Tag Archive for: growth

Julie Gottshall: Partner and Chair, Employment Litigation and Counseling Practice, Katten

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Julie Gottshall

When she was first starting out, Katten’s Julie Gottshall would not have predicted she would spend nearly her entire legal career working for a single large law firm. In a profession with many options, and an era that often rewards job changes, Gottshall believed she would join different employers and maybe even take some time off the career fast track. Instead, Gottshall found a position that enabled her to grow and balance, and decided to stick with it.

Sometimes, says Gottshall, the best opportunity is the one you already have.

Finding Her Niche

Gottshall’s career has been a steady climb. After graduating from George Washington University Law School, she decided that moving to Chicago would be her “great life adventure,” despite the fact that she had no obvious connection to the city. She initially eschewed the largest law firms, choosing to start her legal career at a midsize firm that she hoped would provide a more appealing lifestyle. But when she was a fourth-year associate, two partners with whom she worked closely joined Katten. She moved with them to continue her career focus on employment counseling and litigation, a practice she has solidly established and now leads.

Gottshall felt drawn to employment law for the human element of the practice, and the opportunity to keep her corporate clients out of trouble but defend them if they nonetheless found themselves facing a lawsuit. At Katten, Gottshall handles a broad spectrum of employment issues, including worker mobility (e.g., non-compete implementation and enforcement); employee separations and reductions in force; worker classification and wage/ hour compliance; handbook and policy implementation; workplace investigations; and discrimination and harassment prevention. She has litigated in numerous state and federal courts at both the trial and appellate level, and before all manner of government agencies. She also acts as an impartial third-party arbitrator on the Employment Panel of the American Arbitration Association, where she has decided cases involving breach of contract; discrimination, retaliation and harassment issues; and other workplace matters.

Gottshall likes to quip that one of her most impressive professional achievements is to fly deftly under the radar, since she works hard to keep her clients on track and out of the spotlight.  Always one to look for practical solutions, she describes herself as a counselor first, an attorney second, and a litigator last. Still, she knows her way around a courtroom. She is particularly proud of a whistleblower case she argued and won before the Illinois Supreme Court – a victory that was the culmination of 11 years of work. After she prevailed in the lower court only to see the decision overturned on appeal, she sought certiorari, becoming one of seven out of 237 petitions the Illinois Supreme Court agreed to hear that session. The high court ruled unanimously in her client’s favor, marking a noteworthy victory for her client and a favorable precedent for other employers.

Gottshall finds employment law is a particularly exciting space right now, given the current remote work environment during the pandemic that has prompted employers to reimagine the workplace and what it will look like in both the near and distant future, as well as presented challenges regarding workplace safety, sick leave and furloughs and layoffs.

Mastering the Balancing Act

While the legal field continues to evolve in its support for personal life choices, Gottshall finds that women still face a constant challenge in finding the right balance. “We are called upon to take on so many roles— some that we need to do and some that we want to do,” says Gottshall. “It’s up to each person to decide how to allocate her time and navigate how much is spent on family and other pursuits, versus how much is poured into a career.”

Still, Gottshall has found Katten conducive to personal as well as professional growth. As she notes, a long tenure at a single firm allows you to build credibility and good will. Your colleagues know your work ethic and contributions, which better positions you to set boundaries and request flexibility. She encourages the use of maternity and paternity leave and other options such as Katten’s sabbatical program, designed to help promote work-life balance. “I applaud women who lean in, but also take advantage of the programs offered, especially today as companies realize they have to adapt to keep their top performers,” Gottshall said. Like most women, Gottshall tries to multi-task when she can. In fact, she once leveraged her maternity leave to take a mediation course to further her career. “Women should determine the best course for them, their families and careers.”

Gottshall appreciates opportunities like the Katten Women’s Leadership Forum that can support women attorneys’ desire to create bonds with other women and fulfill the responsibility to be a mentor.

Part of her balance also comes from using her skills in her community. For example, she has been a school board member for eight years, which she sees as an important commitment. “It’s a gratifying way to leverage my professional knowledge while giving back,” she says.

With one daughter in college and another in her senior year of high school, Gottshall and her husband are looking forward to determining what it means to be “empty nesters.” For now, they enjoy paddle sports and indulge in their passion for travel, especially visiting national parks.

“You have to be mindful of your priorities,” she said, “and look for the joy in everyday pursuits so you don’t lose sight of perspective in all the things life offers you.”

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Kelli Hill: Senior Director of Planning, Central Region, Wells Fargo Private Bank

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Kelli Hill

“In the moment, you might think that your path in life doesn’t seem clear. It might seem like it’s going in a direction that’s not what you had planned,” says Wells Fargo’s Kelli Hill, based in Minneapolis. “I’ve learned to go with it and have confidence that life will take you right where you need to be.”

From unexpected career and personal turns to crossing the finish line at an Ironman Triathlon, Hill shares on navigating towards growth and fulfillment.

Trusting A “Zig-Zagging” Career Track

“Prior to joining Wells Fargo over eight years ago, I would have described my career path as a bit of a zig-zag road. That’s the way that I thought of it.”

While at the University of Minnesota Law School, she wanted to become a public defender. But Hill remembers sitting in a tax class one day and turning to the student next to her and saying, “Isn’t this fantastic?” The reaction she received was quite the contrary.

That was the moment she suspected this might be the field for her.

Out of law school, Hill took a job in public accounting at Deloitte & Touche. She left Deloitte (now Deloitte Tax) to practice law and spent most of private law practice in the trust & estates and business transition planning groups at Minneapolis-based, Fredrikson & Byron, PA. She enjoyed the work, the firm and her colleagues, and was learning a lot, but felt like something was missing.

“I didn’t want to look back and say, ‘I was a successful attorney and worked at a terrific firm with so many talented colleagues, but was never really completely fulfilled.’” reflects Hill.

Hill left private law practice to run the tax, trust and legal group of a single-family office headquartered in St. Paul, Minnesota.  It was during her time at the family office that Hill discovered the benefits and impact that having a financial plan and, specifically doing strategic wealth planning, can have on high net worth families.

When she joined Wells Fargo as a senior wealth planning strategist in 2012, she began to see congruency in the experiences she’d accumulated and where she was going, eventually rising to a Senior Director of Planning in Wealth Management.

“I thought to myself, ‘my entire career path has been tailor-made for this role and this experience,’” says Hill. “It was no longer a zig-zag to me.”

Working with Individuals and Families

What Hill loves most about her work in wealth management (and wealth planning, in particular) is supporting and advising clients on personal and financial decisions that are otherwise difficult to make, to greater outcomes than you might even imagine.

“As a professional, when you help somebody to make financial decisions, it has a qualitative impact that often far outweighs any tax dollars saved,” she says. “It can have such profound impacts on their lives and, when that happens, the appreciation and gratitude is overwhelming.”

As an exemplary moment of this, Hill recalls working with a family to transition their business to the next generation.  Her work led to conversations that, as a family, they had not previously been able to confront.

“We had this moment where they actually told each other how they felt about the business and their desired places in it,” remembers Hill, “I will never forget it.”  Beyond ultimately being able to identify solutions that enabled the family to achieve their financial goals, Hill recalls this moment and how important to the family their work together had become.

Being Open and Receptive to Mentorship

“I would not be in the position I am today without having had the benefit of supportive mentors and sponsors,” Hill attests. “I’ve worked with some pretty wonderful people in my career, especially while at Wells Fargo.  In fact, most of the mentors and sponsors with whom I’ve had the privilege of having were/are managers of mine.”

If you want to attain strong mentorship and sponsorship, whether you are the mentor or mentee, Hill recommends listening, being receptive and open, and most of all—being yourself.  Early in her career, Hill recalls a mentor saying to her “don’t try to fake it, people will know.”

“I always try to be open to feedback, even if it stings a little.  I want to continue to improve and work on my professional and personal development,” she notes. “The individuals who have become my mentors and sponsors have pointed out that my openness to feedback and focus on self-improvement are characteristics they enjoy most about working with me. The other is my being authentic, being me.”

Hill says her professional self is just who she is. These days, that includes embracing the realness of her seven year old daughter wanting to say hello to her colleagues on a Zoom call.

“This is me,” says Hill. “I always try to be my authentic self.  To really connect with people —your colleagues, your clients —you have to let them see you. I’ve learned that to be a great leader, it’s a good thing to be vulnerable, authentic, natural. To be you.”

Hill also recommends implementing the advice you receive.

“It’s one thing to solicit and ask for advice and guidance,” says Hill. “It’s another thing to actually take it, and I do my best to do so and will continue to.”

Growth Through Change And Adversity

On a personal level, Hill values personal growth through challenge as well as learning through making mistakes.

In her early thirties, she experienced an unexpected divorce that shook her world.

“I took the opportunity to work through a big change in my life very seriously,” says Hill. “I remember saying, ‘This is an opportunity for me to really figure out who I am.’ It impacted my life tremendously, it was traumatic—and yet I would do it all over again, every bump, every hurdle. My life experiences have helped shape who I am today and, as painful as some may have been to go through, I appreciate them all.”

In both personal and work life, Hill is aware the road of transition can be a time of discomfort and challenge, but keeps focused on the vision.

On an organizational level, Wells Fargo has embarked on an evolution to create greater consistency around bringing financial products, services and solutions to all clients through a more horizontal structure.  While the work will result in “a more effective and efficient organization for our clients and shareholders, the change can be challenging.”

“When we look back six months from now, we’ll see how we’ve transformed and know that it is right where we are supposed to be.” Hill tells her team.

Trusting Your Own Strength

Hill never for a moment doubted her own vision of being personally successful.  Though she came from a single-parent household with modest financial means, Hill is proud of being the first in her family to go to college and then on to law school, which was the beginning of her career path.

While recovering from that divorce years ago, she remembers a moment of personal empowerment that taught her she was capable of anything.

A few years into her career, she was a self-confessed coach potato who realized it was time to change. The first time she put on a pair of tennis shoes and ran a single mile, it took her 14 minutes. But she was thrilled.

Then, she was hooked—training up to participate in marathons and eventually an Ironman triathlon.

“I remember crossing the finish line of the Wisconsin Ironman and thinking, ‘There is nothing I can’t do’” beams Hill, who also met her husband through the triathlon community, with whom she is raising their daughter.

Her contagious enthusiasm has encouraged several others on the running path, and she keeps up a morning workout which she loves, though being a mom is now her number one priority.

Her favorite time with her daughter is bedtime reading. It began with she and her husband reading to their daughter when she was an infant and now it’s listening to their daughter read to them—and Hill wouldn’t trade it for any finish line, not these days.

Abbot Downing, a Wells Fargo business, offers products and services through Wells Fargo Bank, N.A. and its various affiliates and subsidiaries. Wells Fargo Bank, N.A. is a bank affiliate of Wells Fargo & Company.

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Change Your Mindset To Change the World (and Your World)

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By Nicki Gilmour

As we close out our Black History Month coverage this week, and in a direct follow up to my Op-ed on mental constructs regarding Race and how to talk about racism.

I ask how can you ensure your network is not just full of people like you, who hold the same constructs and therefore everyone can easily have confirmation bias? Bad for business with potential ‘groupthink’ coming into play, and bad for personal growth.

I am going to ask you to check whether you walk the talk on having an inclusive network.

Does your network consist of people who look, think and act like you, in every way? I am here to ask what can you gain by broadening your horizons?

How can you ensure you are getting to know perspectives that are different from yours? Equally, how can you explore enough when you are getting to know someone, to find out if that person who do not look like, can actually be very similar? How can you not presume or make assumptions based on stereotypes? It is hard because you brain “goes” there and research from the fields of neuroscience and social science’s “ladder of inference” can be shared with you in one sentence here. Simply put, your brain tricks you into thinking you have seen this before and you know what this is about. Guess what? You don’t know what is coming next, whether it is your brain seeing four red cars and subliminally telling you the next car will be red. Or whether your brain tells you that leaders are always better if they are tall white men even if you don’t know the person himself but in concept only. Or you do know the person and you dismiss their flaws and give unearned credibility to them due to concepts.

My point is, appearances can be deceptive. We are all made up of complex identities, no one is simple or one dimensional and we all have a gender (male is a gender too), ethnicity (maybe we need a new word as it implies white protestant as a benchmark baseline ), orientation (straight is an orientation too), nationality, work position, parent or not parent status, even golfer or not golfer status. Most of us, have had some affiliation to a legacy or current dominant group. We can go through life like that, easily. I had very little perspective for example of what it meant to be a Catholic growing up in Belfast as my class and religion meant I was never really stopped by army or police or had to deal with thugs and gangs and any resemblance of poverty. Bombs yes, they were everywhere and random, but the everyday drag and bias of being in the minority and less powerful group in my society, no. Yet, my mindset was one of scarcity, fear, paranoia and being aware to this day of the so-called “other”. I am not saying I am freed 100% from my sectarian constructs – maybe 99%, but I know that i see parallels in the USA with race and that is why I know for sure that people can take the diversity journey and grow. As Maya Angelou said, “when you know better, you do better.”

So, where do you start?

Step 1: Take the time to understand your values because values are espoused versions of your implicit beliefs. Chances are you are running the same old program that was handed to you in childhood via your direct environment, family structures, institutions such as school and church/temple/mosque, and the overall society you were born into and whatever norms that group had in play.

Step 2: Write out every construct you have been told such as “Trust is earned” or “X, y, z is the way it is”. What do you tell yourself when you are in varying situations as who to hire for the project, who to cut from the project, and who to promote? What do you tell yourself when you are stressed at work and having less than optimal interactions?

Challenge the and every single line by asking yourself simple questions such ‘Do I believe this, truly?’ or an advanced version of this could be ‘How else can I look at this?’ or ‘Is this still working for me now?’ and “how is this actually something that was given to me by my father/mother/granny, and is not actually how i feel at this time?”

If you would like to work with me as a coach on personal and professional growth and renewal, with real insights for you, about behaviors and the context of the operating system you are in. Please book a free exploratory time with me. Life is too short to carry outdated constructs around. Grow! Whether it is individual, or organizational change, it does not happen without awareness as the starting point.

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How To Achieve Growth and Renewal at Work and Life

By Nicki Gilmour

It is the holiday season and end of year.

Many of us are sprinting towards the finish line, busy with deadlines and projects that need to be cleared off our desk this week so that we can take a break over the next few weeks.

Taking a break is very helpful. But, how do you really use your break to feel renewal and even perhaps growth? I believe that learning from the good and the bad and having a growth mindset gives us what we need to be better, more effective and have more of everything we want.

These past few years, I have become very interested in neuroscience and how our conscious and unconscious mind works for us and against us. This has been in service of helping my coaching clients break life-long paradigms implicitly formed via constructs over time from birth which just don’t work for them. How we see things matters since we evaluate our options through that developed over time lens. For example, people who operate with a lens of loss will have a tougher time seeing the opportunity or gains in a situation and rather see what they don’t have or didn’t get. Opposite to that example, are people who have an over tuned mental model around aspiration as they will goal set around aspirations without a grounding on the resources and factors that are needed to get there.

It is the ability to be able to create and use strategic insight by literally conduct ongoing self-appraisal accurately, that allows you to know what strengths can be deployed to achieve your goals; real ones that matter. Goals that enable growth and renewal one thought, feeling and action at a time.

Here are some TEDx talks to enjoy over the holidays as a change of scene and some “off-task” time can be very good for the brain!

Happy Holidays to theglasshammer readers and if you wish to have an exploratory coaching call (at no charge) to see if coaching can help you, then email nicki@evolvedpeople.com

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How to Lean “In-Between” and Keep Your Career Moving

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Get to the top! Lean in! Break the glass ceiling!

These clarion calls from the power sisterhood sound exhausting, unrealistic—even undesirable—to women in the everyday sisterhood feeling pressured to turbo-charge their careers alongside caregiving for children, aging parents and the monumental effort to make it home in time for family dinner.

What if you’re a talented, ambitious woman who actually prefers to, or needs to, lean “in between”?

Today ambitious women are not only found in the corner office or charging the corporate ladder in leaps and bounds. Ambition has a new face at a time when women have respectable professional options beyond the tied-to-your-desk, 60+-hour-a-week corporate job.

If your goal is to pursue work with substance in a reasonable work structure, you have three ways to be on an employer’s payroll—without sacrificing professional stature:

1. Make peace with a current full-time job that has reasonable demands, don’t worry about advancing to levels that could swallow your personal life and find ways to “grow in place”.
2. Turn your current full-time+ job and long commute into a more flexible situation—reducing hours and/or working at least partially at home.
3. Find an enlightened employer who offers a more flexible culture and healthy paths to professional growth.

Keep Growing Without the Big Promotion

If a big promotion is in the offing and you’d rather pull the covers over your head than pop champagne, it’s OK to decline or postpone. It’s not the end of your career if you take a slower route to the next level or never make that jump at all. Evidence this is true is found in some of the most unlikely places.

Working Mother magazine publishes an annual list of the “50 Best Law Firms for Women,” including big, top-ranked firms women chose to exit in decades past. Now these firms tout reduced hours and remote work. Most ensure that lawyers who take advantage of family-friendly programs are not cut off from partnership or leadership positions. I’ve seen this sea change firsthand: an attorney I know works remotely in Vermont, travels to her New York office occasionally, and snagged the partner title at a prestigious firm on her own time.

When you don’t have the family bandwidth for a big promotion, these eight strategies can help you “grow in place”:

1. Define leadership beyond big titles. Recognize that leaders at any level head project teams and set work quality standards.
2. Broaden confining job descriptions. Suggest to your manager expertise you’re interested in attaining and particular projects that could expand your role.
3. Streamline current responsibilities. Make room for more skill development—zero in on better processes, ways to delegate, etc.
4. Collaborate more with team members and departments. Explore job shares—or multi-disciplinary project shares that could cultivate new skills.
5. Take the lead on training and mentoring. Help younger colleagues navigate work and life issues so that women, especially, take fewer career breaks.
6. Get greater industry exposure. Participate in industry associations, speak at conferences, write articles and more.
7. Sign on for legacy projects. Don’t get lost in routine tasks—raise your hand for initiatives that could go down in company history.
8. Help your company be a good global or community citizen. Research organizations that align with your company’s mission and be a volunteer or spokesperson.

To grow in place focus on breadth of responsibility and visibility so managers can evaluate you in broader leadership terms and acknowledge your own brand of ambition and success.

Kathryn Sollmann is a flexwork expert, speaker and career coach—and the author of Ambition Redefined: Why the Corner Office Doesn’t Work for Every Woman & What to Do Instead.

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Mover & Shaker, Gina Love, Counsel at Shearman & Sterling LLP

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Gina LoveMore than 10 years ago, while attending the annual convention of the International Council of Shopping Centers (ICSC), Gina Love realized that few people attending looked like her.

“I literally started counting people of color – especially women of color,” recalls Love, a counsel at global law firm Shearman & Sterling. Of those she met, several were from New York, so Love and her new acquaintances came up with the idea of organizing a get-together of people with diverse backgrounds as a networking opportunity when they returned to convention the following year. Their outreach was decidedly grassroots – emailing people they knew and handing out fliers — so they were stunned that word had spread so fast that they were joined by nearly 200 people.

“We knew we were on to something so I started organizing it as an unofficial event at ICSC every year, securing sponsors, inviting speakers and raising money,” says Love, adding that Shearman & Sterling has been unequivocally supportive over the years. For 11 years, Love kept the event afloat on her own time, which though laborious was extremely rewarding. “It’s amazing to see the room clogged with people, many of them telling me that they come to ICSC’s convention primarily for this event,” she says. Eventually, though, she realized the reception needed to be self-sustaining, and ICSC agreed to officially take it over.

Today, the ICSC’s Diversity Reception is attended by anywhere from 600-850 people and has a long list of impressive financial sponsors and speakers from throughout the real estate industry. At the 2014 event, the ICSC announced the creation two scholarships: the “Retail Real Estate Diversity Scholarship” to offer tuition assistance to graduate students entering the retail and real estate industries; and the “Love Scholarship for Diversity,” named in Love’s honor to offer tuition assistance to sophomore, junior and senior university students belonging to an underrepresented minority group. “The whole thing started so innocently, and it was amazing to watch how it grew,” Love says. “It was really wonderful to see that my decade of work to increase diversity in the real estate industry was honored and appreciated by the leadership of ICSC, and I am delighted the legacy will go on.”

Real Estate Roots

Love chose a career in law because she felt it offered a way for her to showcase her strengths in writing and research. She preferred the business-oriented classes during law school and though she did a rotation in litigation, Love gravitated toward a specialization in real estate. Her family had built a background in various facets of real estate – from her aunt who was a broker and real estate investor to her grandfather who had built a residential development and construction company in Jamaica, W. I. , where she is from – so it was an industry with which she was quite familiar. And she has not been disappointed by her expectations of a career in law. Ever since her initial stint as a summer associate, she viewed the field of law as one with multiple challenges, but also extremely rewarding moments.

Recently, Love experienced one of those moments when she helped close a key phase of a complex international deal she had been working on with her Shearman & Sterling counterparts in Germany, along with Mexican counsel. “There were cultural differences to navigate but we had a solid team and it was very satisfying work,” she says. “That kind of international transaction is a real focus for me and for our firm.”

That is part of the appeal of the real estate specialization for Love – the constant diversity. For example, she is also representing a high-end luxury fashion client that recently received a significant influx of capital and is opening stores around the US.

“One of the reasons I really like real estate is because I feel as though it’s one of the only segments of law where you can see the creative result of your work,” she explains. “Real estate attorneys in New York can walk around this city and see visible, tangible signs of what he or she has accomplished — We aren’t the architects or the developers, but as lawyers, we do a lot of the ‘behind-the-scenes’ work to make it happen. Sometimes law is hard to explain to others, and I find the real estate specialty to be one of the few where you can really show people something you had a hand in creating.”

Mentors Helped Her Succeed

Love knows that mentors and sponsors have had a major impact on her career. At her former firm, Nixon Peabody, she knew of at least four partners in the real estate practice area whom she said were extremely supportive of her career from the beginning. “I would say that they really guided, guarded and watched over my career,” she recalls fondly.
Now, she has mentors both inside and outside Shearman & Sterling. At Shearman & Sterling, she says she has been guided and supported by real estate practice leader Chris Smith, who has been particularly helpful in the areas of networking, developing client relationships and deal work.

She also has an ongoing mentor relationship with a former colleague at Nixon Peabody, Elizabeth Moore, who is now General Counsel at Consolidated Edison. She says, “We were drawn to each other because she also has Caribbean roots, and we just related really well. It’s fascinating to talk with her about the different facets of her career, since she has had so many completely different roles. She was in State government then became a labor and employment law partner before becoming the GC of Con Ed. We talk frequently about how to deal with specific professional situations, but also just in general how life is going. Our relationship has been very valuable.”

A Clear Plan for Growth

When Love reflects on the qualities that have set her up for success, her method is simple but effective. “I set my goals, chart my plan and start working toward it,” she says, noting that it’s imperative to have multiple plans of action to address eventualities that might come up. She says this approach is something she learned from her father, her biggest role model, who worked as a chemical engineer but also earned a business degree. “You have to adjust periodically to what isn’t working anymore and take personal responsibility for what you do.,” she says. “The road might not always be smooth, but you can get there with a clear but flexible plan.”

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