Tag Archive for: executive women

Kate Kenner Archibald: Chief Marketing Officer, Dash Hudson

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Kate Kenner Archibald“The combination of expressing your needs and doing fewer things better is what I have learned in recent years,” says Kate Archibald, who shares on advancing in a workplace of women, creating a spherical life and managing up.

Growing as a Leader While Surrounded By Women

Having grown up in New York, Archibald idolized the big fashion house vibe. She was magnetized to how creativity and business merged together at Estée Lauder, where she spent 14 years specializing in luxury brands, including Tom Ford Beauty and Bobbi Brown, honing her career towards tech marketing. In November, she moved to Dash Hudson, an all-in-social entertainment insights marketing software platform that works across some of the most influential global brands including Apple, Amazon and Disney.

With three kids (currently, seven years, five years and ten months old) and a husband with a full-time job, maintaining her career through the family journey has been a choice she has committed to, partly because she derives great satisfaction from her work, and also because of the independence mindset she adopted early on.

“My father really impressed upon me the value of being independently successful as a woman and used to impress upon me that I could be a CEO,” she reflects, “He’s been a huge impact in my life, so being independent has always been important for me.”

At Estée Lauder, she was surrounded by a workforce of 85% women, so the vertical track to, and horizontal track across, leadership positions were well-accessible for women who wished to advance, and Archibald navigated across several cross-functional leadership positions.

“I was encouraged and enabled, and there were opportunities,” she says. “You still have to know that nobody is going to hold your hand, and you are the owner of your destiny. But it helps to be in a place where the growth mentality as a woman is appreciated.”

Now at Dash Hudson, Archibald enjoys the mix of professional and personal life supported by the tech-like atmosphere and culture while still leveraging the leadership experiences she gained through her tenure in beauty and luxury.

Creating a Spherical Life and Reserving Family Time

“I am very direct in terms of what we’re trying to accomplish and what we need to do to achieve our goals. I try to get to the root of the problem and reduce the back-and-forth,” Archibald says, accrediting her need for work-family balance for the acute focus. “I also enjoy creating an environment of collaboration by enabling people to see outside of their silos, and to understand how the piece they are contributing is interrelated and contributing to the other teams. I’m a huge proponent of creating a structured collaboration framework and connecting the dots.”

Archibald has recently been inspired by the novel approach her CEO takes to hiring and culture at Dash Hudson: “The mentality is people first. Let’s find the best, smartest, most amazing people and figure out where they can add the most value. The strength of the talent and the true belief that diversity makes us stronger creates an incredible culture. The level of support felt between peers and teams is a real shift for most people when they join the company. Especially in a hybrid environment.”

Within a mostly female environment for over a decade, Archibald has had the benefit of sharing lots of honest conversations with successful women. She has often sought insight on managing professional and family demands, even the basics of keeping a household running. A recommendation she received along the way was to think of your life as a circle or a pie graph that includes everything that is important to you:- family, work, health, friends, spirituality, etc.

“If one part of the pie gets more dominating than you want it to be, you have to consider how to make that part smaller so you can ‘right-size’ your family life or your spiritual life, for example,” she says. “That has really helped me to compartmentalize what I’m doing and how it impacts the other parts of my life.”

As a traditional Jewish family, Archibald and her family observe Shabbat every week, reserving Friday night and Saturday strictly for time with family. Honoring this has been fundamental in helping manage her time, and because that time is a weekly fixed date, it’s also helped her feel more peaceful during the week when she needs to work. Additionally, it ensures that she is aligned with her partner on their collective family goals.

“I think a lot of parents feel guilty if they don’t have dinner every night with their family,” she says. “But for me, every Friday is a guaranteed dinner together with all the family and Saturday is family, all day. No exceptions. It has given me a supportive structure in my life.”

In addition to being influenced by her father’s outlook on independence and her supportive husband, Archibald attests that her mother is the hardest working person she knows. While Archibald went off to first grade, her mother went back to school and obtained her PhD in Neuropsychology. Inspired by her, Archibald wishes to model to her daughter and two sons that a woman can have a career and still be present for her family.

Managing Up and Knowing Your Own Expectations

As she’s grown more senior in her career, Archibald has found herself getting better at reinforcing her own brand of executive presence and managing up: “The transition over your career is toward managing up, and ensuring that you get what you need. I learned this the hard way when faced with health challenges, when I was doing too much and not telling people what I needed. I really have come to see the importance of don’t take on too much and do fewer things better, both of which I pass on to women just starting their career.”

When it comes to mentoring, she also tells everyone, but especially mothers with young children, that if you’re not happy at home, you’re not going to be happy at work.

“If your work is really impacting your home life, take that step back to figure out what and how you can fix it. Push for flexibility, which is becoming more common, or figure out what the issue is,” she says, “But if you’re not satisfied with how much time you have with your family, you’re never going to be happy at work, no matter how much money you’re making.”

Archibald advises women to go back to the sphere and consider the balance across areas and really understand “what does good look like, for you?” which is different for everyone. She says, you have to be able to manage life in a way that works for your expectations for your family and work life ― and honestly, check if your employer is willing to support that for and with you.

Changing Jobs Amidst a Remote Workplace

Having joined Dash Hudson well into the pandemic, and in the middle of her crossover maternity leave, Archibald has yet to meet her new colleagues in person. But in this exceptional context of our times, she has hugely valued a strong and communicative organizational culture, which has supported her onboarding and becoming part of the team.

Together, her family loves skiing in the winter and swimming in the summer in the Hudson Valley, where she loves being outdoors and active in nature. She has a real passion for ice cream and swears her ice cream place in Tivoli, New York is verifiably (just check Food & Wine Magazine) the best in the world.

By Aimee Hansen

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Aine Leddy: Information Technology Business Partner, AIG Investments

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Aine Leddy“Curiosity is a hallmark of who I am and has been a huge enabler to my success. I am trying to grow all the time,” says Aine Leddy. “One thing I found when I first came to the U.S. decades ago was that many people were specialized, deep and narrow. I always aspired to know a little bit about everything.”

Leddy speaks to elevating to the C-Suite, cultivating intellectual curiosity and being proactive in expanding your ability to lead.

Stepping up to the C-Suite

Irish by birth, Leddy emigrated to the U.S. in the late 80’s while training to be an oil trader. Finding that her personality was not suited to the aggressive trading environment, she moved into financial services at Morgan Stanley, where she received an analyst training that she likens to an in-house Executive MBA.

After holding a variety of financial roles across 22 years at the firm, she reached an inflection point while working as the finance partner to the Chief Information Officer (CIO) of the investment management division, Marianne Bachynski, AIG Investments+ Chief Information Officer, at the time. Technology was developing to become its own branch of the business, and Leddy was given the opportunity to step into a Chief Operating Officer (COO) role with overview of the IT business.

“I’m a big picture kind of person. I find closeness to decision-making and strategy very compelling. I love to ideate and be in a position where you can see ideas taking shape and then ultimately come to fruition,” says Leddy. “I enjoy the increased personal responsibility to make things happen as well.”

After a few transitions, Leddy began working at AIG in September 2020, motivated by the opportunity to learn about the insurance industry at a highly reputable firm, expand her skillset and reunite with Bachynski. While she has yet to be in the room with her team due to the need to work virtually, she’s been highly impressed by the collaboration, communication, cutting-edge performance, and progress on the big, gnarly technological issues like cloud migration.

Being Curious with Breadth

“I personally like to know enough about everything ‘to be dangerous’ and went out of my way to equip myself with that knowledge,” she says. “That curiosity has served me, particularly with my entreé into the tech COO world. I could show up at the table and enter right into a discussion about the business strategy and where technology fits in, and that was apparent to the people who have given me the opportunities.”

As a teacher’s daughter, Leddy prides herself on being super-prepared and putting the “sweat equity” into knowing her stuff, and it’s a hot-button for her to watch someone trying to wing it when they clearly haven’t done the same preparation. Despite this, she has learned to take in stride the out of left field questions as she is also prone to be the one to ask the question.

Being curious as a principle means the willingness to reveal what you don’t know: “I think a lot of women think it’s better not to ask because maybe you should already know. So, I might soften that by prepping my question with, ‘I probably should know this, but would you mind explaining it anyway.’”

Nine out of ten times, the person next to her will thank her for asking because they were wondering the same thing.

Taking Action in Empowering Yourself

Leddy emphasizes it’s critical to be solution-focused: “I do like to ideate and strategize, but I’m also an action-oriented person. You can sit around and admire the problem for a long time, but ultimately, you have to get the stuff done.”

She feels that taking personal initiative in growing yourself is foundational, as she, too, often hears people defer the responsibility of their learning limitations to their organization, when she argues you can be proactive yourself.

“Training is out there. It won’t always be the customized training that you do as part of the code of conduct or something like that,” advises Leddy. “But you can go and talk to someone with a different skillset than yours. There’s tons of information out there for you to train yourself, and there’s so much you can do for yourself in terms of expanding your horizons.”

When Leddy glances around her senior circle of peers at AIG Investments, and at some of her previous employers, she’s invigorated by the presence of women leaders. She has found herself fortunate to be in environments that reward intellectual curiosity, foremost, and where she felt she could be herself.

“Some women feel they need to be more aggressive to be successful. I never felt I had to be anybody other than who I am,” says Leddy. “When you bring your authentic self to the table in any situation, you’re going to be more successful.”

Being Willing to Move, But Also Move On

“You don’t realize how immersed you are in a culture until you have to get to know another one. I think switching companies taught me to be more open and not to bring my bias from another culture,” says Leddy. “That includes listening upfront and taking in how people work, work together and what’s important to leaders in one company versus another.”

Earlier in her career, while putting three children through college and being motivated by a compensation-focused opportunity, Leddy learned that you don’t always know whether something is going to be a good fit until you’re inside of it.

“I tell those I mentor that you cannot know all of the elements of anything ahead of time, you just can’t. So, if you want to switch departments or companies or even careers, you think you are going in with ‘eyes wide open’ but you may not be,” she says. “The lesson I learned is that if it’s making you miserable, change your situation as quickly as you can, learn from what you don’t want and then move on. Don’t stay where you’re unhappy.”

Staying True to What You Want

While Leddy feels she was most often mentored on business skills, her mentorship has always begun with listening into: what do they really want?

She’s found that it tends to be guidance on the softer side of matters, such as how she managed to get promoted while her kids were little and still feel present in the home. Leddy is known by her peers for being grounded and ‘unflappable’, and she carries that grounding to her mentees.

One thing she imparts onwards is never be afraid to ask for a raise or promotion but be solid in arguing your case for why you’ve earned it. She also advises to not get caught in emotional defeat when you don’t receive what you want, but be resilient, prepare to go back in and to argue your case again.

“I think women do ourselves a disservice, because we take things personally and get annoyed with our manager if we don’t get the raise or promotion,” she observes. “Whereas men seem to think, ‘If it doesn’t happen, I’ll get back in the ring and I’ll fight the good fight again next year.’ Ultimately, promotion is a numbers game. It can’t happen for everybody all of the time, so rather than take it so personally, elevate your case and prepare to ask again.”

Leddy has been married for almost 33 years and her three grown children are now in their mid-late twenties. She loves her Peloton bike and taking in the sun in her garden. She is a huge reader, a passionate etymologist and prides herself on living holistically to enjoy all aspects of her life.

By Aimee Hansen

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Grace Lee: Treasurer & Head of Financial Planning and Analytics, S&P Global

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Grace Lee“I’m completely open to, and actually encourage, my team telling me when I’m wrong. I invite them to convince me that I’m wrong. I love that!” says Grace Lee. “I want us to have the best ideas, and that’s only possible when we are all contributing, debating and challenging each other.”

Lee speaks to ramping up the opportunity for responsibility, why motivating others makes the real difference in impact and why the ability to have a constructive relationship with healthy debates means you must be willing to challenge and be challenged.

Following The Call To Responsibility and Impact

“You do things for three years and then you look for a new challenge,” laughs Lee, recalling what the Head of HR at a previous firm said to her. She is motivated by massive strategic challenges with fast growth curves—and the desire to manage more responsibility while seeing the direct impact of her work.

Having planned to become a lawyer because of her love for formulating a thesis, supporting an argument and conducting a robust debate, Lee deferred law school to follow the investment banking hype out of Columbia University, and took an analyst position in Asia.

While in Asia, she discovered that she was far more drawn to the financial analytics and investor storytelling components of investment banking versus the work she partnered on with international corporate lawyers when on deals.

“The thing that I appreciated about certain aspects of investment banking is you can see the direct impact of your work. When working on an IPO of a company, if the competitive analysis and valuation work you’ve done is compelling, you should see that play out in the markets. Similarly with M&A, if investors deem that the merger makes strategic sense and the valuation is reasonable, you see that reflected in the price performance of those companies,” says Lee. “For me, seeing direct impact is so important.”

After three years in Asia, she moved back to the U.S. headquarters of the same investment bank. Subsequently, she went for a rewarding full-time Harvard MBA, which allowed her to focus on learning and traveling. She highly recommends a full-time MBA, rather than an EMBA, if you have accrued both the experience and finances to give yourself the opportunity.

After Harvard, Lee moved to the equity research group within the same investment bank. The firm had just acquired an asset management firm and she was able to join its financial institutions research team, where she was able to build upon her experiences in investment banking but now, formulate her own theses on which companies made most sense to buy vs. sell. After another few years, she thought “instead of analyzing these companies and the strategic direction that they go, I’d love to participate in the strategy making of a company and see how that transpires.”

She took a big leap to Voya Financial, helping to lead the IPO of the U.S. business for what was formerly ING, a top global financial powerhouse before the crisis.

“In my early 30’s, that was a really transformational experience. We were basically in a start-up environment, but for a massive company with leading businesses,” says Lee. “Before IPO-ing the company, we had to create the story of how the sum of the businesses made strategic sense together, and were far greater than the individual parts.”

When that role eventually evolved to maintenance, Lee moved onto a couple Executive Chief of Staff roles at other firms, before landing at S&P Global, which she came to be familiar with as her mentor from a prior firm had recently joined the company.

Merging Strategic and Analytical Outlook

“Coming from an investment banking and equity research background, we were trained to formulate both the high-level strategic picture, as well as be comfortable with the underlying analytics that support the strategy. For example, the investment case wouldn’t hold for a certain stock if the secular trends for the industry were all deteriorating. It’s valuable to be able to both see the big strategic picture and back that up with analytical horsepower,” says Lee.

Lee feels the ability to influence people is important and something she has honed, as is staying abreast of the macro-environment.

“Our job isn’t static, so to constantly keep educated on how the economy, markets and world is evolving is important,” observes Lee.

Inspiring Greatness In Others

Through both executive coaching and mentorship, Lee has realized that while striving for personal achievement has delivered her this far, the true opportunity for incremental growth and impact now lies in inspiring greatness from others.

One of her mentors shared that a mentor once advised that if you’re operating at 100% as a high achiever, it takes a lot of work to ramp yourself up to 110%. But if a whole team is operating at 70% of their performance potential and you are able to elevate the team to 80%, the incremental impact of that shift is much, much greater.

Lee has embraced this philosophy, particularly as in recent roles, her direct reports and management responsibilities have increased. While she still rolls up her sleeves and does her own modeling or formats her own PowerPoint presentations from time to time, she realized that her impact is no longer measured solely on her performance, but on the camaraderie and achievements of her broader team. “The joy I used to get seeing the price performance of a successful IPO I worked on, I now get watching my employees grow and succeed.  Some of the greatest compliments I have received recently were from my staff who have told me about the profound impact I have had on their professional development.”

More deeply embracing empathy and the softer skills is part of her current leadership approach, qualities which she admits wer not central to her personal achievement mindset.

“Earlier in my career, I focused on quick and seamless execution,” she reflects. “I didn’t much appreciate the softer skills, but now that I oversee a range of initiatives, it is impossible to be that strong individual contributor across all of these. I am also recognizing that what I need to do is empathize and elevate those I work and partner with, as collectively we can all achieve more than any single contributor,” says Lee.

She also notes that leaders she most admires, including executive management at her current company, demonstrate these skills and she feels inspired by them to always do her best.

Setting the Tone And Encouraging Women’s Voices

As a Korean-American woman, Lee is often a unique face as finance in corporate America tends to be white male-dominated. But growing up with a younger brother, all male cousins and having two sons, she isn’t necessarily out of her element.

“At my level you don’t see that many females, but that has not been a deterrent for me. My personality is a bit more direct, and I think that resonates more with my male colleagues,” says Lee. “That being said, the people I’m closest to and develop the closest relationships with are female. The higher you go, there’s fewer women but we really support each other.”

Naturally assertive herself, Lee will often encourage or even nudge her female reports to speak up. “In the reviews I give them, I tell them ‘I know you share good emails and insights with me, but I think everyone would benefit from you sharing those ideas.’”

In the virtual meeting room, she will take the initiative to volunteer other women to speak, mentioning that she knows her female coworker (by name) has ideas to share on this topic. She also IMs with managers and peers when topics come up, either to bounce off possible points or let a colleague know her input would be valued on this topic.

Being Willing to Challenge and Be Challenged

Lee emphasizes the value of being willing to challenge, as well as being willing to be challenged as a leader. “I have strong opinions, but I am the very first person—if you tell me why I’m wrong and give me data points— to say, ‘I’m wrong. Let’s shift.’”

Equally, she is unafraid to challenge her current boss, when she has a different perspective on how to approach an issue. “He’s a very logical man and he doesn’t want ‘yes people, because they add less value than people who will think strategically and then push back. I appreciate this about him and have tried to emulate this in my own management style.”

Lee thinks one of the best and important decisions she’s made is choosing a husband who is also an advisor and coach to her. She also appreciates that he always challenges her, and keeps it real and her grounded. She enjoys spending quality time with him, her six and nine year old sons and also watching Korean dramas.

By Aimee Hansen

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