By Natalie Sabia (New York City)
Good conversation, interesting people, warm energy and high powered women are all ways to describe Deutsche Bank’s 16th Annual Women on Wall Street Conference, which is dedicated to the courageous women who represent great power and achievements. Sold out in a matter of 15 minutes, The Women on Wall Street conference drew in over 2,000 women from all areas of the financial services industry to learn about “innovation” and how other women have paved their path to success. “This night is all about empowering, supporting and mentoring women,” said Donna Milrod, Head of Regional Oversight and Strategy, Americas at Deutsche Bank.
The Women on Wall Street network (WOWS) is apart of Deutsche Bank’s diversity strategy, which seeks to develop, retain and motivate diverse talent. Even with a total of 16,000 corporate and investment bank employees, Deutsche Bank has managed to sponsor this conference for members of the financial and broader business communities every year since 1995 and have grown the attendance from just 200 to over 2000.
Kicking off the night, Anshu Jain, Head of Corporate and Investment Bank at Deutsche Bank, highlighted just how strong Deutsche Bank’s view is towards having a diverse population within the firm. Currently, with 138 different nationalities, Jain detailed how important this event is in order to continue the expansion of gender diversity. “Financial innovation is created in many ways,” said Jain. “We should continue to have effortless diversity.”
Hosting a panel of true executive and entrepreneurial women, Sharon Hall, Partner & Co-founder of the Diversity Practice, asked several insightful questions such as what innovation means to them and also what advice that they have learned along the way.
“Innovation means offering creative solutions and collaboration; not being afraid to take risks,” said Reshma Saujani, Attorney & Former Deputy General Counsel at Fortress Investment Group.
“Assessing risk, while having a sense of optimism,” said Alexandra Lebenthal, CEO, Alexandra & James Co. and Lebenthal & Company.
Women and Workplace Flexibility: Canaries in the Coal Mine
Work-LifeWork-Life types from across the country descended on Dallas last month for the first regional forum of the National Dialogue of Workplace Flexibility hosted by the Women’s Bureau, U.S. Department of Labor. The four regional forums in Texas, California, Illinois and New York are designed to build on the message and momentum from the March 2010 White House Flexibility Forum.
One of the major themes of the day was that workplace flexibility was a gender-neutral proposition, which begs the question, “Then why was it hosted by the Women’s Bureau?”
In the traditional breadwinner-homemaker family, there were two jobs and two people. Hilda Solis, U.S. Secretary of Labor, shared that she grew up in family whose basic standard of living necessitated the employment of both parents and she saw a different family model develop. Her mother oversaw the management of the household, but the older children were responsible for providing care for younger children while the parents were both at their places of employment. The key issue is that the mother’s primary concern was ensuring that the children were provided for and cared for. This was a three job-two parent household. Ms. Solis, even as a child, wasn’t blinded to the fact that it was her mother that carried the heavier load, managing both employment and the family.
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Voice of Experience: Marie Wilson, Founder and President of the White House Project
Voices of ExperienceA Special Election Day Message from Marie Wilson: “There are 107 reasons for you to vote. Why 107 reasons? This Tuesday, November 2nd, 107 alumnae of The White House Project’s signature political trainings will be on the ballot and running for political office.”
“The first job I applied for was at DuPont. I took a test, and the results came back saying I was a candidate for management. They didn’t hire me because as they said, ‘you’ll just get pregnant and have a child.’ This was 1962,” said Marie Wilson, Founder and President of The White House Project.
Wilson, one of the honorary “Founding Mothers” of the Ms. Foundation and co-founder of Take Our Daughters to Work Day, has been advocating for women in leadership ever since.
“If you’re going to be a leader,” she said, “don’t rush to change yourself. The world is still mixed about ambitious women. You need people who will encourage you to dream big – and the world is often discouraging. You need a tough skin that is porous – slough off the critics, but listen.”
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Calling All Intrepid Women!
Intrepid Women SeriesThe Glass Hammer is looking for more stories on Intrepid Women – professional women who have a flair for adventure, a love of the unknown, and the courage to step out of their comfort zone. Sound like you, or someone you know?
Previous Intrepid Women have included a lawyer / volunteer fire fighter, a marketing executive who scaled the Great Wall, and our former editor Pamela Weinsaft – who wrote about her expedition to Antarctica. We’ve also visited trapeze school, sky diving class, and even a Russian Bath House here in New York.
And now we want to know about your adventure.
How have you challenged yourself physically or emotionally lately? What was the outcome? What has your adventuresome, limit-pushing experience taught you about yourself, and how has it helped you professionally?
Are you an intrepid woman? Tell us why! Email me and tell me what you’d like to write about, and we’ll discuss the next steps.
Can’t wait to hear about your adventure!
Networking: Why Even the Biggest Events Have Strategic Value
Featured, NetworkingIt has been a busy week at theglasshammer.com – as you can see from our coverage we have been attending several events: The Women’s Conference, the FWA’s event with PIMCO’s Mohamed El-Erian, and Deutsche Bank’s Women on Wall Street Conference.
What constitutes a good event, which ones should you go to, what should you expect to get out of the networking event? Good networking events can offer the following benefits:
1) Useful content delivered by an inspiring panel – You learn something that will help you in some way (it can be generic advice or a specific action you can take)
2) Good contacts – you actually swap cards with people who you can do business with at some point
Bad networking events usually offer very little content of value, and on the people side of things, there is no reason to write or call anyone whose card you swapped yours with.
No networking at all is the worst kind of event for women, as we traditionally have less access to networked business conversations where decisions are made. Therefore, we need to form our own connections. Where do you start in one room with two thousand women, like at the Deutsche Bank WOWS event? You start by reaching out to the female clients (not friends) that you want to do business with ahead of time, and ask them to meet you at the door going in. Use these events strategically. Small events are easier to navigate, and theglasshammer.com hosts 100-200 women only at a time at our events.
I enjoy big events if they have interesting panel speakers and I am constantly in awe of the what some of these senior women have to say about their experiences. My favorite panelist at WOWS this year was Alex Lebenthal, CEO of Lebenthal & Company, recounting her childhood visits to her grandmother, “Mrs. L,” in the Wall Street office she ran since 1925, with Lady Liberty standing in the distance. This memory of leadership by a women, through the eyes of a child, leaves quite an image in your head.
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Getting Personal at The Women’s Conference
NewsPhoto via The Women's Conference
By Melissa J. Anderson (New York City)
Wednesday marked the last day of The Women’s Conference, a gathering of 14,000 women at the Long Beach Convention Center in California – plus several smaller teleconferenced gatherings around the globe. The annual event, now twenty-five years old, was hosted by California’s First Lady, Maria Shriver – who encouraged women to be Architects of Change.
She said she had “a simple and profound message: we are the leaders we have been waiting for.”
In New York, over 500 women attended the Conference virtually as part of the Satellite Summit. Marie Wilson, Founder of The White House Project, opened the Summit saying, “We sit at the nexus of business, politics, and media. The comfort level of us as leaders is changing.”
Wilson encouraged all of the attendees, in the next twenty-four hours, to call a woman and encourage her to lead. She said, “It is our time, and we can’t do a democracy with only half of the resources.”
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From Improbable to Reality – PIMCO’s El-Erian at the FWA
Industry Leaders, LeadershipImage Courtesy FWA
Tuesday evening, the Financial Women’s Association of New York hosted a sold out, members only event featuring Dr. Mohamed El-Erian, CEO & co-CIO of PIMCO. Dr. El-Erian discussed the changes facing the financial markets, the US, and the world, as we navigate what he has coined “the new normal.”
Interviewer Michelle Caruso-Cabrera, analyst and reporter at CNBC, opened the evening by asking what the US Treasury’s first ever issue of a negative yield meant in terms of inflation. Dr. El-Erian said, “It tells you the economy is having some trouble gaining strength.”
But on a broader scale, he continued, “it’s an indication that the unthinkable and the improbable, or at least what used to be unthinkable and what used to be improbable, is not only possible but is the reality.”
Dr. El-Erian believes that rather than simply resetting after the recession, the market is head in a totally new direction – one that is now a structurally different institution. “We came up with the idea that the system wouldn’t reset, that this is the ‘new normal’.” Dr. El-Erian said that the new normal is characterized by slow growth, persistently high unemployment, more political involvement in economies, and a much flatter distribution of outcomes.
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WOWS 2010: Innovation, Ideas, and Action
Industry Leaders, LeadershipGood conversation, interesting people, warm energy and high powered women are all ways to describe Deutsche Bank’s 16th Annual Women on Wall Street Conference, which is dedicated to the courageous women who represent great power and achievements. Sold out in a matter of 15 minutes, The Women on Wall Street conference drew in over 2,000 women from all areas of the financial services industry to learn about “innovation” and how other women have paved their path to success. “This night is all about empowering, supporting and mentoring women,” said Donna Milrod, Head of Regional Oversight and Strategy, Americas at Deutsche Bank.
The Women on Wall Street network (WOWS) is apart of Deutsche Bank’s diversity strategy, which seeks to develop, retain and motivate diverse talent. Even with a total of 16,000 corporate and investment bank employees, Deutsche Bank has managed to sponsor this conference for members of the financial and broader business communities every year since 1995 and have grown the attendance from just 200 to over 2000.
Kicking off the night, Anshu Jain, Head of Corporate and Investment Bank at Deutsche Bank, highlighted just how strong Deutsche Bank’s view is towards having a diverse population within the firm. Currently, with 138 different nationalities, Jain detailed how important this event is in order to continue the expansion of gender diversity. “Financial innovation is created in many ways,” said Jain. “We should continue to have effortless diversity.”
Hosting a panel of true executive and entrepreneurial women, Sharon Hall, Partner & Co-founder of the Diversity Practice, asked several insightful questions such as what innovation means to them and also what advice that they have learned along the way.
“Innovation means offering creative solutions and collaboration; not being afraid to take risks,” said Reshma Saujani, Attorney & Former Deputy General Counsel at Fortress Investment Group.
“Assessing risk, while having a sense of optimism,” said Alexandra Lebenthal, CEO, Alexandra & James Co. and Lebenthal & Company.
Read more
Are You a Role Model? Teach a Business Course
Back to School, PipelineWhat’s one way to pull more women into the leadership pipeline? Be a role model.
On The Glass Hammer, we shine the spotlight on successful professional women in an effort to inspire other high-achieving professional women to break the glass ceiling, and to show that there are plenty high performing women out there – even if they aren’t always highly visible. We’re committed to providing role models and peer networking for our audience of successful women.
But the need for role models begins early. Currently, female MBA enrollment rates are hovering around 30%. The leadership gender imbalance is at play even before women actually make it into the workforce. Only a small percentage of MBA instructors are female – and the lack of successful female role models in business education is one thing keeping women out of the career pipeline.
Do you want to make an impact on the next generation of female business leaders? Be a role model at the MBA level. Teach a course, give a guest lecture, or speak at a networking event. Make yourself visible!
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Voice of Experience: Pam Kiernan, Global Head of Business Development, Global Prime Finance, Deutsche Bank
Voices of Experience“My advice is to be confident in what you do really well. Be open to taking risks, and to new opportunities, leveraging what you do really well,” advised Pam Kiernan, Managing Director and Global Head of Business Development for Deutsche Bank’s Global Prime Finance business.
She explained that when she heard women voicing frustration about their careers, it was usually “the result of an aversion to taking risks at a key inflection point.”
Kiernan said one of the things she’s most proud of in her own career has been her ability to take on new opportunities – moving from an infrastructure position early in her career, to a client facing role, and eventually holding COO roles for the Bank’s North American cash equities business and DB Advisors’ hedge fund business. And now she’s taken on a global role in the company’s prime brokerage business as Global Head of Business Development for Global Prime Finance.
“Be confident, and take the risk,” she said.
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This Year’s UN Report on the World’s Women: The Rundown
NewsLast Wednesday, in recognition of World Statistics Day, the UN released The World’s Women 2010. The report covers a broad range of data and trends on women around the globe – 284 pages of data, in fact – so we’ve put together a review of the most salient information to be useful and easily accessible for you, our readers.
In his opening letter, UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon writes, “The World’s Women 2010 is intended to contribute to the stocktaking being done to mark the fifteenth anniversary of the Beijing Conference. …It finds that progress in ensuring the equal status of women and men has been made in many areas, including school enrolment, health and economic participation.”
But, he continued, “At the same time, it makes clear that much more needs to be done, in particular to close the gender gap in public life and to prevent the many forms of violence to which women are subjected.”
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