This article forms part of our Latina Leaders celebration in honor of Hispanic Heritage month in the USA.
As we celebrate Hispanic Heritage Month 2015, Latina executives remain scarce in the corporate landscape. But ambition to lead, and ability to bring leadership advantages, are not scarce.
Walmart’s EVP and COO Debra Ruiz ranks 28 in Fortune’s current 50 Most Powerful Women in Business 2014 list. Latina Style celebrated ten executives in February, with Calline Sanchez, VP of IBM Enterprise, taking Corporate Executive of the Year 2014. Ana Dutra made history when she was appointed the first Latina president and CEO of the Executives’ Club of Chicago.
But with the growing influence of Latinas, there are too few, even dangerously too few, Latinas helping to steer companies.
In 2014, Latinas in the USA workforce (9,838,000) comprised 14% of female jobs. 26.1% were in management/professional occupations, holding 8.8% of women’s positions. 9.4% were in management, business, and financial operations, holding 9.1% of female positions. Latinas are the most under-represented females in managerial and professional jobs.
While Catalyst 2015 data indicates Latinas make up 6.2% of S&P 500 employees, they hold only 3.1% of first/mid-level positions, 1% of executive/senior level positions, and no CEO positions. Hispanic women occupied only 4.4% of S&P 500 women-held board seats in 2014, less than 1% of total board seats. The HACR CII data echoes the same numbers of non-representation.
Is the Path to Entrepreneurship More Accessible?
As written by Samantha Cole in Fast Company, “Women need to see someone else succeed—to know that their dreams are possible, and attainable by someone who’s not so different from them.”
For Latina business women, the majority of public role models aren’t somewhere up the corporate ladder. They’re braving the path of entrepreneurship.
Nely Galan, first Latina president of a U.S. Television Network turned media mogul notes deep cultural barriers to success in traditional pathways. She says Latina women are “a secret weapon to the economy” and encourages them to take business into their own hands to harness the economic pull they hold.
At its own risk, corporate America may be sending the same message.
According to an entrepreneurial report from the Center for American Progress, female-owned businesses increased by 59% between 1997 to 2013, while Latina-owned businesses increased by 180% during this same time, with 944,000 Latinas running their own businesses and turning $65.5 billion in receipts. Currently at 17%, Latinas will make up a fourth of the American female population by 2050.
Women entrepreneurs see it as an opportunity to be their own boss, have greater control over their destiny and pursue their passion. But roadblocks also lead Latinas onto the entrepreneurial path.
The report notes many challenges in organizations raised by all women of color that, despite the very real risks, may encourage Latinas to go it on their own. Across accountancy, securities and law, barriers included a lack of role models, low access to high-visibility assignments and client-facing opportunities important to career advancement, marginalization by stereotypes and exclusion from networks.
Stepping Into Latina Leadership – A Sum Greater Than Its Parts
The key to the advancement of Latina professional women is a corporate culture that supports it.
“[You] need to be in a company that embraces women,” Ileana Musa, managing director and Head of Global Client Segment and Strategy for Merrill Lynch and Chair of Women of ALPFA, recently told the Latin Post. “That gives you the resources and creates an environment where you can thrive.”
2015 Latina Style Top 50 companies are making progress, especially financial players in the top ten ranks including Accenture (#4), Prudential (#5), and Wells Fargo (#8). But we still await more tangible and visible outcomes in executive representation.
On that note, Musa also recommends that Latinas take risks and use their cultural assets in rising to leadership, rather than allowing their leadership potential to be defined by the circumstances.
Musa stated, “I don’t think Latinas recognize their strength and influence.” She spoke about cultural strengths in leadership. “From an early age we learn to bring others in, we work well in teams,” she said. “It is cultural, using that strength is a huge [advantage] in the workplace.”
Research also reflects that Latina leaders experience distinctive challenges but on the flip-side they possess culturally-derived leadership assets.
Latina leaders face an intersectionality of identities – being Latin, a woman, a leader. Many Latinas are actively connected in their culture and seeking to integrate at work. The whole is distinct, greater, more complex and more connected than the sum of its parts.
Qualitative research into Latina leadership has illustrated core challenges such as lack of mentors, lack of opportunities, and cultural and family obligations. These factors can also contribute to creating internal barriers to leadership.
But distinctive challenges comes with distinctive advantages. What Latina women bring to leadership is much greater than the sum of their identities.
Bonilla-Rodriguez observed that Latina leaders self-define towards transformational leadership, motivating followers to become leaders themselves, and participatory leadership, enabling group democracy and making everyone accountable for results.
Research participants believed effective Latina leaders possess five categories of characteristics:
- High Integrity—Ethical, honest, moral, responsible, and trustworthy.
- “Marianismo”— compassionate, good listener, understanding, service oriented and willing to sacrifice
- “New Latina” — ambitious, assertive, competitive, hard-working and determined
- Transformational Leader—team-building charismatic, collaborative, politically savvy, leads by example, good communicator
- Visionary—creative, committed, flexible, passionate, and risk taker
Research suggests that Latina leaders translate distinctive cultural implications– such as “marianismo” – into their leadership style by being empathetic and nurturing team leaders. Latina leaders have self-reported to be natural and skilled networkers, able to build connections beyond boundaries, leverage them towards achieving, and harness community.
Visible Change
The influence of challenges faced by Latina women along their leadership journeys cannot be separated from the leaders they become – leaders that overcome obstacles, make things possible, bridge cultures, and transcend roles.
If you’re a Latina leader in finance, STEM, or any other field of influence, your visibility matters if women are to follow in your footsteps. As stated by Dr. Frances Colón, Acting Science and Technology Adviser to the U.S. Secretary of State, “They can’t be you if they can’t see you.”
But with the inherent power of Latina leadership, it seems to us the big question may not for long be: When will Latina women rise to executive leadership in major, existing firms?
It may instead be: How will they come to change leadership as they rise?
By Aimee Hansen
Narrow the Hidden Executive Pay Gap Starting Now
Career Advice, Gender Pay Gap, Office Politics, This Month's FeatureAs women move to senior ranks, the gender pay gap widens. Your best career management play? Begin closing it now.
A March 2015 study by the Federal Reserve Bank of New Yorkprovides insight into the hidden pay gap between top male and female executives. Based upon 1992-2005 S&P’s Execucomp data, it covers executive compensation in the S&P 500, the S&P Midcap 400, and the S&P SmallCap 600. The research focused on Chair/CEOs, Vice Chairs, Presidents, CFOs and COOs.
Less Incentive Pay
The researchers found 93% of the pay gap between male and female executives is due to disparate incentive pay – bonuses, stocks granted, and stock options.
Accumulating year upon year into “firm-specific wealth”, incentive pay encourages executives to elevate corporate performance. But the study found overall women executives reaped less of it. Pay disparities held true even when age, title, tenure and firm size were controlled for.
Pay Less Sensitive to Performance
The value of incentive pay such as stock options rises and falls with the company’s performance, but leading a firm to equal strong performance pays off more for men.
Researchers found that a $1 million increase in firm value increases firm specific wealth for a male executive by $17,150 but only $1,670 for a female executive (<10%), since, as
Bloomberg notes,women’s “incentive compensation tied to the company’s equity tends to be lower.”
Pay More Exposed to Under-Performance
Researchers found that pay sensitivity goes in the oppositedirection when firms under-perform: “Overall, changes in firm performance penalize female executives while they favor male executives.”
A one percent increase in firm value creates only a 13% increase in firm specific wealth for a female executive, but a 44% increase for a male executive.
But a one percent decline in value creates a 63% decline in firm-specific wealth for a woman executive, and only a 33% hit for a man. A female executive’s incentive pay is hit twice as hard for firm under-performance.
The researchers found no differences in firm performance by gender to explain pay disparities.
As Fivethirtyeight writes, “Male CEOS get bonuses; female CEOS get blame.”
Less Influence On Pay?
The researchers theorize that men hold more insider purse strings, such as greater influence with Board Members and influence on their compensation.
CFOsummarizes the authors speculation stating the gender gap “does not reflect executive performance but ‘different degrees of managerial power of female and male executives,’ with women ‘less entrenched’, than men and exerting less control over their compensation due to limited access to informal networks, gender stereotyping, and an inhospitable corporate culture, along with their younger age and lower tenure.”
Bloomberg writes, “Men, on the other hand, who are more entrenched in an organization and can cash in favors after years in the industry, are more likely to be able to steer their pay in a way that’s more favorable for them.”
Change Means Transparency
Compensation would not remain one of the hidden, insidious biases still alive in the old boy’s club if met with disclosure.
The researchers call for greater transparency.
They write, “Our analysis suggest that performance pay schemes should be held to closer scrutiny and raises a note of concern for the standing of professional women in the labor market as incentive pay becomes more prevalent.”
Co-author Stefania Albanesi told Bloomberg, “increasing transparency in general in an organization but specifically with how your pay is set relative to others in similar positions is going to be helpful.”
Albanesi notes that it’s important to get transparency sooner. The gap doesn’t magically appear at executive level – it compounds. As incentive pay popularizes at lower ranks, disparities will build annually so inequality has to be addressed early.
“The accumulation is going to be there even when women get promoted, and also possibly if you move to another firm, because usually your past compensation is used in some degree,” Albanesi said. “These differences can be very, very persistent.”
Brave the Discussion
Women can’t afford to keep quiet about pay.
The systemic gap is unlikely to change as long as having children results in a cascading impact on salaries and opportunities for women. Increasing pressure to offer temporal flexibility and returner programs is essential.
But at an individual level, you can push for transparency and initiate the conversation of negotiating your compensation.
As Business Insider points out, women may face a “social cost” of negotiating salary but they can’t afford not to negotiate. Settling early compounds to highly significant salary differences later in your career.
According to Forbes, in a study for her book Women Don’t Ask, Stanford’s Margaret A. Neale found only seven percent of women MBAs negotiated their job offer salary compared to 57% of men MBAs.
Neale explains that if one person negotiates a $7,000 rise on a $100,000 offer and another settles, then 35 years later that $7,000 gap equates to a difference of eight working years to accumulate the same wealth, and that’s if both people experience identical raises and promotions in their career.
When women don’t negotiate, they affirm the pay gap status quo. Strategic salary negotiation is a career and gender equality move.
Let’s bring the pay gap out of the entrenched corner (offices) it hides in and put it on the table.
Mover & Shaker: Isabel Yepes, Director, Women Who Code
Movers and Shakers, PeopleAs the director of Women who Code in Colombia, Isabel Yepes thrives on capturing the interest of women. “It’s something I feel strongly about; there are very few of us in the telecomm field and there’s no reason why. Women can do it as well as men.”
Trained as an engineer, Yepes says she realized she had a passion for telecommunications and decided that is where she wanted to dedicate her career. Currently an independent software developer and founder of Hacemos Contactors, she also parlays her knowledge into a teaching position at a local technical college.While she used to teach more advanced classes on how to configurerouters and servers, she prefers her new position because of its open, positive work environment and the inspiration of teaching technology to people who are not yet immersed in it.
When Yepes first began her career, she realized how different the corporate world is from school. “You figure out the skills you learned in school weren’t always applied skills,” she says, adding that learning the importance of networking and relationship building is also something that has to be developed.
Yepes’ mentor has been a teacher who was a friend of her mom, who has been an advisor at different points in her career. And she considers her sister, also an engineer, as her role model during school. Another role model has been a colleague who founded a startup that is now a thriving corporation.
Attracting More Women to the Field through Women Who Code
Yepes’ goal at Women who Code is to work on attracting more women to technology. She and a friend are developing tools to introduce women to the many benefits of a career in technology, including a video channel that they will offer to conferences and other interested groups.
She also believes it’s important to include men in the conversation. “It’s not just about women helping women,” she says. “We all need to speak a common language to let women know that it’s a robust and attractive field.”
Before her role with Women Who Code she volunteered for United Nations, sponsored by Cisco, with the objective to bring Cisco Networking Academy program to an underserved population, primarily unemployed young people. “We had no budget so we were able to accomplish it through the goodwill of the stakeholders and the generosity of Cisco as a sponsor.”
Time With Family
In her free time, Yepes enjoys being with her family, including her parents, sister and nieces, and spending time outdoors and traveling.
By Cathie Ericson
Secret Career Weapon: Admitting Your Mistakes Then Learning From Them
Office PoliticsWhether you are an entry-‐level analyst or a top-‐ranking CEO, the potential to make mistakes is equal. What we do after we make them is what distinguishes the leaders from the followers.
And yet, as a society we look so harshly upon failures and mistakes and are conditioned to judge women who make mistakes more harshly than men, especially if they occupy traditional male roles. The study “People in jobs traditionally held by the other sex are judged more harshly for mistakes,” from the Association for Psychological Science calls this dynamic a “glass cliff.”
Read more
Should I Stay or Should I Go? When The Culture Just Isn’t Working For You
Career Advice, Career Tip of the Week!When there is:
Think about what work gets done? What gets rewarded? What gets people’s attention? Who gets rewarded? What gets tolerated? List 2-3 examples of work to help you understand what your workplace culture is!
By Nicki Gilmour, Executive Coach and Organizational Psychologist
Contact nicki@theglasshammer.com if you would like to hire an executive coach to help you navigate the path to optimal personal success at work
Voice of Experience: Anilu Vazquez-Ubarri, Chief Diversity Officer and Global Co-Head of Talent Development, Goldman Sachs
People, Voices of ExperienceReflecting on her career, Anilu Vazquez-Ubarri says that her path might seem to be carefully designed, but in reality what has led her to where she is today is her appetite to try new and different roles at critical points in her career, the wise counsel from mentors and her belief in facing challenges head on.
Analyzing Talent for Individual and Firm Benefit
Vazquez-Ubarri began her career as an executive compensation and employee benefits lawyer, advising clients on employment matters in the context of corporate transactions. Even at an early stage of her career, Vazquez-Ubarri enjoyed advising clients and understanding every aspect of their business to provide holistic solutions, particularly with respect to the people side of the transactions.
This led to her first job at Goldman Sachs in Employee Relations, where she provided advice to managers and employees on how to navigate their careers and manage conflict.She then became chief of staff for the Human Capital Management division and is now Chief Diversity Officer and global co-head of Talent Development.In her current role, she is responsible for evolving and integrating leadership and the talent and diversity priorities at Goldman Sachs.
“Had I known this type of work existed I would have gone into it earlier, since my current position is a perfect match for my interests and allows me to apply the knowledge I have collected throughout the years in the different roles I have held,” she says.
Building and leading this new group has also presented an entrepreneurial opportunity for Vazquez-Ubarri, which she considers to be one of the more rewarding aspects of her job. “I appreciate being allowed to lead and innovate in a space that is so important for the firm and also to have the opportunity to build new career paths for the people on the team. It is a privilege to be part of their professional development,” she says.
As part of this entrepreneurial mindset, she and her team are looking at the firm’s practices with a fresh approach.They have continued to build on the firm’s data-driven approach, using people analytics to identify priorities in their talent strategy.In addition, they use a person-by-person approach to design customized solutions for different talent pools. Realizing the crucial impact that managers have on someone’s career, the firm has also reinforced its emphasis on manager effectiveness as a driver of performance.
“Women Should Feel Inspired About Their Chances for Success”
Vazquez-Ubarri believes that what may have historically been perceived as challenges for women in particular are actually questions and challenges that men and women share. “At different points in our career, we all question our ability to manage our personal and professional responsibilities and interests,” she says.
Vazquez-Ubarri observes that it is critical in those moments for employees to have a support system at work that encourages them to discuss their situation and also take advantage of the resources available to them.“I had just returned from maternity leave a few days before being promoted to managing director at Goldman. It was of course a very important time personally and a significant milestone in my career, and the flexibility and support I received from the firm made all the difference.”
“Women should enter the industry in full power, with the expectation of success and confidence in their abilities. They should pursue opportunities that put them in the middle of the action, where problems need to be solved, where challenges exist and where they can contribute in a meaningful way,” she says.In addition, Vazquez-Ubarri believes that developing strong relationships with clients and mentors has been crucial to her career trajectory.She equally believes that Hispanics/Latinos should be proud of their heritage and seek work environments that embrace their difference as an asset.
“My cultural background and upbringing has had a major influence on how I approach situations of ambiguity, how I build relationships with people with different points of view and how I manage a team – all things that have been crucial in my career progression,” she says.
Offering Guidance to Others
Vazquez-Ubarri knows that managers and sponsors play a critical role in developing and retaining talented people, and she highlights how important it has been in her career to have managers and sponsors who believed in her and provided tough feedback along the way. “Their belief in me has driven me to want to deliver for them and to make them proud of their investment in my career.”
She recommends that those starting out do their research, be intellectually curious and challenge themselves to expand their horizons as they consider career paths.he suggests that they network to find out information about different sectors and industries, but also so they have different examples of how to achieve success as there is not just one path.
Regarding her responsibility to mentor and sponsor women and Hispanic/Latinos she says, “We have to reach out to the next generation and remember what it felt like to be new and unsure of your next step or how to complete a project for someone you really wanted to impress.” This is particularly important when it comes to women and Hispanics/Latinos, she noted. “We need to be visible and accessible to them in order to continue to build a diverse talent pipeline.”
She urges her peers to spend an extra 10 minutes with more junior colleagues after a meeting or in their office. “To you, it’s only 10 minutes, but to them it makes such a difference,” she says.
Outside of the office, Vazquez-Ubarri spends her time with friends and family, including her husband and two sons. A competitive swimmer growing up, she has passed on that passion to her two children, ages two and ten, during treks to the pool each weekend – time that she makes all about being with her loved ones.
Hispanic Heritage: Latina Women are Ready to Lead. Are Companies Ready?
Career Advice, FeaturedThis article forms part of our Latina Leaders celebration in honor of Hispanic Heritage month in the USA.
As we celebrate Hispanic Heritage Month 2015, Latina executives remain scarce in the corporate landscape. But ambition to lead, and ability to bring leadership advantages, are not scarce.
Walmart’s EVP and COO Debra Ruiz ranks 28 in Fortune’s current 50 Most Powerful Women in Business 2014 list. Latina Style celebrated ten executives in February, with Calline Sanchez, VP of IBM Enterprise, taking Corporate Executive of the Year 2014. Ana Dutra made history when she was appointed the first Latina president and CEO of the Executives’ Club of Chicago.
But with the growing influence of Latinas, there are too few, even dangerously too few, Latinas helping to steer companies.
In 2014, Latinas in the USA workforce (9,838,000) comprised 14% of female jobs. 26.1% were in management/professional occupations, holding 8.8% of women’s positions. 9.4% were in management, business, and financial operations, holding 9.1% of female positions. Latinas are the most under-represented females in managerial and professional jobs.
While Catalyst 2015 data indicates Latinas make up 6.2% of S&P 500 employees, they hold only 3.1% of first/mid-level positions, 1% of executive/senior level positions, and no CEO positions. Hispanic women occupied only 4.4% of S&P 500 women-held board seats in 2014, less than 1% of total board seats. The HACR CII data echoes the same numbers of non-representation.
Is the Path to Entrepreneurship More Accessible?
As written by Samantha Cole in Fast Company, “Women need to see someone else succeed—to know that their dreams are possible, and attainable by someone who’s not so different from them.”
For Latina business women, the majority of public role models aren’t somewhere up the corporate ladder. They’re braving the path of entrepreneurship.
Nely Galan, first Latina president of a U.S. Television Network turned media mogul notes deep cultural barriers to success in traditional pathways. She says Latina women are “a secret weapon to the economy” and encourages them to take business into their own hands to harness the economic pull they hold.
At its own risk, corporate America may be sending the same message.
According to an entrepreneurial report from the Center for American Progress, female-owned businesses increased by 59% between 1997 to 2013, while Latina-owned businesses increased by 180% during this same time, with 944,000 Latinas running their own businesses and turning $65.5 billion in receipts. Currently at 17%, Latinas will make up a fourth of the American female population by 2050.
Women entrepreneurs see it as an opportunity to be their own boss, have greater control over their destiny and pursue their passion. But roadblocks also lead Latinas onto the entrepreneurial path.
The report notes many challenges in organizations raised by all women of color that, despite the very real risks, may encourage Latinas to go it on their own. Across accountancy, securities and law, barriers included a lack of role models, low access to high-visibility assignments and client-facing opportunities important to career advancement, marginalization by stereotypes and exclusion from networks.
Stepping Into Latina Leadership – A Sum Greater Than Its Parts
The key to the advancement of Latina professional women is a corporate culture that supports it.
“[You] need to be in a company that embraces women,” Ileana Musa, managing director and Head of Global Client Segment and Strategy for Merrill Lynch and Chair of Women of ALPFA, recently told the Latin Post. “That gives you the resources and creates an environment where you can thrive.”
2015 Latina Style Top 50 companies are making progress, especially financial players in the top ten ranks including Accenture (#4), Prudential (#5), and Wells Fargo (#8). But we still await more tangible and visible outcomes in executive representation.
On that note, Musa also recommends that Latinas take risks and use their cultural assets in rising to leadership, rather than allowing their leadership potential to be defined by the circumstances.
Musa stated, “I don’t think Latinas recognize their strength and influence.” She spoke about cultural strengths in leadership. “From an early age we learn to bring others in, we work well in teams,” she said. “It is cultural, using that strength is a huge [advantage] in the workplace.”
Research also reflects that Latina leaders experience distinctive challenges but on the flip-side they possess culturally-derived leadership assets.
Latina leaders face an intersectionality of identities – being Latin, a woman, a leader. Many Latinas are actively connected in their culture and seeking to integrate at work. The whole is distinct, greater, more complex and more connected than the sum of its parts.
Qualitative research into Latina leadership has illustrated core challenges such as lack of mentors, lack of opportunities, and cultural and family obligations. These factors can also contribute to creating internal barriers to leadership.
But distinctive challenges comes with distinctive advantages. What Latina women bring to leadership is much greater than the sum of their identities.
Bonilla-Rodriguez observed that Latina leaders self-define towards transformational leadership, motivating followers to become leaders themselves, and participatory leadership, enabling group democracy and making everyone accountable for results.
Research participants believed effective Latina leaders possess five categories of characteristics:
Research suggests that Latina leaders translate distinctive cultural implications– such as “marianismo” – into their leadership style by being empathetic and nurturing team leaders. Latina leaders have self-reported to be natural and skilled networkers, able to build connections beyond boundaries, leverage them towards achieving, and harness community.
Visible Change
The influence of challenges faced by Latina women along their leadership journeys cannot be separated from the leaders they become – leaders that overcome obstacles, make things possible, bridge cultures, and transcend roles.
If you’re a Latina leader in finance, STEM, or any other field of influence, your visibility matters if women are to follow in your footsteps. As stated by Dr. Frances Colón, Acting Science and Technology Adviser to the U.S. Secretary of State, “They can’t be you if they can’t see you.”
But with the inherent power of Latina leadership, it seems to us the big question may not for long be: When will Latina women rise to executive leadership in major, existing firms?
It may instead be: How will they come to change leadership as they rise?
By Aimee Hansen
Voice of Experience: Natalie Eckford, Managing Director, Cambridge Associates
People, Voices of ExperienceEckford describes her career path as traditional – developing a solid background in finance by joining an investment banking firm right after earning her undergraduate degree. She then moved back to Mississippi, where she worked for WorldCom in its broadband division. “Even though I was still in finance, my work at WoldCom was completely different. In banking, I worked with prebuilt models to try to make the deal fit, but at WorldCom, I had to build the model to fit the situation. I was learning how to run a company.”
In addition, she had much more interaction with people, which was lacking in her former role as an Investment Banking analyst. When evaluating potential M&A deals for WorldCom, she had to understand how every department would be affected. “I actually had to get out of my chair and talk to people,” Eckford says, adding that it was an important development in her career skills.
After attending Harvard Business School, she landed at Cambridge Associates, which was the perfect fit for her. At Cambridge Associates, Eckford helps institutions navigate the global markets, access profitable investment opportunities, and grow their endowment capital. “My role here takes all the skills I’ve been building and utilizes them to help further missions in which I really believe,” she says. Her clients include nonprofits that work in education, community development and civil rights advocacy.
Eckford feels she is following the model set by her parents, both of whom earned their degrees during the Jim Crow era and used them to combat inequality and poverty. “The example they set was that I had a responsibility to use the privileges with which I had been blessed to try to help someone else, and I’m proud of what I do to help my clients access capital to further their important missions.”
The passion for the work she’s doing has its roots in her undergraduate thesis on women-focused microfinance as a means for broader economic development. She says that she has always been interested in how you can make investments that have a double bottom line – not only are you making an impact that is visible, but you are doing it through a market orientation. She says that she is seeing a broader use of impact investing in portfolios, though it’s still in the early stages. “There are more funds being created to bridge the gaps in income inequality and education through new technology, and a growing number of these funds are being led by women. It is a very exciting time.
Learning To Speak Up
Eckford recognizes the power of sponsors, citing that advocacy as the reason that she earned her initial spot on the real estate investment banking team. Someone for whom she had interned on another team championed her, alerting the decision makers that Eckford had really made a difference on their team and had potential to be a value-add for the group. “I’m very thankful that I have had advocates, but we also need to do it for ourselves – we need to shed the fear of telling our colleagues how we’ve added value to the company.”
And she says that young women should not be afraid of taking risks. She looks back on her business school experience and how most of the women in her class took jobs within very established companies or industries, whereas many of the men were looking for positions with independent groups, angel investors or start-ups. “They were not afraid to go to a place that had been unproven and because of it, many of them have been able to benefit from valuable experiences learned when you are part of a small team working to grow a business or when you have an individual investing in your career because your success is tied to the business’s survival.” She cites her time working for a start-up group at WorldCom as a risk like that: “I was coming up with the ideas and that really impacted my viewpoint on the rest of my career.”
Over the years, Eckford has learned that it’s not enough to just work hard – that women need to promote themselves and develop a network of allies who will help promote them. “As a black woman I had worked so hard to just fit in over the years, it felt unconscionable to try to stand out,” she says, “and yet, you get to a point in your career where it’s critical if you’re going to progress. Most likely, your male counterparts are not holding back.”
She says that speaking up and sharing your unique perspective is what will make people remember you. “I’ve worked so hard to get the seat at the table, and when I got promoted to managing director I really thought about how I wanted to use that.” Eckford knows that even if was her stellar resume that got her in the door, it is the sum of her experience that differentiates her in meetings.
She knows that her clients appreciate the different perspective and voice that she can bring and believes that all organizations can benefit from incorporating diverse perspectives to their governing bodies. She firmly believes that women need more board representation. “Even as we look for more diversity in portfolios, that decision tends to be determined at the board level. We have to have a more diverse board calling for diversity in our portfolios.”
Walking the Walk
Eckford is active in a group at Cambridge Associates that founded a Diversity Council, which encompasses employees of different ethnicities, genders and sexual orientation through all levels of the firm.
She knows that her firm is interested in the business case for diversity – and that clients care. She says that in the past year, they’ve talked frequently about the barriers for women and minority managers. “We’re making progress, but there’s a lot of work to be done,” she says.
As if her busy professional life wasn’t enough, Eckford also makes time to give back outside her firm. “Nonprofit boards have always been a passion throughout my life.”
By Cathie Ericson
How Companies are Helping Women Find STEM Careers
Guest ContributionThis move is by no means unprecedented, as major companies and schools across the country have risen to the occasion amid reports of a distinctly male-dominated tech industry.
In December, MIT announced a new, women-focused workshop titled, “Make Your Own Wearables” designed to introduce female high school students to the possibilities of the tech industry. Kristen Railey, a mechanical engineer who brought the idea to MIT said, “My goals for the workshop were to spark girls’ interest in engineering through the trendy topic of wearables and to equip them with hands-on engineering skills before college.”
Common sense tells us that if women have access to engineering and STEM careers and gain experience working in the field, more women will find an interest in tech and move on to pursue STEM related majors. However, according to a recent study, that’s only half the battle.
Researchers surveyed 1,800 scientists and graduate students from 30 different scientific disciplines, including philosophy, neuroscience, anthropology, and engineering, asking participants to rate their level of agreement with statements like, “If you want to succeed in [discipline], hard work alone just won’t cut it; you need to have an innate gift or talent.”
Unfortunately, they found that disciplines that rated themselves higher in raw talent tended to employ fewer women. Sarah-Jane Leslie, a professor of cognitive psychology at Princeton University and co-author of the study believes social bias plays a large part in the findings. “Pervasive cultural associations link men but not women with raw intellectual brilliance. Women’s accomplishments are seen as grounded in long hours poring over books, rather than in some kind of raw brilliance.”
This raises an important question: how do we begin to alter the cultural stereotypes, help women be more confident in their natural talents, and pursue meaningful careers in STEM?
Last month, three female computer scientists at MIT took to Reddit to answer questions on everything from technical programming to what it’s like to be a woman in the industry. They used the platform to inspire users to pursue a STEM career by telling anecdotes and giving advice to current students.
When one user asked if the three women were treated differently than their male counterparts, Jean, a programming language design and software verification researcher, summarized the results of the study with her own experience.
“Yes. Especially when I was younger, I noticed that people did not expect me to know very much. While some of my male friends could walk into a room and have people listen to their technical ideas by default, I had to do some amount of proving myself. Now that I have more credentials it’s become easier because rather than having to do this whole song-and-dance to demonstrate my technical credibility, I can say what I’ve done in the past. This can be exhausting–and certainly made me doubt myself more when I was younger.”
As more women enter the field through initiatives similar to Intel’s and MIT’s, these experiences will become less common. It seems the answer to the question of altering workplace stereotypes is the same determination of employers and colleges to hire and educate more women in STEM that has resulted in the creation of the initiatives themselves.
Companies and universities are now realizing the need for workplace diversity, and across both major changes are being implemented. Southern Illinois University’s Society of Women Engineers is preparing to host its third annual “Introduce a Girl to Engineering Day” in February, where girls from grades 5-8 are invited to attend a daylong event that offers exposure to the engineering field.
In addition, ASU recently made the news for its club, “Women in Science and Engineering,” whose members are dedicated a mission to “guide, gather and advance” anyone they meet. Mariah Patton, president of the club, says she “was looking for a nice, supportive community of young women. I was really looking to find a niche where I could connect with other women who had similar goals and a similar mindset.”
While Intel may be the highest-profile company to spend a significant amount of money on workplace diversity, it certainly won’t be the last. Expect to read more headlines like this as the collective effort of our educational system’s effort to bring more women into STEM begins to take effect. Until then, you can help make a difference by supporting foundations like Million Women Mentors or the American Association of University Women, which provide scholarships and fellowships to help young women begin their STEM careers.
Guest Contributed by Matthew McCallister, a content specialist at CareerGlider
Guest advice and opinions are not necessarily those of theglasshammer.com
Why “How We Do Things Around Here” Or Company Culture Will Make Or Break You
Career Advice, Career Tip of the Week!So how do you spot culture if you are interviewing? It is hard but the difference between now and previous decades is that you have a window into it via social media and opinions of people who work there as well as sites like theglasshammer.com which offers a day in the life views into big firms.
By Nicki Gilmour, Executive Coach and Organizational Psychologist
Contact nicki@theglasshammer.com if you would like to hire an executive coach to help you navigate the path to optimal personal success at work
Voice of Experience: Stephanie Cohen, Managing Director, Goldman Sachs
People, Voices of Experience“Even if you are just a little bit off at a certain point in your career, it’s that much harder to get back on track, so it’s vital that women actively ask for, and receive feedback.”
That advice has been crucial to Cohen’s success throughout her career.
As a “lifer” at Goldman Sachs, Cohen is quick to point out that even though the firm has been her only full-time employer, she hadn’t necessarily intended to stay this long when she joined. But the opportunities continued to come. Her first position was as an analyst in Mergers & Acquisitions in 1999, and she was then promoted to associate in the Industrials group, where she has spent the majority of her career. She did a stint in the San Francisco office as a vice president, where she worked in M&A with a broader array of clients, until she was asked to return to New York to oversee Conflicts and Business Selection in the Americas during the financial crisis. She then became sector captain for General Industrials in the Global Industrials Group and a member of the Merger Leadership Group in the Investment Banking Division. She was named managing director in 2008 and partner in 2014.
Building a Business
Just this spring Cohen was tapped for an exciting new assignment – creating and heading a new group, Global Financial Sponsor M&A. Cohen says she is proud that her team’s success in driving financial sponsor M&A for the Industrials Group was recognized such that she was given the opportunity to build this broader business across the company.
“It’s really exciting to be building a team, while being an active part of the current M&A deal environment, which is once again near its previous peak,” she says. “My group is able to assist clients in navigating this complex environment and achieve maximum value for their businesses.”
From a deal perspective, Cohen is proud of her work on the team that helped Chrysler negotiate with the United States government in paying off its debt in May 2011. By living and breathing the deal, she came away highly impressed with how much the employees cared about the company, and the resulting turnaround and pride in the positive strides they made in relation to the quality of their cars.
Seeking Diverse Qualities in Mentors
As she has ascended the ladder, Cohen says that an important lesson she learned is to understand the longevity of your career, and how the relationships you build will help you along the way. “At the junior level, you might be immersed in a project where you are working with someone constantly, and then the project ends and everyone moves on. While you might expect the relationship to go on, the reality is that it takes effort to maintain those relationships — but it’s worth it,” she says. Social networks like LinkedIn give the illusion that it’s easier to stay in touch, but that isn’t a substitute for actively managing your network in today’s transitory professional environment.
While she realizes that the financial services industry has fewer female role models, she has found it largely irrelevant in her career. “I would have really been stuck if I’d fixated on finding the ‘senior woman in M&A’ to emulate,” she says. “Your role model doesn’t have to be someone who is similar to you in every way. And furthermore, trying to figure out exactly what got someone to a particular seat isn’t extremely helpful either, since that exact seat likely won’t exist in its current form by the time you get there.”
Instead, she recommends creating a “personal board of directors,” and incorporating aspects of individual people that will help you in your career. “Thinking that a single mentor will help you to achieve success in all aspects of your career is not practical,” she says. Building a network of different people whom you can go to for advice and feedback means that when you make big career decisions, you have a lot of people whose input you value.
Climbing the Career Ladder
For women starting out, Cohen recommends building a base of expertise and advises younger people to avoid pigeon holing themselves. “At the end of the day, you have to have good judgment, and be able to adapt to different situations,” she says.
And again, she underscores the importance of actively seeking feedback. “If you’re not getting negative feedback, it’s not because you’re perfect. Women might get less feedback because they don’t ask for it, but it took me a while to fully appreciate that men tend to get more direct feedback on areas of improvement which allows them to know what to work on.”
Support of Women
Cohen believes that women should support other women. “There are not that many of us, and we can help each other in ways that are very impactful.”
She has seen that men in the workplace tend to be better at blending their personal and professional lives, and using that to create more client and networking opportunities. She believes that it doesn’t have to overwhelm your personal life, but it makes the networking easier and more fun when you can build and create personal connections at the same time.
To help build those bridges, Cohen created a women’s M&A event several years ago to bring together clients and other professionals who work in M&A, such as lawyers and accountants. The goal is to create relationships between those who are involved in the broad M&A infrastructure. And she reports, it has done exactly what she hoped it would.
In addition, Cohen acts as a mentor to junior women as they think about their careers, and she stays involved in recruiting and retaining a core group of female analysts. “Keeping top-quality women is vital,” she says.
Making a Difference Outside of Work
Outside of work, Cohen spends time with her husband and young son, who “helps me hone my negotiation skills,” she laughs.
She is also on the national board of the nonprofit group Reading Partners, which focuses on literacy in grammar schools, helping underprivileged kids who are behind in reading. She was first involved with the effort when she worked in San Francisco, and brought it with her when she came back to New York. She helped the organization to secure financing for a local chapter, and the group has since spread nationwide.
“The organization does great work very efficiently. The fact that we are working on literacy lends itself well to testing, so we are able to ensure the efforts are successful,” she says. The program is self-sustaining in that schools pay for it with money set aside for a literacy specialist.
“If you can’t read, you can’t succeed. Teaching a child to read will fundamentally change his or her trajectory in life.”