In this session, Gwen Young, COO of WBC, met with our newest host, Linda Peek Schacht, on January 13th at 12pm EST Gwen introduced Linda as she joins the LinkedIn Live series to host two sessions per month. In addition, Gwen and Linda gave an overview of what to expect for this series over the next year, and how each of the themes and issues covered fit into WBC’s overall mission of equal pay, position, and power for all businesswomen.

Watch the recording on Linkedin here, or below!

The post #WBCFasterTogether: Leading the Trends in 2022 appeared first on Women Business Collaborative.

Nonprofit Collaborative Grows Participation by More than 200% Since its Founding; Remains Committed to Accelerating Progress Across Nine Key Action Initiatives

Published via PR Newswire and Yahoo Finance on December 14th, 2021

WASHINGTON, Dec. 14, 2021 /PRNewswire/ — Women Business Collaborative (WBC) has established itself as the leading collaborative and high-growth movement committed to achieving equal position, pay and power for all women in business. Founded in 2019, the nonprofit alliance of business organizations and leaders has grown to include more than 60+ women’s organizations, 40 corporate sponsors and 400+ Council Champions.

WBC’s vast network of business organizations and leaders are focused on achieving long-term results around Nine Action Initiatives, including: more women CEOs, in the C-Suite and on Boards; a demand for gender and pay parity; increasing capital for women entrepreneurs; driving more women as controllers of capital allocation; parity for women in technology; and leveraging learning and development to drive pipeline promotions. With diversity, equity and inclusion at of the core of the collaborative’s mission, every WBC Initiative has a goal to advance diversity.

Since WBC’s founding, the number of collaborating women’s business organizations has grown from 19 to 62 and corporate sponsorship has grown from five to nearly 40 top companies. Supporters include Diversified Search Group, Wells Fargo, Capital One, IBM, Bank of America, BCG, Cigna, and Deloitte. WBC’s flagship Summit hosted a record 3,600 participants this past September.

“We’re incredibly thankful for the passion and commitment that each of our partners and champions offer to this critical movement,” said Edie Fraser, CEO of WBC. “While Boards have seen a sea change and there’s been a major surge of women-owned and minority-owned businesses seeking capital, there is still much more to be done to accelerate gender parity for women. We project further acceleration in 2022.”

In 2021 the WBC with Catalyst, C200 and Ascend released the 2^nd annual Women CEOs in America Report.   According to the report, women comprise 8.2% of the Fortune 500 companies and are about 7% of CEOs across public and private companies. WBC monthly Women Joining Public Boards report shows an average of 42% women being named to public boards and one third of these women of color.

Follow us on LinkedIn and Twitter @WBCollaborative, Instagram @womenbusinesscollaborative and join the discussion with #WBCFasterTogether.

The post WBC Reports Major 2021 Progress Toward Gender Parity for Business Women appeared first on Women Business Collaborative.

Gwen Young, WBC COO, and Edie Fraser, WBC CEO, hosted the final #WBCFasterTogether session of 2021 on December 16th, 2021! Gwen and Edie summarized the progress and achievements of the WBC from the past year, while previewing what’s to come in 2022 for the women’s business movement.

Watch the recording on LinkedIn or below on Youtube!

The post WBCFasterTogether Series: Building the Movement – 2021 and Beyond appeared first on Women Business Collaborative.

This release was published on PRNewswire on Sep 20, 2021, 08:16 ET

Among the Summit’s Featured Speakers are CEOs from GM, Walmart, P&G, BlackRock, State Street, Dow, Progressive, Siemens, PepsiCo, IBM, Humana, Sodexo, CVS, TIAA, and others

WASHINGTON, Sept. 20, 2021 /PRNewswire/ — Women Business Collaborative (WBC) – the fastest growing alliance of top business organizations driving impact to create equality for women in business — will convene more than 3,000 participants, including CEOs, thought leaders and the workforce-at-large, at its third Annual Summit  “Empowering Through Gender Equity and Diversity,” taking place virtually, September 21-22, 2021.

With 8.4% of Fortune 500 CEO positions currently held by women – up from 5.7% in 2019, women appear to be on the rise in Corporate America.  Committed to accelerating the progress to include more women across all leadership roles, the WBC Annual Summit brings together the organizations, companies and leaders that are working tirelessly to create cultures of diversity, equity and inclusion across every industry and area of business.

Key data points and best practices for how these leading organizations are taking action will be shared and highlighted throughout the Summit.

“We are crystal clear that all are no longer just talking, but now collaborating on building pathways and nontraditional ways of accelerating women business leaders,” said Edie Fraser, CEO of WBC. “Over the next several days, we will hear from trailblazers in DEI, work to better understand the intersectionality of diversity and discuss how to continually advance the WBC’s Nine Action Initiatives to create equal position, pay and power for all businesswomen.”

In addition to the day and half of engaging discussions, WBC will recognize and highlight achievements in diversity throughout the program. WBC’s 2021 Excellence in Gender and Diversity CEO Award recognizes top officials in major companies for their efforts to diversify their companies and increase opportunities for women in business roles. The 2021 awardees include: Mary T. Barra, Chair and CEO, General Motors; David Taylor, Chairman, President & CEO, P&G; Ronald P. O’Hanley, Chairman and CEO, State Street Corporation; Doug McMillon, President & CEO, Walmart, Inc.; Jim Fitterling, Chairman and CEO, Dow; Laurence D. Fink, Founder, Chairman and CEO, BlackRock, Inc.; Tricia Griffith, President & CEO, Progressive Insurance; and Barbara Humpton, President and CEO, Siemens Corporation.

The full Summit program, agenda, list of speakers, session descriptions and information on how to register for the event can be found here: WBC’s Virtual Annual Summit: Empowering Through Gender Equity and Diversity.  Follow us on LinkedIn and Twitter @WBCollaborative, on Instagram @womenbusinesscollaborative and join the discussion with #WBCFasterTogether.

The post Women Business Collaborative (WBC) 3rd Annual Summit to Convene Leading CEOs and Business Organizations to Accelerate Gender Equity Across the Global Workforce, September 21-22, 2021 appeared first on Women Business Collaborative.

Whether your goal is to promote women into the C-Suite, a woman as your company’s next CEO, to diversify your board of directors, or to help women into their first leadership job – your goals cannot be achieved if you don’t accelerate female talent, especially women of color, from the start of their career and through the leadership pipeline. To check out WBC’s own Resources for Parity Guide covering six categories of services, click here!

The post Resources For Parity Guide appeared first on Women Business Collaborative.

Hannah Grove joined WBC Advisory Council having recently retired from State Street (NYSE:STT) and after 22 years of a portfolio career including public and private company board service.

Each year during March we celebrate the achievements of women, or significant milestones and movements that have advanced women.  While acknowledging these accomplishments are important, I fear that in looking back and embalming women’s achievements in the past tense we take our eyes off the acute urgency of what needs to change now, and in the future, to strengthen women’s equality and opportunities.  As a former Chief Marketing Officer, I can’t help but think that we have a brand problem here. So, what if instead of Women’s History Month we celebrate Women’s Future Month?

We are at a critical point in 2021– yes, there has been progress in placing more women on boards, in leadership positions, and in the overall workplace, but we also have to be honest with ourselves that the forward march has been bordering on glacial. Even more disturbingly, the resulting representation is by no means as diverse as it should be in terms of Black, Hispanic, Asian women or LGBTQ+ representation.  And, despite it being the 21st century, it seems as if a medieval manners manual is still in circulation in some parts, suggesting that women should be seen and not heard in meetings. Add to this the persistent pay gaps and the truly alarming predictions we are seeing about women leaving the workplace during and post-pandemic, or losing their jobs (again, disproportionately women of color), and we might well see history repeat itself in ways that we simply cannot afford or tolerate.

The solution in my view lies in concrete action, collaboration, commitment, metrics and accountability.  I had the good fortune of a 22-year career at State Street (NYSE: STT) and benefited first-hand from the application of these solutions and the unwavering support from a series of enlightened and committed CEOs. I joined the Women’s Business Collaborative (WBC) because of its Nine Action Initiatives – each one aimed at tackling the systemic challenges and issues that hold women back with clear outcomes, including achieving gender parity in the C-Suite by 2030.  Simply put, women won’t run more businesses unless they have the opportunity to actually do so.  The WBC is also a true movement with both men and women uniting many of the organizations that are addressing these issues to accelerate the pace of change.  I am also encouraged by the Biden Administration’s recently announced Gender Policy Council and the fact that it reports directly to the President.  In the words of co-chair Jennifer Klein “it’s not just a council, it’s a plan to take a government-wide approach to gender equity.”  This is exactly what we need now and for the future in both public and private sectors.

So, in celebration of Women’s Future Month, I will end on a high note, looking up at the skies. As I watched NASA achieve its extraordinary landing on Mars last month, I was equally spellbound by the number of women in the control room – all ages and ethnicities.  The mission Perseverance is aptly named and serves as a reminder that anything is possible when you go bold, don’t give up, and focus squarely on the future.  And, as the secret message embedded on the Mars Rover’s canopy says, let’s “Dare Mighty Things.”

The post Women’s History Month – Is It Time for a Rebrand? appeared first on Women Business Collaborative.

New DDI data highlight how missed opportunities in positions that hold P&L responsibility hold women back.

“We just couldn’t find any qualified women for the role, especially who had managed a business and had substantial P&L responsibility.”

It’s one of the most common complaints we hear from companies that struggle to achieve their diversity goals for women in leadership. Of course, it’s tempting to wonder how broadly they cast their nets in identifying top female talent. But even with these questions, there’s an element of truth to the complaint, especially related to profit and loss (P&L) responsibility. An emerging executive who has escalating levels of P&L responsibility is responsible for how resources are allocated within a department, or an entire segment of the organization, in order to drive positive financial results. And it’s a must-have qualification for high-level executive and C-suite roles. Getting more women into roles with P&L responsibility is a major commitment for both the Women’s Business Collaborative and DDI. The WBC collaborates across more than 43 leading women’s organizations to achieve equal position, pay, and power for all women in business.

As DDI and the WBC work together, one of our key efforts is to stop the “leaky pipeline” of women in leadership. We first set out to find out just how wide the gender gap is in P&L functions. Leveraging new data from DDI’s Global Leadership Forecast project, we analyzed P&L responsibility across more than 1,700 companies and 15,000 leaders worldwide. Overall, we found that 42% of women leaders said they had managed a P&L function, compared to 51% of male leaders. In many ways, this 9% gap speaks for itself. But there’s more to the story.

The Critical Step: Early Executives

The path to the C-suite requires leaders to gain significant experience and responsibility for leading the business. They need to deal with complex decisions, drive large-scale business management, and move through escalating levels of P&L responsibility. While the P&L gap occurs at every level, there’s one critical step where the gap gets much wider: Early executive roles. Nearly 81% of executive men had led P&L responsibility at this level, but only 63% of women had. The large gap at this step is crucial, because nearly all C-suite positions will require P&L responsibility.

This gap is even worse because of the small number of women at this level. Women comprise only 21% of executives, according to our Diversity and Inclusion Report 2020. And with only 63% of those women having P&L responsibility, it means there are even fewer women candidates for C-suite roles. Furthermore, women in the study were well aware they may not be getting the opportunities they’d need to move ahead. Among women executives, 45% said they would have to leave their current company to advance, compared to only 32% of male executives.

Awareness of Paths to P&L Responsibility Is Crucial

So what accounts for the gap between women and men getting P&L responsibility, even those who work in the same function? It likely comes down to information and coaching.

According to a report by Working Mother Media, women are rarely informed about paths to P&L roles. In the report, 48% of men said they had received detailed information about their career paths toward P&L roles. But among women? Only 15% got that kind of coaching. Encouragement also plays a major role. In the Working Mother Media study, men were three times as likely as women to have been encouraged to take a P&L role. And it makes a difference. Among the few women who said they’d been encouraged to consider a role with P&L responsibility, 80% said they felt they would be successful in the role. And when women didn’t get that encouragement? Only 51% could imagine themselves being successful. The barrier is huge. In fact, 78% of women in the study cited their own lack of understanding of P&L career paths as a top obstacle. Likewise, 77% said the top barrier to gender equity is a lack of information about how to advance.

COVID Creates a Critical Moment to Act

Over the years, women’s progress toward the top has been slow, but steady. However, the pandemic has significantly changed the pipeline of women leaders.

Overall, women have been harder hit than men by layoffs caused by the pandemic. In addition, the pandemic has caused many women—especially those with children under 10—to take on an extra 20 hours of work per week at home. This phenomenon has been called the Double-Double Shift. The result is that women are disproportionately leaving the workforce because of the stress of balancing family life and work during the pandemic. In the U.S., an analysis from the National Women’s Law Center showed that 865,000 women dropped out of the labor force. That’s compared to only 216,000 men. If they aren’t leaving, then they are considering downshifting. The annual Women in the Workplace study by McKinsey and Lean In found that one in four women is considering stepping back from their roles in some other way, such as reducing their hours, taking a leave of absence, or switching to a less demanding role. With an already anemic pipeline of women leaders, we could see an even bleaker future for women leaders.

What Can We Do?

We don’t have to accept this path. There are a number of actions that we can take to start changing things now.

1. Turn top executives into champions. The executive team champions the diversity initiatives and sets goals fueled by an action plan and urgency. When executives take ownership and cascade accountability, it sets the tone for diversity and inclusion throughout the entire organization.
2. Establish metrics for every step of the leadership pipeline. The data shows that the gender gap starts with the very first rung of the leadership ladder—the first leadership job. And it only gets wider at every step along the way. Start measuring the percentage of women (particularly women of color) at every step to know if you’ve made progress.
3. Ensure women receive stretch assignments. The lack of P&L responsibility can become a self-perpetuating cycle. Women don’t apply to jobs with P&L experience because they don’t already have it. Companies need to be purposeful about assigning stretch opportunities that can help women gain P&L experience, even before they get in an official role.
4. Create opportunities for cross-functional experience. It is often cited that women are under-represented in the C-suite, because they spend their career in functions (e.g., Legal, HR), that are not the typical pathway to CEO. It’s critical for organizations to help women leaders gain cross-functional experience (into functions such as finance, operations, or sales) which may improve their chances for a P&L role.
5. Leverage assessment data to ensure objectivity. Unconscious bias can cause managers to make selection and promotion decisions based on mistaken assumptions around capability and motivation. Leadership assessments uncover objective data about skills, break through biases, and bring visibility to women who may have been overlooked.
6. Build P&L coaching muscle. As the Working Mother Media study showed, few women get information and coaching about P&L responsibility. Organizations need to ensure they equip leaders to coach equitably, and provide information about P&L career paths.
7. Use internal sponsors who insist on gender, diversity, and pay parity. Sponsors not only coach women, but advocate for them within their executive team. Train sponsors to advocate for women to help them get the key opportunities they need to advance.
8. Focus on what women can do more than their resumes. Don’t disqualify candidates for gaps on their resume, especially as many women return to work post-pandemic. Focus interviews instead on what they can do—their skills and approach to solving problems over their recent experiences.
9. Ensure women are part of high-potential pools. In our study, women were much less likely than men to say that they had been told they were designated as a high-potential leader, especially at more senior levels. Company leaders need to deliberately ensure that women have equal access and are equally represented in their high potential pools. Equity in the pools coupled with rich development experiences create momentum for women to reach more senior leadership levels.

P&L Responsibility Is About the Bottom Line

The most important thing to keep in mind is that achieving gender parity is a great business opportunity. It’s an opportunity for growth, rather than a diversity problem. But it’s not about advancing just a few women. The accountability for improving gender balance puts the focus on leaders and leadership—all organizational functions and levels need to be aligned. Without a proactive eye toward gender balance, women fall out of the high-potential pipeline—and never make it back in.

DDI and the WBC both pledge to fix the leaky pipeline for female talent. This means specifically targeting that high-potential mid-career women and up will equal the number of men tapped for P&L assignments together with leadership training in line management roles by 2025. This is a lofty goal. But, an important one, that we will meet—together.

For more data about how diversity and inclusion connects to the bottom line, download DDI’s Diversity and Inclusion Report 2020.

Tacy M. Byham, Ph.D., is DDI’s Chief Executive Officer and co-author of Your First Leadership Job: How Catalyst Leaders Bring Out the Best in Others.

Edie Fraser is CEO of Women Business Collaborative (WBC), engaging business women’s organization partners and stakeholders to accelerate the advancement of business women. Edie continues her 15th year as Managing Director of Diversified Search. She was Founder and CEO of STEMconnector® and Million Women Mentors (MWM), with 2.5 million mentor commitments.

The post P&L Responsibility: Why Women Don’t Get to the C-Suite appeared first on Women Business Collaborative.

Studies show that nearly 80 percent of women executives are concentrated in finance, legal and HR. This means they are not in operating roles that lead to CEO opportunities.  And men are more likely to receive information on P&L (profit and loss) jobs over women as well as support and encouragement to consider operating roles. This brief looks at why we are focused on achieving parity for women in the c-suite, particularly executive roles with P&L responsibility.

Why focus on the c-suite?

C-suite positions, specifically those with P&L responsibility, are seen as the main pathway to CEO positions. And yet:

• According to the World Economic Forum the proportion of women in senior executive roles globally has been stuck at 24% for more than a decade
• In the United States, one in five c-suite leaders are women; one in 25 c-suite leaders are women of color (2018 Women in the Workplace-McKinsey / Lean In)
• An ISS Analytics study showed that nearly 80% of women executives are concentrated in finance, legal and HR, not in operating roles that lead to CEO opportunities
• Working Mother Media’s 2019 survey of 3000 men and women leaders showed that 48% of men said they have received detailed information on career paths to P&L jobs in the past 24 months vs 15% of women – and 46% of men were encouraged to consider operating roles vs 14% of women

Our Goals

So how do we change this? First, we’ve built an amazing team of partners: ATHENA International; C200, Catalyst, Ellevate Network; National Association for Female Executives (NAFE); Network of Executive Women (NEW); Watermark; Women for Economic and Leadership Development (WELD); Women’s Forum of New York; Working Mother Media.

With our partner organizations, we are focusing on actions including providing women with access to information about how to advance into P&L roles starting at mid-career, providing resources around succession planning, and working with relevant research organizations to include questions on the surveys that help to track the pipeline of women in P&L roles, e.g., DDI, etc.

We hope that these actions will lead to:

• Full gender parity in the c-suite by 2030
• 8% and 17% of women occupying the c-suite have substantial P&L responsibility by 2025 and 2030 respectively
• 25% and 30% of candidates assessed for c-suite roles are women by 2025 and 2030 respectively
• 25% of all women in the c-suite are women of color by 2030
• Equal numbers of men and women receive detailed information on career paths leading to line management roles by 2025

The post Issue Brief: Women in the C-Suite & Executive Leadership appeared first on Women Business Collaborative.