Here is a brief excerpt from an article written by Sallie Krawcheck and featured by LinkedIn. To read the complete article and check out other valuable resources, please click here.
Illustration: Zack Blanton/Vetta/Getty Images
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I am investing in 85 Broads, the 30,000-strong professional women’s network founded by the well-before-her-time Janet Hanson.
For most of my career, I tried to avoid the topic of being a woman in business, vaguely concerned that talking too much about it would hold me back in some way. My standard response: “Oh gosh, I never really think about being a woman in business. I’m just focused on getting the job done.”
But I’ve been thinking about it over the past year…a lot.
And it’s not just because of the fairness issue, important though that is. It’s because the research and business case for the economic advancement of women is so compelling, in a world deeply in need of greater economic prosperity.
This holds at the country level, where the increased participation of women moderates the political process and paves the way for a healthier economy. And it is true at the business level, where companies with greater diversity in senior management have higher returns, lower volatility, more innovation, greater customer focus, better stockholder returns and lower gender pay disparity.
Despite this, the progress of women in business has plateaued. And while there has been a renewal of the national discussion on how to break this logjam, if the answer were one-dimensional, the challenge would already have been solved. The answer can be as unique to every woman as her own definition of personal and professional success.
And that leads to “why a professional women’s network.” Networks are beginning to operate alongside the traditional corporate structure, serving as a modern means for individuals to come together to exchange ideas and information. They enable their members to contribute to, and pull from, the network to accomplish more than the sum of the parts would indicate.
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To read the complete article, please click here.
Sallie L. Krawcheck is the former president of Global Wealth & Investment Management for Bank of
America, one of the largest wealth management businesses in the world with more than 20,000 financial advisors across the entire wealth spectrum and $2 trillion in total client assets. Global Wealth & Investment Management provides comprehensive wealth management to affluent, mass affluent, high net worth and ultra high net worth clients, individual and institutional retirement plans, philanthropic management and asset management.