For our fifteenth and final episode of the Opt-In podcast, listen in on last week's capstone event in San Francisco, where
we presented our observations and findings based on our discussions with representatives from all different industries over the
past year. Hear a summary of our findings, and comments from an enthusiastic audience who joined in the discussion about
how to change the workplace. The Opt In podcast will be on hiatus over the summer, but we'll be back in touch next fall
as we continue to search for real-life solutions to long-term career sustainability and work/life balance for everyone.
In the fourteenth episode of the Opt In podcast, leading up to our capstone event on May 31st, we take a look back at the
progress we've made over the past year. This podcast features excerpts from some of the presentations at Opt In
roundtables over the past twelve months, and comments from Heller Ehrman's Pat Gillette. On May 31st in San Francisco,
we'll come together to discuss how to fundamentally change the workplace, based on the discussions that have taken place over
the course of the project. We look forward to seeing you there.
Employers have a choice: they can continue to insist on a straight career path that leads to an up-or-out destination or
they can adjust the traditional career path to try to address changes in workforce demographics, attitudes, and family
structures.
The Opt-In project came to New York to hold a roundtable discussion with businesses who have chosen the latter path -
mapping out the new ways to look at careers. In this episode we recap our New York roundtable and hear from Anne
Weisberg, Senior Advisor to Deloitte & Touche LLP Women's Initiative, and co-author of the book, Mass Career
Customization: Aligning the Workplace with Today’s Nontraditional Workforce (HBS Press, 2007), who outlines the successes
that Deloitte has had by moving the corporate ladder model of career progression into a corporate lattice.™
Laila Worrell, Head of Accenture’s New York Women’s Initiative, also shares with us how Accenture is implementing a
program of creating “on-ramps” to bring women and men back into the workforce.
If you are in the business of creating change, how do you approach the critical first step: getting decision-makers to agree that change is necessary?
Our last few podcast installments profiled new models for changing the workforce. In this episode, we talk to people who are leading the way in building consensus around implementing change. The topic is near and dear to our hearts, as the Opt In project transitions from our first year of identifying innovative solutions to our current focus on implementing those solutions across industries.
We talk to Karen Lockwood, partner at Howrey LLP in Washington DC and former President of the Women's Bar Association of the District of Columbia, about how she put together a working group of managing law firm partners to develop recommendations about changing the legal industry to support and retain women. They produced a report, Creating Pathways (www.wbadc.org), outlining model policies and meaningful ways to get individual firms to implement them.
We also hear from Kathleen Bradley, attorney and Career Development Coach at Arent Fox, who shares her experience putting a women's initiative in place at her firm. She talks about how she put together a comprehensive report that builds the case for implementing change.
Is there a difference when it comes to men and women’s leadership styles? Why does it matter to have women leaders?
We began our evening asking these very questions during Opt-In Project’s first East Coast appearance in Washington, D.C. The program, our third roundtable discussion, asked men and women in the public and private sectors to discuss how to advance more women into leadership positions and outline the case for creating more women leaders. This episode we feature a recap of the event.
The program, "Women in Charge: Making a Difference," featured Sanyin Siang, Managing Director of the Center on Leadership and Ethics at Duke's Fuqua School of Business and Kimberly Jenkins, former head and founder of Microsoft Corporation's education division. In addition to her work with Microsoft, Kimberly also ran The Internet Policy Institute and is the current executive-in-residence at Duke University. Hear what they have to say about the importance of having women in positions of power and leadership and their response to some of the questions that were brought up during the evening.
This podcast was produced in collaboration with Hear Now Productions: http://www.hearnowproductions.com
In March of 1908, 15,000 women marched through the streets of New York City, demanding that their employers offer shorter hours, more pay and better working conditions. A year later International Women’s Day was established to commemorate the protest and to continue the momentum that was begun that day in 1908.
Almost a century later, in countries all over the world, people celebrate International Women’s Day in countless ways. Companies with a global focus mobilize their global workforce to use the holiday as an occasion to talk about how they can advance the women in their ranks.
We profile what one company, Accenture, has done to take the lead in using this day to raise awareness about the issues women face in their workforce, and to help start conversations that continue throughout the year.
Valerie Benjamin, Accenture’s Director of Global Inclusion and Laila Worrell, Head of Accenture’s New York Women’s Initiative, outline their plans for the 2007 event. They also talk about the many ways that the company and its employees benefit from the energy surrounding their International Women’s Day program.
This podcast was produced in collaboration with Hear Now Productions.
More business decisions occur over lunch and dinner than at any other time.” – Peter Drucker, Management Professor
If Peter Drucker was right that your time outside the office is so important to your time inside the office, what does that mean for balancing your work and family life? How do parents who don’t want to give up their after-hours time find equal networking opportunities?
This episode we profile a group that has created a new solution for this problem. The Seattle based group, MAMAS was founded to be a source of support for attorney mothers, where they can network, share experiences, learn from each other, problem solve, and talk about issues unique to being a mother attorney.
Co-Founder Rachel Black and Lori Lynn Phillips talk with us about the founding of the organization and the need that this group fills for its members. We also hear from members Davina Inslee and Kristin Lindsay on the benefits that the group offers.
For more information you can visit the MAMAS website at www.mamaseattle.org.
This podcast was produced in collaboration with Hear Now Productions: http://www.hearnowproductions.com
Who asks for work/life balance? Who benefits from it? When we think of programs to help implement work/life balance, do we assume it's only for women, or more specifically, for women who are mothers? Why? How does this affect the conversation and advancements in this area?
These are the questions that we wanted to answer at our third roundtable discussion, “Work/Life Balance: Not Just for Women”. In this podcast episode we recap what we heard at the event. If you weren’t able to make it we encourage you to read our report we put together to help lead the conversation. It is available at www.hellerehrman.com/optin/.
We asked Noni Allwood, Senior Director of Worldwide Diversity and Inclusion at Cisco Systems, of Cisco Systems and Eric Drattell, Vice President and General Counsel at Risk Management Solutions to lead the conversation to speak with us about these questions because even in this male dominated business environment, high tech companies have been able to make extraordinary advances in offering flexibility to highly demanding professionals.
The tech industry seems to have recognized that the employees who benefit from flexible programs are not just women. Rather,this industry has found that to attract and retain the employees they want and to make their business run efficiently, they have to make the workplace accessible and acceptable to all employees. As a result, they have embraced and fostered a work environment that accommodates all types of schedules and all types of needs. And their employees, both men and women, have taken advantage of this “alternative” work style.
This podcast was produced in collaboration with Hear Now Productions: http://www.hearnowproductions.com .
It's about the future and it's about harnessing the incredible power that each individual
brings to the table in our company that make the inclusive environment happen.
-Sandra Bushby, Director of Women's Initiatives, KPMG
The Opt-In Project kicks off the new year with an episode profiling KPMG's work style diversity assessment program. Sandra Bushby, Director of Women's Initiatives for KPMG speaks with us about how the company has re-imagined the way to look at diversity though identifying each employee's work style characteristics. We learn how exactly this program has benefited KPMG, their clients and also how this program filters out gender, ethic, or racial bias from the conversation.
This podcast was produced in collaboration with Hear Now Productions:
http://www.hearnowproductions.com
Many women never get near that glass ceiling because they are stopped long before by the maternal wall. -The New York Times, The Opt-Out Revolution, October 26, 2003.
We continue our conversation on the Opt-Out Revolution debate taking place in the media with the four writers we featured in episode five. This time, we concentrate on what they had to say about changing family roles, and the culture of work in general. We also bring the conversation back full circle, to what changes employers are making that promise a different future.
We continue talking with:
Susan Douglas, chair of Communication Studies at The University of Michigan, co-author of The Mommy Myth: The Idealization of Motherhood and How it Undermines Women, and contributor to In These Times.
Maggie Jackson, is an award-winning columnist and author of What's Happening to Home? Balancing Work, Life and Refuge in the Information Age. Her twice-monthly column on work life issues, “Balancing Acts” appears in The Boston Sunday Globe.
Rebecca Traister, contributing writer who covers gender politics for Salon.com.
Cathy Young, contributor to Reason Magazine and op-ed columnist who has written about gender issues for The Boston Globe.
This podcast was produced in collaboration with Hear Now Productions: http://www.hearnowproductions.com
Happy Holidays from the Opt-In Project and Heller Ehrman! We will be taking a small hiatus, but will resume our podcasting schedule with a brand new episode January 14, 2007! Seasons Greetings!
Why don't women run the world? Maybe it's because they don't want to. --The New York Times, The Opt-Out Revolution," October 26, 2003.
In this, our fifth episode of the Opt-In podcast, we return to the original inspiration for the Opt-In project and talk about how the debate over women and the workforce has evolved in the media. Over the next two episodes, we talk to op-ed contributors and columnists who cover work life and gender issues and ask them how they see the discussion progressing. We hear what they think about the way the media has covered the so-called opt-out revolution and what issues they feel need more attention.
Featured in this episode:
Susan Douglas http://www.inthesetimes.com/site/about/author/43/, chair of Communication Studies at The University of Michigan, co-author of The Mommy Myth: The Idealization of Motherhood and How it Undermines Women, and contributor to In These Times.
Maggie Jackson http://bostonworks.boston.com/news/archive/balance/, is an award-winning columnist and author of What's Happening to Home? Balancing Work, Life and Refuge in the Information Age. Her twice-monthly column on work life issues, Balancing Acts, appears in The Boston Sunday Globe.
Rebecca Traister http://www.salon.com, contributing writer who covers gender politics for Salon.com.
Cathy Young http://www.cathyyoung.net/index.html, contributor to Reason Magazine and op-ed columnist who has written about gender issues for The Boston Globe.
This podcast was produced in collaboration with Hear Now Productions: http://www.hearnowproductions.com
Amid increasing competition for talent, many employers are taking rising interest in wooing back successful female employees who left for personal reasons. And research suggest that many women who take a break from their professional lives to raise children are interested in returning.- The Wall Street Journal, Business Schools Target At-Home Moms, May 10, 2006
Answering the demand described above is a new solution developed by Dartmouth's Tuck School of Business, which is conducting its inaugural session targeting women and men who have left the workforce and want to reenter. We profile the "Back in Business" program to find out how "on-ramping" programs could be structured and explore the custom design of this program with Dartmouth's Tuck School professors Constance Helfat and Anant Sundaram, the co-architects of "Back in Business" program.
We also profile the reasons behind corporate involvement and sponsorship in the program with Hans Morris, Chief Financial officer at Citigroup Inc's Corporate and Investment Banking unit. Citigroup Corporate and Investment Banking is the lead sponsor of the Tuck program, providing both assistance and financial support to subsidize the program. A participant, Gregory Clow, also shares his experiences of what he is gaining from the program.
To learn more about Tuck's "Back in Business" program click here or about Citigroup's recruiting efforts click here.
This podcast was produced in collaboration with Hear Now Productions: http://www.hearnowproductions.com
“ Just as employers have changed the rules about employees, these young people want to make up their own rules when they enter the workforce. If we let their voices be heard, experiment with their ideas, then retaining them and stimulating them won't be” that much of a challenge - in fact, the new world Gen Y brings could benefit us all.” – Johanna Torsone, “Generation Y Will Change the Way We Work,” Philadelphia Inquirer, May 28, 2006
Media coverage regularly tells us that generation Y is going to demand a more flexible workplace – and that the landscape of business and employment will change over the next two decades as a result. But how will this happen? What do they want? In our third episode of the Opt-In Podcast we profile Generation Y and their views on a flexible workplace. We hear from Lindsey Pollak, author of Getting From College to Career: 99 Things to Do Before You Join the Real World (HarperCollins, April 2007 -- www.lindseypollak.com) who has profiled this generation and its perceptions of the workplace.
We also brought together several “Gen Y’ers” and asked them to speak frankly about what they want from the workplace. Our panelists include Albert Lee, VP of a hedge fund, Kristen Jacoby, first-year associate at Heller Ehrman; Ed Bayley, law student, and Rebecca Freeland, consultant for an environmental planning firm.
Cathy Benko, National Managing Director for Deloitte's Initiative for the Retention and Advancement of Women, proposed in her opening speech at our first roundtable that we look at "the day after tomorrow," when planning for the future workplace. The stop-gap solutions of part and flex time work fill an important need, but what are the bigger solutions in retaining employees and restructuring the workforce? What will the day after tomorrow be like? How do we get there?
We take a look at this in our episode and see how Bain & Company is approaching this question by speaking with partner Heidi Locke Simon. We also talk with Harvard Business School professor Kathleen McGinn on what the future of business might look like, and discuss how one reframes the retention issue to get more people involved with Ralph Pais partner at Fenwick & West.
This podcast was produced in collaboration with Hear Now Productions:
http://www.hearnowproductions.com <http://hearnowproductions.com/>
You can subscribe to the podcast via iTunes, which will automatically let you receive a new episode every two weeks from now through the end of May. Or you can click on the "listen" button to hear the podcast in your computer's preferred music player.
The Opt In project, sponsored by Heller Ehrman, explores the issue of the advancement and retention of women in top professional positions, through a dialogue with business leaders from many different industries. In this podcast, hosted by Anne Mercogliano, Diversity Specialist at Heller Ehrman, we hear from Pat Gillette, co-chair of the firm’s Labor and Employment Practice Group. We also hear from Elissa Ellis, Executive Director of the Forte Foundation, and Cathy Benko, National Managing Director for Deloitte’s Initiative for the Retention and Advancement of Women. They describe the work being done by their respective firms to change the way we think about career alternatives. You’ll also hear a collage of comments from some of the women who attended our roundtable event on September 28th focusing on the professional and financial services, including Brooke Johnson and Kim Wiatrak of PricewaterhouseCoopers and Brook Andrich of Heller Ehrman.
Subscribers to the podcast will receive a new episode every two weeks from now through the end of May. Watch for our next episode, out on October 19th. Meanwhile, we’d love to hear from you. Please visit our website at www.hellerehrman.com/optin or you can email us at: optin@hellerehrman.com.
This podcast was produced in collaboration with Hear Now Productions: http://www.hearnowproductions.com.
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