You have to be your own best advocate,” says Laura Rogers. “Sometimes women can shy away from opportunities that they don’t feel ideally suit them, but when you take assignments that are good for your company in the short-term, they can end up being great for your career in the long-term.”
With degrees from University of California at Berkeley, New York University and an MBA from Wharton, Rogers chose a career path in financial services. She has worked for firms such as Merrill Lynch, Citibank, and Cognizant Technologies focusing on leading internal teams make smart decisions based on strong financials and metrics.
Own Your Opinion
Working in the financial services industry after recently graduating can be difficult, especially given its competitive nature. However, earlier in her career, Rogers learned a critical lesson on holding her ground that has enabled her to be successful to this day.
In the period leading up to the financial crisis, when markets were especially frothy, many business units were taking on more risk. Though many in her company at the time wanted to expand into different types of trading, she didn’t believe the right risk management systems were in place in her business unit and advised against some trading they weren’t prepared for, ultimately saving the company millions of dollars in potential lawsuits.
“You have to think about the full vision and take ownership of your position rather than going the easy way,” she says. “I was able to make a significant difference for our division and our clients even though my stance was unpopular at the time.”
Rogers believes that this is a great time for women’s careers, since there is a real drive to engage them and help them succeed. Her advice for women is to have an opinion and own it.
Managing Change through Technology
By owning her opinion, Rogers has continued to carve a successful career path. She joined TIAA-CREF in 2013 and was recently named executive business manager for the production services group, overseeing business management and metrics, the project management office, software licensing and continuous improvement efforts. “TIAA -CREF feels like home to me,” she says, citing the open environment and the company’s mission, unchanged since 1918, to serve those who serve others – focusing primarily on institutions and individuals in the academic, medical, cultural, research and governmental communities. “Its motto of ‘Created to Serve. Built to Perform.’ is a great match for my personality and beliefs.”
In her new expanded executive business manager role, Rogers leads a cross functional IT team which is focusing on analyzing software spend and identifying opportunities for the company to reduce costs. “It’s a role that will allow me to look outside my day-to-day functions and help make a significant difference to our cost structure.”
Rogers says that as IT moves to cloud technology, it will be a game changer in terms of how people engage within the firm. “We are increasingly using the cloud as a complement to our current infrastructure, and incorporating it in such a way that it is seamless to the client.”
Networking for Career Success
Aside from leading cross-functional working groups, Rogers is a strong proponent of cross-functional mentoring. She encourages women at all stages of their career to set up peer networks – both within the company and also outside their particular division and company.
She finds that women have different questions in different stages of their career. This makes it vital to have a group that you can rely on to ask how they handled something, or what worked or what didn’t given a certain situation. “It’s about more than networking,” she says, adding that it’s important to be open and ask for advice, because people want to give it.
She herself has engaged in formal peer-to-peer networking and found it to be a game changer because of the accountability factor. She cites a friend in a similar position in a different company who was reluctant to seek a new opportunity and how Rogers was able to counsel her to try it. “Select someone you trust and seek their advice,” she says. “The further you get in your career, the more reluctant we are to be vulnerable but we still need that guidance.”
Benefits of Women’s Groups
Rogers does not just employ these practices herself, she shares her experiences with her colleagues. At TIAA-CREF, Rogers is involved in three key women’s initiatives.
First, she co-leads a mentoring group that launched in April which has received excellent feedback. It consists of two tracks – women only and mixed groups – with each group having two mentors who work with a group of eight to discuss topics that are both industry-specific and company-related.
Secondly, Rogers is active in the firm’s women’s ERG (Employee Resource Group), which she values because it allows her to get to know others in a wide variety of departments around the company.
And finally, she is excited about TIAA-CREF’s Woman2Woman: Financial Living, an online community where women can connect with both experts and peers to ask questions and share stories and tips related a range of financial topics and goals. “It fits in well with our mission of being created to serve,” Rogers says.
An Advocate for Bone Marrow Donation
Rogers, who is married with three children, enjoys spending time with her family and also is a passionate advocate for bone marrow transplants. While just out of school she volunteered in the pediatric cancer ward of Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center and saw firsthand the immediate benefits of bone marrow donation.
She is a involved with charities focused on this effort including both Gift of Life and Be the Match, and has encouraged family and friends to register for the national bone marrow matching site. “Becoming registered essentially takes no effort,” she says. “If you could save someone’s life, why wouldn’t you?”
Rogers was extremely gratified that her mom in New Jersey was matched with George, a 43-year-old man who lived in England, and was able to save his life.
No matter whether its work related or her personal interests Rogers is a passionate advocate for anything she believes in, owns her opinions and encourages other women to do the same.
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.”
Men Who Get It: Phil Porado, Content Director, Advisor and Financial Services Groups, Rogers Publishing
Men Who "Get It", People“Having held a variety of different journalism and publishing positions really helps as a manager,” he says, “because when people ask about processes you can give them a real answer.”
Following His Mother’s Advice
“I’m a diversity champion because my mom told me I had to be,” says Porado, only half joking. He says that he had an advantage through growing up with a mom who was an early 20th century career woman, which normalized women in the work force to him.
After her father died, she went to work to help support her four siblings when she was just a teen as a bookkeeper at General Electric. It was during World War II when women were welcomed into the workplace so she took advantage of the opportunity to contribute to her family’s income. Before her 19th birthday, she was running the payroll department.
Porado said she stayed home to take care of her own children, but continued to do people’s taxes on the side and assisted with the bulk of financial planning for his father’s business.
“I remember her telling me when I was 10 that someday I would be in charge and I would have to advocate for diverse people in the workplace, because I was a ‘privileged white male,’” he said, adding that his family never hesitated to make him aware of the fact that he was better off than many.
Porado admired that his parents modeled an even division of labor and says that his home was very much a partnership, with no one shouldering the bulk of the less desirable tasks.
Given his upbringing, Porado expected it to be standard operating procedure to work with women and was surprised to enter the workforce and find that sexism was still rampant in the 1980s.
“It offended me,” he says, since he had been raised in a different environment. “If you’re fortunate enough to be enlightened, then it’s your responsibility to pass it on.”
Publishing Industry Better Than Most
On the whole, Porado says the publishing industry was better than most, largely because it is a desirable field for women. He found that there were a large number of women who were choosing the field who were not only interested, but what he calls highly motivated to succeed.
“I find that women differ from some of their male counterparts many times because they are looking to learn things and up their game. They are constantly soliciting information they can use to become more skillful, which men don’t do as much,” he says. He has had the experience corroborated by others. In fact, just recently a colleague who was hiring for a writing and reporting job asked him, “Is it me, or do you also find that the woman are just stronger candidates?”
He says that when people demonstrate a willingness and desire to learn, he can facilitate their learning, making a point to actively teach them how they can progress.
That’s the greatest management lesson of all, he’s found, to help people thrive and then get out of the way. “That’s when championing gets interesting — when people whom you’ve taught show signs of eclipsing you. And that’s when you need to be able to point them to someone who might know better, though not everyone is comfortable with that. Mantle passing is hard, but if you are able to identify and help mentor a protégé, then you are doing your job.”
He has found that being a sponsor comes naturally since his focus is always on helping others with their career growth. He believes you have to advocate for promotions for people behind the scenes, and the best way to do that is to speak up for people when they’re absent, giving credit where it’s due.
“I have the uncomfortable position of people giving me credit when I am undeserving since it was an entire group effort, and I am just the leader,” Porado says. He rights the confusion by being quick to name the team members who actually did the work and acknowledging that even though he might have outlined the game plan, they were the ones who carried the ball.
Boldly Questioning Stereotyping
He says that over the years, he has seen the effects of stereotyping and has been bold about questioning it. “I would step up and say, ‘Why not so and so?’” when the situation presented itself.”
Another way that he encourages inclusion is by always suggesting that other team members join meetings when it’s appropriate. If he does find himself in a meeting where he feels another team member should have been invited, he makes the contributions he thinks they would have made, even deliberately pointing out that if that person was there, this is what they would say. “The subtle message is that you were remiss in not inviting that person and only consulting with me.”
However, he is quick to point out that things are progressing rapidly; whereas 20 years ago a stereotypical mindsight was noticeable, now it is much less of an issue. “I’ve been privileged to see a lot of change in my life, and I often point out to young people that they are living in a world that we hoped would one day exist, and they should realize and appreciate it.”
By Cathie Ericson
Managing Difficult Conversations for Career Advancement
Managing Change, Office PoliticsSome GM employees had long been aware of the potential seriousness of the engineering fault. What did executives and board members know and when did they know it?
Read more
Mover and Shaker: Lauren Koopman, Director, PwC US Sustainable Business Solutions Practice
Movers and Shakers, PeopleKoopman’s observations come from her own career trajectory, including the initial impression that she was going to be in derivatives the rest of her life, and it was just a matter of deciding for which company. But traveling the world allowed her to figure out the new, rewarding career path that she travels today.
Detour Through Wall Street on the Path to Sustainability
Koopman’s first professional position was as a management consultant and manager of e-business during the dot com craze, where her charge was to work with large banks to help them define their internet strategy — helping them switch from “brick to click” as it is commonly known.
That was her first realization that you can’t plan your career too meticulously based on the information you have. “When I was going to school, there was no internet, and then all of a sudden, I was the manager of e-business. The world is morphing so quickly, there’s really no way to look out five to 10 years to identify what you are going to do.”
She decided to return to school to earn her MBA in finance, and there she became intrigued by the complexity of derivatives, realizing that if she could master a technical skill like that it would serve her well. She was subsequently hired by Deutsche Bank and worked on the Wall Street trading floor, which was literally all men. “They used to call the woman’s bathroom ‘Lauren’s room,’” she laughs.
Koopman describes an intense environment that would begin at 7 a.m. when she would familiarize herself with overnight action in Asia and Europe, and then begin monitoring four computer screens and six phone lines.
For five years she worked on the floor, until her new husband, who had just sold his business, asked if she could make it work to travel with him. “I had always wanted to travel around the world so I took a year off and we created our “BC” (Before Child) trip, where we tackled all the harder places to travel, such as India, Beirut, Syria, China, East Asia, the Arctic Circle and Africa.
“It was the best decision I ever made; completely game changing for me,” Koopman recalls. “After seeing firsthand the real issues in the world that people were experiencing, I decided I needed to do something to make a difference.”
Combining her finance background with a second master’s degree, this time in environmental engineering, she began investigating potential options where she could make the biggest impact. She approached it with strategic analysis, creating a database of more than 100 people to speak with at foundations, banks, corporations and consulting firms.
At the time, PwC US was just starting its sustainability practice, and she jumped at the opportunity to build it out and wield true influence, a positon she has held for five years. In fact, she cites her professional role model as the person who hired her, who had the foresight to understand the business benefits of sustainability and the inspiration to build it out.
Though she describes her current position as a complete career shift, she is able to rely on her deep insight in the financial world by focusing on financial service clients. “They appreciate that I am able to speak their language,” she says, adding that even three years ago most of the companies hadn’t even thought about incorporating a sustainability mindset into their investment decisions. “I am proud of how much we’ve done and I am excited to expand our work into asset management and other asset classes.”
Koopman was also recently appointed to the World Economic Forum (WEF)’s Young Global Leaders (YGL) forum, a group selected from around the world to form a next generation leadership network to engage in global affairs. The honor recognizes outstanding and proven young leaders under the age of 40 across business, government, and arts and culture, for their accomplishments, commitment to society and potential to contribute to shaping a better future. Previous and current YGLs include Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, Google Co-founder Larry Page, and Statistician Nate Silver.
Lessons Learned Along the Way
As Koopman has navigated her career, she’s learned the importance of reading people. “I had always assumed people at the top knew everything and were always right, but over the years I’ve figured out that people are people. You have to learn to evaluate your audience and understand where they’re coming from and how to speak to what they need,” she says, adding that understanding people and how an organization works is as important as technical knowledge. “Think about who you’re talking to and their needs.”
She also has seen the value of taking on every opportunity that’s presented without immediately worrying about why it wouldn’t work. “We tend to worry about failure and stay in our comfort zone,” she says. “But there’s so much value in taking on those new opportunities. Even if it‘s something that you don’t think you want to do, inherently you are learning so much from new skill sets and new people. This creates a knowledge and network reservoir you will draw on throughout your career.”
She cites learning by simply paying attention and absorbing as critical, for example times when she has watched CEOs sell an idea to a huge group of people. Koopman also pays credit to the mentors and colleagues she has met through participating in Women in Wall Street.
A Traveling Family
Koopman is quick to point to her supportive, “amazing” husband as one of her inspirations. With a two-and-a-half-year old and a six-month-old, her home life is as busy as her office. And, even though their life-changing trip was designed to hold them over until their children were a little older, they already have robust passports: the little travelers have visited Holland, Canada, Colombia and the west coast of America, along with regular trips to her husband’s family in New Zealand.
PwC US? Or globally?
By Cathie Ericson
Changing the World
Career Advice, Guest ContributionWhat wisdom have I acquired through the years that I could share with her and so many others who are just starting out today?
1. Leadership takes courage
By definition, leadership is forging a path where no one has gone before. Be prepared to face fear of the unknown. This in no way diminishes you but presents a unique opportunity to search within you. You will be fine as long as you are fueled by a belief in yourself and heed to your moral compass. Your big dreams will often leave you standing alone but never stop dreaming. This vision is fundamental to the road map you will need in moving ahead. Always remember that the path you blaze will be tread by others so don’t leave them behind. Your ability to influence others is the key ingredient to igniting change. Be patient, change happens one person at a time but there will be many that will not budge. That is their choice, not yours.
2. Remain true to your convictions
Always stand up for what you believe in. But know that you will not always get your way. Corporate politics is a tough pill to swallow and youthful idealism can erode with each workplace disappointment. Compromise is an art so explore your right brain and let creativity flow. This is all part of growing up. Organizations that lack diverse leadership may pose an unfairly stacked deck against females and you will face gender bias at least once in your career. The very first time this happens will be a painful blow that disorients and disappoints. After all, encountering gender as a barrier is a loss of innocence. But you will recover stronger and more resilient.
3. Stay hungry
Ambition is the fuel that propels us out of the gates keeping our eyes on the prize while never looking back. Each individual success results in a burgeoning confidence. There will be setbacks which may result in second guessing your relevance and impact in the workplace. Despite these, never drop out. Make the most of the hand you have been dealt and never stop striving for the finish line.
4. You matter
Predominantly male organizations may provide an absence of females to look up to making it a very lonely place. Despite this, know that you are not alone. Fill the void with someone who cares and cheers you on. Mentors and advocates come in all shapes, sizes, and yes, genders. Engaging men in the conversation results in game changing partnerships and lays the foundation for empowerment and gender equality. If you must be the first in your organization to shatter the parochial glass ceiling, strap yourself in. You are in for a trip of a lifetime. One less glass ceiling moves all women ahead. You owe it to yourself and those that follow to get off the sidelines and roar.
5. Pay it forward
Always look for those that look to you as an emerging leader. You must remember that you too bear a responsibility to the generation that follows. After all, it is the next generation of women and men that will continue the progress that has been made and effect long-term and permanent change. Just as you stand on the shoulders of those that came before you, so too will the next generation stand on your shoulders.
My grown up self has still so much to learn and if asked the same question in five years, my hope is that I have acquired more wisdom to add to my list. But one thing I know for sure is that I am impacting the world. Each and every day, we are given the opportunity to create a legacy. The caliber of that legacy is completely up to us. Let it be a positive one and the foundation for those that follow in their attempt at changing the world.
Guest Contribution by Rossana G. D’Antonio, PE, GE
Guest advice and opinions not necessarily those of theglasshammer.com
Taking Your Development Areas and Working On Them
Career Advice, Career Tip of the Week!Ascertaining what you are not so good at at work is really important as then you can spend time developing yourself with or without formal development or learning programs at your company (it is great if there are programs to help you). However, how do you know what you are bad at? Well, you could have received feedback formally in a review or informally but sometimes the tasks you like least are often the ones you are least developed in and you just know that some of the elements of your job you could do with strengthening your muscles in ( see last week’s advice)
Write a list of what you want to master and carve out time to spend real time to practice – for example: budgets or excel – a lot of this can be self taught. Then there are less tangible areas such as networking which we will talk about for the month of October in this column. Good Luck!
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: Laura Rogers, Director, Executive Business Manager, Information Technology, TIAA-CREF
People, Voices of ExperienceWith degrees from University of California at Berkeley, New York University and an MBA from Wharton, Rogers chose a career path in financial services. She has worked for firms such as Merrill Lynch, Citibank, and Cognizant Technologies focusing on leading internal teams make smart decisions based on strong financials and metrics.
Own Your Opinion
Working in the financial services industry after recently graduating can be difficult, especially given its competitive nature. However, earlier in her career, Rogers learned a critical lesson on holding her ground that has enabled her to be successful to this day.
In the period leading up to the financial crisis, when markets were especially frothy, many business units were taking on more risk. Though many in her company at the time wanted to expand into different types of trading, she didn’t believe the right risk management systems were in place in her business unit and advised against some trading they weren’t prepared for, ultimately saving the company millions of dollars in potential lawsuits.
“You have to think about the full vision and take ownership of your position rather than going the easy way,” she says. “I was able to make a significant difference for our division and our clients even though my stance was unpopular at the time.”
Rogers believes that this is a great time for women’s careers, since there is a real drive to engage them and help them succeed. Her advice for women is to have an opinion and own it.
Managing Change through Technology
By owning her opinion, Rogers has continued to carve a successful career path. She joined TIAA-CREF in 2013 and was recently named executive business manager for the production services group, overseeing business management and metrics, the project management office, software licensing and continuous improvement efforts. “TIAA -CREF feels like home to me,” she says, citing the open environment and the company’s mission, unchanged since 1918, to serve those who serve others – focusing primarily on institutions and individuals in the academic, medical, cultural, research and governmental communities. “Its motto of ‘Created to Serve. Built to Perform.’ is a great match for my personality and beliefs.”
In her new expanded executive business manager role, Rogers leads a cross functional IT team which is focusing on analyzing software spend and identifying opportunities for the company to reduce costs. “It’s a role that will allow me to look outside my day-to-day functions and help make a significant difference to our cost structure.”
Rogers says that as IT moves to cloud technology, it will be a game changer in terms of how people engage within the firm. “We are increasingly using the cloud as a complement to our current infrastructure, and incorporating it in such a way that it is seamless to the client.”
Networking for Career Success
Aside from leading cross-functional working groups, Rogers is a strong proponent of cross-functional mentoring. She encourages women at all stages of their career to set up peer networks – both within the company and also outside their particular division and company.
She finds that women have different questions in different stages of their career. This makes it vital to have a group that you can rely on to ask how they handled something, or what worked or what didn’t given a certain situation. “It’s about more than networking,” she says, adding that it’s important to be open and ask for advice, because people want to give it.
She herself has engaged in formal peer-to-peer networking and found it to be a game changer because of the accountability factor. She cites a friend in a similar position in a different company who was reluctant to seek a new opportunity and how Rogers was able to counsel her to try it. “Select someone you trust and seek their advice,” she says. “The further you get in your career, the more reluctant we are to be vulnerable but we still need that guidance.”
Benefits of Women’s Groups
Rogers does not just employ these practices herself, she shares her experiences with her colleagues. At TIAA-CREF, Rogers is involved in three key women’s initiatives.
First, she co-leads a mentoring group that launched in April which has received excellent feedback. It consists of two tracks – women only and mixed groups – with each group having two mentors who work with a group of eight to discuss topics that are both industry-specific and company-related.
Secondly, Rogers is active in the firm’s women’s ERG (Employee Resource Group), which she values because it allows her to get to know others in a wide variety of departments around the company.
And finally, she is excited about TIAA-CREF’s Woman2Woman: Financial Living, an online community where women can connect with both experts and peers to ask questions and share stories and tips related a range of financial topics and goals. “It fits in well with our mission of being created to serve,” Rogers says.
An Advocate for Bone Marrow Donation
Rogers, who is married with three children, enjoys spending time with her family and also is a passionate advocate for bone marrow transplants. While just out of school she volunteered in the pediatric cancer ward of Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center and saw firsthand the immediate benefits of bone marrow donation.
She is a involved with charities focused on this effort including both Gift of Life and Be the Match, and has encouraged family and friends to register for the national bone marrow matching site. “Becoming registered essentially takes no effort,” she says. “If you could save someone’s life, why wouldn’t you?”
Rogers was extremely gratified that her mom in New Jersey was matched with George, a 43-year-old man who lived in England, and was able to save his life.
No matter whether its work related or her personal interests Rogers is a passionate advocate for anything she believes in, owns her opinions and encourages other women to do the same.