Inna Jackson’s biggest learning moment came immediately after completing a very large and intense project—one that didn’t pan out the way she had envisioned, an unexpected outcome given her successful career to date.
“I was forced to take a large step back to reconsider the work I’d done. I realized that while I had worked very hard for a prolonged period of time, I had focused on a level of details that, from a longer-term vantage point, were insignificant,” she says.
That one experience gave her a larger lesson as a way to consider how you spend your time. “We all like to say how busy we are; being busy makes us feel valued, needed, grounded. But my big focus has become being busy with the right things that will actually create lasting value.”
Finding Her Passion in Legal Work
Her career mirrors that aspiration. Jackson began as a corporate and M&A attorney in private practice, working with a range of clients on cross-border, M&A, private equity and other transactions across a wide variety of industries that included media, telecommunications and real estate.
One of her most exciting projects came when she was selected to serve as assistant outside general counsel and transactional attorney for a multinational multi-billion investment fund in its acquisitions of 17 hotels in Mexico and the Dominican Republic. She cites this role, which spanned four years, as one of the highlights of her law firm experience due to the meaningful work, but also because of how interesting it was culturally as she routinely worked with partners, advisors and investors in Spain, Latin America, the Netherlands and Abu Dhabi.
Halfway through her career, she moved in-house to work at American Express. For her first assignment, she lawyered American Express’ Business Insights (data analytics and reporting business) from the ground up, spearheading a foundational privacy and regulatory legal analysis, creating baseline processes and agreements and negotiating a number of cutting-edge data analytics and data license partnerships. She also supported the Global Merchant Services organization on a range of strategic negotiations, marketing and product build initiatives.
But she discovered her passion for digital work when she was asked to join the core team negotiating and building American Express’ relationship with Apple for Apple Pay, one of the Company’s first strategic mobile wallet partnerships. Jackson then moved on to support the digital team full time, playing a core role in the Google Pay and Samsung Pay negotiations, and leading many other initiatives involving issues of first impression, including partnerships for Amazon Alexa, Amex’s bot on Facebook Messenger and the more recent partnership with PayPal and Venmo, among many others.
“This work has been particularly exciting because it sits at the cross-section of what other lines of business do, but with layers of innovative issues and considerations,” Jackson says. She notes that to do her job well, it is essential to take a practical approach as a partner to the business team, rather than solely as a legal advisor, and to constantly seek the bigger picture by connecting the dots for considerations and priorities across the organization.
Growing Her Expertise—And Her Brand
Throughout her time at American Express, Jackson has earned a reputation as a key thought leader in enterprise data strategy and third-party data sharing frameworks, the professional achievement of which she’s very proud. “When I started my career at American Express, I knew very little about data or privacy, but throughout my eight years here, data considerations have been a consistent focal point,” she says. “I’ve served as a principal architect of numerous arrangements with savvy counterparties, including Amazon, Google and Apple, and I’ve progressively built on these learnings in partner negotiations as well as funneled them into the enterprise principles and approach.”
Along the way, she’s rethought the notion of what it means to be a “women lawyer,” moving away from her first impression that she had to fit a cookie cutter stereotype. “It’s not that I had a particular human in mind, but rather the idea of a corporate individual as a machine—centered around a logical core, extremely efficient, neat and trim, working around the clock, showing limited emotion,” she says, imagining that everything that made her unique must be put aside during the workday, almost like an extracurricular project.
Fortunately, she realized that real life is far more nuanced, and while some elements of the stereotype may have truth, they are not as radical. “As individuals, we have a lot of control around how we shape our own brand and the culture we inhabit and want to inhabit,” she says. In fact, she’s found that the leaders she has most admired are those who are comfortable sharing aspects of their unique personalities and being appropriately vulnerable while retaining the corporate persona.
Over her career, she’s had several sponsors and has been loyal to them—possibly to a fault, she says. She has appreciated that her sponsors have given her opportunities that she didn’t even recognize she was capable of handling; for example being asked to work on multi-pronged digital projects with no precedent. Each time, she rose to the occasion and spent days, including weekends, charting out a game plan, with a possible deal structure, issues and stakeholders. “It is through my sponsors’ belief in me that I’ve learned that no project or issue is unsolvable and that with curiosity, resilience and ultimately, the right team of people, there is always, eventually, a path forward,” Jackson says.
A Focus on Family
While Jackson has had many role models over the years to pick just one, it has to be her mom. She set an amazing example—switching professions mid-career when she immigrated to the United States and learning not only the English language but also the necessary skills to excel among people who started in her field years earlier.
It was through her mom that Jackson learned resiliency, recalling how maddening it was when her mom helped her with homework in middle school, and even after she was ready to give up, her mom would persevere until she understood the problem. Although she worked long hours with teams in India and others around the globe to turn around complex projects on very tight timelines, Jackson recalls that she made it look easy. “By being very present, not cutting corners and having an ultimate belief that even the most tangled issue could get figured out, she seemed like a superhero.”
And now Jackson is passing on those qualities to her three daughters, along with her love of travel and languages.
She is fluent in Russian and Spanish and can also speak French and Italian. And while her travel options were limited when her daughters were younger, they are now at fantastic ages to travel, and they have been planning trips to Europe and South Africa this year.
Throughout her career Jackson has been active in pro bono work—in law school, where she was chair of the pro bono committee, to private practice and now at Amex. Over the years, her work has ranged from helping 501c(3) corporations with bylaws and other corporate matters to helping with immigration and asylum matters for various clients, including through Kids in Need of Defense (KIND) and Catholic Charities Immigration and Refugee Services.
The Legacy Mindset – Why It Matters (Part 2)
Career Advice, Guest ContributionImage via Shutterstock
Last week, we featured part 1 of a guest contribution around having a legacy mindset for success. Enjoy part 2.
What can stop us from having a legacy mindset? What we forget in the 24-7 race that consumes our lives these days is a reminder of what is truly important in life. We want more than just to earn and consume. We want to matter in our lives. And in the lives of others. We want to make an impact on the world, not just make an income. And to do so, we need to change the definition of what it means to be successful.
Business people often think only of the bottom line but adopting a legacy-driven mindset puts you in a position to make that quantum leap forward, which will drive and sustain relentless development for future generations.
The Magic of the Arts to Shift Paradigms
A prime example of legacy-driven mindset resulted in one of the great paradigm shifting moments in business and culture. Business decry the lack of people who can write well and communicate in new ways. But in our short-term drive to believe that technology will solve all problems, people ballyhoo the arts as not really needed in our new digital world. Yet the magic of the arts is that they allow people to think and communicate differently—which if you’re a business, is exactly the edge you are looking for. Look at Steve Jobs who loved typography—and how form followed function in such a beautiful and timeless way—that he almost became a type designer. But instead his enduring love of beautiful and functional design manifested itself in the I-phone. He never lost sight of what drove his inspiration.
To Be Lucky or Be Prepared—That is the Question
What makes adopting a “legacy-driven” mindset so compelling is that you are always prepared. And in the capricious world of business and life, being so steadfastly prepared makes you constantly able to meet luck as if it’s an everyday occurrence. “Luck Is what happens when preparation meets opportunity” is the timeless quote of Roman philosopher, Seneca. You hear people say all the time talking about someone becoming an “overnight success” or reaping a windfall. Was Steve Jobs just lucky or was he always prepared?
A legacy-driven mindset is the basis for all profound changes in people’s lives. Though many of us will not change the world like Steve Jobs, we still deeply desire to touch those around us and to leave a lasting impression. Yes, we want to make an income but we desire to make an impact.
Leave Your Legacy Inside People
You want to change the world? Then leave your legacy inside of people. Inspire them with how you walk your talk. When leaders adopt a legacy-driven mindset, they leave something in people—and not just for people. Want to change the world? Inspire people to inspire themselves. That is truly living your legacy, which then is constantly renewed in others. Leaving people with things or information is not enough. Leave people with inspiration.
Why People “Undo” Their Legacy
I’m always amazed when a business or a person decides to “undo” their legacy for the short-sighted pursuit of an immediate gain versus the long-term success of a legacy-driven philosophy. It’s the candy-in-front-of-the-kid syndrome. “I want it now because I can have it now.” That’s how children think. Think of Wells Fargo or Volkswagen. Or Google or Facebook. What was Google’s mantra? Do no wrong—where did that go? But we excuse their behavior by saying, “They are big corporations with a bottom line and shareholders to satisfy.” But what really happened? They forgot who they were and why they were. A legacy-driven bottom line is much different than a ledger-driven bottom line. Which do you think will endure for a hundred years? Any enterprise that is led by people will possess the same characteristics that can be undone by people.
You Already Have the Answer—You’re Just too Busy to Hear It
How do you begin thinking in this “Legacy-Driven mindset?” Decide in your life what is important. You don’t have to do it overnight. But ponder it a bit. Make a list if you need to. When I ask people if they could do any three things in the world right now, what would they be? And they’re always surprised they have an answer. You’ve already prioritized things in your heart but your mind just doesn’t know it. Sometimes you have to cut through all the myriad noise and malarkey in your busy mind to find the truth that’s been there all along. Many times we’ve already made the priority in our hearts, but our minds just can’t—or won’t hear it.
The 4-Ps’s of Creating the “Legacy-Driven” Mindset
Another simple but effective way to help you think about the “Legacy-Driven” mindset is to use what I call the 4 P’s! These are: Passion, Pursuit, People, and Peace.
Passion is what makes you smile. What brightens your eyes when you think about doing it. This passion is the heart of living a “Legacy-Driven” life.
Pursuit is making this passion a reality.
People are real. Communicate with them. Be with them. Put away the electronic barriers that make real communication a false reality. Dance with people you really want to dance with. And don’t be afraid to dance both backwards and forwards. When people believe in your passion, they make the pursuit of it so much more worthwhile.
Peace is finding or creating peacefulness inside of you—one of the most difficult actions to attain in our brutally busy lives. It’s the being mindful of being human—and truly aware of being alive. Do this small step at the end of everyday—it’s a lovely way to put yourself to sleep. Ask yourself did you do a small act of kindness that day? Did you stare at the clouds for a moment? Do you put really listen to someone? Did you just stop and quit thinking for a moment? And if you did any or all these things—smile to yourself that you lived well that day. And if you didn’t, then go to sleep saying you’ll try again tomorrow.
A legacy doesn’t mean the end, but the beginning of a new phase in your life or the next chapter. In order to succeed, you should identify and evaluate your legacy at each stage in your life, whether it’s career oriented or personal. In your quest to make an impact upon yourself and others, you will discover how well this “Legacy-Driven” mindset creates a much deeper sense of a life well lived, while you’re actually living it.
Bio:
Carew Papritz is the 5-Time award-winning author of the inspirational book, The Legacy Letters, which was featured last month in INC.: 5 Gifts That Will Do Good Long After You Buy Them
Voice Of Experience: Kenya Scott Woodruff, Partner, Katten Muchin Rosenman LLP
Voices of Experience“It really does all work out. Your career path might not be as you predicted, but if you are willing to work hard; you are open; and you say ‘yes’ to things that others don’t, you are going to end up with great opportunities to advance.”
Finding Her Passion in Healthcare
Kenya began her career at a large law firm in Dallas as a commercial litigator, but she discovered the healthcare practice area as a second-year associate and immediately loved the complexity of the space.
She found a mentor who was a client. He managed litigation for a large health system and helped Kenya develop a steady stream of healthcare litigation work. She later went to a firm where she handled government investigations, before transitioning to an in-house position with the Dallas hospital district, Parkland Health and Hospital System, where she handled investigations, litigation, regulatory and transactional work.
After four years, Kenya returned to private practice, focusing on mergers, acquisitions and joint venture strategic partnerships in the healthcare sector and advising administrators and medical providers on compliance and other business issues. In October, she came to the newly-opened Dallas office of Katten as part of a respected trio – Cheryl Camin Murray, Lisa Genecov and Kenya. They were the first three women partners in the new office and were hired to grow the firm’s healthcare practice in the Texas region.
While Kenya is looking forward to what the team will accomplish, one of her top career highlights is a project she took on when she returned to private practice, working with five physicians and a technology investor to help them build a healthcare company. Together, they formed an independent Accountable Care Organization (ACO), Premier Patient Healthcare, and the company has since expanded to more than 400 physicians and created savings for Medicare and private payor programs each year they have existed.
Kenya found it exciting to watch their growth and especially to realize that there are rural, unaffiliated physicians who now have the technology that delivers recent visit and admission data about patients to the physicians’ desktops and enables them to care for their patients with an understanding of their recent medical encounters. “We’ve been through a lot together since 2012, and it’s amazing to see the wonderful work they have done,” she says. “It is awesome to see the role they are playing in advancing efficient care and to be able to play a part in that advancement.”
In fact, in this era of constantly searching for high-quality, cost-effective care, Kenya is finding that collaborative arrangements are emerging as an important answer. “We are working to help healthcare professionals and organizations figure out how they can take care of patients across the continuum of care in an efficient and effective way,” she said.
Career Advice For Creating a Successful Path
The healthcare industry is largely a welcoming place for women. While there are still advances to be made, Kenya says companies are increasingly amenable to women progressing into executive leadership roles. But in the legal industry, she recognizes there is still a real issue with retention of female attorneys at law firms, even though most firms are very close to 50/50 in gender division when hiring.
Kenya believes one of the best ways to combat attrition in the legal profession is to make sure that women have mentors early in their careers. Often times women may be on par with their male counterparts when it comes to the skills needed to succeed, but they are less likely to have mentors who show them how to navigate the politics of the firm, as well as the business of law, specifically how to develop a practice that is sustainable and financially successful.
In addition, she encourages women to fill their toolbox of knowledge and experience and then seek out a niche they enjoy that preferably is not saturated by other experts. “We have to remember that our business, like others, is subject to the financial realities of supply and demand,” she said.
And mentoring shouldn’t stop as women ascend the career ladder. Kenya stresses the importance of continuing to find camaraderie and support from groups, whether internally at a law firm or externally in industry-based organizations.
At Katten, Kenya is active in the Women’s Leadership Forum, which supports the retention and advancement of women attorneys at the firm through mentoring and professional development programs. She finds the forum’s meetings to be helpful because women often share success tips, as well as challenges. “That’s what it takes to help people move forward—honest, straightforward advice,” she said.
Kenya has also been involved with a number of industry groups, such as the Center for Women in Law at the University of Texas at Austin School of Law, which she calls a “powerhouse organization with great women, companies and firms.” Along with the advice and other benefits of female networking groups, she says it’s vital for women to share career opportunities with each other and support other women as they climb their respective ladders.
A Healthy Balance in All Aspects of Life
As the mother of two “strong-willed” girls, ages 9 and 11, Kenya increasingly enjoys watching as they come into their own and hearing the interesting conversations their newfound maturity sparks. With her husband, David being a magistrate judge, it’s a challenge to juggle family, church and work obligations, but she and her husband share the load – they are true life partners. “Our church family is a big part of our lives,” Kenya said, adding that “We are there for each other in good times and bad. My church family is fun, supportive and they even help with emergency childcare needs!”
Kenya sits on the board of directors for what was formerly AIDS Arms, an organization focused on the prevention and treatment of HIV. She was a part of the board when the nonprofit group legally changed its name to Prism Health North Texas to better reflect the comprehensive services it provides. “The name change has been well-received, and we continue to enjoy great community support,” she said. “I always encourage people to find some organization where they can get involved and help their community in a significant way.”
2019 Workplace Predictions
Guest Contribution, NewsGuest Contribution by Fierce Inc.
An increasing number of fledgling workers are currently being thrust into the spotlight as baby boomers retire and millennials and Gen Z increasingly take over the majority of new jobs.
Many companies are at a loss with how to properly deal with this change and the publicity that comes with it. What makes matters worse, many suffer from a “culture of nice” and have complicated organizational structures, which only perpetuates business problems and proves detrimental to the bottom line. A survey Fierce conducted found that over 40% of leaders felt their organization suffered from “terminal niceness,” valuing politeness over the pursuit of the best ideas and perspectives.
Based on our conversations with current and potential clients — after thousands of hours of conversations and learning about their concerns, unique challenges and goals — we’ve developed the below five trends that we predict will be key to organizations of all sizes in 2019:
Increased accountability for corporate bad behavior. We’ve all seen the news: companies seem to be plagued with worsening scandals, dubious leadership practices and unethical decisions at a near constant rate. Moving forward organizations will internally face these issues head-on, as they happen. No longer will they be swept under the rug or ignored altogether. To get in front of some of these potentially negative stories and to ensure they know what happens within their companies, leaders will work to gain a deeper understanding and connection to the people who make up their organization. This means the popularity of employee training and engagement programs will rise and cover a wide range of topics such as diversity, unconscious bias, ethics, and inclusion.
Fewer organizations will suffer from a “culture of nice.” In these “overly nice” environments, no truly productive feedback is given. People are afraid to disagree or speak up, refuse to address problems and rarely challenge the status quo. A culture of “nice” lends itself to a host of challenges including lack of trust, higher turnover, and lower productivity—none of which are actually “nice.” As organizations continue to improve their conversations skills as it pertains to feedback, and as younger workers vocalize their desire for more frequent feedback, the number of organizations who suffer from this type of culture will decrease in the coming year.
Generation Z will no longer be ignored. An estimated 61 million Gen Zs will apply for jobs in the U.S. next year, many entering the workforce for the first time. However, organizations are only spending 4% of their resources on training those less than 25 years old, according to IBIS. Organizations will be forced to adjust to this new reality in 2019, and in order to be successful, will need to find innovative ways to invest more heavily in their training from the get-go. Fierce believes the New Year will be an area of growth in this regard, as organizations figure out the best way to engage with this new generation. A part of this will no doubt be providing the right resources to this tech-savvy generation to help them succeed both in the short and long term.
Companies will move away from hierarchy and towards more agile teams. Organizations are starting in earnest to understand that strategic alignment is key to their success, and the best way to achieve it is to ensure the company is flexible and responsive at every level. There will be a shift away from teams interacting only at the highest echelons within an organization and towards a more integrated and collaborative approach. With this shift will come an increased need for communication skills, as it will be imperative that managers are well-versed in both delegation and decision making. By empowering teams with greater opportunities for collaboration, 2019 will result in higher productivity and employee engagement.
Progress will be made on digital transformations. While most organizations have been slowly integrating digital components across many areas of their business, 2019 will be the year where real progress is made. Organizations will spend more time focused on truly understanding the needs of the end user—be it employees, clients or customers—and in turn, work with their IT departments to ensure these needs are being met. Innovation is no longer a luxury; without adopting and staying on top of digital trends, organizations will become obsolete.
When we look back a year from now, how successful company leaders are at addressing these themes will come down to a key component — the strength of their conversations. The skills leaders have in addressing issues, assessing concerns and finding solutions all come down to one simple thing: how well an individual can communicate and connect with those around them.
Guest contributions express views of their own and are in no way affiliated or endorsed by theglasshammer.com
Experience Business and Personal Success in 2019 with a “Legacy-Driven” Mindset
Career Advice, Guest ContributionMaking an impact will be just as important as making an income is central to adopting a “Legacy-Driven mindset” and that becomes crucial to long-term success in both our business and personal lives.
In watching how people navigate the landscape of their business and personal lives, I believe that women have a better sense of how to adopt and implement this way of life because women always seem to be in charge of balancing the life and work dance—and like Ginger Rogers with Fred Astaire, they can also do it backwards.
Why a “Legacy-Driven Mindset” is Not a Strategy or Tactic
The “Legacy-Driven mindset” is deciding what is truly important in the entirety of your life—and then living it. Why is this crucial to long-term success in our working and personal lives? Thinking about long-term successes rather than short term fulfillment keeps you focused on your specified path during times of chaos and uncertainty. And because your actions are rooted in a much bigger picture of how you should live your life, you won’t be pulled willy-nilly by every capricious whim and wind that comes your way.
“Living Your Legacy”—In my writing and speaking to groups about my book, The Legacy Letters, I came to the realization one day that legacy was not the sum total of who and of what you left behind in your life but how you “walk your talk” or “live your legacy” in all your words and actions. This long-term outlook—this legacy-driven outlook—is what gives purpose to your priorities. Thoreau wrote: “Simplify, simplify, simplify.” I would rather it be: “Prioritize, prioritize, prioritize.”
The “Ginger Rogers” Syndrome—Why is it so important to prioritize in this life? Because we’ve come to believe that everything we do, all the time, is important. That if we could only answer the next e-mail, text the text message, race to the next meeting, buy the next new thing, go on the perfect vacation, dot every “i” perfectly and cross every “t” like precision, then we would win the race, become the perfect person, and get the gold star for doing the most things in a twenty-four period of time. And as so many professional women know the “Ginger Rogers” syndrome, they still can do it backwards. But this perfection is false prioritizing. It is just checking boxes. And when you reach the end of your life, are you happy that you checked so many boxes so well?
The Regret Test—When I speak to audiences about legacy-driven life, I ask them to take a simple test that I call “The Regret Test.” Imagine you’re ninety years old and now can look back on your life and find all the regrets you have. Imagine talking to yourself right now at the age your and say, “Why are you still at that “great” job making a ton of money and being totally miserable?” or “Why don’t you leave that idiot boyfriend and find someone who loves you, or really wants to have kids with you, or loves you being the CEO of your company?” or “Why don’t you go live in Colorado or France like you’ve always wanted?”
Then you continue the conversation: “I’m here to tell you as your ninety-year old self, you are going down a long path to unhappiness and ultimately will have more regrets than not. And I’m here to tell you that it really sucks to have more regrets at the end of your life when you could have easily decided not to have gone down the path of most regrets. You could have decided to live your life and not the life everyone else wanted you to live. Because, at the end of the day—or the end of your life—if you can’t say to yourself, I’ve done a good job of living well, then you really have blown it.”
Now that’s one powerful conversation to have with yourself.
Bio:
Carew Papritz is the 5-Time award-winning author of the inspirational book, The Legacy Letters, which was featured last month in INC.: 5 Gifts That Will Do Good Long After You Buy Them
The 4AM Club: Three Ways to Make It Work For You
Career Advice, Guest ContributionYou’ve heard it said: the early bird catches the worm — in the opinion of many highly successful people, the phrase is much more than a cliche.
The benefits of an extremely early morning routine have been touted by so many self-made celebrities that the “4AM Club” has become a part of the public vernacular. It’s the magic hour for many world changers like Oprah, Michelle Obama, and Tim Cook, and experience has taught me why. In my world, it’s a time of quiet, focus, determination, and accomplishment.
As an entrepreneur and a mother, high-paced days at my desk and endless days on the road are only outpaced by high-energy evenings and weekends with my family of five. By waking up at 4 AM, I’m able to routinely devote time to my own self-development and care, a necessary practice for success in all areas of my life.
If this is something you’ve wanted to try but haven’t yet managed to find success in, here are a few keys I’ve found to making this routine not only possible, but extremely enjoyable as well:
Check your DNA
Our tendency to be productive at certain times of the day is often hard-wired in us, an internal clock that’s determined by our DNA. This genetic predisposition is called our chronotype. If you identify as a “night owl”, then you can stop reading now. This method is not for you. In fact, research shows a correlation to weight gain, diabetes, and heart disease if you try to force an extra early wake-time when your DNA is telling you otherwise. But if you feel like you do your best work in the morning, or maybe you’re not sure, than the 4 AM club could be for you.
Check your Watch
The key to sustaining this routine has everything to do with a consistent sleep schedule. Knowing the exact number of sleep hours that support your peak performance is requisite to success. Not getting enough sleep effectively compromises all the systems that work together for success in day-to-day life. Without enough sleep, the motivation to exercise is zapped, food choices start moving in a downward spiral, and productivity at work takes a nosedive.
Check your Excuses
An early morning routine is a no-excuses kind of practice. Follow the 21/90 rule — on average, it takes 21 days to form a habit. If the system seems to be working for you, another 90 days is recommended to turn it into a permanent lifestyle change. That said, the first few days will inevitably be brutal. Resist the temptation to hit snooze on that alarm by using the Rule of 5. When the alarm goes off, count to five, pop up, and start moving out of bed, no matter how you feel about it in that moment.
Above all, know that every person is wired in their own way, and successful habits look different for everyone. Do not try to define yourself by what works for others — instead, let them inspire you to find your own routines that drive you toward your goals.
Author Bio
Judith Nowlin, Chief Growth Officer with Babyscripts. Judith created iBirth™, a mobile care companion for pregnancy, birth and postpartum, to help healthcare practitioners deliver better health outcomes for women and children in the United States and beyond. The original idea for the app was born out of her prior decade of service in maternity care. The technology platform she and her team built has since impacted nearly 1 million families on their journey toward optimal health and wellness during one of life’s most precious times. iBirth was acquired in June 2018 by Babyscripts, Inc., the leading virtual care platform for obstetrics. You can find her here: https://www.linkedin.com/in/judith-nowlin-3a9b82b/
Guest contributors views are their own.
Voice of Experience: Sandra Bang, Chief Diversity and Talent Strategy Officer at Shearman & Sterling LLP
Voices of ExperienceShe continues, “Having dialogue, listening to each other’s stories about how we learn, develop, grow,and achieve career successes – hearing a diverse range of perspectives – will help support everyone better, and create a more inclusive environment.
Ms. Bang started her legal career as a litigator in Toronto, Canada. She also spent a year as a provincial prosecutor stating, “This was an incredible learning experience for me because I had to think on my feet every day, not always knowing what cases I was going to handle on a given day, nor which cases would settle or proceed.”
Bang then went into legal recruitment and professional development, and moved to New York City in 2004 where she continued her work in the legal talent management space with firms such as Weil, Gotshal & Manges and Chadbourne & Parke before joining Shearman and Sterling in 2008.
She continues, “Diversity and inclusion has always been an inherent part of the legal talent recruitment, development and management work that I’ve done. I am excited about my current work as it allows me to spend the majority of my time on diversity and inclusion. And this work is about engaging people, and strategically creating an inclusive work environment where everyone can feel like they belong and do their best work and advance their career. The business case is clear: the research and data show that better results are achieved when you have both an inclusive environment and diverse teams.”
She is enthused about diversity and inclusion as an integral part of the firm’s business strategy and sees that clients are also committed to moving the needle on diversity and inclusion. She comments,
“I think the efforts being made in the legal industry on the diversity and inclusion front has moved up a notch as the benefits of collaborating on this topic are evident. It is exciting to work closely with clients and having dialogue around how we can help each other create change from both a business and organizational perspective.”
Feeling Engaged and Feeling included
As an executive who has spent several years in professional development and is a certified coach, Bang feels that talking to people, particularly those from diverse backgrounds, about their career path – listening to what people want to achieve, giving them feedback that will help them get to where they want to go, and providing opportunities to achieve new experiences and success – is both a business imperative and the right thing to do. She shares,
“Having a sense of belonging in our work environment and feeling understood is essential. If you are are in a business environment and you constantly feel like you don’t belong, then you can’t do your best work. Coaching leaders and managers to lead and manage inclusively, and create diverse teams with members who feel included and understood in the workplace will not only help people achieve and serve clients better, but also produce better business results.”
When asked what career advice that she would give her younger self or to others, she says, ‘that it is more than ok to fail’ and recounts that the idea of perfectionism had a stronghold grip on her for a long time. She shares, “It wasn’t until recently that I realized that it’s ok to fail and fail fast. That’s how you learn. When you fail, you pick yourself up, and try something differently. Ultimately, it is about taking more risks.”
She is a strong advocate for encouraging people to ask for what they need and want to advance their careers, particularly women and people from diverse backgrounds. The subject of entering into conversations comes up, with Bang advising people to be smart and strategic around their asks, but to face their own fears by asking ‘the questions that we are afraid to ask’. She says, “You won’t get what you don’t ask for.”
Generational Change
Bang believes that Millennials will continue to have a significant impact on how the needle will be moved on the topic of diversity and inclusion in the workplace. “Millennials know that there is a business and competitive advantage to having a diverse team, where there is diversity in perspectives, thoughts and insights result in a better outcome.”
Shearman & Sterling is taking all of this into consideration as it takes its diversity and inclusion strategy to the next level. With recommendations resulting from an inclusion diagnostic, the firm has created a new global Task Force, headed up by the firm’s Senior Partner, and will take a data driven approach to designing and rolling out initiatives and programs to better help everyone achieve career success at the firm. Shearman continues its close work with clients on co-hosting diversity and inclusion education and awareness programs, as well as advancing know-how and networking opportunities on topics such as Blockchain and the FinTech industry generally.
“It’s exciting to be working collaboratively with both internal and external clients,” says Bang, “to create learning and advancement opportunities for women and people from diverse backgrounds and experiences in particular. Using data and client driven approaches, that align with business strategy, to advance diversity and inclusion initiatives, is what it is all about.”
Renewal and Life outside work
Outside of work, Bang enjoys spending time and traveling with her family. She comments that traveling provides so many opportunities to learn and share — including the diverse communities within and outside the US, and of different perspectives and experiences.
“Traveling with my kids always presents tremendous learning opportunities for me. I love hearing their perspectives on things we do, places we explore and people we meet. They remind me that there is great optimism to be had because people remain curious, and as the world becomes increasingly more connected, there is a greater sharing of culture and stories.”
Mover & Shaker: Inna Jackson, Vice President & Senior Counsel, Digital & Data Partnerships, American Express
Movers and Shakers“I was forced to take a large step back to reconsider the work I’d done. I realized that while I had worked very hard for a prolonged period of time, I had focused on a level of details that, from a longer-term vantage point, were insignificant,” she says.
That one experience gave her a larger lesson as a way to consider how you spend your time. “We all like to say how busy we are; being busy makes us feel valued, needed, grounded. But my big focus has become being busy with the right things that will actually create lasting value.”
Finding Her Passion in Legal Work
Her career mirrors that aspiration. Jackson began as a corporate and M&A attorney in private practice, working with a range of clients on cross-border, M&A, private equity and other transactions across a wide variety of industries that included media, telecommunications and real estate.
One of her most exciting projects came when she was selected to serve as assistant outside general counsel and transactional attorney for a multinational multi-billion investment fund in its acquisitions of 17 hotels in Mexico and the Dominican Republic. She cites this role, which spanned four years, as one of the highlights of her law firm experience due to the meaningful work, but also because of how interesting it was culturally as she routinely worked with partners, advisors and investors in Spain, Latin America, the Netherlands and Abu Dhabi.
Halfway through her career, she moved in-house to work at American Express. For her first assignment, she lawyered American Express’ Business Insights (data analytics and reporting business) from the ground up, spearheading a foundational privacy and regulatory legal analysis, creating baseline processes and agreements and negotiating a number of cutting-edge data analytics and data license partnerships. She also supported the Global Merchant Services organization on a range of strategic negotiations, marketing and product build initiatives.
But she discovered her passion for digital work when she was asked to join the core team negotiating and building American Express’ relationship with Apple for Apple Pay, one of the Company’s first strategic mobile wallet partnerships. Jackson then moved on to support the digital team full time, playing a core role in the Google Pay and Samsung Pay negotiations, and leading many other initiatives involving issues of first impression, including partnerships for Amazon Alexa, Amex’s bot on Facebook Messenger and the more recent partnership with PayPal and Venmo, among many others.
“This work has been particularly exciting because it sits at the cross-section of what other lines of business do, but with layers of innovative issues and considerations,” Jackson says. She notes that to do her job well, it is essential to take a practical approach as a partner to the business team, rather than solely as a legal advisor, and to constantly seek the bigger picture by connecting the dots for considerations and priorities across the organization.
Growing Her Expertise—And Her Brand
Throughout her time at American Express, Jackson has earned a reputation as a key thought leader in enterprise data strategy and third-party data sharing frameworks, the professional achievement of which she’s very proud. “When I started my career at American Express, I knew very little about data or privacy, but throughout my eight years here, data considerations have been a consistent focal point,” she says. “I’ve served as a principal architect of numerous arrangements with savvy counterparties, including Amazon, Google and Apple, and I’ve progressively built on these learnings in partner negotiations as well as funneled them into the enterprise principles and approach.”
Along the way, she’s rethought the notion of what it means to be a “women lawyer,” moving away from her first impression that she had to fit a cookie cutter stereotype. “It’s not that I had a particular human in mind, but rather the idea of a corporate individual as a machine—centered around a logical core, extremely efficient, neat and trim, working around the clock, showing limited emotion,” she says, imagining that everything that made her unique must be put aside during the workday, almost like an extracurricular project.
Fortunately, she realized that real life is far more nuanced, and while some elements of the stereotype may have truth, they are not as radical. “As individuals, we have a lot of control around how we shape our own brand and the culture we inhabit and want to inhabit,” she says. In fact, she’s found that the leaders she has most admired are those who are comfortable sharing aspects of their unique personalities and being appropriately vulnerable while retaining the corporate persona.
Over her career, she’s had several sponsors and has been loyal to them—possibly to a fault, she says. She has appreciated that her sponsors have given her opportunities that she didn’t even recognize she was capable of handling; for example being asked to work on multi-pronged digital projects with no precedent. Each time, she rose to the occasion and spent days, including weekends, charting out a game plan, with a possible deal structure, issues and stakeholders. “It is through my sponsors’ belief in me that I’ve learned that no project or issue is unsolvable and that with curiosity, resilience and ultimately, the right team of people, there is always, eventually, a path forward,” Jackson says.
A Focus on Family
While Jackson has had many role models over the years to pick just one, it has to be her mom. She set an amazing example—switching professions mid-career when she immigrated to the United States and learning not only the English language but also the necessary skills to excel among people who started in her field years earlier.
It was through her mom that Jackson learned resiliency, recalling how maddening it was when her mom helped her with homework in middle school, and even after she was ready to give up, her mom would persevere until she understood the problem. Although she worked long hours with teams in India and others around the globe to turn around complex projects on very tight timelines, Jackson recalls that she made it look easy. “By being very present, not cutting corners and having an ultimate belief that even the most tangled issue could get figured out, she seemed like a superhero.”
And now Jackson is passing on those qualities to her three daughters, along with her love of travel and languages.
She is fluent in Russian and Spanish and can also speak French and Italian. And while her travel options were limited when her daughters were younger, they are now at fantastic ages to travel, and they have been planning trips to Europe and South Africa this year.
Throughout her career Jackson has been active in pro bono work—in law school, where she was chair of the pro bono committee, to private practice and now at Amex. Over the years, her work has ranged from helping 501c(3) corporations with bylaws and other corporate matters to helping with immigration and asylum matters for various clients, including through Kids in Need of Defense (KIND) and Catholic Charities Immigration and Refugee Services.
Taking an Early Career Setback into an Opportunity
Career Advice, Guest ContributionFor many, a career setback does not come strictly by being fired or laid off although.
As a woman in business, there also are subtle ways you may experience bumps in the road. Maybe you were just passed up for a promotion or you are coming back from maternity leave to find the company’s culture has changed for the worse. No matter what kind of setback you’re experiencing, here are a few steps to turn your negative experience into an opportunity for career growth.
Make Financial Independence a Goal
When you experience a setback, start working toward financial independence. To be able to make a move to a new company, city, to work for yourself, or going back to school, you’ll need to have money saved. If it’s possible to stay in your current job for a little longer to add to your savings, do so and bide your time. Even though you may be ready to move on, hold on while collecting your regular paycheck.
But remember, don’t stay too long if you’re not mentally prepared for the work ahead of you. If you’re not operating at your best, those around you will notice. Leave a great impression on your colleagues when you finally depart, because you never know when your paths may cross again in the workplace.
If you’re ready to leave or have been fired, take steps immediately to stabilize your financial situation. Even if you can afford your current lifestyle, cut back on those little expenses that add up. Especially if you have less than 6 months’ expenses saved up, take every precaution to use those savings sparingly until you’re back on your feet.
Keep A Positive Attitude
Just because you’ve experienced one setback doesn’t mean you can’t accomplish your goals. Find some time for yourself to take do a little self-care to put your mind in a healthy place. Operating at your best is an important step to being able to tackle the next opportunity head on. You are your best ally, and it’s key to take good care of yourself.
Find Mentors
Having other driven and successful women on your side is an invaluable resource. Reach out to women in your field who have achieved your goals or that you want to emulate. You would be surprised how each person’s path to success varies greatly. Join a professionals group in your field, especially one for women. There are other women out there that understand the unique challenges you may face in the workplace and how to navigate those successfully.
Remember, you won’t want to ask your current peers or supervisors for recommendations if you’re trying to apply for other jobs quietly. If your employer learns you’re leaving before you have an offer in hand, you may be seen as less committed or lose valuable leverage for negotiating. Having mentors outside of your current company helps you have additional flexibility when asking for references, testimonials, and letters of recommendations.
Add To Your Resume
Find opportunities to collect your resume and portfolio assets while you still work for your current organization. You might lose access to some of these projects when you leave. Take an inventory of what you’ve accomplished and save anything you can legally use for your future. Depending on your current employee handbook and contract, be aware that there may be some proprietary information you cannot leverage for a resume. However, save everything else that you can because you never know what may be useful in a future job.
While volunteer experiences won’t directly benefit you financially, you can learn a lot from volunteering and add valuable interest points to your resume. Employers love seeing that a potential candidate is engaged in the community because they are better equipped to create a positive culture in the workplace. Find a volunteer opportunity that is directly applicable to your career, and you may find connections to other people who are in your field.
Get Organized
If you are working towards specific career goals, break it down into manageable pieces. When you set a lofty goal, it can seem too far away to accomplish in the short term and it may become overwhelming. By giving yourself a roadmap to success, it’s much easier to visualize the path you need to take and show each step with the final intention in mind.
In addition, write a list of what you like and don’t like about your career. How can things be better? What type of company do you want to work for? By answering these questions, you know what to ask your next interviewer to get to the heart of their organization.
When you ask the right questions in an interview, it quickly sheds insight on how the organization operates and where the potential problems may lay. Simply asking “What is your culture like?” doesn’t give you everything you need to know about a new company. Instead, ask questions like “do you feel like you have the resources you need for success?” If you’re looking for a job where you feel more supported, this question will open an honest conversation with the interviewer about those attributes.
Check out the infographic below for some more tips on how to deal with career setbacks from entrepreneurs, investors, and creative minds.
Voice Of Experience: Amanda Segal, Partner, Katten Muchin Rosenman LLP
Voices of ExperienceThere’s no set path to success, says Amanda Segal, head of Katten’s Distressed Debt and Claims Trading practice.
“Everyone’s professional journey is different, and for a planner—as many attorneys are—it can feel unsettling when the road starts to twist and turn. But one of the best things you can do is be flexible, patient, and let your trajectory develop organically.”
When Segal started her career, she thought she would progress up the ladder as a bankruptcy litigator, but her career path took a different course as dynamics in the financial market helped steer her towards attractive new opportunities. “You will be better equipped as a professional if you are open-minded and able to adapt to the evolving needs and priorities of your clients and employers.”
Building a Career Unique to Her
For Segal, that approach has led her to a successful career. After law school, she joined Kramer Levin Naftalis & Frankel LLP as a bankruptcy associate. Three years later, with the financial crisis looming, she saw an opportunity to parlay her experience into a more transactional practice in the area of distressed debt at Richards Kibbe & Orbe LLP. She spent ten years at the firm, where she secured the requisite expertise and experience to make the move a little over a year ago to head Katten’s Distressed Debt and Claims Trading practice.
At Katten, she leads a team of attorneys advising clients through the acquisition and sale of distressed assets, including trade claims against bankruptcy estates, litigation claims, bank loans, and a variety of other investments. Her team—well versed and deeply immersed in financial services—works with related practice areas, including bankruptcy, commercial finance, tax, private equity and more, to provide the firm’s clients with tailored legal advice and transactional support in a wide range of circumstances. Segal believes this will be increasingly important as volatility in the financial market continues to rise.
“Because our practice integrates the talents of so many dedicated attorneys and professionals across the firm, we have the unique ability to look at large bankruptcy cases across multiple sectors. This will enable us to offer ‘big picture’ guidance as our clients navigate the next distressed cycle.”
For attorneys just starting their career, Segal highlights the importance of being empathetic to clients and colleagues. “When you are able to put yourself in someone else’s shoes and view an issue from multiple perspectives, it helps make you a more relatable professional and leader and, ultimately, a more effective advocate.”
She also advises young attorneys to “play the long game.” “Surround yourself with trusted advisors and mentors; use every occasion to network, and work hard to maintain and build upon relationships. Over time, those relationships will provide the backbone for a more productive and fulfilling career.”
Finding Balance in the Workplace
Segal points out that even though law firms have become far more open and accepting of work/life balance, there is no one-size-fits-all solution. “Every woman’s professional and personal needs are different, so there’s no formula. Each woman must determine what works best for her and her family—sometimes simply through trial and error. The end result won’t look the same for everyone.”
Katten hosts a Women’s Leadership Forum that she has found valuable for building relationships across the firm, and also provides skill building, internal and external networking, mentorship and professional development. “Katten has consistently been recognized as a top firm for women, which I have been fortunate to experience first-hand,” she says.
With five-year-old twin daughters, Segal prioritizes a balance between work and family time, running marathons and maintaining a healthy lifestyle, and cheering on the basketball team of her alma mater, Duke University.
An Updated Look at Risk Taking for Professional Women
Next LevelA new report by KPMG for 2019 called “Risk, Resilience, Reward- Mastering the 3 Rs: The Key to Women’s Success in the Workplace” suggests that women are still cautious when it comes to risk taking in their careers with 69% of report respondents saying they are are open to taking small risks to further their career, but a lower number (43%) revealing that they are open to taking bigger risks that may be associated with career advancement.
Just 8 percent of respondents say risk taking has contributed most to their professional success, crediting task-oriented factors over leadership traits. Instead, women attributed success to good habits such as working hard (73 percent), being detail oriented (45 percent), and organized (45 percent) to their success. Other highlights from the report suggest that women are willing to take risks to ask for new assignments and projects (69%) but less keen to ask for more salary if they deem it to be risky or moving locations for a job (both 35% respectively).
Risk studies that are available on the topic and that we have written about over the years are inconclusive since there are many factors to risk taking, including personality, environment and what is perceived as risky by the taker or even by the system.
However, KPMG’s research is mostly consistent with trends that show women are not as confident as men when it comes to risk taking, including how women think about risk. Research also shows that in some cases, women are more concerned about risk and the impact on a group than men and feel more accountable for the implications of the riskier decision. There are so many factors that correlate and cause women to not want to take risks as well as societal and organizational eroders of even the most confident woman over time, not least the double bind of being “Damned if you do, Doomed if you don’t”. So, knowing all this and still being undaunted, we caught up with Michele Meyer-Shipp, KPMG’s Chief Diversity Officer to discuss this report’s trends and actions for women and men to take in light of the findings.
Nicki (NG): What parts of the report resonated with you personally or otherwise?
Michele (MMS): This report really spoke to me, as throughout my own career I’ve definitely been hesitant at times to take risks. Like the respondents in the report, I thought ‘if I just work hard, everything will happen for me’. It was all about working hard. That’s what I was taught growing up and I truly believed that was all there was to it. It was never ‘go forth and ask for what you want’ – I had to figure that out along the way.
NG: What advice do you have for women regarding risk taking?
MMS: We have to take ownership of our careers, we have to speak up and ask for what we want, and navigate the politics along the way. Don’t assume someone is going to hand you the next job just because you’re working hard; it just doesn’t work that way. Engage your board of mentors, and identify those who are sponsoring you. Your mentors are the people you choose to give you career advice. Your sponsors are the leaders who are advocating for your career. Both are incredibly important.
NG: What role does the organization have in helping women who do take risks?
MMS: Organizations have a huge role to play in helping women who take risks. First and foremost, they must make it clear that risk taking is a welcomed and valued leadership trait. This message has to come not only from the very top of the organization, but also from a woman’s immediate supervisor. From there, when a woman does take that risk, the company must support her in those efforts. For example, a risky new role requires the woman assuming that role to have the support she needs to get the job done. Does she have the right team, the right budgetary support, and so on. These are all factors an organization must consider.
NG: Since most leaders are still men, what role do men have in this?
MMS: Men need to “lean in” and support women on their teams. Some men have hit the snooze button in the wake of the #MeToo movement out of fear and uncertainty, but this is not a moment to sit on the sidelines. It is a great time to decide who we are and what we stand for and to be intentional about it. Whether you are a man or a woman, my advice is to proactively support each other, mentor each other, partner on teams together and advocate for one another. We must ‘assume good intent, until you see otherwise’ as it is a two-way street.
Men must also beware of their unconscious biases as related to women. Let’s face it, if you have a brain, you have a bias. It’s human nature. That said, men need to interrupt stereotypical assumptions they may make about women as that can inevitably lead them to make a bad decision.
NG: What surprised you about the findings in the report?
MMS: I found it really interesting that money remains the top motivator for risk taking. It runs counter to a lot of research and I kind of like that it debunks the notion we are so different. If 40% of women who responded said that they would take risks when there is an opportunity to make more money, then we know that along with the finding that 70% of women tend to be very resilient even in the face of failure, then I have great reason to remain optimistic that we will continue to see women taking smart risks that bring long term rewards.