Tag Archive for: Aimee Hansen

Why Choose A Women’s Retreat Instead of A Summer Vacation?

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women's retreatAs we enter spring, summer vacation is approaching. While sometimes a vacation is the perfect break from daily life, other times it may feel like a too short escape. Sometimes, as women, we don’t wish only to take a week away from our lives. Sometimes we want to take a deeper look at how we are feeling in our lives and what belongs here, now? 

Once in a while, a woman admits she skipped the annual girlfriends cocktails on the beach trip or perhaps gifted herself a rare week away alone because she knew she was being called to do something else. That voice came from nowhere but within. Rather than a break, sometimes women want to put the brakes on everything, step back and connect: This is my life: how awake am I to the living of it?

Sometimes we want to listen into our own center with less noise around. We want to take an honest look at whether we are allowing ourselves to feel what we truly feel, be who we want to be and do what we most want to do – and how we, ourselves, might be getting in our way. We want to see if we have fallen into getting by in life instead of enchanting our lives. We want to reimagine our possibilities and shift, within ourselves, to be more intentionally in alignment with our desires.

When women choose a women’s retreat, it’s often because they are confronting a crossroads or seek soul nourishiment or simply a fuller sense of aliveness. Which also means they want an experience of life that is nourished from within rather than defined by constant striving. While often held in an idyllic location with exceptional scenery, the real invitation of a women’s retreat is as much to the inner journey as it is to the travel adventure.

Debating about summer plans?

Here are some reasons why you might choose a women’s retreat this year instead of just the usual summer vacation.

You will release stress and be nurtured. Even short mindfulness retreats have shown a significant reduction in stress and anxiety levels and improved biological markers of inflammation. Going on retreat is a way to strip away the distractions and allow yourself to simply be nourished – by your host, by the warmth and sharing of your fellow participants, by the rich offerings of your surroundings. But not only that – you again remember how to truly nourish yourself while on retreat and the importance of that, and not just for a week.

You can disrupt your routine and thought patterns. We typically think at least 6,000 thoughts a day (some say far more) and up to 90% of thoughts are repetitive. Talk about exhausting! At a retreat, you release control of the small decisions and surrender into a different and foreign rhythm. Why does that matter? It disrupts and shakes up your repetitive thought patterns and creates spaciousness in which you can hear other voices within. It’s amazing how the questions and also being-ness that lie buried just under the busy-ness begin to surface.

You will get back into your body and intuition. We live so predominantly in our minds in the modern world and even more so as faces on screens in the virtual workplace. And how much of achievement culture is based on striving and producing at all costs, even if overriding the physical self? Have your ever actually, even once, crossed off the entire to-do list and finally got to the landing? You have to create it for yourself, regardless. A retreat invites you to get back into your body. Whether through breathing or meditation or yoga or free movement, you are given the opportunity to connect with your body and the rich and embodied insight that lives in your cellular awareness.

You will step out of your roles. We play many roles in our lives, but sometimes, we can get so enmeshed with them that the roles start to parade around as us. A role includes any ‘part’ you play from which you derive value, worth or a sense of identity – both the roles that you love (chief executive, favorite grandmother) and roles that you don’t (undervalued team member, sleepless mom of a difficult child). No matter the role, no matter who assigned it to you, no matter what you’ve made it mean and no matter how much your identity may be wrapped up in it, every role is too small. Sometimes we derive our worth from the roles we play and the scripts we’ve created, displacing it from our core. We can also victimize or aggrandize ourselves through roles. Stepping out of them challenges you to value yourself inherently.

You will be seen, heard and validated. Small talk comprises up to one-third of our speech, and plays an important role in social interaction. But women do not come to a retreat to have the usual conversation. A retreat circle is a circle of women who usually did not know each other previously: it can provide a place without history. No blueprint of your identity exists here. Women often come to shake up the conversation they have with themselves. And sometimes, all it takes is being heard saying something you thought you could not, so you can finally clear your throat and let your voice come through. You are invited to be raw and authentic and unresolved. In a women’s retreat, women come together with the intention to honor and support each other – but in doing so, we also redefine what that means.

You can expect some perspective shifts. Of course, putting yourself in new and often incredible surroundings can refresh your perspective. But, if you dare, expect more. Whether we want to face it, there is no one consensus reality. Our experience of life emerges through our practices of perception. In the context of a women’s retreat, you may be able to see where you are buying into beliefs about yourself and the world that have never worked for you. You may be able to see where you are inhibiting yourself with the patterns or false virtues or committing to things you don’t want to with regular reinforcing action, instead of what you want. What if you’ve played down the part of you that would benefit you most to play up? You may recognize that you are sitting in victimhood where it would feel so much more empowering to recognize your agency and your choice. What if the world and your options are not nearly as limited as you have been determined to see them?

You may feel a rush of life force or have new visions. In a women’s retreat, you are invited to remember that being self-loving is how you fill your own cup, so that you can spill over. As you begin to pour into yourself on retreat, with less going on externally to take up space within you, do not be surprised if you begin to feel like you are accessing more of yourself. You may find more to be grateful for. You may remember a vivid energy or quality about yourself that you’ve forgotten and now want to bring back. Or a new way you want to share from your heart. You may realize you have enough resource and energy to make real steps, first within, towards a change you wish for. You may simply feel more at peace and able to be less shaken by the chaos outside of you. But it would be very rare if you thought and felt exactly the same as you did arriving.

Which is the main point, really. So, the biggest reason to skip the traditional summer vacation and go on a women’s retreat this year? What animates you most in life is living into and showing up for this adventure of you.

By: Aimee Hansen – Our “Heart” coach, interviewer, and lead writer – is a women’s retreat creator and facilitator. The Journey Into Sacred Expression writing and yoga women’s retreats on Lake Atitlan in Guatemala are recommended in Lonely Planet Wellness Escapes and have been praised by the nearly 200 women who have gathered with her. Circle with women underneath volcanoes to write, meditate, do yoga, move and participate in various sessions. She has two summer events in 2023: July 7-15 and Aug 25 – Sept 2. Each has 12 spaces only.

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Joyce Shen: AI investor, board director, author, and data science at UC Berkeley

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“You can’t be too risk-averse in your own career journey. It takes risks to create a portfolio of valuable skills and find purpose. It takes risks when structural factors or personal reasons mean one path isn’t working and fulfilling, and it’s time to create another,” says tech trailblazer Joyce Shen. “Instill confidence, and say, ‘I can create my own path. Maybe I’m only at the first step of this path, but it’s a path that I want to pursue.’”

Shen talks about the value of contrarian moves, the often overlooked career paths in tech, how tech is changing the shape of career trajectories and why leaders need to hold both vision and empathy to drive innovation.

Growing at the Pace of Tech

Between accompanying her scientist father to the research lab on weekends as a young girl, being immersed in academia on her mother’s side and growing up in college towns, Shen has always been interested in science, technology and continuous learning. She dropped her pre-med surgeon trajectory when she discovered how economics, statistics and math can model what is happening in the world at The University of Chicago.

Shen then interviewed with a non-profit named Sponsors For Education Opportunity (SEO), an organization that helps to close the academic and career opportunity gap for college students from underserved communities, and was placed as an intern in her sophomore year at IBM in procurement finance. A year later upon graduating with two degrees in Statistics and Economics in three years, Shen joined IBM full time in Corporate Development focusing on mergers and acquisitions. She quickly immersed herself in high-stake projects. Shen was energized by the fast pace of innovations in the technology industry and began to evolve, rapidly.

By 25 years old, she was leading an international finance team of nine people, ranging from fresh college graduates to baby boomers. By 29 years old, she was the first (and youngest) global CFO leading and managing the IBM Cloud Platform, an internal start-up at the time. As a fast-rising star, she was recruited by Thomson Reuters, a global company in information services and technology, to build and lead the emerging tech practice, including establishing emerging technology strategy and launching the corporate venture fund and a blockchain program. Having achieved all milestones including investing in over 12 startups in machine learning, data, digital identity, and blockchain, she was recruited to join Tenfore Holdings, a private investment firm in New York.

Shen has also been lecturing at UC Berkeley and has previously lectured at Saïd Business School, and has published books on innovation and blockchain. For the last ten years, she is also actively involved as a career mentor for SEO.

The Value of Being a Contrarian

“My career has been non-traditional and multi-dimensional. I took risks that most people normally would not take, and each built on the other without me knowing at the time how each step will fit together – my decision was anchored by pursuing knowledge, innovation, making impact, and doing things that I think matter in the world I live in,” says Shen. “And because I took risk in my career, I built a reputation of being a multi-faceted leader, strategic thinker, a problem solver in any environment, and being able to work through tough assignments and execute end-to-end against entirely new visions.”

Shen has been driven by her interdisciplinary and multifunctional skills in the intersection of business, technology, and finance. Her last three positions have been particularly created for her with a blank slate: “Even more than taking a risk, I’ve often been the contrarian and not done what everybody else was doing,” says Shen. “I wanted to keep developing at a different growth vector and bring others along with me.”

Those contrarian choices include going into corporate development out of university instead of consulting or banking, going for her full-time MBA degree at The Booth School of Business at the University of Chicago after only two years as a young professional, returning to IBM after her MBA instead of a new firm, leaving Corporate Development in Armonk for the grittier challenge of leading a mature, less-glamorous business unit to gain management and restructuring experience, departing IBM after starting and growing the cloud computing platform startup to an billion dollar business as the global CFO to gain experience in making emerging technology innovation, procurement, and investing decisions in the CTO office at Thomson Reuters, and then leaving a highly coveted position working with innovative technology startups for an investment firm that had less than seven people and to focus 100% on technology investing and advising founders and management as a lead investor and board member.

Shen attributes her ability to adapt and figure things out in part to a childhood spent moving often as well as her own travels and exposure to different cultures and systems of thinking.

“The world is changing every day,” says Shen, “and the ability to immerse in your environment and have that sixth-sense ability to see opportunities and create value, regardless of the environment or infrastructure or market condition, is incredibly and increasingly valuable and highly demanded.”

The Overlooked Career Path in Technology

As technology has changed our lives and become pervasive in every way, Shen notes that much of technology (e.g., software, smart infrastructure, machine learning, artificial intelligence) runs horizontally through every single industry. She’d love to see more women get involved where so much future value creation is coming and consider the breadth of options to create their own purposeful path.

“There tends to be two main paths in technology careers in conventional thinking. One path is a purely technical path, often as an individual contributor as well as a super-doer. But there is another path where people get into more of the operational and business side, around product management and distribution as well as considering emerging topics such as ethics, fairness, governance in technology and especially in AI and machine learning. There is also a lot of opportunity to get into highly critical technology areas such as cybersecurity. In my experience, a lot of the influence and ability to make changes come from working at the intersection of different disciplines and taking that experience to management and leadership.”

Shen continues, “In technology or in any industry, being able to have that broader aperture allows someone to see more opportunities and navigate better decisions about where they want to go and how to do it to make a broader impact in an organization.”

Create Your Own Career Ladder

“The entire career landscape is shifting and new opportunities are emerging rapidly. Developing a portfolio of skills you can apply in many ways, no matter what path you take, makes your career more dynamic and resilient,” advises Shen.

While in some industries, career development still looks like a vertical ladder, technology disrupts that paradigm, and Shen feels watching her parents create their own ladder as immigrants gifted her the agility to do that.

“Conventional wisdom would say the path you follow is a ladder and you progress according to that ladder, but in business and technology there isn’t a ladder that is given to you even though it can seem that way,” says Shen. “You can create that ladder yourself, and it doesn’t really matter what shape it takes, as long as there is a strong purpose to the work and that you are enjoying the journey and making an impact. It doesn’t have to be the same ladder that everybody is climbing.”

Knock Until The Door Opens

Working at the intersection of technology and finance and business, Shen has become used to being the “only,” but she’s focused on leveraging her strategic thinking, expertise and her deep set of skills relevant in her fields. Her parents’ immigrant experience and her moving often as a child taught her to put herself out there and work hard to prove herself. She is energetic, outspoken, direct, and down-to-earth. Sitting down with seasoned executives was an intimidating experience early on when she embarked on her career, but not once she stopped making giants of them.

Shen encourages women to focus on making an impact. Before going into a meeting, she focuses on her own clarity of how she will show up and what she wants to learn and can contribute. She encourages her students to own their voice and show the value of their work. She also encourages women not to give up just because someone doesn’t take interest in your aspirations or you don’t get that assignment.

“What I learned is that everybody who has accomplished a great deal had a lot of help and support from other people. Giving and receiving opportunities are very important to women” Shen says. “So if you ask for an opportunity and you’re told no, and you’ve been doing an amazing job, find another person to ask. Sometimes, women take that ‘no’ very hard and in a personal way, but please don’t be discouraged. Keep knocking on doors until one opens, because you will find people who will see your potential. It is definitely hard but remember don’t get discouraged.”

Shen encourages women to hold the inner strength and confidence. If one day is really tough, another day is going to be better, and amidst the unique structural challenges for women, you have to leverage all the resources within and around to keep progressing on your career journey.

Leadership that Empowers and Includes

Her mother often called Shen a natural leader, and Shen agrees leadership is innate in her. The growth has been honing her leadership for others in different capacities as a corporate executive, investor, board director, and educator.

“I was exposed to the highest levels of leadership at IBM very early on, and I’m a keen observer of human behavior,” says Shen. “From start-ups to larger companies and across different functional areas, I still take the approach of observing and picking up what are the leadership skills that create incredible teams and organizations that have strong culture and purpose.”

What did not work for Shen was detailed and controlling micro-management that didn’t inspire innovation or empower people to leverage their own strengths to add value. From her first management experience, she realized the importance of recognizing and empowering individuals.

“I realized that I had the responsibility to make sure not only that we deliver great work as a team, but also that we take care of each other,” reflects Shen. “It’s not just having an open door policy. It’s having empathy and treating my employees as human beings who have different needs and aspirations. Listen to them and create an environment where they can thrive as individuals, so that as a collective we are more powerful team.”

Shen has seen the difference that makes, more starkly in start-ups: “I think the most incredible leaders are those who can create clear vision, mandate high expectations, but also at the same time, show empathy and flexibility to the team.”

Inspiring Others Behind Her

As a woman who breathes technology and business and finance during most of her waking hours, Shen loves keeping on top of technology innovations, emerging trends, and potential investments. She’s a part-time faculty lecturer at UC Berkeley’s Master of Information and Data Science where she teaches the Capstone course. Among other volunteering, through SEO, she mentors underserved college students in getting hired into technology and finance roles in Corporate America.

“My work gives me a lot of energy because I’m making a difference and helping others,” she reflects. “I get very energized working with portfolio companies and teams, and when I see former employees or my students grow in their careers and thrive.”

She also loves spending time with family and friends, many of whom have a strong overlap in personal and work values. She cycles, runs marathons, and cooks as a daily analog way to unwind.

By Aimee Hansen

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Women Leaders – Walking Out or Walking Onwards?

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For every woman at the director level that was promoted to the next level in 2021, two women directors walked out the door of their company. Women leaders are now demanding more, and leaving their companies at unprecedented rates, according to The Women in The Workplace 2022 report by LeanIn.Org and McKinsey & Company, who have released the research annually since 2015.

“We’re finally seeing the moment where women in leadership are voting with their feet,” said Alexis Krivkovich, a managing partner at McKinsey and cofounding report author.

In this “profound change,” women are indeed deciding to vote for the workplace they want with the most compelling power they will ever have: their presence, time and energy. Nothing short of this will shake up the workplace as we have known it. No matter the current representation, senior women are going beyond just getting access to upper levels and getting clearer on what they would like to experience and see happen there, and seeking that out. Could senior women’s participation from this place of self-empowerment catalyze greater change?

Women Aren’t Leaving, They’re Leaving For Better

“We are in the midst of a Great Breakup in corporate America. Women leaders are leaving their companies at the highest rate we’ve ever seen. They aren’t leaving the workforce entirely but are choosing to leave for companies with better career opportunities, flexibility, and a real commitment to DEI,” said Sheryl Sandberg, founder of Lean In, who leaned out of Facebook this past summer.

About 10.5% of female leaders (senior management and above) left their companies in 2021, compared to 9% of male leaders. On the average year, the spread is close with only a half-point gap.

Senior women leaders, after all the journey they have gained, aren’t walking out because they don’t think they have choices. They are walking about because they finally know they do – and they are taking their leadership assets with them in search of better opportunities. Having now recovered from pandemic job losses, women are more attuned to the relationship they want (and the ones will not tolerate) within the workplace. Women’s threshold to tolerate toxicity and inequity has been thinned, yet the broken rung is still there and the broken record of unequal outcomes plays wearingly on repeat. Women leaders are voting for the relationships they want to have with work.

Cultures That Work for Women’s Advancement

Women are as ambitious as men. Black women leaders (59%) and women of color (41%) are even more likely to want to be top executives (27%). But only 1 in 4 C-Suite leaders is a woman and only one in 20 is a woman of color. For every 100 men promoted from entry level to manager, just 87 women and 82 women of color are promoted.

And the signals that counter advancement come across in microaggressions or more overt dynamics: Female leaders are twice as likely as male counterparts to be mistaken for someone junior. 37% of women leaders said they’ve had a co-worker get credit for their idea, compared to 27% of men. Black female leaders are 1.5x more likely than women overall to have had their judgment or qualification questioned. Many women still feel undermined or passed over in the workplace.

Recognition for and Performance Consideration Of Essential Work 

While women are twice as likely to do be doing DEI-related and inclusion work that is helping with company performance, they are disproportionally carrying an increasingly ‘valued’ aspect of leadership that too often goes unrecognized and 40% say does not factor into the performance review. Meanwhile, women leaders are more burnt out (43%) than male counterparts (31%).

Flexible Work Cultures that Embody the Talk Around Diversity, Equity and Inclusion

Women want a better work culture. Only 1 in 10 women wants to work on-site most of the time, and women will move for flexibility. It’s not surprising considering that 52% of senior female leaders do most of the family housework and childcare compared to 13% of senior male leaders. Women who work the way they want to feel far happier, feel they have more equal opportunity to advance and are less likely to leave their job. Remote work also provides a reprieve from office-based exclusion and as McKinsey points out, that is a fundamental issue for organizations to address: “Companies cannot rely on remote and hybrid work as a solution; they need to invest in creating a truly inclusive culture.”

Over the past two years, being in a culture committed to well-being and DEI has become more important to women, and they are 1.5 more likely to have left a job because they wanted a more inclusive culture.

Better And More Supportive Managers 

Having a supportive manager is a top three criteria for women when thinking of joining or staying with an organization. Only about half of women say their manager encourages respectful behavior on their team regularly. Less than half say their manager shows interest in their career and helps them manage their workload. Black women and Latinas are particularly less likely to feel their manager shows interest in their career, checks in on their well-being or promotes inclusion on the team. They also experience less psychological safety. Women with various intersectional identities see gaps between the lip service to inclusion and what is actually happening in their experience.

Towards A Work Paradigm That Works For Women?

Female directors are becoming more sensitive to the conditions that don’t work for them, and it matters for them and future generations. Women under 30 are highly ambitious to become senior leaders, but 2/3 would be more interested if they saw senior women with a covetable work-life balance, an increasingly important career requirement for younger people.

The press isn’t focused on how bad this attrition of women leaders is for women. It’s focused on how bad the attrition of women leaders is for organizations. McKinsey has previously found that executives teams in the top quartile of gender diversity have a 25% greater likelihood of outperformance (above average profitability) than those in the bottom. LeanIn.Org and McKinsey have several recommendations for organizations following this recent report.

Stepping back, we are interested in what happens when women leaders take stock of their own value. All along, women have been trying to pave the way for those behind them by fighting to have a seat at the table. But increasingly, women are realizing that modeling leadership is not only about the rooms you are able to walk into, but also the rooms you are willing to walk away from. Because we need to walk towards creating organizational missions and cultures where all women (and people) are welcome and supported to lead and live their lives.

That is the power of esteeming the self. How would that mindset shift, at a collective level, give rise to more change in our workplace?

By Aimee Hansen

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Sabina Munnelly: Partner, Baringa

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Sabina Munnelly“Sometimes you don’t even see your own potential,” says Sabina Munnelly. “But when someone makes it clear that they see something in you, their belief in you can help grow a belief in yourself that you might have not even had.”

Munnelly speaks to openness on your path, being a force of nature, surpassing the barriers and the value of mirrors that reflect and magnify your possibilities.

Embracing Opportunity and Switching It Up

Since the moment that computers were introduced in the ‘90s halfway through her education at Trinity College in Dublin, Munnelly began a career she would never have seen coming.

“Embrace what comes at you. You don’t have to control everything, and it doesn’t always have to fit in with what you originally thought,” says Munnelly. “I got a whole other opportunity because I opened my mind to the technology piece.”

After starting in banking as a technology tester, Munnelly worked for Compaq and Hewlett Packard, gaining vast experience with big players. Rather than transition to management, she joined Accenture so she could continue to keep her hands in project work. Across 16 years, she jumped between various tech and data related areas of expertise, becoming a Managing Director at Accenture Applied Intelligence, and moving to New York from Europe.

“I always like to pivot every three years or so, to keep myself up to date. I’m a bit of a magpie,” confesses Munnelly. “Anything that is white space. Give me a white board, and I’ll figure it out. I prefer that, so my journey has been a constant evolution.”

In 2021, she joined Baringa, a global management consultancy working across multiple sectors including energy, financial services, telecoms, media, consumer goods, retail and government. As a leading advisor on the energy transition globally, sustainability runs through much of the business’s work across sectors. In addition to enjoying the entrepreneurial spirit of building a fast-growing team in the U.S., Munnelly feels she’s come full circle to interests at her roots, having written her thesis on wind farming back in college.

“From a financial services perspective, there’s a lot of momentum behind the notion that if you can put the capital to make the most impact in the right place, then change happens where the money goes,” notes Munnelly. “If I can be involved in making change happen through climate activity and how investors deploy their capital to fund those changes, that really resonates with me.”

Equally, culture was a big factor in her move: “For me, you have to be able to get up in the morning and love what you do and love the people your work with. A people-focused business was really important to me.”

A Force of Nature

Describing herself as driven, Munnelly feels curiosity and a love of learning and problem solving motivate her. She enjoys start-to-finish involvement, and smiles saying she would be called “a force of nature” by her colleagues.

“It’s definitely an energy, but also a cohesion with the team.”

While she’ll come into a room with a strong point of view, she feels ‘nature’ implies a melding with the environment. She’s very much about being ‘in it together’ as a team and enjoying the adventure, and feels energized by working with others. These days, she would admit that her intuition and her attunement to reading the energy of a room have been important contributions to her success, as well as self-care.

Her sensitivity to her own and other’s energy has increasingly been a validated part of how she navigates her work-life: “I balance my energy. So I don’t think about the hours I work. I actually think about the energy I expend in a day.”

If You Can See It…

Growing up with three younger brothers, Munnelly was both accustomed to being in male-dominated spaces and being respected in them. So when she went into finance and tech, her context didn’t phase her.

“I enjoyed going into rooms and finding those moments where I’d pipe up with an interesting point of view or a question, and all of a sudden, people would shift around and look at me,” she says. “So I find it quite empowering. I’ve used the difference to my advantage.”

Only as she grew more senior did the gaps in representation of women become far more visible to her. And being one of the few in that space, she felt her role was to vocalize what she saw.

“It increased my use of my voice. It’s important that it doesn’t become a silent observation or be held in,” says Munnelly. “It’s important to make sure that things are noted and vocalized, and even with the reasons, considered.”

Mary Robinson, the first female president of Ireland who held term from 1990-1997, was a real inspiration in envisioning possibility. It made such a difference to teenage Munnelly that it stirs up emotion even today. Robinson allowed her to see not only what could be, but what was possible.

“I think all of these factors combined meant I didn’t buy into the barrier, and just ignored it, and still today it hasn’t stopped me, because I have a deeper belief that it can happen – at least in the spaces where I’m operating in.”

Coming to Baringa, she was met with a U.S. office that held a 50/50 gender representation at senior levels, and where every individual has an advisor. Having doubled down on its U.S. growth in the past 5 years, a DEI approach has infused the internal culture and focus for external impact from the outset.

Do What You Love, and Empower Others

Due to her extensive background in consulting and taking an advisory role, Munnelly has become adept at taking the listening seat to consider all voices when it comes to coming up with the best way forward, rather than just pushing her initial viewpoint. She’s learned to take her own ego out of the way.

As she thinks of the shift from ‘doing’ to ‘enabling’ as a leader, and the amount of letting go required, Munnelly is grateful for the people that saw her potential and trusted her. Having your ability reflected back to you matters, she feels, regardless of what level you’re at. She focuses on paying that back, in witnessing, encouraging, motivating and empowering her team through trust: “At the end of the day it’s belief and self-belief that matter.”

“Build your skills using the best of others that are ahead of you,” she suggests. She encourages women to pick up the best of what they observe in managers and leaders, integrate what inspires you and make it your own.

Do what you love is a practical direction she recently received from a leader that empowered her: “She didn’t say ‘meet these numbers’ or ‘I want you to do these things.’ She gave me the freedom of saying ‘just continue, but do what you love.’ She probably knew that if I heard that, then I would already motivate myself and do more than what others would ask from me,” reflects Munnelly. “If I’m in a positive frame of mind, loving what I’m doing, then I’ll be even more successful.”

She suggests to ask yourself if is it possible to tweak your work to get more enjoyment out of what you’re doing. Family, friends, a good chat and laughter are core to Munnelly. She enjoys spending time with her young daughter who keeps her more than busy and grounded. She also loves cycling, and while she’s always loved adventure and fast movement, in the past years she’s begun taking up more energy balancing activities like acupuncture and massage. She’s also a Reiki master.

By Aimee Hansen

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Do You Have an Intrapreneurial Mindset?

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intrapreneurThere is no lack of entrepreneurial spirit among women. Women began 49% of new businesses in the U.S. in 2021 (up from 28% in 2019). Women entrepreneurs grew by 48% year-over-year, outpacing men in the entrepreneurial space by 22%. But how are women tracking in intrapreneurship?

According to Wikipedia, intrapreneurship “is the act of behaving like an entrepreneur while working within a large organization. Intrapreneurship is known as the practice of a corporate management style that integrates risk-taking and innovation approaches, as well as the reward and motivational techniques, that are more traditionally thought of as being the province of entrepreneurship.”

Psychology Today says that “teaching employees to become mindful intrapreneurs is the way to future-proof an organization.”

Intrapreneurial Assignments

According to Investopedia, intrapreneurship happens when an employee is “tasked” with the initiative of developing an innovative idea or project inside an organization – and given the freedom and autonomy to explore it. Although unlike entrepreneurs, an intrapreneur has access to the resources of an established company and doesn’t face the same level of outsized risks or outsized rewards. And yet, the intrapreneur does put skin in the game.

In one way or another, the intrapreneur is leading the charge on developing something that hasn’t been done in the organization before – whether a new section, a new department, a new product – or perhaps even a new approach or new team. Intrapreneurship has an internal start-up feel. Also, the Post-It Note, Gmail and Facebook like button are all arguably products of intrapreneurial thinking.

Just as formal sponsorship would change visibility and increase equitability in opportunity for women in the leadership pipeline, Forbes has argued that intrapreneurship is one way to fast track women to high-profile and high-potential initiatives, build leadership profiles and ultimately boost female executive numbers.

But also, in the same way that entrepreneurial spirit implies an intrinsic fire, an intrapreneurial spirit does not wait around to be assigned a task. Nor should you wait for permission, if you resonate with an intrapreneurial mindset.

An Intrapreneurial Mindset

Senior leaders have told us about the value of holding an intrapreneurial attitude – which we’ve counted among top tips for elevating your leadership mindset.

Linda Descano, Executive Vice President at Red Havas, told us: “So as I think of being an ‘intrapreneurial executive,’ I bring that same sense of acting like an owner to the organization I work for. I’m going to be constantly thinking about ways of improving the business. I act like I own it, as if it’s my investment. It’s working with that same sense of responsibility and drive to make it grow.”

Indhira Arrington, Global CDEIO at Ares Management, asked: “Outside of your day job responsibilities, what are you doing to contribute to the greater good of the organization and to make yourself an impact player? Anybody can get work done. People want to promote impact players.”

With creative passion and risk-tolerance akin to entrepreneurs, intrapreneurs focus on evolving the business from within. They see opportunities that are not obvious to others. They are willing to take risks, expansive in their thinking and often dynamic in their network. They keep an eye towards opportunities. They understand the internal cultural context and external business context.

Intrapreneurs are also ideas-driven and intrinsically motivated to break down barriers and collaborate with others to make new things happen at scalable levels. That often involves going outside of departmental silos and means impacting your surroundings in a way that goes above and beyond your job description. It requires stakeholder management and ability to manage upwards, as well as project management.

It also means being organizationally savvy and knowing how to sell and pre-sell your ideas. It requires a high level of accountability, resilience and willingness to see failure as a valuable part of the journey.

As written by Tendayi Wiki in Forbes, intrapreneurs need to have a particular mindset because they are operating within larger organizations. They need to focus on creating tangible value for the organization or clients, not just on the ‘theater of innovation.’ They focus on building relationships to garner support and enthusiasm and focus on getting others behind the clear value proposition of their ideas. They also have an ‘ecosystem mindset’ that focuses on identifying repeatable processes that will apply for future projects and build environments for ideas to emerge.

The Organizational Context of Intrapreneurship

According to Samantha Paxson, CMO of CO-OP Financial Services, “What makes intrapreneurs so successful is their empathy toward colleagues’ challenges and their ability to apply critical creativity to generate new ideas.”

Paxson argues that intrapreneurship draws upon innately feminine leadership qualities of being receptive to how to better serve colleagues, clients or customers from a leadership stance. She points out that research has indicated that women score higher than men in 3/4 of the important leadership competencies that support intrapreneurshi – including taking initiative, motivating and developing others, championing change, collaboration and teamwork, problem-solving and driving results.

Though according to Women Unlimited, Inc, intrapreneurship requires two sides – both the intrapreneurial mindset and an environment that is ready to support it (and from that individual).

Organizational characteristics conducive to supporting intrapreneurism include:

  • Regularly soliciting new ideas and input from employees at all levels
  • Ideas incentive funds
  • Fostering inter-departmental collaboration
  • Monitoring customer opinions relevant to products and services
  • Creating an environment where employees are free to speak up
  • Setting aside an in-house venture capital fund
  • Rewarding innovative ideas monetarily
  • Holding training and immersions to encourage and spark employee creativity
  • Encourage fun, creativity and innovation in the environment

How many women of color have left the corporate workplace for entrepreneurialism because they did not find an environment which was prepared to fully include their intrapreneurial mindset? An important part of encouraging an intrapreneurial mindset is that individuals are validated and rewarded for what they bring forward.

And sometimes, as Claudia Vazquez, Founder of elevink told us, it requires refusing to let go of the vision, and waiting for new opportunities and new angles, or even new contexts, to drive ahead.

Cultivating Creativity For an Intrapreneurial Mindset

While there are many components to an intrapreneurial mindset, and not everyone wants to take up that role, it’s possible to build up the qualities that support it.

Some playful advice for improving the muscle of your creative intelligence to support your ability to cultivate an intrapreneurial mindset includes:

  • Physical agility: Move your body and make changes in your physical environment when you feel creatively stuck.
  • Emotional agility: Become self-aware of your emotions, as the ability to name and regulate your emotions is tied to creative performance.
  • Mental agility: Embrace the symbiotic relationship in creativity between generating ideas and being able to apply creative thinking to those ideas.
  • Curiosity: A passionate level of curiosity is often required to catalyze the desire to create, so follow the thread of curiosity and nurture it.
  • Self-belief: Valuing your unique perspective and contribution is important to allowing self-belief to build momentum behind your ideas.
  • Intuition: Trusting and validating your intuition and gut instinct – when you know without knowing how you know – is critical in seeing new possibilities.
  • Daydreaming: The productive activity of letting your mind wander is correlated with higher intellect and creative ability.

If you hold an intrapreneurial mindset, embrace it as a leadership asset and find a culture in which you can thrive for your ability to cast your vision above and beyond the day job.

By Aimee Hansen

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Cassandra Cuellar: Partner, Venture Capital, M&A and Capital Markets, Shearman & Sterling LLP

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Cassandra CuellarAs a partner in the buzzing Emerging Growth practice, Cassandra Cuellar works with entrepreneurial clients who are launching companies and investors who are looking to back a promising venture.

Taking Ownership To Grow

“What gets me out of bed in the morning is the opportunity to work with people that are pouring their personal energy, time and wealth into the companies they’re growing,” says Cuellar. “It’s very rewarding to be a part of their journey as they start those companies, grow them and hopefully realize a successful exit. It’s life-changing for them.”

Cuellar must understand the concerns and interests of both founders and investors in her practice. She emphasizes that a collaboration mentality and solution-orientation is required to effectively advocate for her clients: “Our job is not to identify 20 roadblocks and then say we can’t go further. Our job is to identify the roadblocks, figure out if this is truly something that will be detrimental to our client, and then bring our clients in on that, figuring out the solution together.”

Cuellar enjoys the fast pace of work these days: “You get so many more people that have new ideas and diversity of thought starting companies and taking a chance on themselves. It’s great to see that and be able to be part of that.”

She is also comfortable leaning in and taking a chance on herself. “I have a willingness to take ownership over things without necessarily having to be so dependent on a hierarchical structure,” she says. “Startups run lean, so that’s the way my group approaches the practice and it’s how I’ve developed as an attorney.”

From early in her career, she had to get comfortable communicating with CEOs, CFOs, and key decision makers, but she relates learning through taking ownership to even earlier in life.

“I grew up in a small town as the oldest of four kids, and my parents had their hands full. I had to take ownership of my own professional career – getting into college, getting scholarships and making sure I was set up to move away and do my own thing,” says Cuellar. “Having that ability to do that from a young age translated well into being successful at this practice. I’m not afraid to take ownership over issues and clients and get stuff done.”

The Confidence To Trust Yourself and Others

“Latinx students going into law school don’t necessarily have readily-accessible role models that have gone into BigLaw, so often Latinx students make a choice to opt out of BigLaw, despite being more than qualified,” cautions Cuellar. “But I have found that because Latinx students often have to figure things out on their own without role models, that makes us uniquely qualified for this profession. You are used to navigating unknown waters, so it makes it easier to approach novel legal issues, transactions, and clients. The one thing I’ve learned – through negotiating the law school process, getting a job in a big law firm and now building my career – is that whatever you can throw at me, I’m going to figure it out,” she notes. “I don’t get scared off by challenge. I can rise to it because I have done it before.”

While launching herself into responsibility came naturally, her stretch zone has been releasing control. As a senior associate, she was accustomed to knowing every detail in every transaction and trusted herself to deliver on the high expectations she set. As she’s moved up, she’s had to learn to let go and trust in her team. Cuellar echoes other Latinas we’ve spoken to in expressing that being the one Latina within her practice, or one of few, feeds the drive to validate through performance. It makes letting go harder because more has felt at stake.

“Being a Latina, there’s not that many of us doing what I do, so I do feel a certain responsibility to be able to prove myself here and make sure that anything I work on is done at 100%,” she reflects. “That part of my identity and proving myself is impacted by this other part of me that needs to grow and trust other people to do things, even though I don’t have 100% control.”

Along with that self-awareness, she’s found that empathy is important.

“Letting go of some of that control has been hard, but I’m working on it,” she admits. “I’ve realized that everyone is an individual, and they’re not all like me, and I have to manage to each person versus to what my personal expectations, approaches, or processes would be.”

Encouraging Each Other’s Potential

Inspired by leaders she’s worked with, Cuellar models her practice upon listening and showing understanding to clients and those she is working with. She would love to see more Latinas follow a law path, and attributes her own decision to meeting a Latina lawyer in the Texas legislature, who encouraged her on the path.

At Shearman, Cuellar has felt supported in opening her possibilities by other women mentors: “I’ve always found someone willing to sit down and talk to me about things in a very honest fashion, who would guidepost, for example, that I needed to be thinking about business development, even as a second year, if I ultimately want to make Partner.”

In formal mentoring of law school students, especially Latinas and Latinos, she implores students not to limit themselves based on context or precedents, but instead to take a good look at whether a big law firm could be a match: “You work a lot, but you learn a lot, and have a lot of professional opportunities. I think it’s important that more Latinos and Latinas feel comfortable taking that risk, even if it might not be something your family understands at the time. You’re setting yourself up for your future professionally. You can at least try, and you could even be successful.”

Finding Out What Works For You

Cuellar admits it has taken her years to get comfortable in networking, but she tells students to take networking seriously as a skill to develop, the earlier the better.

But she’s also found her own approach to creating connections. “What I’ve discovered, whether it’s within the firm or with a volunteer opportunity, is my best networking is done when I’m working with someone. I take that approach of trying to get to know people by doing a good job with work they send my way, making sure that they feel valued and working from there (with common interests etc) – versus attending every networking event, because I find it hard to make deep connections in that context.”

Cuellar considers it part of the trial and error of getting to know yourself. Try out different things to see what works for you, and develop your own network style.

Her close-knit family and three year old son Max come first in her life. They enjoy cooking, celebrating birthdays and planning holidays. She enjoys connecting with close friends through the early experiences of motherhood. In this particular moment, it appears her son Max is rebelling against preschool yoga.

By Aimee Hansen

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Why Creating Inclusion at Senior Levels Requires Formal Sponsorship

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formal sponsorshipInformal sponsorship and mentorship can proliferate inequitable power dynamics in organizations. Organic sponsorship is a big part of how leadership proactively recasts the pipeline in the majority image. Meanwhile, the status quo power dynamic inhibits individuals who are in the minority among leadership from lifting others up behind them.

(This contribution from Pulsely dives into how informal sponsorship works to reinforce the glass ceiling).

Here’s one core way in which your organization is perpetuating inequitable power dynamics at senior levels: informal sponsorship and mentorship.

When you connect the dots of power, organic sponsorship is a big part of how leadership proactively, repetitively, and, by default, recasts the pipeline in the majority image. Meanwhile, the status quo power dynamic inhibits individuals who are in the minority among leadership from lifting others up behind them.

We offer a six point case for why leadership inclusion requires formal sponsorship programs that are deliberately disruptive in creating more equitable opportunities.

Mentorship and Sponsorship – What It Really Means

When it comes to career advancement, mentorship is both necessary and not enough. The common distinction is: a mentor talks with you, a sponsor talks about you.

A mentorship is 1-1. Mentors help you within your journey. They help you to navigate the intersection of your goals and career choices, identify and amplify strengths, and develop in core areas. Mentorship often acts as a trustworthy mirror for personal growth.

A sponsorship is more than 1-1. A sponsor relationship is 1-1+ an audience of power. Sponsors put skin and reputation in the game by leveraging their social capital (influence) in rooms you’ve yet to enter, and advocate for opportunities and advancement for you among their peers. The protégé also has the motivation of stepping up to the challenge because the sponsor’s reputation is on the line, too. Sponsorship often acts as a spotlight that shines on you to lift you up to the next level of career advancement.

As written by Rosalind Chow in Harvard Business Review, “Sponsorship can be understood as a form of intermediated impression management, where sponsors act as brand managers and publicists for their protégés. This work involves the management of others’ views on the sponsored employee. Thus, the relationship at the heart of sponsorship is not between protégés and sponsors, as is often thought, but between sponsors and an audience — the people they mean to sway to the side of their protégés.”

Why Informal Mentorship and Sponsorship Are Inequitable

“Regardless of education, motivation, and personal and professional success factors, being sponsored by a white man remains the primary accelerant to the career mobility of Black women.” (Stephanie Bradley Smith in HBR)

As this quote underlines, and Catalyst iterates in Sponsoring Women to Success, “Sponsorship is focused on advancement and predicated on power.”

The dynamic of organic sponsorship is ultimately majority promoting majority, with the same repeated outcome at leadership, save minor and temporary shifts. Even the common phrase of “winning sponsorship” has a blinding and dubious premise.

While data from different surveys inevitably differs on absolutes (for example, the % of people who report they have a sponsor is highly contextual to the criteria), what remains steady across studies is a debilitating power gap between individuals of the majority and non-majority when it comes to both sponsorship and who they are sponsored by.

Here’s what reproduces the current senior management and leadership profile:

1. Mentorship and especially executive sponsorship have a catalytic impact on career advancement for both protégés and sponsors.

  • Male managers with sponsorship are 23% more likely (female managers with sponsorship are 19% more likely) to progress to the next rung of the career ladder than peers who do not have sponsors.
  • Managers and executives who sponsor high-achieving junior talent are 53% more likely to advance to the next leadership level relative to peers who don’t sponsor.

2. Access to mentorship and executive sponsorship is highly variable depending on who you are, regardless of performance = inequitable.

3. Mentorship and sponsorship are especially necessary to advance women and people of color.

  • Black managers are 65% more likely to progress to the next rung in the ladder if they have a sponsor.
  • Mentorship programs increase representation of Black, Hispanic, and Asian-American women, and Hispanic and Asian-American men, by 9% to 24%.
  • Having mentors and sponsors who advocated for them is the single attribute shared by people of color who have progressed furthest in the leadership ranks.
  • Executive sponsorship has been proven to be the most effective organizational intervention to advance Black talent.
  • Latina women with sponsorship earn 6.1% more than peers who lack sponsors and black women earn 5.1% more.

4. But people tend to mentor and sponsor those just like them – and this means the majority (with the power) mostly sponsors the majority.

  • 61% of people indicate their mentorship developed naturally.
  • As much as 91% of white managers have no Black, Asian, or Latinx people in their immediate social network.
  • 71% of sponsors report their protégé is the same race or gender as their own.
  • 58% of women and 54% of men who sponsor choose a protégé because they “make me feel comfortable.”
  • A study of 72 protégés found that 100% of sponsors of white male protégés were men and the majority (73.5%) were white. Among Black female protégés, most sponsors were Black (57%) and 27% were women.
  • Payscale found 77.1 percent of male protégés said they had a male sponsor while women were about half as likely to have a male sponsor.
  • Payscale found 90% of white men and women protégés reported they had a white sponsor, while Blacks and Hispanics were 35% less likely to.

5. Not only are there far fewer female and minority senior leaders, but increased personal career risk can hinder their sponsoring.

  • Women hold only 1/4 of executive roles in the 1000 largest companies and BIPOCs make up only 17% of the C-suite.
  • Despite a desire and even a higher sense of obligation to lift others of similar sex/gender up (26% for Black leaders vs. 20% for Hispanic and Asian and 7% for Caucasian), Black senior leaders face higher scrutiny and are 26% less likely to commit to being a sponsor than white executives.
  • More than one third of black leaders report they never sponsor a junior talent who looks like them – despite often wanting to, at tension with personal career risk.

6. To further the gap, white and male sponsors hold more influence on outcomes of their protégé’s employment than those from the non-majority groups.

  • In U.S. law firms and among lawyers who had sponsorship, white men were half as likely (30%) as women of color (62%) to feel that the lack of an influential mentor was a barrier to their advancement.
  • Payscale found: black women with black sponsors are paid 11.3% less than black women with white sponsors; Hispanic women with Hispanic sponsors make 15.5% less than those with white sponsors; women with women sponsors make 14.6% less than those with male sponsors, and even men with female sponsors make 8.7% less than those with male sponsors. Payscale notes the gaps shrink after compensable factors are weighed in, but the gap remains.

If you want to introduce more equity into talent development, you cannot look away from the affinity bias-based pattern of those with high social capital using that power and influence to promote those who look like them into power, too, while also further advancing their own status. Nor can you look away from how the non-majority individuals who break through to leadership are inhibited from doing the same.

Formal mentorship and sponsorship programs are about deliberately disrupting the cycle of inequitable talent development that has strongly influenced your management and leadership to date. In the next article, we explore how in more detail.

‍Guest contribution: Originally published on the Pulsely blog, written by Aimee Hansen. Pulsely delivers diversity and inclusion diagnostics and actionable DEI insights to drive inclusion, equity, and performance. Pulsely’s scientific framework combines the power of understanding four key drivers of inclusion: diversity data, workplace inclusion, inclusion competencies, and performance indicators. To learn more, visit Pulsely, read an interview with Co-Founder Betsy Bagley, or check out the Pulsely blog to find more content like this. 

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Indhira Arrington: Global Chief Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Officer, Ares Management

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Indhira Arrington“My career trajectory is a combination of two factors. The first is that I am standing on the shoulders of people and organizations who have sponsored me and have opened doors for me to join rooms, organizations and functions that I otherwise would not have been able to,” says Indhira Arrington. “The second is that while I was fortunate to have those opportunities present themselves, I was also prepared and motivated to seize those opportunities.”

Stepping Up to Opportunities, All the Way to the C-Suite

Instilled with a strong work ethic by her family and driven to prove herself as an immigrant in a new country, Arrington was determined to perform at her best and demonstrate her value from early on.

“Being an immigrant really is at the core of my experience,” she says, “Even though I’ve now lived in the U.S. longer than I lived in the Dominican Republic, I distinctly remember that feeling of being an ‘outsider.’”

With her parents speaking little English and no precedent for success in corporate America, Arrington’s “second family” at INROADS set her up with the mindset and skills that enabled her to perform at a high level (academically, as a 4.0 student) and step up to opportunities.

With both the prodding of her INROADS mentor and with the sponsorship of The Consortium, she received her MBA at NYU Stern School of Business before taking on sales and trading roles at Citi and Morgan Stanley: “I didn’t know what I didn’t know, and I was fortunate to have people who saw my potential as much bigger than I did. They pointed me in different directions.”

While building her career on the trading floor, Arrington says that DEI was her steady second job. As a “double only” Latina in the room, she was often called on for diversity conferences and networking needs. She wanted to show up and open doors for others, too.

Then came a crossroads of choice.

“Sales and trading was where I could have maximized my earning potential, but I faced the difficulty of having the intensity that job required and being the type of mother I wanted to be,” reflects Arrington. “I was very good at my job, but it didn’t fit with how I wanted the rest of my life to play out.”

Coinciding with the economic downturn and start of her family, Arrington shifted into diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) as her primary career focus in 2009 – first at Bank of America and then Wells Fargo, before taking her present role at Ares Management Corporation as Global Head of DEI in 2021.

“There are thousands of people that are good at their job and that want to ascend the corporate ladder, but doing it alone likely won’t get you there,” she says. “You also need to have strong executive presence and act like a leader, and then hopefully that combination gains you the sponsors who have the power to open those doors, propel you and pull you up.”

Becoming an Impact Player

As a constant learner, Arrington has focused on becoming the subject matter expert of her craft. Once she realized she could be vulnerable, ask for help and not figure everything out by herself, it was a game-changer in advancing her learning curve: “I always say to my team that when I don’t understand something, even today, explain it to me like a five-year old.”

A key principle she abides to and encourages in her team is to be in service of others: Don’t aim to be basic. Aim to be exceptional.

“Anybody can do what they are told and put the spreadsheet together. But if you’re in the service of others, you’re going to ask the next question about what they are trying to do and the end goal,” she says. “You take the work to the next level, and in doing so, you build good will and advocates who will remember you.”

Whether it’s volunteering to bring in great talent, working with ERGs, or taking the initiative to fix a broken process, Arrington suggests to ask, “Outside of your day job responsibilities, what are you doing to contribute to the greater good of the organization and to make yourself an impact player? Anybody can get work done. People want to promote impact players.”

Leveling Up To Advance Your Career

Arrington emphasizes that leveling up requires the maturity of being open and direct about what you need and want and what your expectations are, and not just expecting your boss (or anyone) to be a mind-reader.

Owning what you want also means learning to “manage your manager” – putting your objectives and goals out, and then soliciting the clear guidance on where you need to focus on developing your skillsets and capabilities to be able to reach your goals. Find out what might be getting in your way and what superpowers you need to double-down on to excel.

“Be unapologetic and say this is what I’m thinking, but also leave space in the room for your managers to say ‘maybe you’re thinking too small’ or ‘maybe you’re thinking too big.’”

Thirdly, Arrington has learned from experience that “the unwritten rules are real.” Knowing the difference between titles, influencers and key decision-makers, as well as knowing the personalities you are interacting with, is essential when it comes to succeeding in advancing your ideas as you rise to bigger roles where more is at stake and few ideas get funded.

“Pre-selling your idea to the right individuals and setting yourself up to succeed is so critical, but women often don’t focus enough on that,” she observes. “We focus on the best idea and presentation and assume everyone is going to like it. The pre-game and understanding how things really get done in your organization is key.”

Arrington encourages women to have a portfolio of sponsors and advocates you spend time with and who know the value you deliver, and be more strategic in building your network. She observes that men tend to build diverse networks that create a matrix intentionally directed towards where they want to go, whereas women tend to build their networks around proximity and likeness. Leverage your network as an opportunity to put your intentions out there to those in the places you want to go.

Impacting Change as a Latina

“As Latinas, we’re bred to be loud and we’re bred to sit in our truth,” laughs Arrington, reflecting on her cultural capital.

As a Latina woman she’s brought her personal experiences to the table: “There’s nothing like breaking down barriers by being vulnerable and telling your personal story of microaggressions and how you have been made to feel less, unwelcome or like you don’t belong in situations. It changes the way that reality lands when a person realizes that somebody that they know isn’t having the same experiences that they are.”

For two decades, Arrington has sat on the board of directors for the Committee for Hispanic Children and Families, supporting Latinos in New York around school, work and childcare. She is currently the Vice Chair for the Council of Urban Professionals (CUP), focusing on supporting women and people of color to leadership roles in corporate organizations. Her experience of feeling like an outsider has inspired her towards actions that bring about change.

While successful in overcoming obstacles, Arrington admits it has been challenging at times to be the only Latina in a room: “That’s where vulnerability came in. Without somebody that would have a naturally predisposed affinity towards me, I had to figure out how to break down barriers to be let in and be embraced even though I was different,” says Arrington. “It’s much easier when you feel that level of comfort and connectedness.”

Why Managing Is Really Coaching

Arrington jokes that she cannot have a boss who doesn’t want to be her friend, but she also means it: “If you don’t know me and you don’t understand what drives me and what ails me, then how could you truly be in charge of growing me and taking me to the next level?”

She continues, “I think it’s really important as managers that we take the approach of being coaches and changing the relationship from ‘I’m here to manage and make sure you do what you’re supposed to do’ to ‘I’m here to coach you and make sure that you exceed that.’”

In a coaching relationship, honest feedback can be received as care and guidance with your best interests at heart.

“Most managers feel like I can’t get too close because then I can’t be objective, and I think it’s the opposite,” says Arrington. “If you’re not close enough, you’re going to miss what’s happening and you’re going to miss opportunities to support people in a way that makes them want to come to work and be part of the community.”

Having often felt she had to prove herself along her journey, she would have a simple message to her younger self: “Stop being so scared. Try to enjoy it more along the way. You are worthy. You are good enough. You’re more than good enough.”

These days, Arrington practices giving herself grace on a daily basis. With her twelve and nine year-old sons playing flag football on the weekends, Arrington confesses to be that sports mom cheering on the sidelines with a cowbell. She enjoys yoga and learning through documentaries, and is an avid reader when she can sneak a few chapters in.

By Aimee Hansen

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Amber Hairston: Agency Underwriter, PGIM Real Estate

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Amber Hairston“For this moment, while employers are asking you to bring yourself to work, do it. Do it now. Do it today,” says Amber Hairston. “The hope is that this is a movement, not a moment. But time is of the essence, so do it. It will pay dividends.”

In honor of National Coming Out Day on October 11th, we share Hairston’s experience on freeing yourself into authenticity. 

Seeing the Hurdles Before They Come

Graduating during the global financial crisis and determined to exit the social confines of her rural Virginia hometown, Hairston took a position in marketing and communications. But “in typical Millennial fashion,” she made a network connection on Twitter who saw her as suited to commercial real estate finance and directed her towards an opportunity. In 2015, she then moved to PGIM, where she ascended across four positions within six years.

“I was redirected to the path that was intended for me,” reflects Hairston, who had planned to study business before diverting towards communications. “I think of myself now as a different kind of storyteller.”

As an underwriter, Hairston pitches deals to loan approvers after careful assessment of a property, who’s operating it, the market, and other financial risks. Attributing her work ethic to her parents, Hairston prides herself on attention to detail: “I’m very thoughtful in assessing what the hurdles are. I don’t always like to call them ‘risks’ necessarily. I call them ‘hurdles’—these are the hurdles, and this is how we can and will clear them.”

The volatility in the domestic and global economy, and the impact on the real estate investment marketplace, has definitely provided challenges to step into—and Hairston finds that exhilarating. While she won’t speak the most in a meeting room, when she does, she has reflected and has something powerful to say.

Time management and foresight have been her boons. “There’s nothing that I haven’t thought about when I’m underwriting a deal. There’s nothing that I encounter that I haven’t at least entertained as a possible hurdle. I’m never caught flat-footed or surprised.”

“Dropping the Weight Vest” To Rise in Authenticity

Reflecting on her desire to stretch beyond home as a teenager, she says, “It was a very black and white space in a literal and figurative sense. There wasn’t a lot of space for a queer woman of color in the town that I came from, and I knew that I could not grow in the ways that I needed to grow in that environment,” says Hairston. “D.C. just made a lot more sense, and it was my dream city in the United States.”

But while having left the confines of her small town, Hairston in some ways brought the burden of constraints within her to D.C.—until the pandemic.

“I kept the queer part of myself under wraps for so long. I tried to be something else and it was exhausting. And it’s not because of PGIM – this is the box that I grew up in, a limited view of what a woman can and should be, what they should look like,” says Hairston. “But the pandemic changed everything. We were at home and there was nobody to see me. There was only the work. It felt like I had been walking around with a ‘weight vest’ for years.”

Hairston recalls a moment when she was overwhelmed with work while colleagues were away and she needed all of herself: “I think that was the moment that everything changed because I didn’t have a choice. I had to take off the vest at that moment to power through.”

She continues, “Then as we started to return to the office in late 2021, I just told myself I wasn’t putting it back on. I decided I was done with it.”

“In a virtual setting and with all the focus on diversity, equity and inclusion, I was ready to bring the breadth and depth to my experience to bear as a queer woman of color.”

That choice has impacted her relationships across the organization and the industry: “My relationships wouldn’t be as meaningful personally or impactful professionally had I not brought everything to the table.”

And it’s impacted her performance and visibility: “I’ve never been a stronger performer. I draw so much power from all the things that make me different. I used to view it as a disadvantage, but it’s so essential to how I’m able to show up, how effective and efficient I am, and the impact that I’m able to make. I draw from everything, and to have not done that for so many years was a detriment to my performance.”

Reflecting overall, she says, “It sounds sad this box that I, in part, put myself into, the unnecessary weight that I carried for so long, but the upside is maybe I can run faster and jump higher than I ever thought I could.”

Evolving Her Work Relationships From Within

As Hairston has become more comfortable in taking up space in a way that is authentic to herself, she’s feels she’s allowed others to do the same.

“Historically, I’ve been really hard on people. I could be pretty demanding and have really high expectations,” reflects Hairston. “I’m not sure that’s changed, but with the pandemic and everything, the way that I approach it has changed. I’ve had to take it easier on myself and that’s translated to other people.“

Reflecting deeper, she shares, “My harshness was a reflection of how I was talking to myself. Now that I’ve reined in my own self talk, I’m more patient, compassionate and thoughtful in how I get the best out of others, because that’s ultimately what I want.”

Empowering Others Beyond Yourself

Hairston feels blessed by an abundance of mentors and sponsors who had her best interests at heart, even when it meant losing her: “I think a lot of people see those who support them, whether consciously or unconsciously, as tools for their own growth and advancement and production. But there have been many people, at many turns, who let me go even when it was going to make things uncomfortable for them. They wanted to see me rise.”

She wishes to take that with her, “There are people in this organization, and across the industry, who have altered the trajectory of my career by presenting me with an opportunity or a challenge. That’s the type of impact that I want to have,” she says.

“Part of the responsibility of leadership, whether you’re the CEO or have one direct report, is to develop people and I hope I never lose sight of that.” It’s also important to her to be a steady presence that others can call on when they need anything.

Hairston is inspired by leaders who embody vulnerability and transparency. “They have the confidence to give you the latitude for mistakes and really allow you to grow,” she says. That latitude has looked like saying her name in rooms she can’t be in and risking putting their name behind hers while advancing her into new challenges.

She traveled broadly before the pandemic – from Costa Rica, Dubai, and Cape Town to London and Zurich. While more grounded during recent times, she’s explored cultures through food and suspects she’s read about 35 books in the last year and a half.

A sci-fi fantasy and Harry Potter fan, she enjoys V.E. Schwab and sometimes reads young adult fiction to appreciate the diversity of representation that was absent when she was growing up. Though never a “dog person,” she was lovingly coerced into puppy parenting. She and her partner have a seven-month-old Bichon Frise named Artemis.

By Aimee Hansen

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Latina Inclusion: Do Not Check Your Identity at The Door!

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Latina Inclusion FeatureThe gap in Latina leadership in Corporate America is still an inclusion issue. But as more Latinas decide to go where they are valued, it’s Corporate America that is losing out the most – and more so in the future.

Hispanic and Latina women comprise only 1.6% of senior executives in the U.S.’s largest companies, less than other major demographic groups. USA TODAY reviewed 92 companies in the S&P 100 and found 18 had no Latinas in senior executive positions: including Apple, CostCo and Netflix. While few had a proportion equal to representation in the U.S. Workforce, PepsiCo, Procter & Gamble and Visa came closest.

It’s not just senior management: Latinas are underrepresented as only 4.4% of managers and 3.2% of professionals. And, according to the Latino Corporate Directors Association, Latinas hold only 1% of board seats in Fortune 500 companies, fewer than other gender or ethnic groups. But Latinas comprise 16% of the female labor force – the largest group behind white women, and by 2029, are projected to be 9.3% of the total US labor force.

Hispanic women earned 16.4% of bachelor’s degrees and 12.3% of master’s degrees in 2020, and Latinas represent 56% of Latinx students, though Latinx enrollment has taken some hit since the pandemic. Over two million Latina-owned small businesses exist – the fastest growing segment of the business community – with over 87% growth in business numbers since 2007. Latinas are creating business six times faster than any other group.

Barriers to Inclusion

Comprising 19% of the population and growing, Hispanic buying power continues to accelerate and demand that organizations understand this market.

While Latina women should have good reason to feel more emboldened than ever to bring their full identities to work through culturally relevant Latina leadership, they continue to be under-supported to do so and underpaid by corporate America.

When it comes to the paycheck, Latinas earn 55 cents for every dollar earned by non-Latino white men: even in the exact same job. Latinas earn 28% less than white women. The pay gap is also widest for Latinas with college degrees.

While Latinas ask for promotions and raises at similar rates to white men, the “broken rung” is exposed when you consider that Latinas are only 71% as likely as men in general to be promoted. Only 19% of Latinas feel supported by white co-workers. Only 5% of Latinos overall in big companies say they have a sponsor, whereas Latinos who do have sponsors are 42% more likely to be satisfied with career progression. Latinas who have reached executive levels often report the importance of that sponsorship in reaching where they are.

Latinas have reported being cast as caretakers, or the media image of ‘jefa of the household,’ rather than corporate leaders. Latinas are arguably more culturally wired for community building, a deeply held value which they often practice at home and that would serve organizations, but the value of individualism still dominates vertical mobility.

Latina women also report, according to Esther Aguilera, CEO of the Latino Corporate Directors Association, having to overcome biases around accents and myths and misperceptions around capabilities – which leads to a cycle, as we’ve heard echoed at The Glass Hammer this month, of Latina execs still feeling the internal drive of needing to prove themselves.

Indeed, 63% of Hispanic leaders indicated they have to work harder because of their ethnicity. And two in three Hispanic professionals felt educating coworkers around DEI falls upon them, spending substantial time whether it relates to their job or expertise.

Compared to non-Hispanic peers, Hispanic professionals are 53% less likely to feel included at work and 53% less likely to say they’re comfortable fully expressing their identities at work. Latina women have reported having to “check their identity at the door” or adjust their persona (code-switch) to fit into white masculine stereotypes of leadership.

The Post-Pandemic Impact

So it may come as no surprise that UCLA found that Latinas are leaving the workforce at higher rates than any other major demographic. Between March 2020 and March 2021, the workforce lost 336,000 Latinas, a drop of 2.74% in the workforce. Perhaps the promise of the American dream became too far stretched in reality for some, taking too much emotional, mental and physical toll without enough reward. One qualitative study found that senior level Latina talent were exiting Corporate America because of poor culture fit and a lack of evidence that Latinas were being structurally promoted.

“The Latina Pathway to Excellence in a Post-Pandemic World” report shared how the pandemic had changed the employment outlook of many Latinas. They both felt more invisible and yet found a “new virtual world confidence” in which they’ve learned to promote their profile more authentically at a professional level.

Mid-career Latinas expressed challenges such as: difficulty in maintaining their true selves in the workplace, a lack of champions they could identify with and trust, a lack of management check-ins, and lack of access to upper management. They emphasized the value of knowing your unique gifts and individual brand and leveraging the value that intersectionality brings to the table.

Executive-level leaders discussed promoting your distinct qualities, developing more skills and taking risks to seize opportunities amidst reduced visibility. They emphasized the importance of overcoming imposter syndrome as well as cultural Latin gender norms, being ‘ready to represent’ at the upper echelons amidst disproportionate scrutiny, and seeking mentorship and sponsorship (many had been sponsored by Latino men). They also encouraged trusting in the “Latina 6th sense” of intuition and decision making. Some C-Suite Latinas had leveraged the virtual meeting place to create new connections and visibility with senior leaders.

As written in Be Latina, “The growth of the virtual world allowed, in certain ways, for ‘authenticity in the business world.’”

It’s about Latina Inclusion

So what about organizations that want to get serious about promoting Latina talent? The answer is valuing the culture add and fostering cultural inclusion. At base level, greater inclusion for Hispanic and Latina women requires at least three things:

  1. Address unconscious bias in talent management decisions – Too many talent decisions are riddled in bias at each level (hiring, promotion, pay) and inhibiting organizations from leveraging and promoting Latina talent. From entry level recruitment to promotion to senior posts to pay packages, it’s possible to identify and shake up the way approaches have kept Latina talent from top positions.
  2. Make sponsorship happen – Ideally through formal sponsorship programs, managers and senior leaders should be challenged to reach beyond their own affinity bias and the gap in sponsorship for Latina women must close to transcend the block to corporate leadership.
  3. Encourage authenticity – Build a culture that celebrates each individual’s perspective, and the intersectionality that often informs that perspective, rather than pressures Latina women to forgo their wholeness to belong in the corporate workplace.
Please Don’t Check Your Identity!

Ask Hispanic and Latina executives, and showing up authentically can be the biggest challenge, but ultimately, there’s no path to stronger performance and personal fulfillment than being able to be who you are.

Latina women are bicultural, bilingual and possess many aspects of cultural wealth that can be leveraged as a leader. In part because of what it’s taken to get this far, Latinas often have developed strong skillsets of resilience, creativity, optimism, social ease, charisma, passion, relationship-building, multi-tasking and adaptability.

It’s recommended that Latinas who wish to thrive look for strong cultural fits that will value your whole selves, be persistent and also know when to adapt and take risks to overcome barriers. It’s important to accept imperfection in selves and others and be grounded in your ethnic background while navigating two cultures. Surround yourselves with mentors and those who can support your advancement.

One hunch about Latina leadership: it’s happening and those who embrace cultural diversity and inclusion will know the advantage of leveraging it.

By Aimee Hansen

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