By Tina Vasquez, Managing Editor
It wasn’t until Latrise Ashford was interviewing with Accenture that she realized technology consulting would be the perfect career choice for her, enabling her to be analytical and work directly with clients.
“A friend who interned at Accenture introduced me to the company and suggested I apply,” Ashford said. “I always knew I wanted to work in business, but wasn’t aware I could have a career in consulting.”
The Yale graduate is now Managing Director of Accenture’s Health and Public Service Practice. Since the early days of her career she has concentrated on information management.
“After receiving my first assignment analyzing and structuring new data sources, I knew I had made the right choice,” she said. “In my current role I work with data analysts and statisticians on a regular basis and love it. I may not have deliberately chosen this path, but I ended up in the perfect place for my skills and interests.”
Leveraging Assets
Currently, Ashford is focused on helping health & public service organizations become insight-driven by leveraging their best asset: data. By using data more effectively and efficiently, she says, these organizations can better help their communities and the citizens who depend on their services.
“I am committed to working with my clients in the public service sector and I’m passionate about finding solutions to problems that affect those who are most vulnerable in our society,” Ashford said. “The combination of my technical skills and love for creative problem solving has made my current position leading Intelligent Processing and Data Analytics in our Health & Public Service practice the perfect role for me.”
The Art of the Possible
The work the managing director does is new and cutting edge, with advanced analytics and new technologies quickly becoming the buzz in the market. But there are challenges.
“The challenge is that public service organizations often don’t have a lot of room for trying out new techniques and methods without the fear of impacting the lives of the citizens they serve. Balancing limited resources and increasing demand for services is something my clients deal with every day. Helping them understand the art of the possible – and how new technology plays into that – is my biggest challenge and a challenge I welcome,” Ashford said.
The work she did with the Administration for Children’s Services is among Ashford’s proudest career achievements. She spent four-years working with the agency to create a management reporting solution that provided a holistic view of children in the New York City foster care system.
“This tool was a powerful way to track key outcomes to get children and families reunited where appropriate,” she said. “I’m happy I played a role and am looking to create similar and even more advanced solutions for my clients.”
Work-Life Integration
Ashford’s schedule is jam packed and she admits that sometimes it can be overwhelming. But a long time ago she received a piece of advice that has stuck with her.
“Stop trying to strike work-life balance; focus more on work-life integration. I have learned that life may not always be balanced, but my work is very important to me and being able to achieve professional success while still being there for my family provides me with a sense of accomplishment, pride, and true fulfillment,” Ashford says.
Leading By Example
The managing director has equally good advice for young women considering a career in her field.
“Always strive to be an authentic leader; never lead in a manner that does not feel natural – working in this manner is simply not sustainable,” she said. “We spend a tremendous amount of time at work, and give our all to our colleagues, clients, and teams. We should enjoy what we do, and not feel we are forcing anything unnaturally.”
The newly-engaged Ashford knows a great deal about being a leader, too. She works with several NYC non-profits, assisting the under-served and most vulnerable citizens of the community. For the last 10 years she has also led the Metro NY African-American Employee Resource Group.
“I am amazed at the programs we’ve been able to organize and the impact we’ve made within Accenture and our communities,” she said. “This group has been a source of mentorship and camaraderie for me and I’m happy to play a leadership role. Watching the next generation of leaders take the torch and run with it also has been incredibly rewarding.”
A forward thinker, Ashford says she sets her sights on new goals every couple of years.
“I’m shaping my next big goal,” she said, “but for now it’s to be the best I can possibly be in creating viable, profitable, and most important, sustainable, business for Accenture.”
Presidents’ Day Publishing Break
NewsDear Readers,
We want to wish you a Happy Presidents’ Day and let you know we are taking a publishing break for the day.
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Or perhaps you missed these great articles and now is the time to catch up:
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The Glass Hammer Team
Tackling Pregnancy Discrimination is Good for the Bottom Line
Work-LifeIn November 2013, the Equality and Human Rights Commission in the U.K. launched a major investigation into the discrimination faced by pregnant women in the workplace. According to a press release, the new project intends to investigate workplace practices and explore the causes and effects of pregnancy and maternity discrimination.
Equality and Human Rights Commission Chief Executive Mark Hammond said in the release, “It is very concerning that in 2013 a number of women are still being disadvantaged in the workplace just because they are pregnant. That would be unlawful discrimination and needs to be tackled.”
Discrimination at Senior Executive Levels
How does pregnancy discrimination apply to women working at senior executive levels, or for Fortune 500 companies? Clearly, women can face discrimination in office settings and it often takes shape in the form of a lack of pay raises, promotions, and recruitment.
Stephanie Mizzell Gossman works for Georgia Power under the Fortune 500 company Southern Company and she says she’s witnessed men in the workplace working hard to understand what a pregnant employee needs, though it’s her belief that a study would be needed to better understand the reason for pregnancy discrimination.
“I do think a study in the U.S. would be beneficial,” she said. “My opinion based on my experiences is that any discrimination against pregnant working women probably stems from a level of awkwardness, since most men feel awkward even when their wives or partners are pregnant, let alone a coworker.”
Susie Sheehey, who previously worked for Fortune 500 company Owens & Minor, says she experienced discrimination from clients, but was treated fairly and generously by her employer.
Read more
Boards Pay Less for Other Companies when Members are Female
FeaturedDo more women in top management mean better financial performance? The body of research on this subject is filled with compelling data, though some of it is conflicting. The 2011 Catalyst “Bottom Line” report revealed that Fortune 500 companies in the top quartile for female representation on boards had a 16 percent higher return on sales than companies with no women on boards. On the other side of the debate is the 2011 University of Michigan Ross School of Business study revealing that the stock price of Norway’s publicly-traded companies actually dropped when they began adding women for their boards to comply with the nation’s mandate that boards comprise 40 percent women.
The latest research, conducted by the University of British Columbia’s Sauder School of Business, suggests that women may have an advantage in one major area of corporate business strategy: mergers and acquisitions. The Sauder study, featured in the Journal of Corporate Finance last November, revealed that the more women a company has on its board, the less it pays for acquisitions.
The survey data shows how the cost of each successful acquisition was reduced by 15.4 percent with each woman added to a board. It also reveals that with each additional female, the number of attempted takeover bids falls by 7.6 percent. These results suggest that women are less inclined than men to make risky transactions, and more prone to emphasize return on investment. The study’s authors believe that this caution exercised by female board members has a positive effect on maintaining shareholder value.
“Female board members play a significant role in mitigating the empire-building tendency of CEOs through the acquisition of other companies,” noted Sauder finance professor Kai Li, one of the study co-authors. “On average, merger and acquisition transactions don’t create shareholder value, so women are having a real impact in protecting shareholder investment and overall firm performance.”
Pros & Cons
Li says their findings add to the debate on the pros and cons of diversity in corporate leadership.
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Voice of Experience: Wanda Hill Managing Director, BK University, BNY Mellon
Voices of ExperienceWhen Hill stepped into her new role in October of 2013, her first goal was developing a three-year strategic roadmap.
“When you step into a new role at a mature company there’s always the challenge of putting your institutional knowledge to work, while at the same time being open to very different approaches and the nuances of each strategic business,” Hill said. “It’s a challenge, but I enjoy it.”
Currently, much of Hill’s focus is on the overall learning and developing strategies tied to what the company refers to as the “investment life cycle” where expertise, innovation, and intellectual capital is necessary to support and sustain BKU as a world-class learning organization. BNY Mellon’s employees are located in 35 countries and 100 markets, with the Investment Services business alone comprised of eight major businesses. Hill regularly meets with those businesses to identify how the company’s virtual university will support their business models today and into the future. “I love to build these strategies and relationships,” Hill said.
BNY Mellon’s Impact
BNY Mellon continues to intensify its focus on diversity and inclusion. In an effort to attract and retain diverse talent and create an inclusive workplace, a number of employee-powered resource groups were launched, including IMPACT in 2008, which is geared toward the company’s multicultural employees. Hill serves as Global Chair for IMPACT and is conscious of the group’s approach outside the US.
“We’re a global company and IMPACT has chapters around the world. Outside of the US, our focus is diverse employees because ‘people of color’ doesn’t really translate in other parts of the world. Creating inclusive workplaces is such a part of the fabric of BNY Mellon and being a part of this work means a lot to me,” Hill said.
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The Latest Tricks in the Illusion of Inclusion
Expert AnswersWith Mary Barra tapped as heir apparent to lead this country’s largest corporation and Janet Yellen confirmed as the next Federal Reserve Chairman (yes, that’s what they’re calling her despite the fact she’s no “man”), you can hear men breathing a collective sigh of relief. They hope that maybe now women will quit complaining about being overlooked for the top spots in their companies and the political arena. After all, there are more women at the helm at Fortune 500 companies than at any other time in history and Yellen will arguably be the most powerful finance person on the globe.
Well, not so fast. With about two dozen women Fortune 500 CEOs, that’s a whopping 4.8 percent of the total. And women in politics? The 113th Congress saw a record number of women elected: twenty. That’s just twenty percent in the 98 years since the first woman, Jeannette Rankin, was elected to Congress in 1916. At that time she proclaimed, “I may be the first woman member of Congress, but I won’t be the last.”
In 1984 I worked as an Equal Employment Opportunity Specialist at the then oil company giant ARCO. Back then women were told we needed to get more women into the pipeline before we would see changes at the top. So women went back to school, eventually surpassing men in graduation rates, entering the workforce in greater numbers than ever before, and proving that their contributions as leaders significantly pushed up the bottom-line. Along with McKinsey and Catalyst studies that tie profits to gender diversity at the top, Roy D. Adler and his colleagues at the California school of Pepperdine University consistently found the “correlation between high-level female executives and business success has been consistent and revealing.” The better a company was at promoting women, the better it tended to rank in terms of profitability. Three decades later, the best we can do is 4.8 percent?
The Turning Point
Do I think women make better leaders and CEOs? You bet. If ever there was a time in history that cried out for women’s leadership in all facets of life from politics to corner offices, that time is now. Here’s why:
We’ve reached what physicist Fritzov Capra calls “the turning point.” It’s that time in society when the people who have power, no longer know how to use it to solve current problems, but they won’t share that power with other people who could help them. Take a look around the world. It’s filled with corporate greed, poverty, war, famine, global warming and in the U.S., a Congress that has done less than any other in history. And who’s at the helm? Right, 20 percent women in Washington and less than 5 percent in corporations.
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Gender Parity in 2029: Realistic or Optimistic?
Managing ChangeIn a recent article published by The Guardian, Chris Sullivan, Chief Executive of UK corporate banking at RBS, pressed his belief that in 15-years, gender parity will not be an issue. Sullivan assured readers that talent is what should— and will— be the deciding factor of who wins executive roles in big business, and that it is merely a bad cultural habit preventing women from reaching these positions.
Considered a “diversity champion” and supporter of the organization Focused Women, Sullivan recognizes that the issue lie in what’s been considered a “leaky pipeline” system of advancement in corporate businesses. While most companies seem to hire recent graduates on a 50:50 basis to fill junior level positions, the number of women begins to dwindle higher up the ladder, according to Fiona Hathorn, Managing Director of Women on Boards, a UK-wide organization dedicated to providing resources and programs to support women on their path to the boardroom. Nothing reflected in recent research makes Sullivan’s ill-informed opinion even slightly plausible. It is overly optimistic at best and many, including Hathorn, do not view gender parity as a realistic option by 2029.
Reports Say Otherwise
“Too many companies do not even know their gender employment data at various managerial levels, which shows that many are not managing their talent let alone taking gender talent management seriously,” Hathorn said. “In fact, Cranfield School of Management’s November 2013 interim Women on Boards update reviewed 50 FTSE 250 companies, revealing that only 2 percent had clear policies or goals for ensuring an increase in female management.”
Research released by the World Economic Forum (WEF) reported that Britain in particular has gone from 9th place in 2006 to 18th in 2013 in terms of gender equality. Britain continued to rank low in other WEF statistics, including helping women find professional positions (71st), getting women into parliament (54th), and healthy life expectancy of women (97th).
Are Quotas the Answer?
It’s not all doom and gloom, however. The UK is taking steps to rectify the situation. In 2011 The Lord Davies Commission began supervising the number of female board directors, raising the number from 17.4 percent in 2011 to 19 percent. Yet much of this progress is a result of boards merely increasing the number of female non-executives within their company.
Read more
Voice of Experience: Latrise Ashford, Managing Director, Health & Public Service Practice, Accenture
Voices of ExperienceIt wasn’t until Latrise Ashford was interviewing with Accenture that she realized technology consulting would be the perfect career choice for her, enabling her to be analytical and work directly with clients.
“A friend who interned at Accenture introduced me to the company and suggested I apply,” Ashford said. “I always knew I wanted to work in business, but wasn’t aware I could have a career in consulting.”
The Yale graduate is now Managing Director of Accenture’s Health and Public Service Practice. Since the early days of her career she has concentrated on information management.
“After receiving my first assignment analyzing and structuring new data sources, I knew I had made the right choice,” she said. “In my current role I work with data analysts and statisticians on a regular basis and love it. I may not have deliberately chosen this path, but I ended up in the perfect place for my skills and interests.”
Leveraging Assets
Currently, Ashford is focused on helping health & public service organizations become insight-driven by leveraging their best asset: data. By using data more effectively and efficiently, she says, these organizations can better help their communities and the citizens who depend on their services.
“I am committed to working with my clients in the public service sector and I’m passionate about finding solutions to problems that affect those who are most vulnerable in our society,” Ashford said. “The combination of my technical skills and love for creative problem solving has made my current position leading Intelligent Processing and Data Analytics in our Health & Public Service practice the perfect role for me.”
The Art of the Possible
The work the managing director does is new and cutting edge, with advanced analytics and new technologies quickly becoming the buzz in the market. But there are challenges.
“The challenge is that public service organizations often don’t have a lot of room for trying out new techniques and methods without the fear of impacting the lives of the citizens they serve. Balancing limited resources and increasing demand for services is something my clients deal with every day. Helping them understand the art of the possible – and how new technology plays into that – is my biggest challenge and a challenge I welcome,” Ashford said.
The work she did with the Administration for Children’s Services is among Ashford’s proudest career achievements. She spent four-years working with the agency to create a management reporting solution that provided a holistic view of children in the New York City foster care system.
“This tool was a powerful way to track key outcomes to get children and families reunited where appropriate,” she said. “I’m happy I played a role and am looking to create similar and even more advanced solutions for my clients.”
Work-Life Integration
Ashford’s schedule is jam packed and she admits that sometimes it can be overwhelming. But a long time ago she received a piece of advice that has stuck with her.
“Stop trying to strike work-life balance; focus more on work-life integration. I have learned that life may not always be balanced, but my work is very important to me and being able to achieve professional success while still being there for my family provides me with a sense of accomplishment, pride, and true fulfillment,” Ashford says.
Leading By Example
The managing director has equally good advice for young women considering a career in her field.
“Always strive to be an authentic leader; never lead in a manner that does not feel natural – working in this manner is simply not sustainable,” she said. “We spend a tremendous amount of time at work, and give our all to our colleagues, clients, and teams. We should enjoy what we do, and not feel we are forcing anything unnaturally.”
The newly-engaged Ashford knows a great deal about being a leader, too. She works with several NYC non-profits, assisting the under-served and most vulnerable citizens of the community. For the last 10 years she has also led the Metro NY African-American Employee Resource Group.
“I am amazed at the programs we’ve been able to organize and the impact we’ve made within Accenture and our communities,” she said. “This group has been a source of mentorship and camaraderie for me and I’m happy to play a leadership role. Watching the next generation of leaders take the torch and run with it also has been incredibly rewarding.”
A forward thinker, Ashford says she sets her sights on new goals every couple of years.
“I’m shaping my next big goal,” she said, “but for now it’s to be the best I can possibly be in creating viable, profitable, and most important, sustainable, business for Accenture.”
How to Ensure We’re Not Having The Same Conversation About Women in the Boardroom in 2014
Managing ChangeSheila Ronning, President & CEO of Women in the Boardroom, does not mince words when it comes to the topic that gave her organization its name.
“Research for the amount of women serving on corporate boards is only being done for the Fortune 500 and those boards are still mainly only looking at CEO’s in F500 to fill those spots. So yes, we know there are a lack of women sitting at the helm of those companies,” Ronning said. “Mid cap and small company boards are also a great place for women to take a seat at the table and there are thousands and thousands of women who are more than qualified for these boards. In just the last 12 months, even though we are not a search firm, we at Women in the Boardroom have received 19 notifications of these board seat openings and we work to connect our board ready women with these companies.”
As Ronning affirmed, there are more than enough qualified women, but recent Catalyst research tells us that there has been absolutely no change in the number of women on Fortune 500 boards or the number executive officers and top earners. We’ve talked at length about the lack of female representation at these levels, but what now? How do we ensure we’re not having the same conversation about women in the boardroom in 2014?
Malli Gero is Executive Director and Co-Founder of 2020 Women on Boards, a national campaign working to increase the women on U.S. boards to 20 percent by the year 2020. We need to change the narrative and instead of focusing on the bleak numbers, focus on what can be done. Gero says there are three parties who can be making progress both separately and collectively: stakeholders, CEOs, and individual women. All three, Gero says, are important in the quest for gender parity.
What Stakeholders Can Do
Gero attributes the slow rate of change to a seemingly-common misconception held by CEOs and board chairs: stakeholders don’t pay attention to board composition. Gero says it’s also a matter of transparency, an issue 2020 Women on Boards is working to address.
Read more
The Toigo Foundation: Taking Steps to Diversify the Financial Services Industry
Industry Leaders, Leadership“No one who makes it does so alone.” This assertion by Dr. Stacy Blake-Beard, Professor of Management at the Simmons School of Management, was recently made at the Toigo Foundation’s third-annual Groundbreakers Women in Leadership Summit on December 5. In those eight words, Blake-Beard encapsulated so much of what Toigo is about as an organization.
Founded in 1989, the Robert Toigo Foundation’s goal is to bring increased diversity to the finance industry through a number of programs aimed at inspiring young people of color who might not have otherwise considered a career in the finance industry. Through its MBA Fellowship the Foundation provides leadership training, mentoring, tuition assistance, and support as they pursue MBAs and launch their finance careers. Toigo offers the only diversity leadership development program focused on the field of finance.
Financial Services’ Lack of Diversity
There is endless data that illustrates the great need for an organization like Toigo that is committed to encouraging people of color to enter the financial services industry. A report by the General Accountability Office (GAO) looked at the issue of diversity in the financial services industry, finding that “overall diversity at the management level in the financial services industry did not change substantially from 1993 through 2008.” Using data collected by the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC), the GAO reported that minorities held just 10 percent of senior-level management positions at financial services firms. In 2008, EEOC data revealed that white males held 64 percent of all senior jobs in financial services, with African Americans holding 2.8 percent, Hispanics 3 percent of all senior jobs, and Asians holding 3.5 percent of top-level jobs.
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Being a Present, Concerned, Clear, and Genuine Leader
Expert AnswersAre leaders born or made? Do you have the competencies to be a leader? Is your emotional intelligence consistent with successful leadership? Will your strengths match what you need to effectively lead?
There are so many questions swirling around leadership and if you choose to lead, you will feel bombarded with images of what leadership looks like and chances are you’ll judge yourself against them. Who has time to delve into all the leadership information while having a fulltime career?
It is my belief that we need to shift from “doing” leadership and focus on “being” a leader. As we become more intelligent about leadership and motivation, we also create more judgments about it. This blocks the ability to allow each of us to identify our core talent to be a leader. With over 25-years of leadership coaching, training, and consulting, I have not found one person who does not have the core ability to be a leader.
According to the US Department of Labor Statistics, despite the high unemployment rate, more than 2 million Americans voluntarily leave their job every month. Why are so many people quitting? Four reasons: they don’t like their boss; they lack empowerment; internal politics; and lack of recognition.
Leaders have the opportunity to change this pattern and retain the employees they don’t want to lose. Not through learning more about what it takes to be an effective leader, but through focusing on how to be a leader that others want to follow.
Be Present
Being present is the strongest leadership skill you can possess. You don’t always have to be right or be the wisest person in the world to be an effective leader, but being present will create the greatest amount of trust and respect.
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