 |
Smith Means
Business
By Ann E. Shanahan '59
In July 2004,
a Wall Street brokerage firm settled a sex discrimination
suit alleging a pattern that routinely denied promotions
to scores of women and gave high salaries to less productive men. News
accounts following the settlement indicated that women fill only 20
percent of executive management positions in the securities industry,
make up only 30 percent of investment bankers, traders and brokers
and hold only 8 percent of top-level jobs (those at the level of executive
vice president and above) in major corporations.
Twenty-five years ago,
when Smith College established its executive education
program (SEE) for high-potential, fast-track women, it
was even more difficult for women to gain a foothold in corporate executive
management. Since the program's
earliest incarnation -- as the Smith Management Program (SMP) -- executive
education at Smith has evolved and prospered. It now claims more than a thousand
alumnae. The program benefits not only the women who have attended SMP and
its successors -- the Smith College Consortium, the Smith-Tuck Program and
various custom programs provided on-site for individual corporations -- but
serves Smith's undergraduates and alumnae as well.
"In the broadest
sense," says Barbara Reinhold, the program's
director, "executive education establishes another level of visibility
for Smith; it reinforces and extends Smith's commitment to develop women
leaders." This plays out in a variety of ways, Reinhold explains. For
example, "Mothers
leave the program wanting to send their daughters here." And SEE alumnae
(along with Smith College alumnae, of course) provide internship opportunities
and insights about employment opportunities for the significant population
of the college's undergraduates who are interested in business careers.
In today's uncertain economic climate,
the willingness of alumnae to offer advice about workplace trends "is
invaluable for our ability to advise seniors who are going into the
job market," says Reinhold,
who, until recently, had been director of both Smith's Career Development
Office and SEE. Providing students access to Smith College and SEE alumnae
who are high up in the business world -- to serve as mentors and as
sources of jobs and internships -- and encouraging networking opportunities
among the alumnae themselves are critical and valued components of Smith's "lifetime
guarantee."
The links between the college's
executive education program and Smith students are just the tip of
the iceberg, however, when it comes to undergraduate exposure to business
careers and practices. A number of students get their first taste of
the business world through Praxis, the innovative program offering
every student a stipend that allows her to take an otherwise unpaid
summer internship. Although many Smith students are able to secure
paid internships at large corporations and financial services firms,
small businesses and interesting start-ups are less likely to offer
internship stipends.
One of the major concerns addressed during
a consortium forum this summer was the need for a commitment from senior
women managers to help increase the number of women in corporate leadership.
Another source of information about business
is Smith's Women and Financial
Independence program (WFI). Its widely publicized lectures, noncredit
courses, investment club and other activities attract large audiences.
WFI was established three years ago with $2.5 million "seed money" jointly
provided by Goldman Sachs and Ann Kaplan '67, one of the first
women to be named a partner at that firm.
With sleek contemporary furnishings, a television monitor
continuously running the MSNBC stock ticker, and copies
of Forbes, The Wall Street Journal, Fast Company and other
business publications scattered around, the WFI office looks and feels
very different from the conventional Smith program or department office.
And the WFI "curriculum," aimed at helping young women
to take hold of their own financial futures by understanding the central
role of economics in their lives, is different as well.
WFI offers
what Reinhold calls "a fully dimensioned" array of programming,
covering such topics as entrepreneurship, tax planning, debt management
and investing. Kaplan, a member of the Committee of 200
(C200), an organization made up of some of the most highly placed corporate
women in the country, was instrumental in bringing one such event to
campus last spring. The two-day program introduced Smith undergraduates
to many of the same topics that Smith's
executive education program covers in greater depth for its more experienced
audience. The sessions were packed and are expected to serve as prototypes
for similar C200 events on other campuses.
Like its undergraduate programs
that encourage and support Smith student interest in business
careers, Smith executive education comes in various forms:
the Smith College Consortium runs for two weeks in the summer; Smith-Tuck
Global Leaders Program (presently held at Dartmouth) and the new program
for women in science, technology and engineering that will debut in
June 2005 and run five days; and custom programming that SEE provides
at corporate sites can be two- to five-day events. SEE instructors
include prominent faculty members from leading business schools, Smith
professors and internationally known organizational consultants. All
of the programs address such similar issues as global marketing and
strategic planning, business relationship management, intercultural
competence, conflict resolution and negotiation, management of workplace
change and leadership of high-performance teams.
Only a quarter of all
enrollees in executive education programs today are women,
Reinhold says, and almost all attend coed programs. Virtually
all of the women who participate in SEE will testify to the value of
a "women-only" program. "Coed
programs are really male programs that let women attend," asserts
Reinhold. "Women
experience these programs as outsiders despite the fact that all the
literature says that you have to feel accepted in order to learn well." Moreover, "women
have qualities that are best suited to the ambiguities of today's
global workplace but their style of learning [more interactive and experiential,
for example] is seldom taken into account in designing coed programs." However,
other executive education programs are finally catching on to the value
of women-only offerings. Many business schools are now putting together
women's
programs and asking Smith to partner with them, Reinhold reports. The
Smith-Tuck Program at Dartmouth, now planning for its third year, is
a case in point.
Issues related to women's concerns
in the workplace were even more evident in last summer's consortium
forum where women managers from the participating companies -- JPMorgan
Chase, Chubb and Sons, Accenture Consulting, Johnson & Johnson,
Eastman Kodak and MetLife -- talked about their lives and work.
Although the topics varied considerably, including networking and the
differences between power and influence, both managers and program
participants kept returning to concerns of particular importance to
women. Chief among these were what they called "work-life choices" -- how
to balance family and other personal commitments with a demanding work
schedule.
Smith President Carol Christ had addressed
the same issue last summer in a talk at the Chautauqua
Institution in New York: "We
need to help our students and young people, particularly young women,
imagine new narratives for themselves that do not undermine ambition
with a false sense of choice. We need to talk about balance and the
need for balance. Women often repeat the joke about Ginger Rogers:
that she did everything that Fred Astaire did, but backwards and
in high heels. It's time to walk forward in flat shoes,
in the same direction as our partner, arguing for policies that allow
us all more capacious and humane lives."
Another major concern
addressed by the SEE consortium forum discussion was the need for
a commitment from senior women managers to help increase the number
of women in corporate leadership. Panelist Isabel Sloane '73
stated it simply: "Climb and lift." Sloane, human resources
executive for asset and wealth management at JPMorgan Chase, joined
JPMorgan as a trader immediately following her graduation from
Smith and has been with the company ever since in increasingly
senior positions. Other panel members had Smith ties as well: Pamela
Craig, senior vice president for finance at Accenture, class of
1979, and Gail Soja, consortium class of 2000. Soja, worldwide
field operations manager for Chubb Commercial Insurance, noted, "My
experience here at the consortium took my thinking from here to
here," as
she spread her hands wide to illustrate the broad scope of what
she had learned.
Barbara Reinhold's experience at Smith has
been wide -- and
instructive -- as
well. She recalls that nearly 20 years ago when she came to campus,
students "lined
up around the block to get on the interview schedules of corporate
recruiters…Wall
Street and consulting firms…the students were willing to
make whatever sacrifices would be necessary in their personal lives." Today,
Reinhold says, "They ask more questions about work-life choices.
They see that there are lots of ways to have a career...start-ups,
entrepreneurial projects, nonprofits....They're not going
into business per se but into businesses -- diffuse
and diverse."
With the prominence of Smith alumnae in
the business world, the college's
burgeoning executive education program and the variety of programs
that prepare students for careers and financial decisions, Smith
and Smith women appear to be uniquely placed right now to contribute
both to the work-life conversation and the "climb and lift" effort
that is so important for the long run.
|
|
