“One of the big challenges for most people of color, and perhaps for many women, is individuating,” says Alma Rosa Montañez. “Being able to cast yourself as an individual by whoever is perceiving you, as opposed to whatever the perceived group stereotype might be.”
Montañez speaks to her journey as a woman bridging two cultures, the pain of being reduced to a stereotype, and what she did when a young woman intern tried to get her coffee.
Exploring Her Roots as a Lawyer
Montañez recalls first aspiring to be a lawyer at eight years old, when she was sitting in an immigration lawyer’s office with her family as they were finding a way to make a life in the U.S. But over the years, she’s considered that when you create your life in another country, you never know who you may have been if opportunity had existed back home.
“The funny thing about immigration is as much as you are drawn to America, and many of us are, for everything it has offered and hopefully will continue to offer, it’s still not the first option,” says Montañez. “If we all had the ability to make a life and a real path in the place where we are from, where we have these deep ties, we likely would choose to stay.”
As she moved through undergrad at Stanford University, Montañez came to understand more of her family’s personal migration story, which was catalyzed by the petrodollar crisis of the late 70’s & early 80’s. The crisis was ultimately traced back to imbalances at the negotiating table between sovereign borrowers and their lenders.
Coming out of Columbia Law School, Montañez chose to represent sovereign borrowers primarily in the oil industry working for the Mexican, Venezuelan and Brazilian governments while based in Mexico. This gave her an opportunity to explore what life might have looked like if she’d never emigrated. It would be her first attempt to bridge the space between her identity and her profession.
“I was drafting in Spanish and English, day in and day out. It answered a lot of questions about what my life might have been,” says Montañez. “I could skip generations of work in Mexico because now I was going back as an American, with Ivy League degrees, who sounds like a local and can function without feeling restrained by cultural stuff. But in many ways, I’m not from there anymore. I learned to become comfortable with the fact that I’m really not either Mexican or American – I’m both.”
Testing Herself in New York
Ultimately more interested in the workings of finances than oil and with some closure on personal issues, Montañez decided to test out her law chops back in New York City: “I wanted to find out if I was actually a good lawyer, not just a good lawyer in Latin America. If you took out my language skills, how would I measure up in New York?”
In 2006, she jumped into the deep-end of structured finance.
“You’re drinking from a firehose, billing 300 hours a month for many months a year, and not getting a whole lot of sleep,” she remembers. “But to be able to go from zero to running deals in the span of six months gave me the confidence to get past the imposter syndrome that accompanies so many of us who aren’t cisgendered heterosexual white men.”
Her journey hit a bump when the market crashed and the once steady lockstep career progression fell out from under her. She began some traveling, volunteering, learned Portuguese and tried to redefine who she was now.
Letting Go of Comfort to Evolve
As she was putting the pieces together, Montañez received what she describes as a call for a “purple unicorn”. It was for a role at S&P Global Ratings, for which a handful of lawyers fit the brief: experience in structured finance, ideally real estate focused, with Latin America language skills. She joined S&P in 2011, as Associate General Counsel, advising on everything from esoteric structured finance to sovereign debt, flexing all the muscles she developed in New York and again influencing outcomes in Latin America. For the first time all the pieces of her puzzle seem to fall into place.
Montañez grew to managing the team of lawyers advising on ratings in the Americas, but after five years that came to feel like cruise control and her drive to challenge herself returned.
She let go of safety and comfort and made a jump to S&P Global, the publicly listed parent company of the rating agency. She took a step back, giving up managing, to build a new skill set and eventually worked her way to managing and joining the GC’s leadership team, now on a trajectory to becoming a public company general counsel.
Becoming More Valuable As a Lawyer
“As a junior lawyer, your job is to impress with legal nuance and detail, the nitty-gritty of the legal analysis,” says Montañez. “When you become more senior, you get access to clients and to business people, so it’s about whether you can communicate and connect in a way that’s meaningful: being able to craft a legal narrative, not only for yourself and for the organizational needs, but also for your specific client and what they’re trying to achieve.”
Montañez notes that in any organization or practice, there’s the formal process, but also many informal processes that often take longer to navigate: “There are invisible gatekeepers at a lot of places. If you can figure those out, it’s a great asset. If you can make people’s lives easier by having a quick call or a conversation on the side, it makes you invaluable in a very different way.”
Learning To Belong Without Belonging
Montañez says that as a Latina lawyer, she is often confronted with potential biases : “My last name is Montañez with a tilde over the n. It’s not Montanez, but my anglicized name has been Alma Montanez for 30 years. When it comes down to the resume, do I add the tilde? If I do, does the person flipping through thirty resumes get put off by having to figure out how to say my name?”
Montañez notes that when people meet her in a meeting, they experience her as an individual. But from a piece of paper, questions and assumptions are created that have nothing to do with who she is. She also acknowledges the privilege of being able to individuate more easily because she doesn’t have an accent and is white presenting.
Still, weary of stereotypes and of being pigeonholed, she has shied away from leadership roles strictly in Latin America, notwithstanding how much of her career and development is tied to the region.
With only a handful of other women at her level of seniority and no other Latin American woman near, she’s learned to claim her seat for herself: “You have to learn to be comfortable being uncomfortable all the time. If I was waiting to feel comfortable in a room, I wouldn’t be in any of the rooms that I’m in. You figure out how to belong, without belonging.”
What Montañez has found most deflating along the way are the instances when people whom she has worked with for years learn she was born in Mexico and suddenly shift from substantive conversations to things like “wow, your English is really good” or “wow, you don’t have an accent” or “so then, are you a dreamer?”
The speed with which one transitions from a peer with a cultivated relationship and track record to a stereotype is astounding, dehumanizing and painful.
Valuing Your Voice and Not Getting the Coffee
“When there are no mentors who look like you, you figure out who you can take a little bit of learning from,” says Montañez. “I’ve had the blessing of being mentored by a lot of really amazing women and they have been my saving grace.”
“One of my coping strategies has been to make observations about the things that I need to avoid. Never in my life will I get coffee for anyone other than a close friend,” she notes. “I reamed out this poor intern once: she came in on her second day looking for something to do and she offered to get my coffee. I told her: ‘Absolutely not. You will not be getting coffee for anyone, ever. Never offer that again. If you get the coffee, you’re going to be the coffee girl, and I don’t know if you’ve ever heard of a coffee boy, but I haven’t.’”
Over the years, she has heard even the fiercest senior women speak to gaps in parity, even if seated at the table. It’s taught her that everyone struggles, and she makes an effort to bring that into her mentoring. “Some women of color and people with different cultural upbringings are often taught to respect the room and not to draw attention to themselves,” she says. ”It’s really hard to overcome that, but you start with reminding yourself that you have a unique perspective, and you actually do have valuable things to say.”
Through mentoring, she’s learned the value of validating other people’s experiences in dealings with bias: “Bias is like gravity. I don’t like it, but I have to deal with it. So if I’m going to move, I have to move, notwithstanding it. Yes, my load is heavier. Does that mean I stop, or does that mean I get stronger?” In acknowledging the weight her mentees are carrying, she hopes to support them through their own journey to get stronger.
She recommends mentees to begin with getting deeper in touch with their authentic and inherent value and values: “When you get in touch with your center, reaching out is from a place that’s more authentic, giving and more supportive. Anyone who feels supported in a genuine way is going to respond very differently.”
Making a Little Time Can Matter A Lot
Her law career has always kept her occupied and on call, but Montañez now also finds the energy to contribute to areas she’s passionate about.
In February, she was compelled to go from being a casual donor to joinng the board of directors of Mextica Organization, Inc., a Sunset Park based organization that supports essential needs in health, education, social, and legal issues for the Mexican and Latin American immigrant community in Brooklyn. She also supports The Squirrel Comedy Theatre, a non-profit people of color and LGBTQ+-led improv theater her sister co-founded.
Her professional skills help her serve these organizations. In making a little time to support causes and people she loves, Montañez is finding another way to unify her professional skills, her culture and her values.
By: Aimee Hansen
Alma Rosa Montañez: Chief Corporate Counsel, S&P Global
People, Voices of ExperienceMontañez speaks to her journey as a woman bridging two cultures, the pain of being reduced to a stereotype, and what she did when a young woman intern tried to get her coffee.
Exploring Her Roots as a Lawyer
Montañez recalls first aspiring to be a lawyer at eight years old, when she was sitting in an immigration lawyer’s office with her family as they were finding a way to make a life in the U.S. But over the years, she’s considered that when you create your life in another country, you never know who you may have been if opportunity had existed back home.
“The funny thing about immigration is as much as you are drawn to America, and many of us are, for everything it has offered and hopefully will continue to offer, it’s still not the first option,” says Montañez. “If we all had the ability to make a life and a real path in the place where we are from, where we have these deep ties, we likely would choose to stay.”
As she moved through undergrad at Stanford University, Montañez came to understand more of her family’s personal migration story, which was catalyzed by the petrodollar crisis of the late 70’s & early 80’s. The crisis was ultimately traced back to imbalances at the negotiating table between sovereign borrowers and their lenders.
Coming out of Columbia Law School, Montañez chose to represent sovereign borrowers primarily in the oil industry working for the Mexican, Venezuelan and Brazilian governments while based in Mexico. This gave her an opportunity to explore what life might have looked like if she’d never emigrated. It would be her first attempt to bridge the space between her identity and her profession.
“I was drafting in Spanish and English, day in and day out. It answered a lot of questions about what my life might have been,” says Montañez. “I could skip generations of work in Mexico because now I was going back as an American, with Ivy League degrees, who sounds like a local and can function without feeling restrained by cultural stuff. But in many ways, I’m not from there anymore. I learned to become comfortable with the fact that I’m really not either Mexican or American – I’m both.”
Testing Herself in New York
Ultimately more interested in the workings of finances than oil and with some closure on personal issues, Montañez decided to test out her law chops back in New York City: “I wanted to find out if I was actually a good lawyer, not just a good lawyer in Latin America. If you took out my language skills, how would I measure up in New York?”
In 2006, she jumped into the deep-end of structured finance.
“You’re drinking from a firehose, billing 300 hours a month for many months a year, and not getting a whole lot of sleep,” she remembers. “But to be able to go from zero to running deals in the span of six months gave me the confidence to get past the imposter syndrome that accompanies so many of us who aren’t cisgendered heterosexual white men.”
Her journey hit a bump when the market crashed and the once steady lockstep career progression fell out from under her. She began some traveling, volunteering, learned Portuguese and tried to redefine who she was now.
Letting Go of Comfort to Evolve
As she was putting the pieces together, Montañez received what she describes as a call for a “purple unicorn”. It was for a role at S&P Global Ratings, for which a handful of lawyers fit the brief: experience in structured finance, ideally real estate focused, with Latin America language skills. She joined S&P in 2011, as Associate General Counsel, advising on everything from esoteric structured finance to sovereign debt, flexing all the muscles she developed in New York and again influencing outcomes in Latin America. For the first time all the pieces of her puzzle seem to fall into place.
Montañez grew to managing the team of lawyers advising on ratings in the Americas, but after five years that came to feel like cruise control and her drive to challenge herself returned.
She let go of safety and comfort and made a jump to S&P Global, the publicly listed parent company of the rating agency. She took a step back, giving up managing, to build a new skill set and eventually worked her way to managing and joining the GC’s leadership team, now on a trajectory to becoming a public company general counsel.
Becoming More Valuable As a Lawyer
“As a junior lawyer, your job is to impress with legal nuance and detail, the nitty-gritty of the legal analysis,” says Montañez. “When you become more senior, you get access to clients and to business people, so it’s about whether you can communicate and connect in a way that’s meaningful: being able to craft a legal narrative, not only for yourself and for the organizational needs, but also for your specific client and what they’re trying to achieve.”
Montañez notes that in any organization or practice, there’s the formal process, but also many informal processes that often take longer to navigate: “There are invisible gatekeepers at a lot of places. If you can figure those out, it’s a great asset. If you can make people’s lives easier by having a quick call or a conversation on the side, it makes you invaluable in a very different way.”
Learning To Belong Without Belonging
Montañez says that as a Latina lawyer, she is often confronted with potential biases : “My last name is Montañez with a tilde over the n. It’s not Montanez, but my anglicized name has been Alma Montanez for 30 years. When it comes down to the resume, do I add the tilde? If I do, does the person flipping through thirty resumes get put off by having to figure out how to say my name?”
Montañez notes that when people meet her in a meeting, they experience her as an individual. But from a piece of paper, questions and assumptions are created that have nothing to do with who she is. She also acknowledges the privilege of being able to individuate more easily because she doesn’t have an accent and is white presenting.
Still, weary of stereotypes and of being pigeonholed, she has shied away from leadership roles strictly in Latin America, notwithstanding how much of her career and development is tied to the region.
With only a handful of other women at her level of seniority and no other Latin American woman near, she’s learned to claim her seat for herself: “You have to learn to be comfortable being uncomfortable all the time. If I was waiting to feel comfortable in a room, I wouldn’t be in any of the rooms that I’m in. You figure out how to belong, without belonging.”
What Montañez has found most deflating along the way are the instances when people whom she has worked with for years learn she was born in Mexico and suddenly shift from substantive conversations to things like “wow, your English is really good” or “wow, you don’t have an accent” or “so then, are you a dreamer?”
The speed with which one transitions from a peer with a cultivated relationship and track record to a stereotype is astounding, dehumanizing and painful.
Valuing Your Voice and Not Getting the Coffee
“When there are no mentors who look like you, you figure out who you can take a little bit of learning from,” says Montañez. “I’ve had the blessing of being mentored by a lot of really amazing women and they have been my saving grace.”
“One of my coping strategies has been to make observations about the things that I need to avoid. Never in my life will I get coffee for anyone other than a close friend,” she notes. “I reamed out this poor intern once: she came in on her second day looking for something to do and she offered to get my coffee. I told her: ‘Absolutely not. You will not be getting coffee for anyone, ever. Never offer that again. If you get the coffee, you’re going to be the coffee girl, and I don’t know if you’ve ever heard of a coffee boy, but I haven’t.’”
Over the years, she has heard even the fiercest senior women speak to gaps in parity, even if seated at the table. It’s taught her that everyone struggles, and she makes an effort to bring that into her mentoring. “Some women of color and people with different cultural upbringings are often taught to respect the room and not to draw attention to themselves,” she says. ”It’s really hard to overcome that, but you start with reminding yourself that you have a unique perspective, and you actually do have valuable things to say.”
Through mentoring, she’s learned the value of validating other people’s experiences in dealings with bias: “Bias is like gravity. I don’t like it, but I have to deal with it. So if I’m going to move, I have to move, notwithstanding it. Yes, my load is heavier. Does that mean I stop, or does that mean I get stronger?” In acknowledging the weight her mentees are carrying, she hopes to support them through their own journey to get stronger.
She recommends mentees to begin with getting deeper in touch with their authentic and inherent value and values: “When you get in touch with your center, reaching out is from a place that’s more authentic, giving and more supportive. Anyone who feels supported in a genuine way is going to respond very differently.”
Making a Little Time Can Matter A Lot
Her law career has always kept her occupied and on call, but Montañez now also finds the energy to contribute to areas she’s passionate about.
In February, she was compelled to go from being a casual donor to joinng the board of directors of Mextica Organization, Inc., a Sunset Park based organization that supports essential needs in health, education, social, and legal issues for the Mexican and Latin American immigrant community in Brooklyn. She also supports The Squirrel Comedy Theatre, a non-profit people of color and LGBTQ+-led improv theater her sister co-founded.
Her professional skills help her serve these organizations. In making a little time to support causes and people she loves, Montañez is finding another way to unify her professional skills, her culture and her values.
By: Aimee Hansen
Embracing Culturally Relevant Latina Leadership
Career Advice, Hispanic Heritage, NewsWhen we look at the numbers among corporate leadership for Latinx executives, little has quantitatively shifted, but what is finally evolving is the talk around the journey: towards valuing culturally integrative leadership.
Latina Style called out the Top 10 Corporate Latina Executives of 2020, included Agnes Suarez, President & CEO of AIG; Leticia M. Sanchez, Executive Director and Market Director of Banking at JP Morgan Chase & Co. Customer Bank; Luz Esparza, Managing Director, Los Angeles of Accenture; Patty Arvielo, Co-Founder and President of New American Funding, and Patty Juarez, National Diverse Segments Director, Commercial Banking Group, Wells Fargo & Company.
But among 16 current Hispanic CEOS of the top S&P 500 companies, women hold none of those positions. Between 2000 and 2020, Latinx have made up only 36 of new Fortune 500 CEO appointments, and there’s been 41 Latinx CEOS, with only two being women.
While calling out Latinx tech leaders, Latin America Reports points out that Latin America itself has been now birthed 17 unicorns, 14 of which have developed in the last three years, and mostly in finance, insurance, and real estate.
Nit Reeder of Ernst & Young notes that Latinx entrepreneurs are leading the start-up scene, with over 40% of Latinx entrepreneurs being millennial and Latinas starting up businesses at five times the rate of their male counterparts. But the same time, even as far back as November, Covid-19 was closing a third of Latinx-owned businesses.
And in a broader glance of the Latinx working population, a recent Aspen Institute report emphasizes integration of the Latinx workforce into the digital economy—as the group highest at risk of digital displacement from automation.
Gaps in Both Perception and Opportunities
The IBM Institute for Business Value published a survey report called Untapped Potential: The Hispanic Talent Advantage, based on 1000 Hispanic leaders offering their perceptions on the opportunities and lack thereof in the corporate workplace during a 33 hour virtual jam session.
When it comes to perception of the Hispanic community, only 16% of participants felt the community is unified and nearly nobody (2.5%) felt the perceptions of the Hispanic community reflect the reality.
They found 41% of Hispanic executives say they benefited from formal mentoring or training but only a quarter of junior managers felt they had access to mentoring programs and only 31% had access to workplace training.
Only 1 in 5 felt empowered to overcome the professional challenges they faced.
The experience of prejudice or feeling they needed to work harder was very prominent. 87% of all participants had experienced racial prejudice, and 63% had experienced prejudice due to accent, language or speech pattern. 63% of the participants felt they had to work harder because of their Hispanic identity and 82% of Latinas felt they did not get the respect they deserve. Latina women were also more likely to cite discrimination based on gender (78%) than white women (67%).
Among the senior leaders, they were most likely to give value to strong communication skills, personal organizational skills, and business savvy in terms of capabilities that supported their success. “Success” was most likely to be defined as both “achieving financial security” and “creating positive change”.
The report notes that a key gap was between the value that mentorship had played in supporting the more senior Hispanic leaders and the lack of mentorship reported available in the perception of the junior managers aspiring to leadership, urging companies to create a hiring advantage by cultivating more mentorship and sponsorship opportunities for young Latinx talent.
Latina women with sponsorship earn 6.1% more than those who lack sponsors, and early on, it can contribute to more stretch assignments and promotions.
Culturally Relevant Leadership Development
Whereas misperception of identity and feeling penalized for it are brutal headwinds to face in the corporate environment, there is increasing encouragement for Latinas to focus on turning this to your advantage.
Recent qualitative dissertation research entitled Recognizing La Cultura: The Experience of Cultural Scripts in Latina Leadership out of the University of St. Thomas, Minnesota found that in different ways, cultural identity and firsthand experiences can be catalytic in informing leadership approaches and trajectories.
Cultural scripts included:
Based on her findings, Patricia E. Conde-Brooks, the dissertation author, emphasizes that “culturally relevant leadership development needs to be encouraged in the Latino community,” meaning the integration of cultural assets as fuel in the leadership journey.
She found that Latina leaders sustain a strong cultural heritage, and that leveraging the positive aspects of these cultural scripts not only fosters pride and empowers Latina women, but can be leveraged as important leadership assets in your toolbox.
At the same time, overcoming the inhibiting influence of marianismo is part of the journey for some Latina women. And while self-promotion is often felt to go against the cultural grain, a survey into women’s fear of self-promotion found that “African American (44%) and Hispanic (47%) women are far less likely to downplay their strengths and abilities than white (60%) women”: influenced by their generally younger age profile.
One organization tapping into social and navigational cultural wealth to accelerate Latina women to the C-Suite is LatinaVIDA, whose mission “is to empower and equip Latina professionals to overcome systemic workplace barriers through culturally relevant leadership programs.”
Drawing from the key traits that define many successful Latina leaders, the organization focuses on fostering Visibility (getting noticed for your talent and leadership), Identity (strong comfort with personal and cultural identities), Determination (holding your personal vision despite challenges and barriers) and Action (a willingness to step up and take responsibility of all facets of your life).
LatinaVIDA offers a number of programs and events, including culturally relevant peer-to peer empowerment, mentorship, collaboration and leadership development.
By: Aimee Hansen
Anna de Jong: Head, Client Advisory Benelux and Nordics, PGIM Fixed Income
People, Voices of ExperienceDe Jong speaks about how the journey you take is what shapes you, the importance of knowing yourself and having the confidence to pursue the important questions.
What Defines You is the Journey You’re On
After growing up in a small village in the north of Holland, where she felt her limbs wanting to stretch even as a girl, de Jong adventured for a half year opportunity in London that became fifteen years between Merrill Lynch, Morgan Stanley and other firms, thriving amidst a diversity of people, experiences, inspiration and opportunities.
Just when she reached the point of considering a move back to Holland for family motivations two years ago, PGIM Fixed Income approached about her current role in the Netherlands, which met the professional trajectory she also wanted. With London life having felt as much like home to her, de Jong reframes the question of where are you from to what it’s really about.
“It’s not where you’re from that matters. It’s just a box that people want to put you in. Ultimately, it’s about the journey that you’re on and the journey that you take that opens doors, or closes them,” she reflects.
It’s About The Personal Factor
The people factor has always magnetized her to her work. “In my field of work, I work for my clients and prospects, and I need to very quickly understand who I’m dealing with and how to progress things,” says de Jong. “You must be able to read people quickly in order to be successful, and that still holds today. I think that human element is what makes me most content in my work.”
De Jong advises that when working closely with others, it’s important to know yourself so you don’t lose your own intentions in any deal or interaction: “I’ve learned you need to hold your ground. You must understand yourself in order to do well professionally, but also personally. That’s a journey I also help other people with: stick with your convictions, yet be open to learning.”
Being approachable is important to de Jong: “I don’t think in different levels. I’ve learned from all walks of life and different parts of business and people,” says de Jong. “I’m always available and listening to everybody around. I am genuinely interested in people, and I think if you can understand what’s going on, then a lot of things make more sense, and it also matters when achieving the right results.”
De Jong notes that while remote working has been validated, being together with your team and clients is invaluable for creating connection and work culture.
“Covid is a lonely time, I think,” she reflects. “And ultimately you spend so much of your time at work. It’s good to see people, but being behind a screen also hides a lot. There’s no longer an excuse for saying that we can’t work from home because we all clearly can, but it’s also important to be with colleagues and have face-to-face time.”
Knowing and Balancing Your Values
“Someone once told me that when your career takes off, something else is going to suffer. For a long time, I was convinced that you have to work very hard while other things would have to take a backseat,” says de Jong. “ I have become of the opinion that’s entirely untrue. You are actually more successful when you understand what is really important to you and cultivate personal satisfaction, as well.”
Years ago, a friend introduced de Jong to a four pillar system. The four pillars represent what is personally important to you and emphasize keeping what matters to you in a balance. She uses the analogy of a chair, it can function with three but ideally needs four legs to be fully stable. For de Jong, she values home and family, friends, work and health: “If one gets out of whack, it makes the rest volatile and you do not perform as well, personally or professionally. It can be a juggling act, but you don’t have to forget about what’s important in your personal life in order to succeed in professional life and vice versa. In a way, they all become one.”
When the work aspect of life becomes too much, de Jong feels it’s important and okay to speak up about that, and not fall into the cultural notion of having to keep everything separate. Personally, she doesn’t resonate with a sense of being “successful” that connotes “achieving the best results regardless.”
De Jong does not perceive that getting the result, no matter what the impact on others or personal life, can ever be success. Rather, she speaks more to harmony and co-creation from a place that is aligned with your internal values.
When it comes to her personal success, “I do my work with lots of pleasure and have happy clients who are keeping and raising assets,” she notes, “but it’s also being home with my daughter and husband. It’s as elementary as that.”
De Jong feels well-matched by the atmosphere at her workspace: “PGIM Fixed Income has this fantastic work culture, that when I joined just felt like a warm blanket – where people work together, give each other challenges and opportunities. It’s been really fantastic.”
With a desire to keep growing, she is curious about pursuing courses in ESG investing and being able to mentor even more in that space.
Guidance For The Journey
“Some guidance that really stuck with me is to ask the same question until you get the right answer,” she notes, having tried this out in areas like promotion as well as anytime you’re immediately told something isn’t possible. “I will continue asking a question until I get the answer that I think works best.”
De Jong tells mentees: “Know, embrace, respect yourself and dare to be different. You have to be yourself, because if you don’t know who you are, then you don’t know where you’re going. It’s the journey you’re on that defines who you are. Embrace that.”
She emphasizes accepting and learning and being willing to let something go when it’s not the right thing. The more honest and non-judging you can be with yourself and others, feels de Jong, the more trust you build and the more you create results together. She has always advised women to be kind to each other, as it can be especially tricky to navigate in banking or finance when you first begin as a woman.
The hardest experience she’s had was in a previous role when she returned from maternity leave only two and a half months after having her daughter, and found part of her region moved from her remit and no expanded team as anticipated. Reflecting, she realizes the feeling that she could only take such a short leave was a red flag in feeling supported.
De Jong feels both men and women can contribute to normalizing parental leave by embracing it, and notes that her own husband has been a huge support.
Vocalize and Invest In Your Needs
De Jong now realizes that earlier in her career, she was often too scared to really ask for what would fulfill her, and so she often got something else. She feels it’s important to be very clear when you’re not satisfied.
“I would get frustrated but nobody seemed to notice, and then I would hand in my resignation and people were so surprised and often disappointed,” says de Jong. “They would ask, ‘why did you not tell me before?’ And I seriously thought I had, but clearly hadn’t been very vocal about my dissatisfaction.”
De Jong enjoys her four-year-old daughter, playing piano and is still looking for an experience in Holland akin to the community volunteer hub she loved in London. Her favorite volunteer work has been a charity she helped create called Launchpad Labs, which offered workspace and mentoring to those with challenging backgrounds.
“Helping others is a great way to stay on your feet to understand the bigger picture and that helps in your personal space and helps with your work,” says de Jong, “It helps to ground those four pillars and understanding what is important.”
She emphasizes investing in yourself and your personal happiness, as well as listening to your body. She loves exercise, baking, and continuing to learn and grow.
By: Aimee Hansen
Six Forms of Cultural Wealth You Can Leverage As a Leader
Career Advice, Career Tip of the Week!Cultural wealth is defined as: “an array of knowledge, skills, strengths and experiences that are learned and shared by people of color and marginalized groups; the values and behaviors that are nurtured through culture work together to create a way of knowing and being.”
Affirming the cultural capital you’ve acquired as part of your road-tested skillset can be a compelling collective and personal narrative-flipper: factors that may have inhibited opportunities become empowering qualifications of your leadership ability. To walk into the room with a sense of cultural wealth integrated into your personal narrative could arguably reduce and reframe a sense of imposter syndrome.
In fact, Yosso’s model was initially designed to “capture the talents, strengths and experiences that students of color bring with them to their college environment”— but professional context, and even executive context, are even more compelling given you are further on the journey.
Here are the six forms of cultural capital and why they make you valuable as a leader.
Aspirational Capital
Aspirational capital is the ability to sustain hopes and dreams for the future amidst both real and perceived barriers.
As states the University of Portland UP Career Center, “It is the ability to envision a future beyond your current circumstances and work towards pursuing your dreams and aspirations.”
As Sheri Crosby Wheeler, VP of D&I at Fossil Group, told theglasshammer earlier this year when speaking to her own economically disadvantaged background: “I feel like it has given me the grit, the resilience, the fight, the get-up-and-go that I have to this day. I won’t see myself as ever being down and out, and I won’t stay in a ‘woe is me’ place, not for very long.”
The impact and success of Black and Latina female entrepreneurs, despite opportunity gaps, bias and barriers in the hallways of corporate America, bears testament to a mentality of sticking to a vision of realizing the dream beyond obstacles.
The ability to conceive of and hold to a vision beyond the current reality is not only essential to becoming a leader, but also what enables leaders to inspire entirely new visions and influence new realities.
Navigational Capital
Navigational capital is the ability to maneuver through systems and institutions that historically were not designed for you. Yosso notes that this capital empowers individuals to move within environments that can feel both unsupportive or hostile.
“I think you can approach a situation like that and feel like you’re the only one,” Gia Morón told us, on inviting herself into the NYC networking circle for the emerging legal cannabis industry, “or you can say, ‘I can invite other people and not be the only one.’”
As pointed out in Harvard Business Review by Marlette Jackson, PhD and Paria Rajai, the dedication many “first generation corporates” have to paying-it-forward and bringing others up through sharing the unspoken rules of navigating an organization is one way navigational capital comes into power. And for those who trail-blazed themselves, they bring that earned strategic and maverick gumption to what they offer.
“The most rewarding piece of my work is to create an opportunity and open a door, where traditionally that door may not have existed,” said Noelle Ramirez, Project Manager, DE&I at PGIM, about alternative recruiting channels, “to be able to put that spotlight on someone who might not have been seen and say, ‘I see you and there’s space for you here.’”
Social Capital
Social capital is leveraging existing community resources and connections in building a network in support of your goals.
The roles of social and cultural capital have been found to be key components in supporting academic achievement among Latinas. In one qualitative study of Latina women, the pursuit of higher education was truly conceived as a “family goal” in which sacrifices were made to realize the goal, and in turn the Latina women “considered their own educational advancements as advancements for the whole family.”
Recently, Monica Marquez, Co-Founder of Beyond Barriers, shared with us that years ago when pioneering a Returnship® program at Goldman Sachs that facilitated mothers back to work after their maternity leave, her team found Latina women were less likely to have opted out of work for home responsibilities than their white peers, because they had the strong family structure and childcare support within the family.
“The cultural nuance or norm of the tight-knit family, where it takes a village to raise a family, helped some women stay employed opposed to having to opt out,” said Marquez.
Linguistic Capital
Linguistic capital is the sum intellectual, social and communication skills attained through a particular language, history and experiences.
Linguistic research indicates that those who are bilingual or multilingual generally have more connectivity and integration in their neural networks, a sharper working memory, more cognitive reserve, better task-switching, more divergent thinking and are more adept at solving mathematical problems than monolinguals, for starters. Analyzing in a second language also reduces decision bias.
“I have the benefit of growing up in a different country and being exposed to different cultures, so that helps me to understand and work with cross-cultural teams,” Anna Thomas, VP at BBH, told us. “For example, in Asian culture, unless you actually reach out and ask, someone will often think it’s disrespectful to provide their view of things. I grew up in that culture, so I know and I can actually coax and ask someone to speak up. I can come from that angle.”
Yosso emphasized that cultures where oral storytelling is part of the daily cultural fabric bring “skills [that] may include memorization, attention to detail, dramatic pauses, comedic timing, facial affect, vocal tone, volume, rhythm and rhyme”, such as to narrative crafting and public speaking.
Familial Capital
Familial capital is the cultural knowledge and nuance obtained from family and community experiences, for example how the communal-orientation of many Latin cultures may predispose networking skills.
While crediting her parents for raising her in faith from a long line of ministers and pastors, Marie Carr, a Global Growth Strategist at PwC US, said: “I have confidence in and the ability to appeal to a force higher than myself. That’s helped me to be more patient, to put myself in other’s shoes, to not be so hard on myself. You have to be able to center yourself, because you’re often going to find yourself in an environment that’s not going to affirm you. So, the ability to affirm yourself is really useful.”
Familial legacy of challenge and strife can also compel compassionate leadership.
Megan Hogan, Chief Diversity Officer of Goldman Sachs, recently shared that her family’s journey from the Dominican Republic to find opportunity influenced her own pro bono passion of working with immigrants seeking asylum: “It’s always been important to me to advocate for people seeking refuge from persecution as a way to pay it forward and allow others to find those same opportunities.”
Resistant Capital
Resistant capital is the inherited foundation and historical legacy of communities of colors and marginalized groups in resisting inequality and pursuing equal rights. This includes embracing a resistance to stereotypes that are not authentic to your sense of self.
Overcoming barriers and challenging the status quo enables a leader-oriented lens of questioning conventional models and methods that aren’t working or may be problematic for long-term growth, according to the findings of HBR authors Jackson and Rajai.
“The narrative is often ‘I come from a low-income neighborhood, I was raised by a single parent, my father is in jail, my brother was killed, I didn’t go to an Ivy League school. I’ve got no credentials to lead…Who am I to run?” said May Nazareno, NE Director of Gifts at Ignite, to us, speaking of encouraging the inherent young female leaders from highly marginalized neighborhoods. “And we flip the script and say: who are you not to? We’re here to convince each young woman that her whole life is what makes her qualified to lead.”
By: Aimee Hansen
Lara Aryani: Partner, Mergers & Acquisitions, Shearman & Sterling
People, Voices of ExperienceAryani speaks to the broad and dynamic nature of M&A, the importance of listening, modesty and asking, and being supported when it mattered the most for her family.
Conducting the Dynamic Orchestra
Aryani began working in both capital markets and M&A, and gravitated towards M&A when she moved to Shearman & Sterling in 2014, finding she loved the generalist and technically challenging orientation of the practice.
“If you’re representing a company as an M&A lawyer, you’re really advising them on everything,” she says, “you are the conductor of an orchestra that involves a whole range of legal expertise.”
Aryani notes you get to learn “enough to be dangerous” about many specialist areas while keeping a broad, dynamic overview and strong client interaction, which she thoroughly enjoys.
She admits that though her group has women associates and female partners, throughout her career she has often found herself to be the only woman in a negotiation room. M&A has a reputation for being male-dominated, though Aryani feels that this reputation might have become something of a self-fulfilling prophecy.
“Let’s be honest: there aren’t enough women in leadership positions, there aren’t enough women in M&A, there aren’t enough women in Big Law and there aren’t enough women in law, period,” says Aryani. “But there’s nothing about the technical nature of M&A that is more or less male or female friendly relative to other legal practices. Though it’s possible that cultures that exist outside of the practice of law may create a perception that deters women from the practice of M&A.”
The Importance of Resilience
As Aryani has become more experienced, she’s realized that being open, empathetic and socially adept can really make the difference between an ordinary and an extraordinary practitioner. But it also takes a little courage and vulnerability, and a lot of luck and support to scale a career.
“Everybody that survives in Big Law should be technically excellent, that goes without saying, but to thrive, it isn’t good enough to put your head down and simply be a technically good lawyer,” says Aryani. “It takes a lot of additional qualities to succeed in Big Law, but as a starting point, to make partner you need to put yourself out there and have conversations with the leadership that may feel uncomfortable and unfamiliar to you. No one can make it in this business alone, and so to garner support you need to be able to ask for it and by implication, be prepared to be scrutinized and rejected.”
“You don’t get what you don’t ask for, as the old adage goes. Hopefully, the worst thing that will happen is somebody will say no and forget about it. You are the only person driving your career, and it’s sometimes hard to remember that, particularly in private practice. People should be thinking more proactively about their futures rather than letting inertia determine it for them. They should also be having conversations about it a lot earlier than they think they deserve to,” she says.
Aryani observes people often hesitate to talk about future career prospects because they feel both uncertainty and that it’s too early to be appropriate to discuss. She argues the conversation is iterative and builds over time.
“You can’t just come in as a very senior associate and start building the ramp for the first time,” says Aryani. “We need to start having these conversations earlier, so that the process becomes more fluid, open and transparent, expectations are created and everybody can work from the same playbook. People will need to revisit these conversations regularly to ensure that expectations remain aligned and progress is being made. The process of professional development can feel painstakingly slow, so it may take a while before it feels like anything tangible has happened.”
“As important as it is to initiate these conversations and follow up on the goals that they establish,” Aryani says, “it is also important to figure out how you fit within the larger business framework and the extent to which your skills and ambitions complement and further the firm’s business goals,” she says.
The Value of Respect and Change in Relationships
Through experience, Aryani has found that in a practice where you’re interacting with and representing people from many different places – whether that be geography, language, culture or markets – it’s important to approach things with more respect and receptivity than she sometimes witnesses in the field.
“We are being hired for our expertise and for what we know, but everybody around the table has something to learn from everybody else, including those junior to you,” says Aryani. “I try to approach deal tables with an understanding that the way we do things is not necessarily the only way to do it, and I need to listen as much as I need to weigh in with my advice.”
Her approach to mentorship is to be open and to remember that while there is a hierarchal environment in private practice, that hierarchy is fluid.
“The associate hierarchy is very rigid, partners are always senior to senior associates, who are always senior to midlevels who are always senior to juniors. But people who have been around for longer understand that eventually these hierarchies can flatten or even flip, either within the law firm or because someone leaves and becomes a client,” says Aryani. “So as hierarchical as our structures are within the law firm, the relationships that we build with people throughout the hierarchy change and our orientation and position in that hierarchy, with respect to any one particular person, is absolutely subject to change, and will likely change.”
“Every year law firms move further away from their guild-like origins and the business aspect of the practice becomes more and more prominent,” she notes. “The relationships we have with our colleagues, counterparts and clients are important and need to be respected and cultivated not only because it feels like the right thing to do, but because it makes good business sense.”
Being Supported When It Really Mattered
Aryani had previously heard the startling advice from peers at other firms that being pregnant and being promoted were incompatible. With some disbelief, she notes: “I was advised: ‘get pregnant at the place that you don’t want to make partner, because once the partners see you as pregnant, they’ll never be able to see you as anything else.’
Fast-forward to four years ago, while with Shearman & Sterling, Aryani’s identical twin sons were born three months prematurely as micro-preemies. Weighing in at only 1.6 and 1.3 pounds, each needed to stay in the hospital, for six and nine months respectively.
After recovering from her C-section with disability leave, she asked about returning to the office to “preserve” her maternity leave for when the twins came home from the hospital. Instead, the firm encouraged her to stay with her kids through hospitalization and begin her formal maternity leave only once they came home.
Aryani returned to work 13 months after the birth: “My firm never pushed me to come back. They never had a conversation about cutting my pay. They paid me full salary and bonuses, and I had insurance. They were a hundred percent fully supportive and said: ‘Your family is what you need to be doing right now and we want to help. When you’re ready to come back, give us a call.’”
“I’m not saying that being a working parent in M&A or Big Law, no matter where I am, is easy,” she reflects. “But when it really mattered, my firm stood by me and my family. And so, that’s really important and meaningful.”
The time and attention Aryani and her husband were able to give their sons during those critical months made a huge difference in their survival, recovery and development. Each weekend these days Aryani and her family go hiking in the forests or mountains near NYC. The longest hike her four-year olds have taken this summer was 5 miles long, “with elevation!” she brags, “that’s more than most adults can do and they have to take twice as many steps!”
She finds it so therapeutic and relaxing she can’t believe it took all these years to really appreciate getting out of the city.
By: Aimee Hansen
OP-Ed: 3 Ways Leaders Can Advocate for Workplace Flexibility
Career Advice, Career Tip of the Week!Increased trends in technological automation and innovations have forced us as professional leaders to rethink most of our internal strategies. From the processes we use to hire and retain talented employees, to the ways we interact with them on the clock, and even down to the resources we provide them to excel in their performance, one thing has been made clear: the pandemic has left its impact not only on society as a whole, but also on the individual as an employee.
As employees have begun to advocate for their wants and needs within the workplace, it is our duty as leaders to provide them with the environment and tools they need to feel appreciated and valued. The best way to do this is to advocate for greater flexibility within your business and its culture. By advocating for the flexibility and greater overall wellbeing of your employees, they will feel more supported. This support, in turn, boosts the confidence of your employees, allowing them to feel more deeply valued in their own abilities, both within and outside of the workplace.
Here are three ways you, as a leader, can become an advocate for the flexibility of your workplace’s culture and its employees.
1. Embrace the New Hybrid Work Model
Some employers are reluctant to change and are resistant to new ways of working for them and their employees alike. They may think that methods which worked well for the past several decades prior to the pandemic can continue to work just as well more than a year later. Employers may have a fear of the unknown or a desire to focus on other priorities for their business. Ultimately, it all comes down to an organization’s leaders–if leaders can acknowledge that the dynamic between them and their employees has shifted, and changes are required, half the battle is already won. When that acknowledgement is avoided, true change becomes impossible.
Many employers are permanently implementing remote work and hybrid working arrangements, providing bonuses for employees who worked extra hours during the pandemic, conducting compensation studies to ensure their pay rates are competitive, and adding benefits like additional therapy visits, meditation, and mindfulness training. Some employers are also adding more paid holidays to their workplace calendar, encouraging vacation day use, or bringing in freelancers, contractors, and consultants to help with complex projects and increased workloads.
Implementing a hybrid work environment can benefit employers in many ways, not the least of which is the reduction in size of their real estate footprint, which lowers operating expenses. For instance, implementing a hybrid work model shows employees that flexibility in their workplace environment is a priority for their leaders, allowing those leaders to retain talented employees for longer periods of time. This hybrid environment allows talented employees to juggle their priorities (such as caring for children or aging parents) while remaining employed without the fear of having to choose between their personal priorities or their career.
2. Revisit (and Revamp) Your Hiring and Retention Strategy
The number one thing employers can do is to ensure workplace flexibility is to have a clearly defined talent strategy; one that includes an aspirational vision or mission that leaders and HR can use as a guidepost. That guidepost is then used to update, change, or create practices and rewards that are aligned to the aspirational vision of a company’s leadership, which should be well-known throughout the organization. It should be communicated clearly and often, praised when demonstrated, and discussed regularly in large company-wide meetings and small team meetings alike. Great, talented employees need to know what they are working for, what they are working toward, and that their efforts are recognized, appreciated, and rewarded.
The recent hiring crisis our nation is facing exemplifies this point. Our current shortage of workers is impacting the ability of HR teams to focus on enhancing their people strategy, resulting in higher turnover rates that lead to a larger amount of open positions that are hard to fill. It’s a vicious cycle that has led many organizations to bring in HR consultants who can help employers and their teams tackle greater workloads in a shorter period of time. However, many HR professionals themselves are completely burned out after everything the pandemic threw at them. Some are shifting career paths, moving on to companies that provide them with more support, or leaving the workforce entirely.
If business leaders and employers are able to successfully adapt to new ways of working, and thinking about work such as implementing a hybrid work environment, this allows them to increase the size of their talent pool–particularly for positions that are difficult to fill. Hybrid work models likewise allows for greater inclusion, making it possible for companies to employ those with disabilities that keep them from a traditional onsite office setting. By increasing the size of their talent pool, employers make it easier on themselves to recruit for positions that would otherwise be hard to fill.
3. Consciously Provide Employees Opportunities to Thrive
The events of the past year have made it clear that employees crave support from employers to help them better balance their lives. Employees want to work for strong leaders, want to contribute to something bigger than themselves, to take care of their families, and to maintain their health and wellbeing. All of these needs require flexibility on behalf of the employer, and while employers are not expected to meet all of an employee’s personal needs, making conscious choices to provide employees every opportunity to thrive is what helps retain great employees.
By focusing your company’s internal people strategy to create a more flexible workplace environment and culture, your organization can focus more on how to foster the wellbeing of its employees. Companies that are more focused on the wellbeing of their employees will find it easier to attract and retain talent, combat burnout, and increase productivity. When employees feel supported, they’re more confident in their abilities at work. It’s no wonder that employees are looking for employers who have been or are ready to embrace this dynamic.
Written by Lauren Winans, CEO – Next Level Benefits
Megan Hogan: Chief Diversity Officer, Goldman Sachs
People, Voices of ExperienceMegan Hogan, Goldman Sachs’ chief diversity officer, joined the firm in 2014 as a vice president on the Diversity & Inclusion team, and has spent her time at the firm supporting efforts related to the recruitment, development and advancement of diverse professionals.
Prior to her current role, Hogan led the diversity recruiting team, spearheading new programs such as the firm’s Black Analyst and Associate Initiative and Neurodiversity Hiring Initiative, which provide mentorship and networking opportunities to Black and neurodiverse individuals, respectively. In addition, Hogan’s team partnered with teams across the firm to establish the Market Madness: HBCU Possibilities Program earlier this year, which recruits students from Historically Black Colleges and Universities.
She notes that she’s most proud of launching the neurodiversity initiative in 2019 on World Autism Day. “As a mother of a child with learning differences, it has been important for me both personally and professionally to create opportunities for children like mine who are exceptionally bright, but navigate the world differently,” said Hogan.
A Thread of “Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion” Throughout Prior Work
“Prior to joining the firm, there was a thread of advancing diversity, equity and inclusion in my corporate law work,” said Hogan. She worked as a litigation associate at Willkie Farr & Gallagher LLP covering white collar, insurance, and complex commercial cases and trials. During that period, Hogan dedicated significant time to pro bono cases, primarily representing immigrants seeking asylum. “I come from an immigrant family – my mother’s family came from the Dominican Republic to find better educational and economic opportunity for themselves and their children. It’s always been important to me to advocate for people seeking refuge from persecution as a way to pay it forward and allow others to find those same opportunities,” said Hogan.
During an externship, she also spent six months working for MFY Legal Services, where she provided legal assistance to low-income New Yorkers to resolve issues in the areas of housing and foreclosure. “A large part of my work was focused on identifying housing opportunities for people who had difficulty finding affordable housing,” Hogan said. “This included protecting them from private actors or individuals who might be biased against them.
Commenting on her decision to interview at Goldman Sachs, Hogan said: “I ultimately realized that I wanted to work on diversity, equity and inclusion full time.” She went on to say of the firm’s diversity and inclusion work in recent years: “We have done a lot of great work to level the playing field across recruiting, and opening up opportunities at the firm to an even greater array of candidates.”
Recruiting and Diversity-Related Goals
Discussing Goldman Sachs’ recruiting and diversity aspirational goals, Hogan highlighted that the firm has “seen the power of having goals, as well as remaining transparent and holding ourselves accountable.”
She went on to underscore the importance of providing transparency to ensure that managers across the firm understand their role to recruit and retain diverse individuals on their teams: “We need to ensure that every individual throughout Goldman Sachs understands they have a responsibility to help reach our aspirational goals and foster inclusion and diversity.”
“I Never Lose, I Only Win or I Learn”
Hogan, who earned a BA in African-American Studies and Psychology from Yale University in 2003 and a JD from Fordham University School of Law in 2006, shared that early on in her career, she reflected often on a Nelson Mandela quote: “I never lose, I only win or I learn.”
She went on to note that, “As a first generation college student, I thought there was no room for failure or mistakes. I realized there should be no fear when it comes to failure – we only learn from our missteps over time, and it leads us to do more interesting things.”
Hogan also shared advice for individuals beginning their careers, noting the importance of taking risks: “After graduating from law school, I felt the need to have a five-year plan mapped out. But, by being so focused on implementing this plan, I didn’t take advantage of other stretch opportunities, such as mobility or working in different areas of law.” Her recommendation: “Innovate and learn by thinking outside the box, taking risks and betting on yourself.”
A Passion for Helping Others
Hogan has been a long-time advocate for addressing hunger insecurity throughout New York, a cause she describes as “near and dear to my heart.”
For several years, she has volunteered with the West Side Campaign Against Hunger, and notes that the employees of this organization are “on the front lines, making sure that homeless individuals or those in shelters have access to their next meal.”
In addition, Hogan serves as a member of the Advisory Board for the Center on Race, Law & Justice at Fordham University School of Law and the Hispanic Scholarship Fund’s New York Advisory Council.
Op-Ed: Back to School Strategies for Working Parents As School Resumes
Career Advice, Career Tip of the Week!, Guest ContributionBut if you’re busy adapting to the pandemic “next normal” – and simultaneously concerned that your five-year-old will have a difficult time adjusting to the school routine, that your eight-year-old will need help with her science homework, and that those standardized tests are looming, too, it puts you in a real bind.
With some special working parent tactics and approaches, however, you’ll be better able to handle all of those details and logistics while focusing on the piece that really matters: your child’s overall academic development and long-term success in school. Where to start in terms of handling the current working-parent “school challenge”? By taking charge in three educational areas that can be the most challenging for you as a working mom or dad.
Homework
Homework can all too often morph into an overwhelming, time-consuming exercise that ends past bedtime, in power struggles and tears. What should be a simple algebra worksheet can leave you feeling torn: of course you want your child to succeed academically, practice resilience, and feel comfortable tackling new challenges—but when you’ve got so little time to spend together each evening, the last thing you want to do is spend it carping at your child to finish her assignment, or checking it for errors. So:
After-school activities—and ways to think about them
After-school activities can supplement your child’s education in wonderful ways, help you “stretch” care arrangements, and bring an element of fun into the relentless homework-and-testing cycle of modern education.
Taken too far, however, after-school activities can put terrible pressure on any working-parent family. Here’s how to keep perspective, ensure that extracurricular activities remain a positive, and make the choices that are right for you.
Volunteering—and how to do it efficiently
It’s unlikely you can make it to every school performance, library fundraiser, and field trip, even if you wanted to. So here’s what you can do instead. In the first week of school, tell your child’s teachers and/or the school’s volunteer coordinators that you’re eager to put in your fair share of sweat equity—but that you will be doing it all in one go. You’ll schedule a personal or vacation day well in advance and use it entirely for school volunteerism.
Maybe you’ll be the “reading helper” in your daughter’s class in the morning, walk the school’s neighborhood safety patrol in the afternoon, and take the minutes during the school fundraising-committee meeting at 5:00 p.m. When the day is over, you’ll enjoy knowing that your yearly contribution has been made in full—and efficiently. That “I’m not doing enough” guilt will go away, and you’ll be able to focus back on family and career.
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Copyright line: Reprinted by permission of Harvard Business Review Press. Adapted from Workparent: The Complete Guide to Succeeding on the Job, Staying True to Yourself, and Raising Happy Kids by Daisy Dowling. Copyright 2021 Daisy Dowling. All rights reserved.
Daisy Dowling is the author of Workparent: The Complete Guide to Succeeding on the Job, Staying True to Yourself, and Raising Happy Kids (HBR Press, 2021). She is the founder and CEO of Workparent, an executive coaching, and training firm dedicated to helping working parents lead more successful and satisfying lives. She is a full-time working parent to two young children.
Katherine Stoller: Partner, Litigation, Shearman & Sterling
People, Voices of ExperienceStoller speaks to how listening matters, the importance of presence and anticipation, and bringing the hard-to-navigate topics into the office chat.
Growing Through High Intensity
Working in the litigation practice, Stoller represents clients in criminal and regulatory investigations – representing people and companies involved in government investigations that can involve allegations of money laundering, sanctions violations, securities fraud, insider trading and market manipulation. She also represents clients in civil litigation, advises financial institutions on their ongoing relationships with regulators and conducts internal investigations.
“By the time clients bring in an enforcement lawyer, they’re frequently in high-stakes situations with a potential crisis on the horizon, so you come in as the steady hand and repeat player. You have to be a good listener,” says Stoller. “The first job is always to understand the facts and figure out the strategy , and then be ready to adjust the strategy as you go. It’s fascinating working with clients through these high intensity stretches.”
Not only is Stoller energized by the caliber of clients she works with on both the legal and business side, but she finds the cross-border aspect of her practice means that she is constantly learning – be it political, legal or cultural differences among the various international jurisdictions.
“Every case involves a different geography and a different business. You have to get steeped in the facts and the relationships among the clients and the regulators or enforcement agencies,” says Stoller. “You learn so much about how other countries operate, and I love that.”
Holding Grace Under Fire
Stoller finds good listening is a prerequisite of being an effective lawyer.
“I think a lot of lawyers come in and think it’s their job to start speaking right away. But there’s so much listening you need to do to understand the business, what the authorities are looking at and what matters to each of the stakeholders,” she says. “Taking all that information and building it into a strategy, and making sure you’re not missing out on what’s important to each of the stakeholders, is a really important skill.”
Stoller feels that understanding “the importance of narrative” is also very important, the ability to shape the story in a way that people can not only understand it, but follow the facts that are crucial to your argument.
As the daughter of an M&A partner at Skadden, she remembers hearing her father on the phone and even as a girl, she picked up that he modeled being a trusted advisor: “He was always calm and precise. You could count on his judgment. There’s a presence to being the calmest person in the room when things become challenging and intense. I hope I picked some of that up from listening to him.”
Moving More Towards Vision and Anticipation
Stoller joined Shearman & Sterling in January 2020, recognizing the opportunity to thrive with the firm, and made partner on July 1st of this year.
As a junior lawyer in the investigations space, doing well was about being meticulous, understanding the record well and not losing track of the details. But as she’s grown more senior as a lawyer, Stoller notes the remit has moved much more to big picture strategy and anticipation.
“The more senior you get, the more you are responsible for steering and being able to see around the corner and anticipating the different challenges that you’ll face along the way,” she observes. “You get more experienced at identifying the problems you may be seeing tomorrow.”
Stoller also values being able to effectively mediate conversations through difficult or stuck places so they can move forward, and without having to be a “bang-on-the-table sort of lawyer”.
Learning from Witnessing, Including Yourself
Having joined Shearman just a few weeks before the lockdowns, with few days in the office, Stoller looks forward to again experiencing in-office time with colleagues.
She notes that for her, much of her most valuable mentorship has happened through witnessing other lawyers in action when it counts: “I’ve learned a lot from sitting in people’s offices on the days when things are going wrong, when you get bad news and you respond to it, and one call leads to another. The chance to watch how excellent senior lawyers practice is important for more junior lawyers.”
Stoller emphasizes to those whom she mentors that it’s up to them to think about where they want to go, what they are good at and what they still need to learn.
“I think young lawyers need to feel empowered to ask for the kind of work they want and to speak up in meetings. There’s a strong tendency to stay quiet, which is the flip side of how important it is to learn from listening,” notes Stoller. “I encourage my junior associates to jump in, tell me if I missed something, ask a question, make the point someone else didn’t make, and start getting used to the sound of your own voice and advice. Of course, you also need to back that up by being diligent and having command of the facts and details.”
Bridging the Conversations
Stoller believes certain conversations should happen more often around law offices, so she will often bring up the topics that more junior lawyers may be reticent about.
“There are conversations that are hard to have and times where you don’t know if it’s okay to ask for something,” says Stoller. “I try to open the door to conversations I wanted to have when I was starting out. It can be a matter of just saying to someone, how are you doing? What kind of support do you need?”
Taking care of very little ones while managing a career that values long hours and lots of face time is one topic example, and a challenge she navigated some years back: “It’s hard to talk about the reality of your career during those few years when you need to leave the office at a certain point, or you don’t know when you’re going to be able to get the baby to sleep.” She feels it needs to be spoken to more explicitly, so parents can be open about what’s going on.
With a son of nine and a daughter of six and a passion for reading herself, Stoller makes sure to read to her kids every night and is currently in middle of a Laura Ingalls Wilder book, quite the throwback to her own childhood.
By: Aimee Hansen
14 Career Insights and Tips From Women Leaders in Asia (Part 2)
Career Advice, Career Tip of the Week!, Spotlight on AsiaIn the first part of this series, we shared seven top tips. This week, we continue with seven more experience-based insights from Asian female executives.
1. Get out of your own way.
“The barriers to success for women in our profession are sometimes ourselves,” said Quek Bin Hwee, previously as the Vice-Chairman of PwC Singapore and the Markets Leader of PwC Asia. “We sometimes believe we cannot reach the pinnacle of our career. This is not always true. It is possible for those who desire it. These women tend to embrace change and always keep an open mind.”
Update: After 25 years of global and regional positions with PwC Singapore until 2017, Quek Bin Hwee sits as director across several boards and member on others.
2. Define your own possibilities for yourself.
“You need to determine your own path and carve out your own unique identity,” advised Paloma Wang, previously as a Partner, Capital Markets Group at Shearman & Sterling in Hong Kong, when reflecting on her trajectory. “Don’t let anyone else dictate who you are as a professional or as a person.”
Having ascended to partnership by 37 years old, Wang shared, “By establishing your own priorities and doing the things that truly make you happy, you will drive your career path in the right direction. Don’t make concessions because you are junior or because you are a woman. Plant your feet firmly and set your sights on achieving everything you want.”
Update: Paloma Wang is presently a Partner at Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom LLP and Affiliates.
3. Take the risk of influencing outcomes.
“Earlier in my career, I was more reserved about expressing my views,” said Stephanie Hui, as Head of the Merchant Banking Division in Asia Pacific Ex-Japan at Goldman Sachs, who grew up as a Chinese woman in a conservative family in Hong Kong.
“But over time, I realized we are in the business of taking calculated risks and just keeping my head down to produce top quality work while hoping others would notice would not make me a leader,” Hui noted. “Instead, I would have to effectively and respectfully influence outcome. I learned that being vocal in the right context is important.”
Update: Stephanie Hui is an MD responsible for the private equity investing business of Goldman Sachs in Asia and has been with the firm for 26 years.
4. Do not contort yourself to conform.
“When I was first starting to practice law, I tried to mimic my male colleagues by dressing how they dressed and talking like them,” said Jun Wei, Managing Partner at Hogan Lovells in Beijing. “One day, a client of mine who was a very successful business woman told me that no matter how much I tried to act like a man, I would always be a woman. She urged me to be proud of my identity.”
Wei emphasized the importance of junior women lawyers to be themselves and resist conforming to male-dominated work environments just to fit in.
Update: Jun Wei remains a Managing Partner at Hogan Lovells, now over 19 years with the firm across mergers.
5. Manage your boss.
“It is important to know how to manage your boss,” said Siew Choo Ng, Senior Vice President, Head of Global Network Partnerships in Asia at American Express. “He or she is the one who can be your sponsor and help you with your career. Often times you are competing for their time and sponsorship with your other team members, so it helps to distinguish yourself from the pack.”
If she could have learned anything sooner to help her navigate, Ng said that would be the golden piece of advice.
Update: Siew Choo Ng still holds this position on her LinkedIn Profile.
6. Leap before you have all the answers.
“I think women have the tendency to be a bit conservative at work. What I mean is that we like to gather all of the information we can before providing an answer, for example. While that is important, I think women need to try to be a little more daring, take more risks and be confident,” said Wei Hopeman, previously as Managing Director and Head of Asia for Citi Ventures in Shanghai. “You have to start down a new path long before you have all of the answers because by the time you get all the answers, the original opportunity will be gone. This is something I have learned from my own career.”
“If you never take on new challenges and new experiences, then you are never really allowing yourself to learn and grow,” said Hopeman. “You learn every day. No matter how senior or junior you are, part of making yourself better is learning from your mistakes and your successes.”
Update: Wei Hopeman has been the Co-founder and Managing Partner of Arbor Ventures for the past seven years and sits on several boards.
7. Seek to align with your purpose.
“To begin finding out what your purpose in life is, imagine looking back forty years from now and asking yourself what would make you proud, or if you would be able to admit to having lived a full and meaningful life,” suggested Nora Wu, formerly the PwC Global Vice Chairwoman and PwC Global Human Capital Leader out of China. “The answers will give you a good indication of what you want, or should, aim for in life.”
Wu then advised to not hold back: “You never know where one opportunity or interaction will lead you and you only can find out if you give it your best shot. You should never be afraid to work hard or put in the long hours. Work-life balance is indeed possible, especially if you do not separate your work and your life. By aligning your purpose, personality, and aspirations, it will be easier to create a balance.”
Update: Nora Wu is now an independent board member at JD Logistics and sits on a few boards.
We hope you enjoyed this two-part retrospective! Click here to see part one.
By: Aimee Hansen