigarettes a thing of the past. Imagine the diversity that lies within our adult customer base so this is something we want to represent also inside PMI.”

Silke recounts how at university and in a large portion of her career, she was always surrounded by men from school classes to the senior management meetings she attended in Germany. Her career journey started at Coca-Cola where she stayed for twelve years and she joined PMI in 2011 as director, Market and Consumer Research, and then was appointed Vice President, Market Research in 2012.

In March 2020, she became PMI’s first Chief Diversity Officer (CDO) starting on the ‘first day of lockdown’ in Switzerland, in a year that would lead most people to reflect on the role of companies in advancing equity and furthering inclusion and diversity in society, and the future of work. Silke was working on this exact topic of “smart work” when COVID-19 hit, and sees real opportunity for everyone to have flexibility, now that the theory that remote work is not only possible, but possible for the vast majority of employees in many companies, has been truly road tested.

When she took the role of CDO, she felt that it was an excellent time to start. She noticed that it was clear that people wanted to talk about the topic and wanted to reflect on their priorities due to pandemic-induced changes of circumstances and the happenings in the world at large that occurred in 2020 – notably, the extension of the Black Lives Matter movement and the growing awareness that came to the forefront of social justice issues.

Diversity And Inclusion

“There has been a tendency for people to think that Diversity and Inclusion is about everyone being nice to each other, but D&I is about creating room for people to speak up so that everyone’s voice is heard.”

Silke believes that it is crucial for people in the company to have the right discussions but that the organization needed to first create the psychological safety to start these conversations. She believes that not everyone has to be an expert, but rather a willing participant, to engage in the conversation about how they would like to see the world in the future.

“Discussions can be had, and conflict can also occur, but ultimately those discussions can be therefore very productive.”

Silke believes that inclusion has benefits for everyone and on her list of things to ensure she and other senior leaders do, is to find a way to empower every employee to enter into the discussion about how to improve inclusion and advance our diversity –to ultimately better our organization and our business— no matter who they are, where they come from, what they look like, who they love, their ability or any other dimension of their identity.

“Different views need to be heard. I&D is something for everyone to participate in. Everyone has to drive this agenda as everyone will benefit. It starts from the top as it needs total commitment that it is a valued task to undertake.”

When she reveals what she is working on, she mentions that this is where she does delight in the numbers, as she has seen the needle move from 29% of women in management in 2014 go to 37% at the end of 2020—with the number of women on PMI’s Senior Management Team doubling from 8 percent to 16 percent in the space of 12 months (since January 2020 until year-end).

“We make gender diversity a company-wide goal and part of leaders’ efforts, and we make sure internal talent processes align. We also have worked hard to create Employee Resource Groups and have updated policies, such as most recently ensuring that we have a more inclusive minimum global parental leave principles which include men and women, and ensuring everyone is covered regardless of sexual orientation. I am also proud to say we have just signed The Valuable 500 and are committed to bring disability onto our 2021 agenda in a much bigger way.”

The Hard Conversations

“Diversity work is a journey and I personally have done a serious amount of reading to learn what I didn’t know and was interested in growing my understanding in this domain. To do this work, to take the journey, you have to start somewhere and have discussions, perhaps hard conversations that include talking about how the playing field is not level. Senior managers have to show vulnerability, which runs deep of course.”

Silke speaks of her thoughts around mentoring and sponsorship freely, revealing she is a very passionate mentor herself and believes that mentoring is the best way to start a sponsor relationship as the chemistry can truly evolve. She feels strongly that pilot programs are the best way to see if certain programmatic efforts work specifically for PMI so that the success of the program can be evaluated and then implemented widely for optimal success.

“It is not about ‘fixing’ women; rather, it is important to recognize that there are specific barriers that women face when it comes to career advancement and we want to make sure to create the right solution that actually helps.”

Silke reiterates her desire for specificity and not a broad approach and believes that she is now a coaching convert also.

“If you had of asked me twenty years ago about coaching, I would have not been convinced, but I have seen how well this can work, especially when there are specific challenges identified, then coaching can really help women and men alike.”

Hope for the Future

Silke hopes that diversity and inclusion stops being such a hard topic in the future but understands that much like quitting smoking cigarettes, that change comes from new behaviors and habits often underpinned by educational facts, incentives via good policies and shifting of cultural norms for everyone in the society.

“If I was to hope for one thing to happen, it would be that everyone gets fully involved so that they can feel and see the joy of belonging for themselves and others; that they can feel the joy of being seen and heard when the speak up at PMI; and that they find benefits in an inclusive environment no matter who they are.”

by Nicki Gilmour, CEO and Founder, Evolved People (theglasshammer.com)

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Julie Gottshall: Partner and Chair, Employment Litigation and Counseling Practice, Katten

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Julie Gottshall

When she was first starting out, Katten’s Julie Gottshall would not have predicted she would spend nearly her entire legal career working for a single large law firm. In a profession with many options, and an era that often rewards job changes, Gottshall believed she would join different employers and maybe even take some time off the career fast track. Instead, Gottshall found a position that enabled her to grow and balance, and decided to stick with it.

Sometimes, says Gottshall, the best opportunity is the one you already have.

Finding Her Niche

Gottshall’s career has been a steady climb. After graduating from George Washington University Law School, she decided that moving to Chicago would be her “great life adventure,” despite the fact that she had no obvious connection to the city. She initially eschewed the largest law firms, choosing to start her legal career at a midsize firm that she hoped would provide a more appealing lifestyle. But when she was a fourth-year associate, two partners with whom she worked closely joined Katten. She moved with them to continue her career focus on employment counseling and litigation, a practice she has solidly established and now leads.

Gottshall felt drawn to employment law for the human element of the practice, and the opportunity to keep her corporate clients out of trouble but defend them if they nonetheless found themselves facing a lawsuit. At Katten, Gottshall handles a broad spectrum of employment issues, including worker mobility (e.g., non-compete implementation and enforcement); employee separations and reductions in force; worker classification and wage/ hour compliance; handbook and policy implementation; workplace investigations; and discrimination and harassment prevention. She has litigated in numerous state and federal courts at both the trial and appellate level, and before all manner of government agencies. She also acts as an impartial third-party arbitrator on the Employment Panel of the American Arbitration Association, where she has decided cases involving breach of contract; discrimination, retaliation and harassment issues; and other workplace matters.

Gottshall likes to quip that one of her most impressive professional achievements is to fly deftly under the radar, since she works hard to keep her clients on track and out of the spotlight.  Always one to look for practical solutions, she describes herself as a counselor first, an attorney second, and a litigator last. Still, she knows her way around a courtroom. She is particularly proud of a whistleblower case she argued and won before the Illinois Supreme Court – a victory that was the culmination of 11 years of work. After she prevailed in the lower court only to see the decision overturned on appeal, she sought certiorari, becoming one of seven out of 237 petitions the Illinois Supreme Court agreed to hear that session. The high court ruled unanimously in her client’s favor, marking a noteworthy victory for her client and a favorable precedent for other employers.

Gottshall finds employment law is a particularly exciting space right now, given the current remote work environment during the pandemic that has prompted employers to reimagine the workplace and what it will look like in both the near and distant future, as well as presented challenges regarding workplace safety, sick leave and furloughs and layoffs.

Mastering the Balancing Act

While the legal field continues to evolve in its support for personal life choices, Gottshall finds that women still face a constant challenge in finding the right balance. “We are called upon to take on so many roles— some that we need to do and some that we want to do,” says Gottshall. “It’s up to each person to decide how to allocate her time and navigate how much is spent on family and other pursuits, versus how much is poured into a career.”

Still, Gottshall has found Katten conducive to personal as well as professional growth. As she notes, a long tenure at a single firm allows you to build credibility and good will. Your colleagues know your work ethic and contributions, which better positions you to set boundaries and request flexibility. She encourages the use of maternity and paternity leave and other options such as Katten’s sabbatical program, designed to help promote work-life balance. “I applaud women who lean in, but also take advantage of the programs offered, especially today as companies realize they have to adapt to keep their top performers,” Gottshall said. Like most women, Gottshall tries to multi-task when she can. In fact, she once leveraged her maternity leave to take a mediation course to further her career. “Women should determine the best course for them, their families and careers.”

Gottshall appreciates opportunities like the Katten Women’s Leadership Forum that can support women attorneys’ desire to create bonds with other women and fulfill the responsibility to be a mentor.

Part of her balance also comes from using her skills in her community. For example, she has been a school board member for eight years, which she sees as an important commitment. “It’s a gratifying way to leverage my professional knowledge while giving back,” she says.

With one daughter in college and another in her senior year of high school, Gottshall and her husband are looking forward to determining what it means to be “empty nesters.” For now, they enjoy paddle sports and indulge in their passion for travel, especially visiting national parks.

“You have to be mindful of your priorities,” she said, “and look for the joy in everyday pursuits so you don’t lose sight of perspective in all the things life offers you.”

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