Tag Archive for: Leadership

More Women Leaders: Time For A Different Approach

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Lynn_24P2193_FContributed by Lynn Harris, Author of Unwritten Rules: What Women Need To Know About Leading In Today’s Organizations.

One definition of insanity is to do the same thing again and again and expect a different result. If we want more women in senior leadership positions we need to take a different approach. The current one isn’t working.

We’ve repeatedly called on Board Directors and C-suite executives to act on the strong business case for appointing more female colleagues, with minimal impact.

The 2009 Catalyst Census of Fortune 500 Women Board Directors revealed that less than one fifth of companies have three or more women on their boards, and more than 40 percent have no women directors whatsoever.

At the last count, women comprised only 15.2 and 13.5 percent of board directors and corporate officers respectively in Fortune 500 companies.

The United States is not alone in its boys club mentality. Canada’s Financial Post 500 companies have only 14 percent female board directors, and 16.9 percent corporate officers. Similarly, women hold only 9.7 percent board positions in Europe’s top 300 companies.

Research shows companies with at least three female board members, and more women in senior leadership roles, produce stronger-than-average financial and organizational results. But the boys at the top just aren’t buying it.

It’s time to stop banging our heads against the same brick wall and instead, think more broadly about where we might influence change.

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Getting Out of the Gender Ghetto

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Wittenberg-Cox_How Women_pbk.inddBy Cleo Thompson (London), Founder of The Gender Blog

“It’s time to get serious about sex”, declared Avivah Wittenberg-Cox in 2008, at the NYC launch of her book, Why Women Mean Business. Co-authored with Financial Times contributor Alison Maitland, the book took the economic arguments for gender change to the heart of the corporate world and spelled out in no uncertain terms that gender diversity is an economic necessity and is good for women, men, companies and their clients.

Two years later, we’re in a very different, credit-crunched corporate world and Wittenberg-Cox is back with the sequel: How Women Mean Business, subtitled – “A step by step guide to profiting from gender balanced business”. The book was launched last week at a London event hosted by Nomura, where the author guided her audience of both men and women through a frank and witty multimedia presentation of the issues covered in her new offering.

“The twentieth century is over. The reality of the world has changed. The last century was driven by manufacturing and the twenty-first century is wrapped up in customer services and technology”, explained Wittenberg-Cox.

“And gender balance has a huge role to play in this transformation.”

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Women in Tech: Building Confidence and Visibility

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iStock_000008800639XSmallBy Melissa J. Anderson (New York City)

Friday’s 85 Broads NYC Internet Week panel “Hot & Bothered: It’s Time To Change The Gender Ratio in New Media & Tech” tackled the myth that there just aren’t that many women in the tech space. Moderator Rachel Sklar, Editor-at-Large at Mediaite, explained that she meets a lot of female leaders in the tech space, but they just aren’t getting recognition.

Panelists included Esther Dyson, angel investor, tech industry pioneer, and journalist; Michelle Madhok, founder, SheFinds Media; Alexa Hirschfeld, co-founder, PaperlessPost; and Joanna Stern, contributing editor, Engadget.

Sklar said she decided to put the panel together after reading New York Magazine’s recent piece “Tweet Tweet Boom Boom: How Tech Startups Like Foursquare and Meetup Are Trying to Overthrow Old Media and Build a Better New York,” Sklar said, “The ratio in the New York Magazine piece – 53 people and 6 female – didn’t reflect my experience, socially, in this space.”

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Three Reasons the Technology Field is Great for Women

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iStock_000000616696XSmallBy Melissa J. Anderson (New York City)

This week, The Glass Hammer is celebrating women in technology with a series of articles profiling women who’ve broken the glass ceiling in senior technical roles. The tech field hasn’t always been seen as women-friendly. For instance, as noted in the Anita Borg Institute‘s report Senior Technical Women: A Profile of Success, the field’s culture promotes a hero-mentality, wherein the people given top jobs, promotions, and kudos are those who swoop in at the last minute when a project needs to be completed, spend long days and late nights fixing problems to meet a deadline, and save the day.

The hero culture doesn’t work well for women, though. As the study explains, most senior women in tech are primary caregivers who often aren’t able to spend those late nights in the office – and so they get passed over for promotions or interesting assignments, even if they’re highly capable.

Another study published in the December Journal of Personality and Social Psychology showed that geeky stereotypes may be keeping women out of computer-science related fields.

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The Ten Best Accounting Firms for Women

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Woman and computerBy Tina Vasquez (Los Angeles)

According to the annual Accounting MOVE Project, created by the American Society of Women Accountants (ASWA) along with Joanne Cleaver, president and founder of the research firm Wilson-Taylor Associates, women account for over half (51.4 percent) of all accounting firm employees, yet, they rarely make it “to the top rank in their profession: partner or senior executive.”

A 2010 MOVE study, released in early April, revealed one reason why women hit the glass ceiling at the senior management level: firms neglect to build women’s skills in business development, forgoing new clients and revenue in the process. And this is just one of a few crucial oversights that make it hard for women to advance in an industry that is otherwise seen as supportive of them.

In conjunction with the findings, ASWA and Cleaver have also released – for the first time ever – a list of the Ten Best Accounting Firms for Women, based on the MOVE research. According to Cleaver, showcasing the best firms provides learning points and insight that other firms can put in place to increase their pipeline of women and help them reach the next level.

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Advancing Women of Color: The NCRW’s Corporate Leadership Summit

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iStock_000002437760XSmallBy Melissa J. Anderson (New York City)

“If gender diversity, cultural and economic diversity is so important to cultural change, then why is there such a paucity of women and women of color in leadership?” asked Linda Basch, President of the National Council for Research on Women.

Basch, speaking at yesterday’s opening panel for the NCRW’s 2010 Corporate Leadership Summit, The Challenge and the Charge: Strategies for Retaining and Advancing Women of Color, continued with a set of statistics revealing the lack of women of color in leadership positions across corporate, non-profit, government, science, and research arenas. “In the second decade of the 21st century, don’t we all find these numbers unacceptable?”

Basch explained that the tide is beginning to turn – that diversity in corporate leadership is beginning to be recognized as a key to success. “We need to harness this moment.” She continued, “This is a time when those with bold dreams can animate bold dreams in all of us.”

The panel, moderated by CNN Anchor Soledad O’Brien, featured Glenda McNeal, Senior Vice President and General Manager, Global Client Group, Merchant Services Americas, American Express, Aynesh Johnson, Managing Director and Global Head of the Office of Global Leadership and Diversity, Goldman Sachs, Joyce Chang, Managing Director and Global Head of Emerging Markets Strategy and Credit Research, JPMorgan, Nellie Borrero, Global Human Capital and Diversity Lead, Accenture, and Carla Harris, Managing Director, Morgan Stanley Investment Management. The women discussed challenges faced by women of color in the corporate arena, and strategies for success.

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Gender parity in the workplace: Is it only a matter of CEOs believing the business case for change?

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Nicki HeadshotBy Nicki Gilmour, CEO and Founder of theglasshammer.com (New York City)

Yes and no. Yes we need all CEO’s to understand the bottom line impact of this productivity issue on their businesses. However that is only part of the solution as strategic plans must be designed and implemented with some sort of a target attached and consequences if targets are continually missed- like any other business function.

The 2010 Catalyst awards dinner showcased their latest research Pipeline’s Broken Promise, which is an excellent piece of work. The new study highlights that men have higher starting salaries in their first post-MBA job than women even after taking into account number of years of prior experience, time since MBA, first post-MBA job level, global region, and industry. These salary differences are not due to different aspirations or parenthood.

Career profiles were examined from 9,927 alumni who graduated between 1996 and 2007 from MBA programs at 26 leading business schools in Asia, Canada, Europe, and the United States. As the Catalyst report points out, the premise of the promise of gender parity occurring sooner rather than later is that the pipeline for women into senior leadership is robust. After all, over the past 15 years, women have been graduating with advanced professional degrees in record numbers – often equal to or even surpassing the rates for men, swelling women’s representation in managerial ranks. Concurrently, companies implemented diversity and inclusion programs to eliminate structural biases and foster women’s full participation in leadership. However the percentage growth of women in senior leadership positions would suggest otherwise. Hence the promise is broken that there is a pipeline of women coming up through the ranks.

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New Morgan Stanley Program Focuses on Diversity – Despite Tough Economic Climate

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Carla HarrisBy Tina Vasquez (Los Angeles)

As we recently learned from the new Accenture study focusing on women leaders and resilience, despite a rough economic climate many companies are not only choosing to keep women’s initiatives and leadership programs, but in many cases they are expanding them and creating new ones altogether.

In December of last year, Morgan Stanley did just that by announcing its new Emerging Manager Program (EM Program), which, according to the company, “seeks to identify and provide capital, as well as strategic advice and infrastructure solutions to emerging asset managers.” What’s impressive is that the program will place a specific emphasis on including minority and women-owned asset managers.

The EM Program will be headed by Carla Harris, a 23-year veteran of Morgan Stanley. Currentlya Managing Director in Morgan Stanley Investment Management (MSIM), and chair of the Firm’s Private Placement Commitment Equity Committee, Harris was a logical choice as champion of the program due to her long tenure in the industry and as a high profile successful minority player. The actual manager participants themselves will be overseen by an investment committee comprising representatives and senior management from across Morgan Stanley.

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Ada Lovelace Day: Our Top Five Women in Technology and Science

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Ada_lovelace

Ada Lovelace

By Elisabeth Grant (Washington, D.C.)

Why so few? Why so few women in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics? This is the question the American Association of University Women (AAUW) and the National Science Foundation (NSF) sought to answer in a joint report they recently conducted and released. The report addressed a myriad of factors that contribute to the low numbers of women in technology and science, from “beliefs about intelligence” to  “workplace bias” (see the New York Times’ excellent analysis of the report in the article, “Bias Called Persistent Hurdle for Women in Sciences“).

In the Forward of the report, the AAUW explains that the study “focuses on practical ways that families, schools, and communities can create an environment of encouragement that can disrupt negative stereotypes about women’s capacity in these demanding fields.”

In an effort to support this, we present five extraordinary women in technology and science to encourage and promote the inclusion of women in these fields. There are, of course, so many more women that could be have been mentioned in this post, and please feel free to add their names to the comment section below.
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Debating Transparency and Valuation – Theglasshammer.com’s Second Women on the Buy-Side Panel Discussion

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By Melissa J. Anderson (New York City)

Yesterday, theglasshammer.com hosted its second Women on the Buy-Side networking breakfast and panel discussion. Nicki Gilmour, founder and CEO of theglasshammer.com, began the event by explaining that the purpose of the gathering was to draw together top women in the investment management industry to discuss the topic of risk and its implications on performance for 2010.

Gilmour later explained that by getting top women together, we can continue to create a critical mass of female leaders in the industry and “change the perception of what a leader looks like.” For the women themselves, this was an event where “they are not the only woman in the room.”

Holly H. Miller, founding partner of Stone House Consulting, LLC, moderated the panel on the “massively broad topic called transparency,” today’s new “buzz word.” Panelists included Michelle McCarthy, Chief Risk Officer at Russell Investments, Virginia Volpe, CFA, Director of Hedge Funds, Global Transaction Services at Citi, Diane Garnick, Investment Strategist at Invesco, and Mara Topping, Partner, Investment Funds Group, D.C. Office of White & Case.

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