By Gigi DeVault (Munich)

A well-stocked kitchen cabinet is more than a reassuring comfort; it can get you through some hard times. If you ask Colette Taylor, Managing Director and Chief Operating Officer of Americas Institutional at Russell Investments and founding president of Russell’s Women’s Network, about her “kitchen cabinet,” she will not talk to you about shelves lined with orderly packages of staples and foodstuffs. Referring instead to Harvard professor Bill George‘s cabinet concept, she will tell you about a cabinet of advisors on whom she can lean for support in difficult times—times like those from which executives across the globe are emerging and through which they are leading their firms. In 2009, Taylor’s own personal board of directors, made up of coworkers, professional coaches, family members and friends, created a platform on which she could strip away distractions, get back to basics, and focus on relationships.

Getting back to basics can mean becoming leaner as an organization. This can be bad news for a program that receives corporate support, such as mentorship programs. As Taylor says, “A formal mentoring program can get lost because it can be considered less of a priority. But mentoring is always going on whether there is a formal program or not; people continue to reach out.” To get the most benefit from a mentoring program, she might remind you to look into your own kitchen cabinet. “One of the things that I have learned is that mentoring can have two facets—one for developing specific skill sets focused on the ‘professional,’ and one for work/life balance. Sometimes those are two different mentors because they are such different conversations. There is tremendous value in hearing from a diverse set of perspectives. This can uncover something you have never thought about—an idea from left field.” And that maverick perspective may be just what is needed. “I’ve been both a mentor and a mentee. I enjoy being on both sides; when you are a mentor, you are getting mentored at the same time. If you are really open to the mentoring relationship—really listening— it can change you.”

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By Elizabeth Harrin (London)

Barbara-Ann King is not your stereotypical stockbroker. In May this year she will be jumping out of a plane to raise money for Breakthrough Breast Cancer. “I am a great believer in giving things a try, because if it does not work out you can try something else,” she says, “and I believe that leadership, or the best leaders, are those who are willing to go outside their comfort zone.”

King took another leap over ten years ago, when she moved from a legal and management consultancy career to alternative investment management. It turned out to be a shrewd move, as she has risen through the financial services ranks to become Head of Investments at Barclays Stockbrokers. However, it wasn’t a structured step on her career journey. “To be honest there was no master plan, it just happened,” she explains. “I was working on a project that involved private equity and got head hunted by a bank for a role that I had no interest in, fed this back and was then asked to consider another role in the start up of a ‘new’ department of alternative investments – the industry was not even called that at the time, it was called ‘special funds’.”

King liked the team at Citigroup and sees herself as a natural entrepreneur and ‘builder’ so she gave the role at serious consideration – and took it. “It sounded fun so I took a leap of faith,” she says. “It turned into a multi billion revenue business and with it I moved to New York and took a global senior management role.”

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By Pamela Weinsaft (New York City)

“I decided to become a lawyer when I was ten. We went on a family trip to Washington, D.C. and visited the United States Supreme Court,” said Sarah Lamar, a partner at Hunter, Maclean, Exley & Dunn, P.C.. “The tour guide must have done a really good job,” Lamar joked, adding, “Although it was a simplistic idea, I just followed it.”

Lamar grew up in the suburbs of New Haven, Connecticut. After obtaining her Bachelors from Yale, Lamar says she was “done with New England weather” and headed south. She attended Emory University Law School in Georgia, and spent the summer between her second and third year of law school in the DC office of Morgan Lewis Bockius, a well-known labor and employment law firm.

That experience gave her “a really broad and interesting view on that area of the law” so when she was deciding what law path to take, she “checked off what things I did not like in the law: tax, corporate law, bankruptcy…employment law remained fascinating because it is the study of human relationships and how they can go right and wrong. Also,” Lamar said, “it is very people-oriented and I am a ‘people person.’ It gives me the chance to get to know the leadership in different industries and what makes people tick. I’ve always been interested in the social issues surrounding employment law like harassment and discrimination and civil rights.”

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By Pamela Weinsaft (New York City)

Renee Pendleton had a steady babysitting job in college. That wouldn’t necessarily distinguish her from many others her age. But how many babysitters parlay advice from their employer into a successful career path?

“I had wanted to be a controller in a small company but, he convinced me to try public accounting first because, if I didn’t like it, I could always go to a private company. But it would be difficult to go into public accounting if I did it the other way.” She followed the advice with the intention to “get in, stay for two years and get out,” but decided to stay at the end of that period to learn a bit more. “Now, here I am 22 years later, still in public accounting,” she said, laughing, “And I blame that guy to this day.”

Raised in Portsmouth, Virginia, Pendleton started off majoring in psychology at Old Dominion University. She intended to learn to help people with their problems; however, after one semester of psychology, “I thought, these people are out of their minds. I just don’t get it!”

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By Pamela Weinsaft (New York City)

Dr. Sherry Cooper, Executive Vice-President and Global Economic Strategist of BMO Financial Group, was destined for the world of finance. An entrepreneur from an early age, Dr. Cooper said, “When I was 12, I spent the summer babysitting. But I didn’t just watch one child. I would gather all the children from up and down the street and take them into my backyard and watch them. At $50 per child, I made quite a bit of money that summer.” One of her role models was her great aunt, who was a “hotshot in mortgage finance” long before it was even a possibility for most women.

But despite the early attraction to finance, it took some time before she embraced it as a career path. Dr. Cooper marveled, “I always assumed that I would just get married and be a homemaker. Until I got to Goucher College, it never occurred to me that I would have a career for the rest of my life.”

She graduated first in her class with a dual degree in economics and math, and then continued on to the University of Pittsburgh for a Ph.D. in economics. Although Dr. Cooper wasn’t interested in academia, she still didn’t see any future in a financial institution. “I grew up in a time when there were very few women in banking or finance so it never occurred to me as a possibility.”

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