Sexual Harassment: How Can Men Help Prevent it?

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sexual harassment

Guest contributed by Jim Morris, WMFDP, Chief Curriculum Officer

In our current political and cultural context women are emboldened – on an historically unprecedented level – to call out the toxic behavior of male colleagues.

What many men are now learning about second hand through the news is a reality women have lived with since entering the workforce over a century ago. Now that the floodgates have opened there is a reckoning taking place: As more and more women speak-up about their harassment experience, others feel supported in coming forth with their stories. This has led to a wave of solidarity, where women are also communicating more with each other on how to approach this problem. One example is the 13 million dollar legal fund for women in low-wage jobs, that was recently announced by a coalition of women in the entertainment industry.

Many of the women who are coming forward were offered financial settlements in exchange for their silence. This sends an unmistakable message that their employers were willing to tolerate harassment without real consequence. What would have been the response had these men committed an equally egregious ethical or procedural breach of another type, like misappropriation of funds, or ignoring a safety issue? Would it have been overlooked, swept under the rug, or treated as confidential? Instead of creating organizational cultures that have a true zero tolerance policy for sexual assault or harassment, we’re living in a world where, until now, it’s been acceptable to quietly collude in a cover up if the perpetrator has enough money, status and power to make the issue go away. This is privilege run amok. Proposed legislation in California that would benefit non-disclosure agreements in these settlements is one possible solution.

So how did we get here? One aspect is the cultural conditioning men receive from a very young age, which entails gaining prestige by cultivating a “cowboy” atmosphere that excludes and often diminishes women. This can range from simply favoring men for leadership roles or drowning out female voices in meetings, (labeled “loudership” in a Harvard Business Review article), to outright objectification, harassment or assault. It’s a systemic issue that is bigger than a few bad actors. Though it’s easy to point a finger at the egregious offenders who make headlines, what about the role that other men play in perpetuating the culture that allows this behavior to flourish? This is a time for men to ask ourselves individually how we have contributed to an environment that has allowed a large number of high profile men to engage in this behavior, over the course of careers that often span decades.

One of the more insidious dimensions of this is unconscious bias. Confronting this requires cultivating a mindfulness of the way one’s own culture and identity shapes behavior and perception. It calls for working with discomfort and sitting with those feelings. At White Men As Full Development Partners, we approach unconscious bias by suggesting the real work before us is to better understand our own privilege and the way other factors like gender and racial conditioning impact how we feel about and view each other. For example, white men don’t typically pay as much attention to their appearance at work, and they are rarely judged as being incompetent because of how they dress. Yet we know from research that the perception of a woman’s competence at work is much more connected to their appearance than their male counterparts. Women are under a lot more pressure to literally “look the part” in order to establish credibility at work. (4)

Another skill that’s crucial to develop is the courage to identify problematic behavior, and speak up to disrupt it. This gets back to the importance of fostering an awareness of how perceptions and realities differ depending on different aspects of your identity. Something that might seem innocuous to a man might actually be experienced as intimidating or inappropriate to a woman or member of a marginalized group. Recognizing that everyone has the right to feel safe and valued in the workplace (and beyond) sets the stage for this approach. The idea is not that men are fundamentally flawed, but rather, are in need of some perspective on how other groups experience life in a white male dominated culture.

Though it’s tempting to think this issue can be addressed with a two hour workshop or online learning module, the reality is that it’s an ongoing process and a long-term commitment. The research, however, says that behavior change isn’t fixed by “training” alone; it’s fixed by helping people learn to first courageously examine and then consciously shift their mindsets. Individual behavior change is a lengthy and deeply personal process. The assumption that training will eradicate a culture of collusion and protection isn’t realistic. Instead, our approach is to begin by examining how the power, privilege and status that each of us wields may impact the way we lead and partner with others. You can’t change behavior without shifting mindsets, and there is no ‘quick fix’ when it comes to that work.

We also need to ask ourselves what men can do to help prepare the next generation? What can be taught to children by men (and women) to preempt some of the sexual harassment endemic to our culture? This behavior starts at a young age because boys want to connect and want to gain status with each other, so we need to find ways for them to do that in positive ways, where there’s space to be vulnerable. Traditionally, discussions on sexual harassment have tended to frame this as a “women’s issue,” and changing that perception is crucial to this process. This entails examining the impact this behavior has on men as well as women, and on the success and health of systems we work within and depend on, from the private sector to government and beyond.

About White Men As Full Diversity Partners (WMFDP):

WMFDP is a diversity and leadership development firm founded in 1996 by Bill Proudman, Michael Welp, Ph.D., and Jo-Ann Morris in Portland, Oregon. WMFDP takes an unorthodox approach towards eradicating bias and discrimination in the workplace. Its client list includes Alaska Airlines, Dell, Lockheed Martin, Northwestern Mutual, Rockwell Automation, Chevron Drilling & Completions, The Nature Conservancy, MassMutual, and others.

Disclaimer: The views and opinions of guest contributors are not necessarily those of theglasshammer.com

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Rising Star: Sue Reager | CEO, Translate Your World

Sue Reager“People are right when they say, ‘If you fall, get back up again,’” says Sue Reager.

Her strategy after failing? To mope for a few days, then stand up and say to herself, “Okay, was the direction I was traveling worth pursuing, or should I go somewhere else? And if the destination is the same, is there another path to get there?

“It really is true that when you fall down, you just say ‘Drat!,’ and get back up again,” she says, a philosophy that has paved her successful and innovative career path.

A Varied Career, Focused on Finding the Perfect Fit

Reager’s career path has always been one of blazing her own trails, starting with becoming a professional choreographer at age 14. She started college, but midway through began teaching college instead, which she says was her first discovery that it is possible to follow a different path when you use your initiative.

After teaching her second year, she realized that the 10th year would essentially be the same as the first and she needed a new challenge, so she set her sights on a career switch and spent the next 20 years working for major media in 34 cities and 17 countries.

“I was told that it was not acceptable for women to work around the world — — however I went anyway. I would definitely never call those the ‘good old days,’,” she says, noting that was the moment that she learned she could make her own decisions, take care of herself and face the world without fear.

Along the way she discovered that because people do business in their own language, she had to study languages every night — grammar, verb conjugations, pronouns, adjectives – all the idiosyncrasies of various languages. But that can be daunting since it takes three to five years to learn to speak a language well enough to efficiently conduct business.

When she was invited to go to Korea on year 20 of her global jaunt, she realized that she didn’t want to start all over again learning a new language and instead returned to the United States determined to solve the language problem.

Opening Up a World of Possibilities

Her first step was to learn how to code, which allowed her to offer her services in code correction for major tech companies that were localizing applications into other languages, but were finding their code was altering the target language. She learned over time that the developer engineers were all making the same mistakes and that what they coded would never work in Japanese, Korean or other Asian languages. Upon further research, she determined that all of these developers were following what they had learned at the university, and the books were wrong.

That discovery led to her first invention, which was a way to localize extremely complex audio products like telephone systems without touching the code.

Then she began to help the speech industry by providing voices and special recordings that create the phonetic information required to generate text-to-speech technology. Her efforts led to her latest invention that is the successful integration of the great language companies of the world under one “roof,” resulting in truly excellent business applications that create cross-language communication.

It was around age 40 that Reager discovered she had something to offer the world that she had not yet recognized. “I am an inventor with a brilliant mind,” she says, adding that this realization was like a seismic shock. And, as she says, life has been really fun ever since, with a reason to leap out of bed every morning.

Right now her company is pioneering four inventions and three software programs designed to bridge the communication gap and thus enable one person to provide global education, customer service, tech support, medical professional language support and more effective 911 emergency services worldwide in dozens of languages.

“To me it is almost beyond exciting that using our software will allow one teacher to teach in 78 languages through live real-time subtitles,” she says. The company has also created a way for small business to attract and serve customers who speak other languages; in the past only huge companies could effectively expand globally due to the expense of translation and the need for special personnel to be hired to service those customers. Her company’s software takes over that job, enabling a small company to communicate, sell and serve around the world.

Reager’s company adds an additional focus: that of empowering wounded veterans to perform fulfilling jobs, as well as enable those who are deaf or blind to work in business on equal footing. “Our invention is revolutionary in this respect,” she says.

Moreover, they have invented a device called the “Eye-Belt” that is a belt that acts as eyes for blind people, telling them how to maneuver around obstacles. As more features are added, it will also tell the blind more about the person in front of them. “Our goal is to provide a new freedom to people who have been limited in the past,” she says.

A Company Culture Devoted to Equality

One of the reasons Reager believes her company has been so successful is because it is run on the basis of consensus, which is more of a Japanese style of doing business, and means that everyone involved needs to agree on a given direction. Anyone who feels strongly that the direction is wrong is encouraged to fight for their viewpoint, because there is probably a good reason for it.

“The concept of equality permeates our company culture,” she says. “Each voice has equal weight and equal merit, and if one person accidentally tries to overpower another, we simply pull the rug out from under them. We are very honest with each other, and we do not criticize.” Without levels of hierarchy, the lines blur between the “worker bees” and executives, eliminating commands and “royal decrees.”

This equality in the office is a perfect metaphor for the equality they are trying to create by removing language barriers around the world.

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Getting What You Want in 2018

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Nicki-Gilmour-bioBy Nicki Gilmour, Executive Coach and Organizational Psychologist

Happy New Year!

Most of us have new resolutions and all of them will rely on a behaviorial change in their essence, as they require action. If you have figured out what you want (and what you don’t want) and have named this as a future state, then congratulations, the first part is done. But, now the goals are on paper, will you behaviorally do what you need to do to really achieve them?

The good news is that you are in charge of your choices.

The bad news is that your unconscious mind can totally hijack best laid plans by creating competing agendas. How does this show up? What saboteurs are lurking? What fears do you harbor that stop you from achieving your goals? Well, subtle behavioral conflict often happens and what you don’t do to meet your goals is worth deeper examination.

Changing or leaving your job is a common example of where you may espouse that you want to change jobs but here you are two years later still in the same spot. Maybe you have been looking, maybe you have even sent out a few resumes, but my bet is that there is truly something within yourself stopping you from doing what you need to do to get what you want. This might look like logic on the surface, like you tell yourself you don’t have time to network or you need more experience to apply. But, the interesting part of all of this is that in reality you are probably holding assumptions and beliefs that are stopping you from actioning your goals. Continuing with the “logic”, the “no time” reason is usually about a fear, and this can be anything from fear of not getting the job, to fear of not performing in the job, to even just a baseline rejection issue as well as many things including fear of what the next workplace culture might be. Sticking with “the devil you know” comes up more than you can imagine for people. Many of my clients are amazing, talented, experienced executives – women and men from different industries and they are also very human. We are all a product of our past experiences and our cultural benchmarks that often scar us from the cradle to the grave with “the way it is.”

Now, that is not to say that systemic factors are not at play, from biased hiring processes to saturation in your marketplace and turbulent external conditions. But, people get hired in up and down markets and it is the internal dialogue that you have with yourself that matters. Mindset work is key, as by understanding your own paradigms and mental models you can truly formulate practical strategies. I say this because I spent significant time in the past several years studying and researching why people fail to execute on their espoused plans from organization diversity plans to individuals who want things to change. The psychology of saying one thing and doing another is fascinating but we all do it to some extent and it happens because of cognitive dissonance or competing agendas propped up by deep implicit beliefs.

So, if you want to get to a different, better, future place than where you are now, please call me for an exploratory chat as we now have a full service sister coaching firm – Evolved People Coaching and we would be happy to find the right coach for you.

Here is to a great 2018!

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Voice of Experience: Allison Nathan | Managing Director, Goldman Sachs

Allison NathanBy Cathie Ericson

Over the years, Goldman Sachs’ Allison Nathan has learned that although you have to be dedicated and proficient in most areas, you don’t have to excel in everything. “You have to focus on your strengths and interests and think creatively about finding opportunities to leverage them,” she says.

Reflecting upon her experience joining the research division, Nathan notes that she was one of the only people on her team that did not have a PhD in economics. However, she soon realized she had other strengths that would differentiate her and allow her to contribute to the group. Connecting the dots across research views proved to be one of them.

“It’s no coincidence that people tend to enjoy doing what they do well,” Nathan says. That knowledge led her to create an entirely new research product that has become a standalone brand.

Parlaying Her Knowledge into a New Product

Nathan joined Goldman Sachs as a first-year analyst in 1998, after earning an MA from the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies and a BA from Duke University.

Goldman Sachs had long been an aspirational firm for her, so she jumped at an opportunity to join. Since she had always had an interest in geopolitics as well as economics, she joined the commodities research team, which she found to be a great fit for those interests.

After working her way up in commodities research over 14 years, including being named a managing director, she launched a research product called “Top of Mind,” a publication that leverages both internal content from Goldman Sachs research analysts and external content from influential experts. In each issue, she and her team develop content that focuses on a specific market-moving theme, ranging from Fed balance sheet policy to trade wars to bitcoin.

“It was very rewarding to start out on a traditional path and then have the ability to create a unique opportunity that really leveraged my strengths,” she says. “I felt strongly this type of product was something we were missing, and while it was initially difficult convincing some audiences that there would be traction, the series has been consistently well-received for over five years now.”

Indeed, its success has allowed Nathan to expand Top of Mind into a thought leadership “brand,” and she is currently working on a fifth conference that is part of the publication’s evolution. Top of Mind forums are held periodically to bring the publication’s ethos of discussion and debate to life within a conference setting that features roundtable discussions with individuals from Goldman Sachs’ research division. The team also now produces a podcast series. “Offering content in different mediums has been an exciting aspect of the brand’s development,” she says.

Helping Others Build Successful Careers

Nathan has been a beneficiary of the women’s networks she has leveraged throughout her time at the firm. Recently, she has been active in Goldman Sachs’ Women’s Career Strategies Initiative (WCSI), which targets high-performing women associates to provide educational and networking opportunities. Through this program, Nathan has had the privilege of mentoring three women who have all recently been promoted.

She notes that mentoring is a powerful tool, and you should leverage your experience to mentor people who work directly for you as much as those with whom you have an arms-length relationship.

Sometimes it can be easier to work with those who aren’t direct reports, as you can be honest and know it won’t affect a day-to-day relationship, but it’s also important to invest in the women on your team, says Nathan. She also finds that while senior women tend to mentor other women, she encourages them to remember it’s also important to mentor men. “You have as much experience and knowledge and as much to offer junior people as the man sitting next to you,” she says.

While she finds that most women tend to anticipate a struggle with work/life balance, her main message is that you can have it all. “I have two kids and a husband who also works full-time. The key is that if you are good at what you do, you’ll find there are opportunities for people to give you the autonomy you need to achieve that balance.”

Much of her time outside the office is spent with her children, ages 7 and 9, but as they become older and more self-sufficient, she now has additional time to focus on other interests. To that end, she has joined the board of DreamYard, a Bronx-based non-profit that works with children to build pathways to opportunity through the arts. She says of this new experience: “I am excited to increase my involvement in DreamYard and help provide more opportunities for these talented students and their families in the Bronx community.”

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Happy New Year!

Happy New Year

Happy New Year!

We are returning to your screens on Monday 9th January but we wanted to share with you the following opportunities:

This is our eleventh year of writing great content, career advice and exploring the research on advancing women at work and to that end we are looking for great writers, guests posts and people to profile.

For profiles: we profile senior women (Voice of experience profiles are for C level, SVP and Managing Directors ) and amazing “Mover and shakers” (VP’s ) in financial and professional services, technology firms and Fortune 1000 companies. We tend to not cover entrepreneurs because we believe the value of the glasshammer and our niche is to inform and empower women when they want to stay in big business and navigate that terrain.

We have themes as well as columns so we are looking for women to profile for Black History Month, Asian Heritage, LGBT leaders to name a few. International Women’s Day is everyday for us but open to posts for the month of March also.

If you want to write (paid as a journalist ) or contribute (non paid as you have a bio for your own expert service at end of column) then email and send unique posts to louise@theglasshammer.com

Finally, we want to tell you about what we have learned eleven years and 8000 articles later investigating how to empower women and their advancement. The conclusion in one word is “coaching”. There is no force more powerful than having a good coach as it pertains to figuring out how to get what you want and have a solidly good time doing it. Nicki Gilmour, CEO and Founder of theglasshammer.com has launched Evolved People Coaching for individuals and groups.

If you want to reserve an exploratory chat at no cost to see if coaching can help you, please email nicki@theglasshammer.com to find a time to talk.

Lets make 2018 the best yet.

Theglasshammer.com team

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Year End Review 2017: Professional Women and the Culture War

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Nicki Gilmour - Founder of The Glasshammer.comBy Nicki Gilmour, CEO and Publisher of theglasshammer.com

Every year in December I write about the runners and the riders, the losses and the gains for women in corporations. The usual statistical update of no movement in female leaders in aggregate can be seen by checking out the report compiled by McKinsey and Lean in called Women in the Workplace 2017.  More calls for increased hiring of female talent in the beginning of their careers to create parity at the top. Culture change, not just binders full of women is the key, as we know spreadsheets alone cannot fix this issue. Yes, there is much work to be done structurally with hiring bias, pay inequality for apples to apples jobs and flawed promotional processes, but we are missing the point; people leave jobs when their sense of purpose is brought into question. Sometimes it is related to money and recognition for the job done. Sometimes it is about competing agendas for men and women to fit life in and having babies is often cited as the issue that prevents women from succeeding. Yet, rarely are the power structures around who gets to keep their professional lives somewhat intact, supported and without question ever talked about.

Neuroscience and the psychology of advancing men

Our cognitive processes and confirmation biases make us assume that it is a given that men should advance at work and in life. Regardless of what men actually want or are actually capable of and the perception of white men knowing more persists through good times and bad times. Sallie Krawcheck wrote an excellent piece last week in the NY Times, in which she encapsulates the whole issue of how we devalue women. She was a leader at the world’s biggest finance shop but still had the guy in front of her, mansplain her business model to her. She commented in the article,

“I was astonished, because I have managed more financial advisers in my career than probably anyone in the country. I realized in that moment how deep our gender views run, how men are still seen as leaders and women as more junior.”

We are a long way off equality and the power of perception has a role to play, as many men and some women believe that things are close to equal, even in firms where the number of female senior executives is 1 in 10. Perception works both ways, it keeps us in and it makes us leave if we see no pathway forward.

Our brain creates inference and assigns values that we don’t even know about that then writes narratives making us think we know the outcome based on past experience and current norms. This surfaces as conscious and unconscious beliefs about the world and how it should work.

Why do women and specifically white straight women have a complicated history of complicity and collusion around men who are deeply flawed or incompetent? Internalized misogyny and white privilege and betting on what has always been is the underpinning element. Even if you think you are a progressive person, liberal and modern, I hear cultural programming mixed with personal experience that 99.9% of the time makes you accept biased structures as the benchmark. The “think manager, think male” research shows that most women consistently rank men as a group higher than women for preferential traits such as competency and productivity. We all have deep programming and cognitive dissonance. Even if we are not stereotyping in our language and individual actions, most people overlook the systemic influences that create our overall environment. That silent invisible operating system called the patriarchy dictates the entire scope of possibilities and weighted value of your actions. What gets preference? Much like your phone, you cannot see the mechanics of how things are ordered and valued for memory and battery unless you look very closely, but instead can only choose the app that can personally help you in the moment. Until we address the fact that the system has weighted preferences on outcomes, we will see surface choices only.

Sure, there has been a deep perturbation in the fabric of the status quo this year from the Women’s March in January to this month’s cover of Time magazine announcing the silence breakers as the person (now people) of the year. There are so many conversations going on now that just didn’t happen outside academia even a year ago. Themes are being explored editorially and widely that were only for the most studied this time last year. Topics like collusion, such as the unpacking of the Harvey Weinstein power play are written about daily now. But, the battle and the war is far from won and this moment in time is one we can spiral up or down from. The relief of surfacing of 2017’s #metoo is only the relief that we can speak about such things openly. Exposing that the system is weighed against certain people based on their social identity (gender, ethnicity etc) and the power given to a person depending on their biological sex and place therefore in society is not the same as addressing systemic inequities. Certainly, the Supreme court itself has distance to go since American women are not equal under law (Equal Rights Amendment is not ratified) and LGBT people are categorized first and foremost behaviorally and not legally recognized intrinsically as people.

What do we need to do?

Care enough to form full and informed thoughts and be heard on the topic. Good men are doing good things and walking the talk such as Unilever’s CEO Paul Polman who voiced his shock at the World Economic Forum’s report when it was revealed that it will take over 200 years to get parity. Men have to understand that this is not a women’s issue. While people are talking up and talking down feminism, maybe we should be speaking about redefining masculinity. This TED talk by Justin Baldoni called “Why I am done being Man enough” is inspiring for all to watch.

Cordelia Fine has written an award winning book called “Testosterone Rex: Unmaking the Myths of our Gendered Minds” that is my holiday recommended reading to you as it debunks the myths of Men are from Mars and other purported differences that stop us from solving the issues. We have to stop believing the faux science that divides us or falsely categorizes us as it actually contributes to a system of yore.  Unless we talk about what masculinity is, the good , the bad and the ugly of it shaped from the ancient Greeks to now, we cannot get to a better version. We cannot get to understand what it means to be a woman in society if we do not examine what it also means to be a man. What are boys and men messaged? What does peer pressure do and Tony Porter talks about the problem of the “man card” in his excellent TED talk. He states, ‘My liberation of a man is tied to your liberation as a woman’. Culture not just biology, is what we need to look at and understand that keeping to a binary instead of understanding spectrums of human nature is not helpful.  There are men and women ready to engage in this conversation and I am ready to have a more advanced conversation in 2018 with everyone and we are well placed to begin!

Seasons Greetings from us here at theglasshammer.com and check out our coaching website: evolvedpeople.com as the change starts with you!

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Persisting Through The Dark: Women in the Boardroom

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The 2017 Heidrick & Struggles Board Monitor: Is Diversity at an Impasse? highlighted that after seven years of slow progress since the survey began, “women directors lost ground” in Fortune 500 companies.
The share of women-held seats dropped by 2 percentage points to 27.8%. The 50% projection pushed to 2032, yet again moved further off in the future.
So it’s no surprise that in their inaugural survey, Nevertheless, She Persisted: The Challenges and Opportunities Experienced by Senior-level Executive Women as They Journey to the Boardroom, Women in the Boardroom (WIB) found that the two words senior-level, executive women are mostly likely to use when it comes to the process of seeking a boardroom seat are “excited” and “frustrated”.
WIB surveyed over 500 senior-level, executive women who were either already serving as corporate board directors (25% of sample), or were interested in service, about their experiences.
The report found a tension between “the excitement that women feel at the prospect of service – and the frustration of securing that opportunity.”
Boardroom Journey: Obscured, Unsupported & Opaque
In their previous 2016 Board Monitor, Heidrick & Struggles pointed out that a major reason women representation is not moving forward is that “most boards are seeking new members from among ‘the usual suspects”, applying the same old process to the candidate selection pool, criteria and picks.
Indeed the WIB survey found that 90% of respondents felt that male networks dominate corporate boardroom searches and over 60% felt they function more effectively than their own women’s networks. 39% of women felt they had no board influencers in their personal network. Yet networking (and broadcasting their intention) remains a core tactic among women who seek, and especially attain, a board seat.
The report authors say, “there are exclusionary practices at play” including that often corporate culture doesn’t seem to actively support women’s boardroom ambitions, as 28% of senior-level, executive respondents chose not to talk about their boardroom aspirations at work.
Only 16% of respondents indicated their employer makes gender diversity in the boardroom a priority that is backed with action, policies and standards, and only 4% feel personally supported in their boardroom intentions.
While the candidate selection process is a well-worn default that fails to serve diversity, or ultimately business itself, pushing oneself towards the boardroom as a woman remains confusing. It’s still far from clear to most senior-executive women just how to break into the boardroom, from what remains a position of outsider status: being a woman.
Among respondents, 66% felt that the selection process is “opaque and mysterious” compared to other aspects of career advancement. 36% have no or only occasional interaction with their company’s board, and 30% of women who have boardroom ambitions don’t have a strategy for securing a seat.
The Persistence of Imposter Syndrome and Unconscious Bias
Even though the WIB survey was among senior-level, executive women that by all indications have achieved professional success, nearly 70% believed that high -achieving women are still deterred by both the inability to internalize and own their success and their fear of being exposed as inadequate.
The third most popular term used to describe pursuing a boardroom seat is “intimidated”. Despite that, 62% of respondents felt confident they are qualified and will get a board seat, and more women felt “excited” and “empowered” by the process than overwhelmed.
Even more prominent is the contextual reality of unconscious bias, such as how boards tend to end up gender matching, meaning they replace men with men and women with women.
Research has shown that awareness alone can’t mitigate unconscious bias – there is a level at which influences on decision making remain unconscious.
Showing You Mean Business About Boardroom Aspirations 
The WIB survey found that women who get through the door were more likely to prioritize securing a seat as a top career priority (83% vs 70% of all respondents).
These women “create a plan, market to their network, work on crystallizing their value add as a candidate, and invest in expert help, whether through coaching or membership in specialist organizations.”
The results revealed these women are taking specific and visible initiative, showing it matters to put your hat in the ring while being vocal about it.
Among these women, 80% belong to a networking organization (vs 66% of women), 67% belong to a board-specific networking organization (vs 40%) and 83% have alerted their network of their ambitions (vs. 54%).
So it’s fair to say that speaking up about boardroom intentions and getting specific in your actions, whether you feel supported by corporate culture, matters to reaching the coveted seat.
This not only means reinforcing your own right to put yourself forward, but advocating for other women, which only 34% of respondents agreed that women do.
For A Different Story: A Different Candidate Pool
Ultimately, we need a story about women on the boardroom that’s not about how some women beat the odds to break into the boardroom. We need a report that doesn’t have to say, as the WIB report states, “executive women thrive often in the absence of supportive structures and culture at work.”
Sure they do. But how much longer will that be the requirement these women have to meet?
We need a story in which the odds are for women rather than against them, in which they are invited into the boardroom not breaking into it, in which there isn’t too often a glass cliff hiding underneath the welcome mat when it appears, in which a corporate culture of both support and access are present rather than lip service and evasiveness, and where senior-level, executive women don’t see the path to the boardroom as mysterious, even from their relatively advanced position.
The report authors urge companies to look at communication, connection and culture as three key areas in which they can better support women into the boardroom.
And the one thing that makes a difference to increasing female selection to the board, according to Stanford research, is simply putting more women candidates into the candidate pool.
Boardrooms that truly hold themselves accountable to diversity will broaden their candidate pool and use vision to change the way the candidate sphere is defined.
Until then, we’ll celebrate the women who swim upstream – and often through the dark – to claim their too rare place in the boardroom. a
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Mover and Shaker: Jessica Roy, Vice President of Corporate Marketing and Communications, WEX

By Cathie Ericson

Any successful professional will tell you that sometimes you need to rely on intuition to manage the multiple types of interpersonal situations that can arise. For WEX’s Jessica Roy, it boils down to trusting your gut the moment you identify that something is a bit off—whether it’s a feeling about how a project is being received or the sense during a conversation with a colleague that you’re just not getting your point across.

“It’s almost always intangible, because if you knew what was wrong you’d fix it,” she says. But at those times, she believes it’s more important than ever to take an extra moment to revisit the situation, candidly inviting the other party to speak up so the two of you can fix the situation rather than letting it fester.

“When you experience that nagging piece, you have to take the time to dig in to understand what may not be working well and solve it”, she says, or even agree to disagree after having the conversation. But she’s found that it’s always worth it to clarify a position rather than taking the easier way out and letting it go.

Reveling in a Career That Could Never Be Called Boring

Committing to following that intuition when needed has helped Roy progress throughout her career. Her first corporate job as the regional marketing director for outlet malls in the Northeast prepared her for anything, she says.

Among the tasks she deftly handled over the years were rescuing a nun from a locked bathroom on the Fourth of July weekend in Cape Cod; answering a call about a man who had fallen into a retaining pond in the North Conway location during the holiday season; and single-handedly emptying a luxury-brand shoe store after the bankrupt tenant fled under cover of darkness.

What did the mayhem teach her? That even though all the above incidents seemed to have nothing to do with her title of “marketing director,” they actually had everything to do with it, because each mishap offers an opportunity to create a positive customer touch point.

Her next position was what she calls “a delightful stint” in tourism marketing for her beloved home state of Maine, promoting the New England region to overseas tourists.

And now, although she’s been with WEX for 15 years, the company has experienced such rapid growth that it feels like a different job every five years, she says, adding that as WEX continues to acquire new companies and move into new verticals, her corporate position will continue to evolve and grow.

Roy is particularly excited about the rebranding she helped to oversee, with the charge to modernize the corporate brand (Wright Express), rationalize the product brands, integrate acquisition brands and complete a brand launch. During the process, she and her colleagues also renamed the company to WEX and redesigned the logo—both of which were key components in changing its positioning from a domestic fuel card business to a global payments company. “Our brand is a living, breathing, evolving entity,” Roy says.

A highlight was standing on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange when WEX went public. “There I was, in the middle of managed chaos, watching the then-CEO ringing the bell, and then our ticker symbol went live,” she recalls. “This was an amazing American moment, and I felt that I was not only witnessing but participating in the American dream. What I realized in that moment was that a small group of talented, driven people can accomplish amazing things.”

That’s the vision she continues to drive forward—currently finding incredible pleasure and challenge in integrating the products and services of two recently acquired companies into the broader WEX offerings. “It’s like a challenging jigsaw puzzle, and it is exciting to put the pieces into the right places,” she says.

Finding Meaning Outside the 9-to-5

Roy is part of WEX’s recently introduced “Women at WEX” mentorship program, which has garnered enormous interest in the company. “Obviously the need is there,” she says, based on the positive response it has received. In addition, she has benefitted from numerous other leadership programs over the years.

As a native of the tiny mill town of Madawaska, Maine—as far north as you can go without hitting Canada—Roy has taken every opportunity she can to travel the world. Among the amazing sights she’s had the pleasure of seeing are giant tortoises in the Galapagos Islands, Buddhist temples in Japan and 800-year-old hill villages in southwest France. The best part? “I’m just getting started,” she says.

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Voice of Experience: Gillian Emmett Moldowan; Counsel in the Compensation, Governance & ERISA Group; Shearman & Sterling

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By Cathie Ericson

emmettIf you don’t ask for what you want, you’re not likely to get it, says Shearman & Sterling’s Gillian Emmett Moldowan. “There’s less informal mentoring for women in law firms, and it can be harder for women to just ask for what they want, but if you fail to do so, it’s unlikely people are going to seek you out to offer what you need,” she notes.

In fact, one aspect of Shearman & Sterling she has appreciated is the strong, visible female leadership, where female partners hold key firm committee positions and regularly participate on panels as subject matter experts in all types of topics, not just those related to women. That visibility has helped her identify mentors in the firm, an important part of any career path. She finds that taking control of your own career is critical, a theme that has resonated on her own journey.

Forging Her Own Path

After graduating from law school in 2007, Moldowan took a job at the firm where she had summered, Davis Polk and Wardwell, spending eight years there, and eventually being promoted to counsel. While there she worked on a number of transformative deals, but one that stands out to her was representing Comcast in the acquisition of NBC from GE. “It really made an impact on me to have an integral leadership role in that transaction, even though I was more junior at the time.”

Moldowan eventually left Davis Polk for a role at another firm. However, while working there, she realized it wasn’t the right long-term fit and started talking with Shearman & Sterling, a firm that was the clear “right fit “ ever since she started in April. “It feels familiar, but new,” she says, with the type of work she loves to do combined with new challenges and a culture that fits her style.

“I was willing to go outside my comfort zone and take risks, leaving a very stable environment, but ultimately finding something that was the right fit,” she says, admitting that goes against her
personality as a lawyer, a group not normally know as risk takers. She enjoys the variety inherent in her position, where she might work on more than a dozen matters a day, from securities offerings to M&A transactions to executive entrances and exits on both sides. “The constant challenges keep me excited and on my toes, which is why I picked this specialty in the first place,” she says.

And, she sees that the industry is on the cusp of even more innovation, given the trend toward more activism by shareholders, who are increasingly interested in governance, compensation, workplace diversity and gender pay gap considerations.

Most notably, she sees that new tax reform could be transformative in terms of executive compensation and provide the opportunity to learn something new and be innovative. She likens it to the new regulations in executive compensation of a decade ago, when, as relative newcomer to the profession, she was given the opportunity to learn novel concepts alongside more seasoned professionals who were also coming up to speed.

Achieving Work-Life Integration

While the buzz of the moment is all about work-life balance, Moldowan chooses to embrace the spirit of integration by instead looking at life from a more holistic view. “If you love your job like I do, it’s part of your life, which makes it hard to box it separately and focus exclusively on your most immediate goals—instead you look at the long-term big picture,” she says. Of course, she notes that can be hard as a junior associate coming directly from an academic structure where everything is segmented into semesters, necessitating a focus specifically on what’s directly ahead of you.

“If you’re in a job with that mentality for too long, it becomes defeating,” she says, especially at law firms where there used to be a known trajectory in terms of timing, and it was possible to put parts of your life on hold until it happened. Now, she says, there’s so much more variability that associates need to integrate work into their overall life.

That’s why she encourages others in the profession to find something they love to do, which means that even when your schedule is crazy, you won’t feel like you’re suffering. At the same time, she encourages women not to feel disappointed in themselves if they don’t want to strive for more. “No one should ever feel stuck or perceive that they haven’t done as much as they ‘should’,” she says.

With two kids—a second grader and a kindergartener—Moldowan focuses on spending all the time she can with them. They love to explore the city; having grown up in an urban environment, they are used to walking everywhere, so she finds bringing them to the city for the day is an excellent adventure in museums and Broadway shows. They love to listen to music at home and both kids are involved in theater. Since she herself did a lot of costuming in college, their Halloween costumes are epic. Always one to lend a helping hand, Moldowan is also on the board of trustees at their school, acting as chair of the audit committee.

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Voice of Experience: Kristi Mitchem, Chief Executive Officer and Head of Wells Fargo Asset Management

Kristi's Mitchem Wells FargoWells Fargo’s Kristi Mitchem believes that women need to visibly support one another. Where a man might readily high five another man for something unremarkable, research shows that women can be more reserved in their praise. Women are naturally aligned with other women and as such, Mitchem stresses the importance of consciously and vocally “friending” one another in corporate settings. “I tell women not to come out of a meeting without commending another woman. You want her to know that it’s important that she shared her opinion,” Mitchem says. “You also want the men in the room to recognize that she has value to add. “

Erasing gender inequality is an issue that Mitchem is passionate about—particularly in Corporate America, where she’s spent her career. “If you’re a young woman coming into finance today, you don’t see a lot of successful women in elevated positions. We need to have women visible in high-level positions so young women can see what’s possible.”

As it relates to advice she gives others, Mitchem cites strong communication skills as an imperative for success. “I consistently see women who could improve their skills in the area of presence and would benefit from seeking guidance on how to talk persuasively and powerfully,” she says. “One of the most wonderful things I have realized is that it is a learned behavior that you can enhance over time.”

Weaving Her Way Around a Successful Career

Mitchem was a Fulbright Fellow in Costa Rica, and her study there ignited her interest in Latin America and her desire to flex her language muscles. One of her first positions was with CS First Boston in the firm’s Latin America Finance Group, where she split her time between New York and Mexico City, working primarily on finance assignments. After completing the analyst program, she went on to earn an M.B.A. from Stanford University and completed a summer program with Goldman Sachs, where she accepted a full-time position in the emerging markets fixed income group as a sales trader in New York City.

As her career took off, love intervened. Mitchem became engaged to someone she’d met at Stanford who was starting his own company, and given the geographic realities, she took a position on the west coast, moving from sales trading in emerging markets to equity derivatives.

It was an auspicious time given the rise of tech hedge funds coinciding with the greater predominance of index fund management, and being part of that rapidly growing business allowed Mitchem to make a name for herself. At Goldman, she was selected for a program within the firm that identified high-profile candidates and gave them specific support needed to move forward in their careers. Mitchem credits this program with helping her achieve the designation of managing director.

As Mitchem was ready to take her next career leap, family again interceded. Pregnant with her third child, she decided she needed to move away from working market hours and perennially waking up at 3:30 a.m., which can take a toll. So while she wasn’t looking to leave Goldman, per se, she knew she needed a schedule that was more sustainable.

She joined one of her chief clients, Barclays Global Investors (BGI), helping them turn around their transition management business.

“I brought in great talent, and we were cooking with gas within a year,” Mitchem says. “One of the things that defines me is that I have a lot of energy and like to move on when something is complete, and the talent is there to support it. My next thought is always ‘What’s next?’”

Her CEO asked her to take on something completely different, leading an initiative around the defined contribution (DC) market in the United States where she says she had the amazing opportunity to build a team from scratch and capitalize on this growing segment of the marketplace.

When BlackRock bought BGI, she decided it was time to move on so she joined State Street Global Advisors (SSGA) to help them grow their DC business. She was subsequently asked to take on various new roles and ended up managing all of the Americas institutional business.

While at SSGA, Mitchem achieved one of the professional accomplishments that she is most proud of, which is an intersection between a personal passion and professional opportunity. That came in the form of an ETF launched in 2016 that invested in companies in the Russell 1000 committed to making progress in terms of gender representation at the most senior levels of management. “We were putting capital behind the companies that were making a difference on gender equality, which is a true win-win — investing in something that will have a positive expected return and also aids in the achievement of gender parity,” Mitchem noted.

In June 2016, she began her new position as CEO of Wells Fargo Asset Management which she calls a “fascinating assignment and an incredible opportunity to deliver value to clients through a large organization with so much reach.”

One of the most interesting and challenging trends she is addressing is the money moving out of active management, as well as the changing regulatory environment. “Now more than any time in my career I feel I’m at the point where I can play a key role in helping an organization pivot, as we build expertise in multi-asset strategies and quantitative investment management to add to our already strong platform in fundamental active management.”

To that end, she has spent much of the last year building out quantitative capabilities at Wells Fargo Asset Management, including the acquisition of Analytic Investors, a leader in factor-based investments based in Los Angeles. Although active management is in the firm’s DNA, she contends that it can co-exist symbiotically with multi-asset and other quantitative strategies under the same roof.

As Mitchem looks back on her career, she says that one thing she wishes she’d known more about is the science on women in the workforce. “I remember getting a review as an associate at Goldman and after a positive performance recap, my boss said that I needed to be more ‘likeable.’ At the time I obsessed about it, but I know now that there are numerous scientific studies showing that as women become more successful, they are typically rated as less ‘likeable,’” she notes. Mitchem feels that if she had had that information, she would have pushed back or perhaps put the feedback more in context. The trick, she says, is to separate the feedback that is unique to you that you can use to improve your performance, compared to what’s related to more broad-based gender issues.

The Right Support Network Makes All the Difference

When Mitchem considers her success, she is quick to give credit to her husband and her caregiver. “It may sound strange, but you have to find the right partner for your life who will support your aspirations. If it’s to be a stay-at-home mom, great; if it’s to work, great. But if you are leaning toward one way or another, the person you choose may be different,” she points out. “My husband has always been tremendously supportive of my career, and I believe it’s important to model a working spouse for our children.”

Secondly she credits her children’s caregiver, whom she calls a “pillar.” “We have had the same caregiver for our children since our first daughter was born and she is truly a co-parent with us, enabling us to have successful careers and a well-adjusted family.”

Mitchem also finds time for camaraderie with other women; having reignited her love of tennis over the past couple of years after playing as a kid. “It allows me to dual task – getting exercise in a way I love while socializing with fantastic women.”

With three girls, ages 16, 13 and 11, she is acutely aware of her position as a role model, and has always integrated her children in her work, even bringing them on business trips when they were younger. “We love to travel as a family, and one of the interesting things about my career is that I’ve had the opportunity to live and work in different countries, which has given me a true appreciation of other cultures. I believe that, as a parent, it’s important to impart a curiosity about the world to your children.”

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