By Melissa J. Anderson (New York City)
“I wanted to be a banker my whole life,” said Maria Coyne, Executive Vice President, Business Banking Segment Group at Key Bank. Coyne graduated with a degree in finance from Notre Dame in 1982, and besides a three year foray into the non profit sector, has spent her 25 year career in banking. While she has worked in just about every part of the bank, she said, she’s always come back to small business.
“It’s where my heart was,” she said. “Particularly the women’s business sector.”
Among her proudest achievements, Coyne includes the work she’s done with the Key4Women program – Key’s program for female business owners, providing financial solutions, networking opportunities, and education. She explained that, going back to the late ’90s, Key Bank was studying the needs of women business owners. “We saw that they just weren’t applying for loans.”
“We identified it as a need and wanted to make it real.” She said the program has gone a long way in helping understand the economic value in women-owned businesses. “This is not just a “feel good” project,” she said. “These women have sophisticated business needs.”
She continued, “The most thrilling thing for me has been to see these companies grow and expand through the program.”
In 2005, Key Bank has committed to lending $1 billion over the next three years, and accomplished that goal early in 2007. “So we said, ‘Let’s double it.’” That goal, she said, was achieved in 2009. The bank is on track to achieve its next goal of 3 billion by 2012.
On the horizon, Coyne said, is a program for non profit entities similar to Key4Women. “We want to help non profits find financial solutions. We’re very excited about it.” Additionally, Coyne said, so many of the bank’s employees sit on non profit boards that the program is energizing the entire leadership team. “We’re well suited to serve non profits,” she added.
Coyne is particularly excited about the financial education portion of the two programs.
She said, “I think financial education is so important in virtually every aspect of our industry. On the consumer side, particularly in the “unbanked,” there is heightened awareness around people better managing their finances. One of the good things that came out of this bad cycle is that we are building the tools to help people manage their finances better.”
Movers and Shakers: Maria Coyne, Executive Vice President, Business Banking Segment Group, Key Bank
Movers and Shakers“I wanted to be a banker my whole life,” said Maria Coyne, Executive Vice President, Business Banking Segment Group at Key Bank. Coyne graduated with a degree in finance from Notre Dame in 1982, and besides a three year foray into the non profit sector, has spent her 25 year career in banking. While she has worked in just about every part of the bank, she said, she’s always come back to small business.
“It’s where my heart was,” she said. “Particularly the women’s business sector.”
Among her proudest achievements, Coyne includes the work she’s done with the Key4Women program – Key’s program for female business owners, providing financial solutions, networking opportunities, and education. She explained that, going back to the late ’90s, Key Bank was studying the needs of women business owners. “We saw that they just weren’t applying for loans.”
“We identified it as a need and wanted to make it real.” She said the program has gone a long way in helping understand the economic value in women-owned businesses. “This is not just a “feel good” project,” she said. “These women have sophisticated business needs.”
She continued, “The most thrilling thing for me has been to see these companies grow and expand through the program.”
In 2005, Key Bank has committed to lending $1 billion over the next three years, and accomplished that goal early in 2007. “So we said, ‘Let’s double it.’” That goal, she said, was achieved in 2009. The bank is on track to achieve its next goal of 3 billion by 2012.
On the horizon, Coyne said, is a program for non profit entities similar to Key4Women. “We want to help non profits find financial solutions. We’re very excited about it.” Additionally, Coyne said, so many of the bank’s employees sit on non profit boards that the program is energizing the entire leadership team. “We’re well suited to serve non profits,” she added.
Coyne is particularly excited about the financial education portion of the two programs.
She said, “I think financial education is so important in virtually every aspect of our industry. On the consumer side, particularly in the “unbanked,” there is heightened awareness around people better managing their finances. One of the good things that came out of this bad cycle is that we are building the tools to help people manage their finances better.”
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Ask-a-Career-Coach: Is “Excessive Subjectivity” Sabotaging Your Career?
Ask A Career CoachOnce upon a time, when managers made implicitly gender-biased judgments about which staff got the pay raises and the promotions, we called a spade a spade: gender discrimination. When Wal-Mart Stores, Inc. v. Betty Dukes et al. was recently heard by the Supreme Court, we gained a new euphemism for structural sexism in the workplace: “excessive subjectivity.”
This phenomenon is no news to most women: When a company fails to establish objective criteria for its managers to decide on pay raises and promotions, then personal, subjective, unexamined biases kick in. And if you’re operating in a male-dominated environment, you can bet that those cultural biases ain’t gonna benefit the women. If the workplace lacks a rational process for making a decision (it’s called a “policy”), then bosses fall back on the most primitive assumptions, including sexist ones.
The result? In the case of Wal-Mart: Women fill 70% of the hourly jobs but make up only 33% of management employees. Women working in the company’s stores are paid less than men in every region, and the salary gap widens over time even for men and women hired into the same jobs at the same time.
Lawyers for the female employees argued that local managers exercise their discretion over pay and promotions disproportionately in favor of men, which has an unlawful disparate impact on female employees, and that Wal-Mart’s refusal to restrain its managers’ authority amounts to disparate treatment.
While the Supreme Court minority opinion, including all three female justices, found that excessive subjectivity was sufficient grounds to proceed with the class action suit, the majority did not. For reasons both technical and ideological, the Supreme Court reversed the lower court’s opinion that the women of Wal-Mart constitute a legitimate class with a common complaint. Women employees at Wal-Mart can move forward with gender discrimination suits, but on a smaller scale rather than as a single class.
As you can imagine, women’s advocates are dissatisfied with this diminished legal protection against gender discrimination in the workplace.
But not to despair! If you find yourself facing the invisible hand of excessive subjectivity, you are far from powerless.
Remember “subliminal advertising”? Take a page from that playbook and launch a subliminal counter-campaign of your own. Here are four simple, on-the-ground tactics to protect yourself from excessive subjectivity. These tactics will enable you to transform it into an objective framework for conversation, evaluation, and decision-making:
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A “Winner” Company or a “Zero”? Ranking System to Bring More Women to Boards
Industry Leaders, LeadershipThere’s nothing wrong with using the stage when you have it, and Diana Taylor, the former New York State Superintendent of Banks, did just that when she was recently honored for her leadership role by the Women’s Forum of New York City, a conclave of influential executive women.
Deftly, she worked into her remarks a clarion recruitment pitch. She looked out into the vast ornate ballroom of the Plaza Hotel and simply invited any interested party there to send her a CV to be considered for a seat on a Board in which she is involved. That is called casting the net widely, I thought—there were hundreds of qualified candidates in that room, and she was looking to recruit a woman for the position. This was an efficient use of a wide pool at hand.
But that was a “seize the day” appeal, the proverbial golden opportunity. Improving the representation of women on Boards appears to be one of those interminable journeys that needs permanent attention. Despite much discussion, we face stagnation in the ranks of women on Boards in the U.S. with the percentages sticking at just 11 percent for Fortune 1000 companies, according to Catalyst, which collects data on women in business.
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The Future of Work Life Fit
Work-Life“One of the things that surprised me was how significantly fear related to flex has gone down,” began Cali Yost, CEO and Founder of Work+Life Fit, Inc. Since 2006, Yost and her team have been studying attitudes toward work/life fit and flexible work schedules. This year, Yost said, the results were encouraging – not only is flex scheduling more the norm, but fewer people are concerned that it may harm their chances for higher pay or promotion.
That’s a good thing, Yost explained. “Flex is no longer a thing only a few people have and many are afraid of. Most of us have it in a different form. Now we need to move to the next step – how we can make it work.”
She added, “We have to make it as good as it can be.”
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Voice of Experience: Barbara Novick, Vice Chairman, BlackRock
Voices of ExperienceRight now, Barbara Novick, Vice Chairman at BlackRock, is focused energetically on change. “Companies and industries change, and very often change is an opportunity.”
Novick’s responsibilities have changed too – after twenty years working on the client side at BlackRock, she’s recently taken a new role leading public policy and government relations for the firm – and she feels strongly that change is leading to opportunities in this area too.
As the markets and regulatory structures evolve rapidly, she explained, people must be able to not only deal with change, but embrace it. She said, “Embracing change is probably the most important thing someone can do in their career, along with trying to turn that change into opportunity.”
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New UN Women Report Highlights Disparity Between Law and Practice
NewsThis week marked the release of UN Women‘s first report, Progress of the World’s Women 2011–2012: In Pursuit of Justice. UN Women was founded last July, in order to accelerate the UN’s progress toward achieving its gender equality goals.
The report produced some tidbits that may surprise you – for example, that women in Quatar earn 142% of what men earn in the manufacturing sector, or that women hold 51% of seats in Rwanda’s parliament.
But the report goes much deeper than that. The comprehensive study of women’s access to justice around the world is not intended to portray women as people who need protection, but to seek out ways to empower women and improve gender equality. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon wrote, “This edition of Progress of the World’s Women examines the injustice that far too many women endure. It also highlights how essential it is to see women as far more than victims, but as agents of change.”
The aim of the report is to acknowledge the global gap between what is set down in law and what really happens, and to establish goals in narrowing that gap.
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5 Ways to Get Male Executives to Invest in Women’s Initiatives
Men Who "Get It"Studies and statistics consistently point towards company benefits and increased profit margins when women are encouraged and emerge as leaders in the workplace. Consequently, companies are increasingly recognizing the importance of identifying and developing female executives. This movement parallels the success women feel when male senior executives become sponsors, mentors and champions of professional gender equality.
However, for those male senior executives who have not yet become involved with this effort, the question remains: how can we encourage and persuade them to invest in women’s initiatives? Here are 5 tips to consider.
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Voice of Experience: Sarah Lee, Managing Director, Global Head of Fixed Income Derivatives Legal, Bank of America Merrill Lynch
Voices of ExperienceBy Melissa J. Anderson (New York City)
“I do really believe that once you get to a certain level of seniority, it is important to encompass into your role the development of other women,” said Sarah Lee, Managing Director, Global Head of Fixed Income Derivatives Legal, Bank of America Merrill Lynch.
Lee, who has spent her career developing award-winning expertise in derivatives law, is also passionate about the importance of passing on guidance and opportunities to other women.
She continued, “Mentoring… is critical for getting women into senior roles in the industry – and as women who are senior, we must bear that in mind.”
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Stepping Stones to Success: Charting Your Course to the Corner Office
Expert AnswersWhile it may not seem like breaking news, women are still underrepresented in corporate boardrooms. A recent survey by the Alliance for Board Diversity revealed that white men hold 73% of the board seats at Fortune 1000 companies (up several percentage points from previous years), white women only hold 15% of board seats, and minorities just 13%, respectively. Are women losing what once looked like their corner on the corner office?
Why don’t women in particular have more of a voice in corporate America, and why aren’t there more in management or executive positions overall? The same ABD study noted that companies with more diversity at the top are actually linked to better financial performance. It’s no wonder, since they’re capitalizing on 50% of the population and 50% of the workforce – and know the importance of including them in leadership and decision-making.
As a female business leader myself, I know this to be true. While coaching executives and CEOs at major corporations across a wide range of industries, and I’ve come across many leaders, both men and women, who “get it.” We have certainly come a long way, but we have much further to go.
When I started my first career in TV news several decades ago, I was one of the only female reporters in a fairly male-dominated field. It was hard to be taken seriously, and it was very frustrating. It was clear that as a woman, I had fresh perspectives and different experiences that could have been an asset, had those qualities been used to their fullest potential. Women in general are a unique brand; they’re inclusive, communal, consensus-building, multi-tasking workers who focus on getting the job done by checking their egos at the door. We are the true definition of a “transformational leader,” and should be breaking through the glass ceiling at an alarming rate – but we’re not.
It’s communicating those advantages to the rest of the world where we often fall short.
As a woman, you can actually thrive through these economically turbulent times if you have the right stuff, you get into the right company that appreciates what you bring, and you stand out among the other male and female leaders of your organization. You have to be willing to step up, to climb the ladder even higher than you have already.
Here are five ways you can really stand out:
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Voice of Experience: Viva Hammer, Principal, KPMG Washington National Tax
Voices of Experience“I’ve been trying to get my driver’s license in the US for seventeen years,” began Viva Hammer, Principal at KPMG Washington National Tax. She continued, “I took the written test when I was pregnant with my daughter. Two weeks ago she graduated college and a week later I passed my road test.”
The story is emblematic of the careers of many women, Hammer said. “Sometimes for women, your career can seem like a long road with lots of detours. You need a lot of faith – or desire – to believe you’re going to make it.”
Hammer, a native of Australia, moved to New York City two days after graduating law school without a job prospect in sight. Now, twenty years later, with a high profile career in US tax law, having founded several non profits and begun her book Choosing Children – and, now with her driver’s license – Hammer can say she has made it.
“Never give up,” she exclaimed. “Never, never, never, never!”
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