by Pamela Weinsaft (New York City)

Lilly Chung, a Partner in Deloitte LLC’s San Jose office, loves a challenge. When she and her family emigrated from Taiwan to the United States when she was in her early teens, she barely spoke English. Yet, as the oldest of three girls in her family, she became the de facto representative of her family. “We came here when I was 14 and I had to be the spokesperson for the family. (My parents didn’t really speak English that well. They never really became part of society, never had a formal English education.) I did the family tax returns and all other documentation [among other things]. I also always worked while I studied; even in high school I had a job to support the family. It taught me not only to really appreciate what I have today but also that even when you have a hard life you can still be happy, feel very loved and have a lot of hope for the future.”

Shy and unsure of herself and her place in US society during her high school years, she focused her attention on excelling at school, which efforts resulted full scholarships to USC/UCLA for her in electrical engineering. “From a personal perspective, I was very shy and lacked confidence [in high school] because I lacked a social network that comes when you grow up together with classmates in the US – I never fit in. But that’s why the way for me to excel was to study very hard and be a good student.” Read more

by Pamela Weinsaft (New York City)

“In my opinion, the number one barrier to success for women in public accounting is the lack of visible role models. If a woman does not see other women succeeding, it is very difficult to aspire to partnership and senior leadership within a male dominated firm,” said Jacqueline Akerblom, National Managing Partner for Women’s Initiatives and Programs, Audit Partner and International Business Center Director at Grant Thornton LLP.

Akerblom started her career 25 years ago at the Los Angeles office of one of the Big 8 accounting firms. She was recruited to Grant Thornton while working as a manager for that competitor, and quickly moved up the ranks, progressing first to senior manager, then partner. As a new partner, she was asked to go to London to head up Grant Thornton’s US transaction group for Europe, where she stayed for four years.

Upon her return to the US in 1999, she was tapped to head up transaction advisory services for the West Coast. She soon became the national managing partner for international client services and was appointed to the Board of Governors for Grant Thornton International in 2000.

Read more

“I’m a firm believer that when you have this job you have the privilege and responsibility of influence – influence to every constituent, to your associates, to your community, influence to your consumer. And that influence can be translated into passion in the work. It gets you through all the tough parts of the job – the extraordinary ability to change women’s lives through the work,” said Andrea Jung, Chairman and CEO of Avon Products Inc. during her luncheon keynote dialogue with Ilene Lang, President of Catalyst at the recent Catalyst Awards Conference on March 30th.

When asked of how she felt about the purported dwindling number of young women going for MBAs because the perceived lack of social utility in business, Jung responded, “It’s killing me that the CEO role is being perceived as it is at this moment. [The job has] got huge responsibility and privilege but these are critically important jobs for the continued growth of America and the world. So I’m proud to be a CEO. I’m proud–I think we can make a difference. It’s not just my company but all of our companies can make a difference in the community and in this country which needs it.”

And if anyone can do it, Andrea Jung at the helm of Avon can. CEO of AVON since 1999 and Chairman since 2001, Jung holds the title as the longest-tenured CEO of the 15 women currently serving as CEOs in the Fortune 500, an interesting point in light of the fact that it is never a position she went into business with the intention to reach. “I never…set out to be CEO. I think you have to want to be in a role where you can make a difference. For me I realized…that I wanted to be a leader and make a difference in the future of the company and that really was the important thing for me.”

It was that perspective that allowed her to stay on at Avon when she was first passed over for the CEO role in 1997. With all the media hype around it–a New York Times article called extra attention to it as yet another example of a woman being passed over for promotion to C-suite–Jung began to get offers from many outside companies to become CEO. She was torn as to whether to stay with Avon and possibly never become a CEO or to leave to take advantage of the various advancement opportunities.

“Ann Moore, CEO of Time and my mentor for many years…said something that changed my life. She said, ‘Follow your compass, not your clock. Make this decision from your heart, not your head.’…And I made a decision… I felt that it was a tough moment for the company and that the company needed me…It really was a moment [where I thought] I can add value in the role as [number 2]. And I decided in that moment even if it meant [never] being CEO that I would do that because I love the company. It was the best decision I ever made.”She ended up getting promoted to CEO 18 months later but she says she wouldn’t have regretted the decision even if that hadn’t happened. “You really learn that….you have to have a passion for the company – a deep love affair for the work you do or it doesn’t matter what will happen.”

For the first five years of her tenure as CEO, Avon saw, in Jung’s words, “5 years of major double digit earnings.” And then, in 2005, “they hit the wall” and Jung was faced with a potential crisis of confidence. “We had missed earnings guidance twice – the pressure was on. Ram Charan came into my office late one Friday night…and said, ‘Look, they love you. Everyone wants you to win but if you can’t fire yourself [on Friday]…and come back in on Monday morning as if [you were just] put in the job to do a turnaround and do all the objective things that somebody with fresh eyes can…If you can’t do that, this is going to be a tough haul.”

Read more

by Liz O’Donnell (Boston)

“A couple of jobs I took along the way weren’t jobs I had my sight set on,” says Aileen Blake, Executive Vice President and Corporate Controller for Northern Trust, “but someone I trusted said they would be good opportunities. At the end of the day, those opportunities opened doors for me.”

For the most part, Blake has followed a direct and proven path. She studied accounting and business in college, took the CPA exam, and became a public accountant for PricewaterhouseCoopers. From there she held several jobs at major consumer packaged goods companies including Quaker Oats and Pepsi, did a stint overseas, and got an MBA from Kellogg School of Management.

Despite this classic pedigree, Blake tells her junior staff to always keep their considerations broad. “Think about the kinds of experiences you want to get and the kinds of tools you want to add to the tool kit,” she says. She believes that even challenging experiences can support a career trajectory.

“When I went to work in the UK, I was only six years out of college,” she says. “I was thrown into a challenging situation. There were cultural things that I didn’t get.”

Read more

by Elizabeth Harrin (London)

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

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

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

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

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

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

Read more