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.

WBC’s Nine Action Initiatives focus on key areas that contribute to achieving gender parity.  We lead the “Women in the Pipeline” Initiative.   We recognized that while there is a desire to achieve gender parity, it can be challenging for leaders to know where to start.  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.  

DDI’s Diversity and Inclusion Report 2020 showed women fall off the management ladder long before reaching the top. One important

 reason that women have failed to advance in management is that they have not had equal access to developmental experiences that would prepare them for higher levels. Men were 19% more likely to have been formally assessed as a part of their transition, 22% more likely to be formally mentored, and 13% more likely to receive leadership skills training for men.  This lack of support may enable what’s called the “glass cliff,” when women leaders are promoted but not set up for success in their new roles.  

At the WBC we are committed to creating equal opportunity and momentum to move women through the pipeline in order to achieve gender parity.  This is where Resources for Parity is a valuable resource for you.  This WBC curated guide helps you cut through the muck and have trusted partners by your side to help you reach your diversity goals.  It will provide you with direct access to advice and consulting from practitioners proven to achieve significant results for companies focusing on building a pipeline of women leaders with an emphasis on women of color. 

So, whether you are a diversity, equity and inclusion advocate (e.g., CHROs, Diversity professionals, Talent Management professionals, L&D professionals) or a professional woman who wants to be in the driver’s seat for your career, we offer you six categories of services: 

Resources for Parity is organized to provide easy access to:  

Broad Consulting in Diversity, Equity and Inclusion

Recruiting

Succession Planning, Leadership Development Services

Inclusion & Consulting Services

Measurement

Sponsorship/Allyship Consulting

The work to build workplaces where women have equal position, pay and power, may be challenging.   Resources for Parity was created to provide organizations and individuals with tools and resources “at your fingertips.” 

Let us know how you are using the Resources for Parity by tagging @WBCollaborative on social media and using the #ResourcesForParity hashtag.  Stay tuned for future events from WBC that will provide more information and discussion about the Resources For Parity guide.

The post WBC Launches Resources for Parity: Trusted Resources to Help You and Your Organization Reach Gender Parity #FasterTogether appeared first on Women Business Collaborative.

There is a photograph of a woman from 1910 holding up a sign that says “equal pay for equal work.”  One hundred and ten plus years later, we are still working towards that goal.  Pay equity has a direct impact on leadership equity.  It also is one of the key issues impacting leaders who are caregivers to children, aging adults and themselves.  It impacts financial stability, what personal and professional choices we make, and how we take care of ourselves.

Over the past 40 years more and more women have managed to move into leadership. They have started and run successful businesses. They have moved into community leadership positions. But it has not been easy. We continue to run into the default view on gender roles:  dad is the primary breadwinner, mom is the primary caregiver -regardless of educational background or profession. We need to recognize the problem with these long held cultural views of gender roles and how it continues to impair how women are viewed as leaders. We need to understand the cost it has to our health and our ability to be the leaders the world needs us to be.

Many of us feel like we are in a vice, pushed from both sides, taking care of children and/or aging adults and trying to grow a professional career.  We continue to be told we are supposed to be superwoman, able to just push through, do more, sleep less, ignore our health and wellbeing because that is what women are supposed to do, the ideal for us to attain.  That ideal is a barrier to closing the gender equity leadership gap.

The caregiving barrier became clearly underscored with the onset of the pandemic.  Choices had to be made as to who was going to stay home and who would be the primary caregiver to children and/or to aging adults.  Even before the pandemic, on average, a working caregiver to an aging adult in their lives working at any level will spend an additional 21 hours a week doing administrative or direct care, according to AARP research.  That is in addition to all other personal and professional responsibilities. It is not the same for our male counterparts.

The female leadership pipeline starts to dry up at around age 35 to 40.  But the challenges start earlier. Women make less than their male counterparts in the same positions with the same educational background and are subject to both the glass ceiling and the sticky floor when it comes to pay equity.  After grinding it out, women fall further behind when they take time off for caregiving.  Because they make less, paying for caregiving becomes more difficult.  Women are also more likely to tap into retirement money to care for an aging parent.

All of this also takes a toll on personal health and wellbeing and financial stability.  It makes it more challenging for a woman to take on a new leadership role.  We need an integrated approach so working women can step into leadership and have resources that support a caregiver in a healthier, more balanced way.

At the Women Business Collaborative (WBC), there is a focused discussion to help get better policies in place, discuss how we can meaningfully address the cultural biases that derail policies, and create a path for women to become leaders. Multiple WBC Action Initiatives are dedicated to emphasizing and breaking down these issues. From the Women in the Pipeline group which works to establish strong relationships and leadership development amongst women leaders, to the Gender and Pay Parity focus area, spreading awareness of the pay gap and lack of representation, WBC is making waves in a society that has traditionally mistreated its women in the workforce.

We need to recognize that without our health, without a better approach to working women that are caregivers, we cannot lead well.  Our legacy can be that more women will have a better professional and personal path forward.  Companies will get the financial benefits of keeping these talented women in their leadership pipeline. We can better close the gender equity leadership game by putting more thought into caring for the caregivers.

The post Leaders That Care: Women, Leadership Pay Parity and Caregiving 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.

Why is it that we think we have to have everything figured out? How come we have to have all of the answers when we don’t expect that of anyone else? Would you like to acquire skills or knowledge to advance your career quickly? Wouldn’t it be nice to have someone to bounce ideas off of, someone who champions you and can make suggestions and introductions?

Well then, you need a mentor; AND if you are serious about taking your career or business to the next level, then the one thing you need to know is that you won’t do it alone.

By definition, mentoring is simply when someone more experienced or knowledgeable helps guide someone who is less so. That’s it. It doesn’t mean that the mentor needs to be older or even in the same industry. It doesn’t even have to be time-consuming.

Sounds great, right? But why is it that women are mentored less frequently than men?

According to the Working Mother Media 2019 Study: The Gender Gap at the Top, 54 percent of men had a career discussion with their mentor or sponsor in the past 24 months vs. 39 percent of women. The WBC Women in the Pipeline initiative is working to change those numbers and get more women involved in both mentoring and leadership development programs.

I believe that mentoring is widely misunderstood. Everyone knows what it is, but too many people have a narrow view of how it can happen – that changes today!

Early on in my career, I needed to familiarize myself with company financials so I at least would be able to have a basic understanding. I asked my friend, an accountant, to guide me through them, and during a series of lunches, we reviewed them, and I got to ask lots of questions. That was mentoring. Even though she was much younger than me and worked in a different department, she was a “subject mentor.”

Mentors don’t have to be long-term. They don’t have to be older or in a higher position. They don’t have to work in the same company. In our online environment, they don’t even have to be in the same state or country.

What it does require is you being willing to ask for what you need from a mentor. This requires that you know what type of mentor you’re looking for according to your career or business goals.

To get you thinking, here are some other types of mentors or mentoring categories:

Career Mentors – This is someone you meet with routinely and for a specified period, say 6 or 9 months or more. In a more formal career mentoring relationship, you’d be wise to have structure and goals around what you wish to accomplish with your (and their) time. This gets you the guidance you need to develop your career overall.

Group Mentoring – This is when someone mentors a group of individuals. I recently spoke at a women’s affinity group on this exact topic, and essentially, I was mentoring them on mentoring. Perhaps someone in your office is willing to present their knowledge about a specific topic to a group of people for a group mentoring experience. What do you want to learn? Chances are others do too.

Mentoring Moments – This happens when you make an ask for a specific reason and at a particular time. Perhaps you want to increase your negotiation skills so the next time someone in purchasing is going to have a call or meeting, you can sit in and then debrief after. Maybe you want to understand contracts better, so if you know someone from legal, you might make the
ask to explain some of the legal jargon in layman’s terms.

There are also Virtual Mentors. These are the books you read, courses you take, coaches you work with, YouTube videos you watch, all for the goal of increasing knowledge, skills and gaining advice and wisdom.

So how do you find a mentor? They are most likely right in front of you. You seek them out because they probably won’t fall in your lap. Once you get clear on what you need to achieve in your career or business, pay attention to the people you work with or meet who have the skills you need to succeed. #MakeTheAsk

If you’re a manager or in a higher position in the organization, can you reach back to mentor someone or put your energy into the development of a mentorship program? For mentoring to work, the outreach must go both ways.

Until next time, here’s wishing you the full power of mentoring in YOUR career or business!

The post YOU Need a Mentor; Here’s How To Find One appeared first on Women Business Collaborative.

As I reflect on Women’s History Month, I celebrate the progress of where we’ve been and the progress made of women joining the workforce. It’s a continuous journey and in the “Digital Age” of technological advances and disruption the workforce demands are ever changing and progressing faster than the human mind can keep up. Companies can no longer be complacent and must transform, or be left behind. The same applies to our workforce, corporations and particularly the opportunities presented for women in the workforce.  In 2020 and with COVID-19, we saw women exiting the workforce and years of progress wiped out in a single year.  How do we recover and encourage women to rejoin the workforce, or retain those who contemplate departure? The opportunity to support women is needed now more than ever as we face a greater shortage and companies scramble for retention strategies to bridge the gap.

An article from USA Today in October revealed that amidst the pandemic, 865,000 women dropped out of the workforce compared to 216,000 men. Overall, the United States job market added 661,000 jobs between August and September, according to the latest jobs report released last October by the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

Our work within the Women Business Collaborative (WBC) is one that brings together collaboration and “power in numbers” to enable greater impact and make a difference.

As a woman in the tech workforce, I reflect in reaching back to support others throughout their career. Having a support system is key to women in the workforce and one we encourage as they struggle with work/life balance.  Every individual has their own personal story and the challenges  faced during the COVID-19 pandemic.   The numbers in 2021 reflect the “1st Female Recession” within the workforce.  This is a Call to Action for women to help change the trajectory.  Our call to support other women to navigate through the stages of the  career lifecycle is one of great need. Through great mentorship, sponsorship, coaching, and advocating, we can provide women lessons learned, encouragement, strength,  and emotional fortitude. Throughout my career, my support system encouraged me to remain in the technology industry. Like many of my colleagues, we traveled the journey together while reaching back to help other women and coaching them all along the way.  Formulating various ways to create “trusted networks” and outreach to our female workforce is an opportunity to impact and pivot the numbers of women in the workforce.

In 2015, Corporate America began a greater focus in recruiting, and promoting women in the workforce.  Several CEOs and corporations launched initiatives to increase the numbers of women in tech, some targeting 25% of their workforce by 2025. While progress continues – but not to the extent of 25% – the impact of COVID brought a tremendous decline as women were overwhelmed with the responsibility of balancing work and life, specifically caring for their children during the COVID shutdown of schools.  We saw an evolution of corporations providing greater support to retain their workforce, yet women were impacted the most . We have work to be done as we rebuild. Now more than ever, CEOs/corporations are realizing the importance of diversity for innovation and impact. Recruiting efforts for women are stronger and stronger. CEOs are taking action, including providing training to help people recognize their unconscious biases and investigating salaries to ensure fairness in pay.

The work of WBC in the Women in the Pipeline Action Initiative allows us an opportunity to raise greater awareness of the call to action and reach the goals set forth in the Women in Technology Action Initiative, one of which is to decrease the female quit rate in the technology sector by 50% by 2030. The benefits of having a diverse workforce is powerful to corporations. As we see in the Deloitte INsights – Perspectives from Leading Women CIOs, the impact of diverse teams is impactful on all levels of corporate performance. With intentional actions to keep women in the workforce and measurable goals to work towards, WBC is setting a great example of how we can offset this “she-cession.”

The post Women in the Workforce: Overcoming the 1st Female Recession appeared first on Women Business Collaborative.

Developing mentors, sponsors and networks are a crucial strategy for women at all career stages. But sadly, women are less likely to receive the mentorship and sponsorship necessary to propel them to leader and executive positions. This brief provides an overview of why focusing on pipeline promotion is a passionate focus for WBC.

Why focus on pipeline promotion?

• Women are less likely to be hired and promoted to manager roles. Men hold 62% of manager-level positions and women hold 38% (McKinsey State of Women 2019)
• Developing relationship capital (mentors, sponsors and networks) are a crucial strategy for women at all career stages. 54% of men had a career discussion with their mentor or sponsor in the past 24 months vs 39% of women (Working Mother Media 2019 Study: The Gender Gap at the Top; HBR January 2020: Challenging our Gendered Idea of Mentorship)
• Far more men than women are benefiting from networking, mentoring and sponsorship than women: 54% of men had a career discussion with their mentor or sponsor in the past 24 months vs 39% of women (Working Mother Media 2019 Study: The Gender Gap at the Top)
• 28% of women vs 53% of men participated in a leadership development program in the past 24 months (Working Mother Media 2019 Study: The Gender Gap at the Top)
• As of 2020 women hold the majority of jobs (50.4%) for the first time in almost a decade, up from 49.7% in 2019 (Bureau of Labor Statistics, 2020). While the number of women in the C-Suite has increased, the talent pipeline continues to offer opportunity to create parity at all levels (Pew Research 2019)

Our Goals

So what can we do? We’ve partnered with an incredible group of organizations to drive change: Network of Executive Women (NEW); Women for Economic and Leadership Development (WELD); WOMEN Unlimited.

Together, we plan to create a pipeline to parity to provide access throughout a woman’s career to development, work to ensure that the selection and promotion systems address the role that unconscious bias plays in the decision- making, identify areas of organizational culture that need to be reset to create a sustainable climate of inclusion, and more.

We believe that through these actions we can see:

• High potential mid-career women (including women of color) to equal number of men tapped for operating roles together with access to leadership training and development for line management by 2025
• 25% of women at all levels of leadership are women of color by 2030
• The same number of women as men receiving mentors and sponsors by 2025
• The same number of women as men participating in leadership development programs by 2025

The post Issue Brief: Pipeline Promotion appeared first on Women Business Collaborative.