Wall Street Women Forum 2014: Success on Your Own Terms

,

iStock_000007716967XSmallBy Jarod Cerf

During the Fifth Annual RegentAtlantic Wall Street Women Forum, host and event founder Jane Newton of RegentAtlantic polled the attendees via text on whether they thought women in finance had more opportunities today as compared to six years ago.

Of the over 100 managing directors, c-level executives, and thought leaders who were present, 57.7% stated wholeheartedly that significant progress had been made, with 26.8% suggesting that additional efforts were required to ensure gender parity in advancement to senior positions.

Both were touched upon by keynote speaker Lisa Carnoy, Head of Global Capital Markets at Bank of America Merrill Lynch, who described her leadership style and expectations for the future as “full of optimism, with faith in the long-term potential of the industry.”

“To build on that momentum, though,” Carnoy asserted, “we need to think about how we recruit talent, develop our teams, and provide effective feedback. We also need to tout our accomplishments, because we can’t assume that our superiors know what we’ve done. We have to define what success means, for us, and how we’re going to meet our goals.”

Defining Success on Your Own Terms
“There’s an old Haitian proverb,” Newton remarked, as she and Carnoy discussed career trajectories, “one you’re quite fond of quoting, that goes ‘dye mon, gen mon,’ or ‘beyond the mountain, there are mountains again.’ Can you tell us how that’s shaped your achievements and the way you work?”

Carnoy, in response, recalled quite vividly the challenges facing Merrill Lynch in the days leading up to its merger with Bank of America: “It was an incredible privilege, to be on the team responsible for raising a significant amount of equity in such a short time. As long as we can resolve a single issue by the end of the day, though, we’re always capable of ascending the ones that follow.”

It’s that resiliency and passion for inspiring others to take initiative that Carnoy hoped to impart to the attendees. “I have a list of things I’m thankful for and of people who’ve supported me,” she noted. “Among them, my husband, my children, and my ‘Gang of Four’—the women who’ve grown with me and become like family, who pushed me to be honest and direct with my peers about what I want from my career and how I’ll prove my worth each year.”

“And that’s the best way to win people over to your cause,” she added, “by being open and candid with them.”

Read more

/by

Women in Engineering: Providing Pathways for Future Generations

,

iStock_000008675366XSmallBy Michelle Hendelman

By now, we have all heard the facts and figures about women in STEM fields. There have been gains, as evidenced by the high profile appointments of Marissa Mayer and Sheryl Sandberg to the C-Suite. However, there have also been setbacks, such as Twitter’s bold move to announce their IPO last fall without a single female on their corporate board.

There is plenty of media attention surrounding women and the boys club of Silicon Valley, but what does the bigger picture look like for women in other STEM fields, such as engineering?

A recent survey conducted by TE Connectivity found that the vast majority (87 percent) of respondents identified engineering as the leading profession sparking innovation and invention in the United States. Yet, women make up only 14 percent of the engineers in the United States. As society is recognizing the positive impact of engineering, what role will women play in sustaining the growth of this industry? Furthermore, what steps can be taken to make sure the pipeline of female engineers remains strong and consistent?

Untapped Potential
According to Jane Leipold, Senior Vice President of Global Human Resources at TE Connectivity, “Women can play a huge role in the future growth of the engineering field. Right now, there is nothing but upside potential in terms of attracting new talent.” Leipold added that as more female role models in engineering emerge, there will be a trickledown effect resulting in finding talented women interested in pursuing a career in engineering.

Attracting female engineers is only one half of the equation. The other –equally important –half of the equation is retaining women who enter the field by providing them with tools and resources that support career advancement and professional growth. Research on why women leave engineering revealed that one of the most important factors cited for driving women out of the field was workplace climate.

What’s more, one-third of women who graduated with an engineering degree never entered the field professionally due to the perception that the industry as a whole was unsupportive of women. In order to reverse the trend of women opting out of engineering, Leipold emphasized the value of investing in programs that support the advancement of women. She noted, “It is important to develop women as they move up the ladder into executive and leadership roles.”

The perception that engineering, and STEM fields in general, are not welcoming to women creates the well-documented psychological phenomenon known as “stereotype threat” that can prevent young women from entering and advancing in their careers. For example, when idea that women are not as good in STEM subjects as men is perpetuated, women will subconsciously internalize this notion and begin to lack confidence, even if they have proven their competence.

Read more

/by

How Executive Search Firms Exclude Women

Businesswoman Standing Out From the Crowd - IsolatedBy Melissa J. Anderson (New York City)

A new study of executive search firms delves into the way common headhunting practices can keep women out of top jobs by perpetuating the status quo. According to the researchers, when women are included on candidate slates, they’re commonly considered risky choices, regardless of their qualifications for the job, simply because they may not fit the stereotypical notion of a leader at the firm in question.

Women candidates face questions about loyalty, stability, and competence in ways that men simply don’t. And men are often considered the “default” candidate type, with women representing a “different” choice. Even when search consultants do try to include more women on long and short lists, clients will change their search criteria over time, the end result of which is weeding out women from the candidate slate.

The research zeros in on organizational factors that keep male dominated teams male dominated, and it shows just how difficult it is to change these patterns.

“Our study thus highlights the power of established practices in sustaining inclusion and exclusion in top management,” write the authors.

Because the executive search field is built on notions of exclusivity and fit, the researchers argue, it naturally upholds the stereotypes that keep women out of the corner office.

Stereotypes and Fit
The study, “And then there are none: on the exclusion of women in processes of executive search,” appeared in Gender in Management: An International Journal last year. It was written by a team of European researchers: Janne Tienari, School of Business, Aalto University, Finland; Susan Merila¨inen, University of Lapland, Finland; Charlotte Holgersson, Royal Institute of Technology, Sweden; and Regine Bendl, Vienna University of Economics and Business, Austria.

The team based their studies on interviews with headhunters at executive search firms in Finland, Sweden, and Austria, with the goal of comparing search practices in the more gender-diverse and egalitarian Finland and Sweden with the more patriarchal and hierarchical Austria.

What they found was that while Finnish and Swedish teams were more open to including women on candidate slates than those in Austria, in the end, the result was the same. Few women would make it to top positions. Gender was an explicit factor up for discussion during the Austrian search practice; that is, a headhunter could ask a client point blank if they wanted a women candidate, and the client could say no.

In Sweden and Finland, the discussion around gender was more nuanced. For example, an executive search team will ask a client how they feel about having women candidates on the list, and common response will be that the gender of the candidate doesn’t matter.

Read more

/by

Business Schools Create Programs to Make Women Board-Ready: Will it Work?

business schoolBy Irene Solaz

Can you teach the skills required to obtain a seat on a board? London’s University of Westminster believes so.

The University’s new intensive Women For The Board program, taught by Dr. Ruth Sacks, lasts six-days and purports to teach women the skills and tools required to be considered board-ready.

According to Sacks, the goal is to offer women who are a few steps away from a board role a broader and deeper understanding and awareness of the skills, competences, tools, and techniques that will enable them to become effective members of executive or non-executive boards.

Specifically, the program focuses on something Sacks calls being “board wise,” which includes Emotional Intelligence, self-presentation, chairing and managing meetings, and creativity and risk in strategic decision making. Finance at the board-level is also covered extensively, among other important topics.

“There will also be sessions on corporate social responsibility, governance, and due diligence, as well as the legal responsibilities of being a member of a board, including anti-bribery,” Sacks said. “The program also includes a session with a recruiter for board-level positions to explore the application and interview processes for such roles.”

The Strength of Weak Ties
Clearly, having the experience, skills, and knowledge are of the utmost importance, but as we’ve all heard: sometimes it boils down to who you know. This is why Women For The Board also emphasizes the importance of networking. More and more we’re hearing about the benefits of women-only networking groups, which is why Sacks is confident that just by participating in the course and meeting other women on the quest for obtaining a board seat, women are expanding their networks.

“They will not only develop new networks among themselves, but also be able to link to the networks of the facilitators and speakers,” Sacks said. “Networking is key to all careers, they support the development of professional relationships, creativity, and learning opportunities.”

There is something to connecting with other women. In a recent Forbes post, executive recruiter Stacey Gordon discussed how the benefits of networking arise from differences rather than similarities, saying those differences have nothing to do with race, gender, or nationality. Gordon says they have to do with the strength or weakness of the “ties” in the networking group.

Read more

/by

Breakfast of Corporate Champions: Eye-Opening and Inspiring

,

boardroom womanBy Natalie Sabia Hackett

Despite a strong push for gender parity over the past 20 years, women on Fortune 500 boards have only increased, on average, by half a percent annually. Today, 40 percent of Fortune 500 companies have, at the most, one woman on their boards. At less than 17 percent representation, it will take 75 years to even out. On November 21, those statistics were enough to draw about 300 attendees to the New York Stock Exchange for the second bi-annual Breakfast of Corporate Champions, an event by the Women’s Forum of New York in partnership with the Committee for Economic Development and the National Association of Corporate Directors. The purpose of the breakfast was two-fold: to honor 174 US-based Fortune 500 Companies and 31 Fortune 1000 companies in the New York area with corporate boards that are at least 20 percent female and to hear CEOs discuss their companies’ success and how others can move toward parity.

Janice Reals Ellig, co-CEO of Chadick Ellig, opened the event, discussing the reasons to applaud the companies and executive leaders in the audience while also encouraging them to help inspire others to follow in their footsteps. “We honored the companies and their key decision makers to this event today and you have filled this room,” Ellig said. “You are driving change in the board room and we thank you for that.”

The Women’s Forum of New York City: Opening Doors
The Women’s Forum is New York City’s distinguished organization of over 450 women leaders representing the highest levels of achievement across all professional and business sectors, from finance to fine arts. Membership in the Forum is limited and by invitation only. Founded in 1974 by Elinor Guggenheimer, the Women’s Forum mission is to form a community where preeminent New York women leaders of diverse achievement come together to make a difference for each other and to take an active, leadership role in matters of importance to them.

Judy Woodruff, co-anchor and managing editor of PBS NewsHour, monitored a panel at the breakfast, reminding the attendees the event was about figuring out how to open more doors for women, as only 16 percent of board members are women.

Read more

/by

Are Business Schools The Solution for Reaching Boardroom Parity?

business schoolBy Tina Vasquez, Editor

According to the Alliance Board for Diversity’s recent report “Missing Pieces: Women and Minorities on Fortune 500 Boards”, men hold a bulk of the 5,488 board seats at American companies, with women representing just 16.6 percent of board seats, a percentage that hasn’t changed since 2004. The 2013 Catalyst Census: Fortune 500 Women Board Directors and the 2013 Catalyst Census: Fortune 500 Women Executive Officers and Top Earners confirm the same, announcing that while companies based in other countries are moving ahead with plans to advance women to top leadership, progress in the Fortune 500 remains flat.

We all know that progress is slow, but few anticipated that it would be so stagnant, begging the question of whether or not addressing parity at the corporate level too late. While we may never know the answer, one thing is for sure: the actions of business schools can naturally lead to more diversity in the c-level suite and on corporate boards.

This, according to Susan Kulp, associate professor of accountancy at George Washington University School of Business. In hopes of once again jumpstarting the number of women on boards, the school has created a new program called On the Board and Kulp is its academic director. According to the New York Times, the program will take a “two-pronged” approach to the issue by helping women get shortlisted to be considered for open seats, and training women to be ready to step into those roles.

“There’s no doubt that the world is full of incredibly smart and accomplished women who can easily step into board service,” Kulp said. “We just help them get ready to take on those challenges by providing experiences in our residencies designed to expose them to the inner workings of board activities.”

Real Tools for Board Service
The program starts with a rigorous screening process where only 15 female executives from diverse backgrounds are chosen to participate. Most of the women have little or no experience sitting on corporate boards, though they are top managers at major corporations. Once chosen, the Fellows meet for three residencies throughout the year: one in winter/spring, one in summer, and the third in late fall. Between residencies, the fellows meet with their mentors, implement what they’ve learned in the previous residency, and build their networks. The university will track their successes and assist in helping them achieve a board appointment.

On the Board exposes its fellows to case study exercises to help them understand the functions of audit or compensation committees, for example, or panel discussions with board members, along with a dose of academics to deepen their contextual understanding of board issues. Kulp says the women are also given lots of time for interaction, information, and activities with globally-known experts to help them understand and better leverage their networks, as well as one-on-one mentoring with women who currently serve as board directors.

Read more

/by

New Class of First Time UK Board Directors: More Diverse, Less Experienced

,

iStock_000005922401XSmallBy Melissa J. Anderson (New York City)

A new Korn / Ferry Institute study shows that first time board-appointees in the UK are getting younger and are more likely to be female than ever before. According to the report, 47 percent of first-time directors in the FTSE 350 last year were women. That’s a huge leap from just 2007, when a miniscule 11 percent of first-time appointees were female.

On average, last year’s class of first-time appointees was 52.6, four years younger than the average for all appointments to the FTSE 350 in the year. It’s a year younger than the 2007 class of first-time appointees.

In fact, the report authors, there’s more than demographic diversification taking place. UK director positions are also opening up to people in roles outside the traditional commercial background to people with human resources, marketing, and legal expertise. Additionally, first-time appointees were more likely to have international experience, with more than half having lived or worked abroad.

The downside to all this diversity amongst non-executive directors (NEDs), the report says, is less executive director experience.

Fresh Perspectives

The vast increase in the percentage of female first-time appointees can be attributed to the push from the public to promote more women to leadership positions. In particular, the push for more women on boards can be attributed to the Lord Davies report, published in 2008, which called for companies in the FTSE 100 to increase their proportion of women board directors to 25 percent by 2015. Groups like the 30% Club have also led the charge to increase the gender diversity on boards.

It’s likely that at least some of the other diversity factors within last year’s class of first-time board appointees were been driven by the need for companies to reach beyond their traditional circles to find women to fill these positions. Korn / Ferry indicates that the gender and age factors may be linked to some extent. But as for the other areas of diversification, it may simply be a case of the UK’s biggest companies realizing they need new views and broader areas of expertise in order to stay competitive. The report says:

“Analysis of NED appointment trends in 2012 makes it clear that companies are increasingly looking to refresh their boards by adding more diverse talent among NEDs. Whether this diversity is through discipline, gender, nationality or knowledge of the internet economy, it is both broadening the skill base of FTSE 350 boards and driving the age of board directors down.”

Nevertheless, this diversification does come at a cost, Korn / Ferry says. The 2007 sample of first-time directors had significantly more people with executive-director experience. “In 2007, 46 percent of first-time NED appointees had executive director experience gained on a quoted company board, including 24 percent with a FTSE 350 company. This dropped to 29 percent among The Class of 2012, and only 11 percent with a FTSE 350 company.”

Read more

/by

What’s the Real Impact of One Billion Women Entering the Workforce in the Next Decade?

,

iStock_000008675366XSmallBy Michelle Hendelman, Editor-in-Chief

Last fall, Booz & Company released an interesting report entitled, Empowering the Third Billion: Women and the World of Work in 2012. In this report, researchers attempt to evaluate the impact on the global economy of an estimated one billion women entering the workforce over the next ten years. By placing a value on women in the workplace, the authors of this report hope to encourage governments, business leaders, and key decision makers to invest in developing the knowledge and skills of women in order to unlock their full potential.

The authors of the Booz & Company report address one very important aspect of the problem when it comes to facilitating a career advancement path for women that leads to more leadership roles and senior level positions across all industries. They write, “Despite the admirable efforts of these women—and millions like them in rich and poor countries around the world—they need supportive systems to succeed. Governments and corporations will need to step in with smarter policies that can remove social, cultural, and professional constraints on women and foster greater economic opportunities.”

The Glass Hammer focuses on the developed world for now, so what is interesting about this research is that Booz & Company correctly identifies an issue that is rampant in the United States and Western Europe. That is, the number of women in the workforce is only the tip of the iceberg on the gender diversity issue in the workplace. The bigger question—which has been explored in research by Catalyst—is why are there so few women in executive positions in the Fortune 500?

What are the biggest issues that governments and companies must look at in order to provide meaningful support for women in the workforce? The common global challenges are as follows.

Read more

/by

Want More Women at the Top? It’s Time to Fix the Leaky Talent Pipeline

, ,

iStock_000017642294XSmallBy Michelle Hendelman, Editor-in-Chief

Previous research has identified that women do not get as many career-changing jobs as their male colleagues. This imbalance is one of the main reasons why the talent pipeline in many organizations is not as diverse as it should be. The question persists in the gender equality arena: why aren’t there more women in leadership positions? Yet, there is evidence that managers and key decision makers are not giving equal access to women when it comes to opportunities that can positively impact a career trajectory.

This begs the question: is the talent pipeline being managed properly with respect to gender diversity initiatives and leadership development strategies in a firm? Catalyst reports that between 2009 and 2012, the percentage of Fortune 500 female executive officers has remained at a near standstill, increasing slightly from 13.5 percent in 2009 to 14.3% in 2012. What factors are contributing to the stagnancy of women’s career advancement in traditionally male-dominated industries such as finance, technology, and professional services?

In order to get to the bottom of why talented women are not being ushered through the talent pipeline at the same rate as their male colleagues, let’s take a look at some key factors creating roadblocks in corporate gender diversity at the most senior levels of management.

Read more

/by

Peer Relationships: Key Factor in Retaining Mid-Career Women

iStock_000002351861XSmallBy Robin Madell (San Francisco)

Last year, the 2012 Accounting MOVE report investigated the role of community service for women in accounting. In the 2013 MOVE Project [PDF], Joanne Cleaver, author of The Career Lattice and the report’s creator, set out to understand why mid-career women in accounting firms either stay the course on the partnership track, or abandon their public accounting ambitions and leave for industry.

Patterns had started to emerge from previous years of research in this area. Cleaver notes that a trend was becoming clear: that women evaporate from the partnership pipeline at the senior manager level. Yet she noted a collective hunch about this “make or break point” was that women actually started to take their feet off the pedal much earlier than senior managers.

“We felt that the decision to stay the course was so complex and important, it deserved a deep dive,” says Cleaver. So in the fall of 2012, she conducted a survey of 440 women at all points in their accounting careers, and interviewed dozens of them to gain additional information about why, when, and how they decoupled their career ambitions from their public accounting firms.

The good news for firms is that women do spend a couple of years at the senior staff and new manager level wondering about the path to partnership. Therefore, Cleaver emphasizes that firm leaders have a generous opportunity to rekindle women’s ambitions to become partners. “You can change their minds!” says Cleaver. “But if you don’t even try, your apparent lack of commitment becomes one more reason why they should leave.”

Read more

/by