By Melissa J. Anderson (New York City)
Today marked the 18th Annual Women of Distinction Breakfast hosted by the Girl Scout Council of Greater New York. The event honored 5 professional women, and one future leader.
With more than 23,000 girl scouts, and the goal to expand to 100,000 girls by 2017, the Girl Scout Council of Greater New York is working hard to empower the next generation of female leaders. One honoree, Barbara Cooperman, Global Chief Marketing Officer for LexisNexis Group, explained that one of the outcomes of the Girl Scouts is putting “more women in leadership roles – and we should set that expectation for girls.”
She added that Girl Scouts is not just about selling cookies and camping – one of the top benefits of an all girl organization is that “all of the leaders are female role models.”
The numbers show that Girl Scouting does encourage and prepare girls to reach higher. In fact, as Patricia Stensrud, Board President of the Girl Scout Council of Greater New York pointed out, 80% of women executives and business owners were girl scouts – as well as every female US astronaut.
Deborah Norville, emcee of the event and anchor of Inside Edition, said that Girl Scouting teaches girls about confidence. “Confidence comes not from being right all the time. Confidence comes from not being afraid to be wrong.”
The honorees included Cooperman; Terri D. Austin, Vice President, Diversity and Inclusion, The McGraw-Hill Companies; Arlene Isaacs-Lowe, Senior Vice President, Moody’s Investment Service; Vanessa Lau, Chief Financial Officer, Alcoa Global Rolled Products; and Nadja Swarovski, Vice President, International Communications, Swarovski. The winner of the Future Woman of Distinction award was Carolina Torres, an Ambassador Girl Scout from Queens, NY.
Ask-a-Career-Coach: How to Choreograph Your Career
Ask A Career CoachA young client’s mother recently asked her what she had learned in our first few coaching sessions. “Always be looking for a job!” was my client’s instant response. This was a hard-won lesson for Mary (not her real name), who had been laid off unexpectedly after a few years at her first job. She had spent those years so focused on the work at hand that she hadn’t yet begun to consider her next job, let alone her long-term career trajectory.
Mary is hardly alone. We tend to get so concentrated on the daily grind of our immediate responsibilities—especially in this job market—that it’s a challenge to visualize, let alone steer, the full arc of our career.
“Always be looking for a job!” was Mary’s enthusiastic reduction of our first few conversations. She and I continue to explore the distinction between a job and a career. It’s like the distinction between an enduring mission and a current tactic. Mary’s mission is to improve the health of her community. Her current job in event fundraising is just her current tactic. It is a means, not an end. Tactics are necessarily provisional; in order to remain effective, they must continually adapt to changing conditions. No job lasts forever, nor should it.
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Building Our Girls’ Club
NetworkingEveryone knows that men get a lot of their business through the “boys’ club.” Now women are getting in on the action. Yes, women are forming their own version – a girls’ club.
Building Women’s Networks
The numbers show that women have a lot of catching up to do. Only 3% of all women-owned firms have revenues of $1 million or more compared with 6% of men-owned firms according to the Center for Women’s Business Research.
Organizations like the Women Presidents’ Organization and Women’s Leadership Exchange are giving women lots of opportunities to meet women in similar positions of power to share resources, connections and advice.
At the Women Presidents’ Organization (WPO), women attend monthly chapter meetings with about 20 other women in non-competing industries to discuss business alongside personal issues, such as how having children affects the growth of a company. There are 90 chapters around the world. In order to be a member, product based companies must earn at least $2 million in gross annual sales or a $1 million for service based businesses and women must either be an owner or a senior manager.
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Coalition of Investors Calls for Gender Diverse Leadership
Industry Leaders, LeadershipDespite a global movement to increase the number of women in leadership, a new report shows that, in the past year, women in the boardroom have only increased by .2%. This is not nearly enough for the improvement in governance diversity that many investors are calling for.
“Women on Boards,” a statistical review performed by Governance Results International, counted female representation on boards of directors, and showed little change in the number of women in leadership roles across the globe.
Julie Gorte, Pax World’s Senior VP for Sustainable Investing said, “Women are under represented on boards. They are better represented now than they have been previously, but the needle hasn’t moved far.”
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Voice of Experience: Brenda T. Dieck, Partner, White & Case
Voices of Experience“I love the thrill of negotiating and the satisfaction of closing the deal,” said Brenda T. Dieck, Partner in the New York and Los Angeles Bank Finance Practice Group at the law firm of White & Case LLP. “There are so many interesting puzzles to solve,” she explained.
Currently charged with building the firm’s LA bank finance practice, Dieck said, “It’s a unique opportunity to be part of a well-established practice group in New York, and at the same time, have the opportunity to be somewhat of an entrepreneur in LA, building a complementary team on the West Coast.”
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In Case You Missed It: Business News Round-Up
NewsThe US Federal Reserve confirmed a much-anticipated expansion of its asset purchase programme with a second round of quantitative easing – dubbed QE2 – when it said it would buy $600bn of longer-term Treasury securities by mid-2011. Interest rates rose in both Australia and India, while the Bank of England, the Bank of Japan, and the European Central Bank left interest rates unchanged.
Economic Backdrop
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5 Ways to Get More Women Into Green Jobs
Green is GoodThis article originally appeared on our corporate citizenship website Evolved Employer.
Talk of more green jobs has been everywhere lately, touted as a solution to our economic crisis soaring unemployment rate, and impending climate change situation. However, most green jobs to date have been male-dominated, labor-intensive roles in construction and manufacturing. With women comprising nearly 50% of the current workforce, the green solution will not be nearly as effective without involving more women and utilizing their strengths.
The EPA reported that U.S. buildings are responsible for nearly 40 percent of the nation’s total carbon emissions and almost 75 percent of total electricity consumption each year. Strides toward more environmentally-friendly new construction, as well as retro-fitting older buildings to improve their carbon footprint could make a huge impact. Men may dominate the manual labor market for this niche, but woman could help lead the way.
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Why Negotiating and Networking Go Hand in Hand
Career Management, Featured, NetworkingPanelist Carol Frohlinger, Principal at Negotiating Women Inc. and co-author of Her Place at the Table, commented, “Women often suffer from the tiara syndrome – we work hard and wait for someone to place a tiara on our head.” But, she said, in today’s environment, we can not wait for someone to notice hard work or reward it appropriately.
“We must proactively negotiate for the conditions of our own success,” Frohlinger said.
The event’s panelists included Frohlinger, Anne Erni, Head of Leadership, Learning and Diversity, Bloomberg; Camille Mirshokrai, Global Director of Leadership Development, Accenture; Linda Descano, President and CEO, Citi Women & Co.; and Kathleen Weslock, Chief Human Resources Officer, SunGard. The discussion was moderated by Selena Rezvani, co-founder of Women’s Roadmap, Washington Post columnist, and author of The Next Generation of Women Leaders.
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What Does the Shift in Gender Roles Mean for Women in the Workforce?
Managing ChangeIn 2009 the Families and Work Institute quietly released a study entitled Times are Changing: Gender and Generation at Work and Home [PDF] that dropped quite a few unexpected bombshells. The study’s findings came as a result of the Institute’s 2008 National Study of the Changing Workforce, which found that millennial women are seeking out jobs with more responsibility; many are earning more than their spouses; and traditional gender roles are changing, among other surprising facts.
Since 1997, the desire to move to jobs with more responsibility among young workers has increased, with this increase being greater for young women—from 54 to 66 percent in 2008. Essentially there is no longer any difference between young women and men in wanting jobs with greater responsibility. The study also found that there is no difference between young women with and without children in their desire to move to jobs with more responsibility. Whereas 60 percent of women under 29 with children and 78 percent of women without children wanted jobs with more responsibility in 1992, today the percentages are 69 percent with children and 66 percent without. This is most likely because millennial women (those under 29, according to the study) are now able to take on more demanding jobs thanks to a slowly evolving shift in how traditional gender roles are perceived and an increase in the amount of time their spouses are spending with their children.
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Honoring Powerful Female Role Models
Mentors and SponsorsToday marked the 18th Annual Women of Distinction Breakfast hosted by the Girl Scout Council of Greater New York. The event honored 5 professional women, and one future leader.
With more than 23,000 girl scouts, and the goal to expand to 100,000 girls by 2017, the Girl Scout Council of Greater New York is working hard to empower the next generation of female leaders. One honoree, Barbara Cooperman, Global Chief Marketing Officer for LexisNexis Group, explained that one of the outcomes of the Girl Scouts is putting “more women in leadership roles – and we should set that expectation for girls.”
She added that Girl Scouts is not just about selling cookies and camping – one of the top benefits of an all girl organization is that “all of the leaders are female role models.”
The numbers show that Girl Scouting does encourage and prepare girls to reach higher. In fact, as Patricia Stensrud, Board President of the Girl Scout Council of Greater New York pointed out, 80% of women executives and business owners were girl scouts – as well as every female US astronaut.
Deborah Norville, emcee of the event and anchor of Inside Edition, said that Girl Scouting teaches girls about confidence. “Confidence comes not from being right all the time. Confidence comes from not being afraid to be wrong.”
The honorees included Cooperman; Terri D. Austin, Vice President, Diversity and Inclusion, The McGraw-Hill Companies; Arlene Isaacs-Lowe, Senior Vice President, Moody’s Investment Service; Vanessa Lau, Chief Financial Officer, Alcoa Global Rolled Products; and Nadja Swarovski, Vice President, International Communications, Swarovski. The winner of the Future Woman of Distinction award was Carolina Torres, an Ambassador Girl Scout from Queens, NY.
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Remote Working and Productivity
Work-Life“Fifty-five per cent of businesses are seeing more home working now than before the recession,” said Mick Hegarty, Strategy and Communication Director at BT Business. Productivity is up by 20% in those who work flexibly compared with those who don’t, he went on. BT have generated a saving of between £6million and £7million as a result of improved productivity.
Hegarty was speaking at the Remote Worker Awards in London recently, and he was just one of several employers who spoke about the value a flexible workforce offers their companies. Hegarty presented some research carried out by BT showing that companies save an average of £6,000 per employee on the cost of overheads. BT itself made estate savings by moving a portion of their workforce to flexible arrangements.
“It helps employees be more motivated,” Hegarty said. He explained that flexible working practices result in less sickness absence and better retention. They are also key in attracting new recruits and enabling employers to “draw from a wider pool of talent like lone parents.”
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