female leaderAfter earning degrees in Business & Insurance Science and Business Administration from Universidad Pontificia de Salamanca in Spain, Belen Navarro began her professional career in April 1997 as an account executive at a brokerage firm in Madrid.

In 1997 she joined AIG Europe, where she held various positions of increasing responsibility in the finance area in Spain and Portugal for 12 years. In 2009, she was offered what she calls a life-changing opportunity: to join the Regional Financial Lines team for Latin America and the Caribbean. Navarro currently heads the Latin America and Caribbean Professional Liability and Cyber team for AIG with the responsibility for establishing underwriting strategy and implementing best practices across the region.

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Guest Contribution by Kelly Wright

People ask me all the time what it’s like being a woman in sales in the technology industry. The truth is that I did not think about the lack of the number of women in a field as part of my career consideration when entering the industry. I love helping and interacting with people. To me, this was sales. I am drawn to fast-paced environments where I could have an impact. To me, this was technology. Selling technology is what I wanted, so I went after it. And it’s worked for me. I started as the first salesperson at Tableau nearly a decade ago, and now I head up the entire sales team for one of the fastest growing software technology companies in the world.

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By Cathie Ericson

Returnship programs, which are typically hosted by top financial services firms eager to mine the talent pool of employees who took a career break and want to jump back in, have been the focus of several banks in the past few years. The programs, which heavily recruit women, represent a win-win for all participants: Returning employees gain an onramp back into the high-powered world of full-time work, while firms benefit from the experience and maturity they offer.

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Thanksgiving - autumnThe Glass Hammer will be taking a short publishing break to celebrate Thanksgiving here in the U.S. First and foremost, we are incredibly thankful for our loyal readers and our sponsors who continue to enable us to do this work. We are also thankful for everyone out there who is working hard to break the glass ceiling. Keep going!

If you are lucky enough to have some down time this week, why not catch up on a couple of our most popular and recent posts that you may have missed?

Additionally, The Glass Hammer is always looking for ways to showcase the women who inspire and empower us – if you’d like to nominate someone to be profiled on the site as Voice of Experience, Mover and Shaker, or Rising Star, please get in touch with jilliane@theglasshammer.com.

What are you thankful for this year? Let us know in the comments section below. We’ll be back next week with more articles designed to inform, inspire, and empower you!

Contributed By Jude Bijou MA MFT

No matter how fulfilled and productive we feel at our job, the holidays have a way of throwing a wrench into the works. That’s because holidays trigger complicated and challenging emotions, such as loneliness, anxiety, and depression. It may be the first holiday without one’s elderly mother at the table. Or one might start to get that uncomfortable feeling of panic just thinking about upcoming conflicts with difficult family members. And of course, many of us worry about finances, gift ideas, school kids on vacation, to-do lists, work interruptions, and much more.

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Lisa Carnoy, Division Executive for Northeast and Metro New York U.S. Trust, Bank of America Private Wealth Management, is a persistent and self-described optimist. Carnoy is pleased to have both “survived and thrived in” the multiple market and corporate changes over the years, including the end of junk bonds, the tech crunch, and the 2007 crisis.

This summer marks her twenty-fifth year in the financial industry and also marks another career milestone as she advances her career from Global Capital Markets to the company’s wealth-management unit. Carnoy, who started at Merrill in 1994, has emerged as one of the top strategists in the company and was recognized by American Banker as one of the 25 most powerful women in finance.

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By Rebecca Caum

Businesswoman using smart phoneThe power of social media lies in its ability to deliver information with unprecedented speed to a global audience. Like most kinds of power, the inherent risks are congruent with the potential benefits. We have all figured out how to avoid the most common mistakes: set your drinks aside, don’t post your political views, and leave all things private as just that—private. But, what about using social media at work—is being social becoming as important of an asset for America’s top CEOs as reading a balance sheet? Can being social online or having a blog actually advance your career?

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By Cathie Ericson

The Opt Out Generation Wants Back In” heralded the headline of a 2013 New York Times article about women who had taken a career break and then subsequently desired to re-enter the workforce. The story itself, however, painted a rather bleak picture of these women’s futures. And while no one claims that finding the right fit is easy, there are ways women can prepare themselves for transitioning back to the workforce.

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Guest Contribution By Danielle Tate, CEO of MissNowMrs.com

iStock_000002618796XSmallDo you know what your goal is? Is it happiness, independence, wealth or a combination of those things? The key to success is knowing your specific goal and the steps to achieving it. Waking up each morning with your goal burning in your brain will help you steer your day and life towards its achievement.

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By Melissa J. Anderson

iStock_000004922748XSmallEven today in 2014, the vast majority of leadership in industries like the physical sciences or financial services is made up of men, which, can create a self-fulfilling prophecy of “think leader, think male” since men and also women hold firm stereotypes around which gender assigned traits make good leadership traits.

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