Kathryn Kaminsky will be a panelist at theglasshammer.com’s 4th Annual Navigating, Negotiating, & Building Your Strategic Network Event on February 26th.
“There is a lot we can learn from men in the workforce,” says Kathryn Kaminsky, a Partner at PwC. “When they leave early to attend one of their kid’s sporting event, they do it with pride. They don’t slink out of the office — they’re excited, and women should behave that way too.”
Kaminsky, who started her career with PwC in Canada before moving to the firm’s New York office, has always been cognizant of the fact that she works in an organization where only 19 percent of the partners are women. “Male relationships are critical so I have always tried to build my relationships to be gender neutral,” she says.
Going on her tenth year as a Partner, Kaminsky has appreciated that during her 20-year tenure at PwC, she has been constantly challenged, noting the opportunity to be in a career where she can do different jobs at the same place. She’s moved from the asset management space to banking and capital markets.
“Being admitted to the partnership is definitely the professional achievement I am proudest of,” she says, adding that she is always looking forward to the new experiences and new engagements that she will undertake as she moves up the partnership ranks.
The industry is constantly changing and she is fascinated by where it might go. “Ten years from now, will we all bank via cell phone??” she muses. She sees huge potential for disruption in the financial services industry, especially with tech companies that can stay nimble and entrepreneurial since they are not hampered by the regulations that banks have to grapple with.
Confidence Builds Careers
Kaminsky sees confidence as a trait that women need to learn to develop as they progress in their careers. “It can be hard to be in a room where you are the minority but you have to speak up – you can’t be in a meeting and not talk.”
That confidence translates into knowing how to discern among competing priorities. “You have to evaluate internal versus external focus,” she says, noting that in a client-based business, you often need to choose the client side.
One thing that Kaminsky has learned over the course of her career is that “this too shall pass.” She says there are times that she wishes she’d had a thicker skin and realized that what seemed like a big deal at the time wouldn’t be in the long run. “I wish I hadn’t taken things so seriously and lost sleep over things that I shouldn’t have cared about,” she says.
She knows from experience that you have to have a stellar work performance, but success is based on more than that. “Aim high – don’t just put your head down. Get out and meet people – growth comes from experiences and relationship building, both internally and with clients. Business books alone won’t tell you what’s going on in the world, you have to get out there.”
And while you’re out there, she advises having some fun. “In the 20 years that I’ve been at the firm, I definitely could have had a little more fun!”
Lessons to Be Learned from Men
“Many people don’t like to hear it, but there are lots of things men do very well that we could emulate,” she says. For example, she appreciates that men are more open in how they talk about things. She says they’re more apt to admit they’re having a bad day, or discuss something they’re struggling with rather than sit behind a closed office door by themselves.
They also are more likely to own the career decisions they make. Currently, she works in the New York office while her family has relocated to the west coast for her husband’s job. “Men commute all the time, and don’t have any problems with it. I have found that my schedule allows me to focus on work during the week and home on the weekend, which is a benefit for everyone, but somehow that is not as accepted with women as with men.”
As part of her desire to create a gender-neutral network, Kaminsky has worked within the wide range of programs PwC offers – some specific to women, and some geared toward general career development. In particular, she has benefitted from an Advocacy and Sponsorship group which matches professionals with more senior partners. Over the years, her male match became a friend, sponsor and advocate, someone she confides in on a regular basis. Kaminsky says that women don’t necessarily need to be sponsored by women – it’s more important to just make sure it’s the right person.
And she finds that at PwC mentorship is inherent in a wide variety of day-to-day activities even aside from dedicated programs.
Still, she says that there is competition even as you climb the ranks, and she feels fortunate that even though she has great male friends and sponsors, she has a network of four to five women who are the ones she calls upon for the closer friendship that everyone needs. “It’s important to remember that not everyone is a competitor.”
Weekends Are For Family
Mom to three boys – an eight year old and seven year old twins, Kaminsky in many ways feels her dual life allows her more focus than if she was home every night. Throughout the week, they FaceTime and talk, and she is able to have “me time” on the plane each way. That allows her to focus exclusively on her kids when she is home. This fall she was the association treasurer and team mom for her twins’ Pop Warner football team. “Our weekend is extremely active with family time with the kids,” she says, always ending with Sunday night dinner. “That’s what weekends are for me – 100 percent focus on my family. They know all about my work life and are very involved with it. But when I’m home, I’m home.”
By Cathie Ericson
Black History Month Coverage: Diversifying Diversity for Better Results
FeaturedThe Glass Hammer has long upheld the “business case for diversity,” and senior women in the corporate space will be pleased to see statistically significant results supporting this argument. More women at the top will indeed help a company perform better. But the study is also a reminder that the definition of diversity extends beyond the group of white women who make up the bulk of those taking part in leadership diversity programs. According to McKinsey, including more ethnically diverse individuals in the leadership tier of companies will produce even better financial performance.
“Diversity matters because we increasingly live in a diverse world that has become deeply interconnected. It should come as no surprise that more diverse companies and institutions are achieving better performance,” write the report authors, McKinsey’s Vivian Hunt, Dennis Layton, and Sara Prince.
According to the study, the top quartile of companies for racial/ethnic diversity in leadership were 30% more likely to outperform the industry median.
Companies in the bottom quartile for gender and for ethnic/racial diversity underperformed compared to their peers. McKinsey urges companies to be more intentional on increasing diversity. While acknowledging that there is more to do before companies approach gender parity at the leadership level, the report shows that efforts toward raising the percentage of women in executive leadership have made a difference.
“The data appears to show that less attention has been given to the attainment of racial and ethnic diversity,” McKinsey says. “By this measure it becomes apparent that for US companies, a dedicated effort would be needed to achieve leadership diversity that begins to reflect the demographic composition of the labor force and the national population.”
Comparatively, companies still need to do much more to improve ethnic diversity in leadership. And according to these numbers, the difficult work of addressing implicit racial biases in the workplace is worth the effort.
“Organizations are often uncomfortable with the discussion of race here in the U.S. and abroad,” says Katherine Phillips, Paul Calello Professor of Leadership and Ethics Management at Columbia University. “Targeting women is easier for organizations because it doesn’t feel as controversial somehow.”
But, Phillips says, there is much that companies can do to broaden their efforts toward improving diversity in leadership and throughout the organization.
“Organizations can better incorporate racial or ethnic diversity targets by first acknowledging that their organizations may not currently be designed for racial minorities to thrive. That was the first step with women – there was an acknowledgment that women had not been so welcomed before and that their needs were not being met. The same acknowledgment needs to happen with racial/ethnic differences to help change things.”
According to Phillips, senior women can help push for more meaningful change at their companies. She encourages the leadership to mindfully sponsor of people of color which will “diversify their own networks and build a broad coalition across these various groups,” she says.
Women who’ve focused on gender diversity have the tool kit to push their companies toward addressing the need for more ethnically diverse leaders as well, Phillips says.
“The barriers and issues may be different but the process of moving the needle is the same – sponsorship and mentorship, vocal advocacy, acknowledgment of biases both explicit and unconscious, and a commitment to changing the status quo are all critical.”
According to the research, businesses with the most women in leadership were 15% more likely to produce above average financial returns. Studies have long shown that diversity makes business sense – teams with greater diversity produce smarter, more collaborative decisions. Research has also shown that companies with more women in the boardroom outperform the market.
But this new research, which crunched companies’ average earnings before interest and taxes (EBIT) between 2010 and 2013, dug deeper. It tracked the gender, ethnic and racial demographics of senior management and boards of 366 large, public companies in the U.S., Canada, U.K., Brazil, Mexico and Chile, and while greater gender diversity produced better returns, greater ethnic diversity produced an even bigger result.
As we move toward a more diverse and global economy, companies that fall to the back of the pack on diversity will also find themselves lagging their peers in terms of corporate performance as well, this study indicates.
Diversity is the competitive edge that most companies are not taking advantage of. By empowering women and ethnically diverse leaders to push into the upper echelons of corporate management, companies will enjoy outsized performance. Unlocking the potential of leadership diversity will take constant and careful work, like any business transformation. But in the end, that work will pay off.
By Melissa J. Anderson
Engaging Men as Allies: Nine Emerging Practices
Guest ContributionGuest Contributed by Chuck Shelton, Chief Executive Officer, Greatheart Consulting
Allies listen, co-create opportunity, and build a personal brand for accountability and trust. For us men, we aren’t allies to women because we aspire to be, or because we say we are. As men, we’re allies only when specific women are willing to speak about our behavioral support and teachability.
Consider nine emerging practices in engaging men as allies for women’s advancement.
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US Trails European Countries in Women on Boards, Diversity Efforts
NewsBy The Glasshammer Staff
According to Catalyst’s board census for 2014, women how hold 19.2 percent of all seats on S&P 500 boards. The U.S. numbers look similar to those in Canada, where women hold 20.8 percent of board seats at companies on the S&P / TSX 60 index.
But in many parts of Europe, the percentage of women on boards has surpassed the numbers in North America that Catalyst reported. Norway has the highest percentage of women on boards of public countries at 35.5 percent, a result of the country’s 2003 quota law that threatens to delist companies whose boards are less than 40% female.
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Voice of Experience: Mylan Denerstein, Partner, Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher
Voices of ExperiencePublic Service
As a 1993 graduate of Columbia Law School and Skadden Fellow, Denerstein began her professional life working for the Children’s Defense Fund in Washington, D.C. This opportunity led to a position with the Department of Justice as a special assistant to the Attorney General in charge of the Criminal Division. According to Denerstein, the experience “was a great introduction to Washington and how things worked there.” But DC couldn’t hold her for very long.
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“Generally, people want to help you with your career, but you have to ask. Anybody can be your mentor, but you can’t let your fear of rejection get in the way of asking for help, or asking for advice.” – Mylan Denerstein
Learning from Others: The Toigo Foundation’s Annual Groundbreakers Summit
FeaturedIn December, the Toigo Foundation, a partner of theglasshammer.com held its fourth annual Groundbreakers Summit for female leaders. This year’s theme was action-based and explored the key resources, tools and relationships needed to help women advance in their careers.
Founded in 1989, the Toigo Foundation established an educational fellowship program (The Financial Services Fellowship) focused on careers in financial services for minorities. Now in its 25th year, the Toigo Foundation has provided MBA fellowships and internships for women and minority professionals, and has since added lifelong mentoring, career development programs, and networking. The group now counts over 1,000 alums in key leadership roles across finance, government and academia.
The day’s presentations were equal parts analysis, inspiration and brainstorming. The morning plenary session called Journey to the Top: What’s in Your Toolkit? This session explored the challenge of rising to the top from both internal and external perspectives. Adena Friedman, President of Global Corporate and Information Technology at NASDAQ, encouraged the attendees to consider the possibility that they can succeed “if they think and act like a woman.” She acknowledged that women face all sorts of external hurdles to success and gender parity – structural, cultural, systemic, but that in her opinion, the keys to success are one’s internal perceptions. Freidman advised,
“Just as someone can’t make you a leader without your consent, they also can’t make you inferior without your consent.”
Friedman then advocated actions over words, “Saying yes to a challenge makes you a risk taker. You don’t have to say, ‘I am a risk taker.’”
Erika Hayes James was named the John H. Harland Dean of Goizueta Business School at Emory University in May 2014 and opened by saying that she was “unprepared for the attention” she received as the first minority female to lead a major business school. Dr. James’s presentation discussed the challenges to one’s confidence of being “different from the majority” and went on to comment on the effects of being in the power minority,
“As a woman in business we are always in the spotlight, under scrutiny, simply because we are different from the majority, and this often causes women to cast doubt upon ourselves.”
According to Dr. James, women generally rely on three coping mechanisms to deal with their confidence issues, which she stated as ‘overachievement, assimilation or hiding in support roles’.
Unfortunately each of these coping mechanisms is limiting at best. A philosophy of overachievement often sets a person up for failure; cultural assimilation doesn’t let a person use their own unique strengths and insights and hiding in support roles is often just that – hiding.
Head of Global Research for Bank of America Merrill Lynch, Candace Browning, recounted her personal story of success despite not fitting the finance mold but stated that “I was okay as an outsider.”
Born in the Virgin Islands and a History and Russian Language major she entered a joint program at Columbia to study business and International Affairs, Browning “fell in love with case method” and eventually graduated with an emphasis in marketing. She joined PanAm and eventually leveraged her knowledge of the airline industry into equity research. Looking back she commented, “There wasn’t a lot of planning but I was willing to take risks.” Along the way she was constantly learning and asking questions, she advises women to “tell the story to get the promotion.”
Dr. Anne-Marie Slaughter, closed the morning plenary sessions with her thoughts on balancing competition and care. Dr. Slaughter is President and CEO of the New America Foundation and author of “Why Women Still Can’t Have it All”. Dr. Slaughter stated in her polarizing interview in the Atlantic in 2012 that women can ‘have it all’ and explained that women can even ‘have it all at the same time’ but takes the stance that there are structural and societal barriers that need to change to allow women to fully enjoy success at work and home.
Dr. Slaughter contended at the event that women are doing themselves a disservice by holding onto self-defeating beliefs such as, “It’s possible if you are just committed enough” and “It’s possible if you marry the right person.” She advocates for women to look instead at finding solutions to obstacles such as default rules about when and where and how work has to be done.
The final two sessions of the day were inspirational and examined how women’s decisions can change the world – and how much need there is for change. Nevada State Assemblywoman, Lucy Flores, recounted her personal tale of growing up poor, early run-ins with the justice system, becoming a politician and, most powerfully, her failed campaign to be Lieutenant Governor of Nevada. “Always go with your gut” is a cornerstone of Flores’s philosophy. Her strength was tested when she testified regarding a sexual education bill in Nevada. The bill promoted abstinence and Flores, relying on her gut, revealed that she had an abortion as a teen and that at the time it was her best option. “The backlash was horrible,” she recalled, “and I thought that following my gut was the worst mistake I could have made. However, eventually more and more people came forward to support me and I am happy to say that my disclosure helped move the needle nationally in the discussion of teen sexuality.” Flores also encouraged women to choose work that “makes them happy, even if it is hard. If fear is holding you back you are missing opportunities. Failure is difficult, but it is harder to live with regret.”
The final presentation was given by Terri McCullough, Director, No Ceilings Project at the Clinton Foundation. The project looks at ways to better integrate women into all aspects of political, social and economic life across the globe and the costs of leaving women out of the equation. McCullough encouraged attendees to “think more broadly about where opportunity and support may lie for women’s progress.”
After McCullough’s presentation, attendees broke into small discussion groups to brainstorm and present possible solutions to the gender parity situation. At the conclusion, Jeanne Sullivan, a technology venture capitalist with StarVest partners, addressed the crowd saying that she was particularly optimistic about the outlook for women in business and financial services. “Men who are marrying now have come up through the ranks and have seen how things work against women. They want their daughters to succeed and they will do what they can to change the culture to help them succeed.”
By Beth Senko
Voice of Experience: Pamela Click, Director and Senior Development Manager, TIAA-CREF
Voices of ExperienceHer path to her current position at TIAA-CREF was somewhat circuitous: After earning a degree in accounting, Click started her career as a management consultant with Andersen Consulting (now Accenture), working with various clients in industries as diverse as consumer products, utilities and oil and gas.
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How to Be a Conscious Listener – What it Means for Us and Others
Guest ContributionContributed by John Keyser
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Career Tip of the Week!
Career Tip of the Week!Enjoy the journey, but know the destination.
Like Steven Covey’s advice of “begin with the end in mind”, it is good to review how your current job is a pathway to gathering the skills and relationships needed to take you to your next job.
Welcome to Career Tip of the Week. In this column we aim to provide you with a useful snippet of advice to carry with you all week as you navigate the day to day path in your career.
By Nicki Gilmour, Executive Coach and Organizational Psychologist
Kathryn Kaminsky, Partner, PwC
Voices of Experience“There is a lot we can learn from men in the workforce,” says Kathryn Kaminsky, a Partner at PwC. “When they leave early to attend one of their kid’s sporting event, they do it with pride. They don’t slink out of the office — they’re excited, and women should behave that way too.”
Kaminsky, who started her career with PwC in Canada before moving to the firm’s New York office, has always been cognizant of the fact that she works in an organization where only 19 percent of the partners are women. “Male relationships are critical so I have always tried to build my relationships to be gender neutral,” she says.
Going on her tenth year as a Partner, Kaminsky has appreciated that during her 20-year tenure at PwC, she has been constantly challenged, noting the opportunity to be in a career where she can do different jobs at the same place. She’s moved from the asset management space to banking and capital markets.
“Being admitted to the partnership is definitely the professional achievement I am proudest of,” she says, adding that she is always looking forward to the new experiences and new engagements that she will undertake as she moves up the partnership ranks.
The industry is constantly changing and she is fascinated by where it might go. “Ten years from now, will we all bank via cell phone??” she muses. She sees huge potential for disruption in the financial services industry, especially with tech companies that can stay nimble and entrepreneurial since they are not hampered by the regulations that banks have to grapple with.
Confidence Builds Careers
Kaminsky sees confidence as a trait that women need to learn to develop as they progress in their careers. “It can be hard to be in a room where you are the minority but you have to speak up – you can’t be in a meeting and not talk.”
That confidence translates into knowing how to discern among competing priorities. “You have to evaluate internal versus external focus,” she says, noting that in a client-based business, you often need to choose the client side.
One thing that Kaminsky has learned over the course of her career is that “this too shall pass.” She says there are times that she wishes she’d had a thicker skin and realized that what seemed like a big deal at the time wouldn’t be in the long run. “I wish I hadn’t taken things so seriously and lost sleep over things that I shouldn’t have cared about,” she says.
She knows from experience that you have to have a stellar work performance, but success is based on more than that. “Aim high – don’t just put your head down. Get out and meet people – growth comes from experiences and relationship building, both internally and with clients. Business books alone won’t tell you what’s going on in the world, you have to get out there.”
And while you’re out there, she advises having some fun. “In the 20 years that I’ve been at the firm, I definitely could have had a little more fun!”
Lessons to Be Learned from Men
“Many people don’t like to hear it, but there are lots of things men do very well that we could emulate,” she says. For example, she appreciates that men are more open in how they talk about things. She says they’re more apt to admit they’re having a bad day, or discuss something they’re struggling with rather than sit behind a closed office door by themselves.
They also are more likely to own the career decisions they make. Currently, she works in the New York office while her family has relocated to the west coast for her husband’s job. “Men commute all the time, and don’t have any problems with it. I have found that my schedule allows me to focus on work during the week and home on the weekend, which is a benefit for everyone, but somehow that is not as accepted with women as with men.”
As part of her desire to create a gender-neutral network, Kaminsky has worked within the wide range of programs PwC offers – some specific to women, and some geared toward general career development. In particular, she has benefitted from an Advocacy and Sponsorship group which matches professionals with more senior partners. Over the years, her male match became a friend, sponsor and advocate, someone she confides in on a regular basis. Kaminsky says that women don’t necessarily need to be sponsored by women – it’s more important to just make sure it’s the right person.
And she finds that at PwC mentorship is inherent in a wide variety of day-to-day activities even aside from dedicated programs.
Still, she says that there is competition even as you climb the ranks, and she feels fortunate that even though she has great male friends and sponsors, she has a network of four to five women who are the ones she calls upon for the closer friendship that everyone needs. “It’s important to remember that not everyone is a competitor.”
Weekends Are For Family
Mom to three boys – an eight year old and seven year old twins, Kaminsky in many ways feels her dual life allows her more focus than if she was home every night. Throughout the week, they FaceTime and talk, and she is able to have “me time” on the plane each way. That allows her to focus exclusively on her kids when she is home. This fall she was the association treasurer and team mom for her twins’ Pop Warner football team. “Our weekend is extremely active with family time with the kids,” she says, always ending with Sunday night dinner. “That’s what weekends are for me – 100 percent focus on my family. They know all about my work life and are very involved with it. But when I’m home, I’m home.”
By Cathie Ericson