EmpowHER Women in Leadership Series | Part I

Yeah. I think there was a notion about that, and I think it was because everyone certainly in your and my generation, everyone was so worried about showing up their whole self to work. I mean, I really think that that was an issue. And for sure we were trained to not talk about anything other than focusing on work. So when you're only focused on that, the connections weren't necessarily what was top of mind. But I found that that's actually not the case.

Betsy Myers: Right. I think that's what's fun about today's webinar is that we're going to legitimize the notion that women are actually each other's greatest allies. And I think what's exciting is that times have definitely changed because there was in the past this notion that there's only a few women at the top, so there wasn't room for everyone. And you've probably heard this 30% notion. That if you get to 30% in any organization of women, there's a cascading effect down where women reach down and reach for their other women colleagues and it makes a big difference. Katie Coric wrote about this in her book and she was really honest about it and I thought that was a really great conversation on this which was, she felt like she couldn't reach down and support younger women because she was the only anchor. So she did that. There wasn't room for other women. And I think that's exciting about what we're seeing today.

I would say in my work of women's advancement in corporate America and academia and government, there's two areas that we're seeing some incredible growth for women's advancement. One is men as allies, and the second is female alliances. So I'm really excited to dig into this conversation today. And the first question we wanted to dig right in is to share a time in your early or mid-career when you were mentored or supported by a female leader or colleague and what was the impact. So first we want to invite Naomi to this conversation. She has a great story and you have a big role in this organization, Naomi, as director of Global Diversity Inclusion and Equity. And it's been wonderful to work with you. So we wanted to ask you to share your story.

Naomi Barrett: Yeah. I am really excited about this topic because you mentioned having senior leaders reaching back and the importance of being able to do that. And that is actually how I got into DEI. There's a lot of conversation about imposter syndrome and how oftentimes women and other minorities, they won't feel like they're ready to take on leadership roles or they'll have those questioning thoughts about whether they should take the next step in their careers. And I was working at my last organization in HR but not in a DEI role, not in a leadership role at that point. And I said, we could be doing more around DEI. So I took one step to say we should do certain things. And I put a proposal together and one of our head of HR saw this proposal and she said, "You should present this to the CEO." And I said, "I'm sorry, you want me to go and meet with the CEO about this?" Okay, I can do that. I can meet with the CEO. And the CEO also said, "We love this. I want you to do it."

And in my mind I said, "I don't know about that one. I think maybe we should do it. Maybe we should hire someone to do it. And I don't know if I should be the person." And I literally tell you the two of them together, I am not going to say the word bully, but they pushed me very hard and they really stretched my capabilities and they really encouraged me and mentored me. And they knew I could do it before even I knew that I should take the job. And I think it's really important that you have those people around you in your circle. They were in those roles and they took that time because in a lot of ways, in a lot of situations, if you say you're not sure, people will move on. So having that confidence is important. But it is also important as leaders to understand the dynamics of a new leader who's coming in, who has that capability and to be there to do it.

And these were two women. Our CEO was a woman, our head of HR was a woman, and they understood that dynamic and they brought me with them and put me into that role and mentored me throughout that role to be able to allow me to progress my career. And it truly was so impactful to me and I think it's important to think about not only the alliances that you create, but the ones that you reach back for as well once you get where you're going. And that meant so much to me. I'm still working in DEI obviously I've moved on to new roles. I'm here at EisnerAmper. But I would not be in this role without that situation happening and without those two women standing firm for me, even when I was not firm yet. And I think that's such an important dynamic to have in these alliances.

Betsy Myers: Naomi, that's a great story. But you said two things that really stuck out to me. One was you didn't quite believe in yourself yet that you could do the job. So one of the things we grapple with as women is the imposter syndrome. And the statistics are so high, it's something like 75% of women feel that they're imposters. And this whole notion of am I worthy, do I have enough skills? Beth you know this that you've had this research for a really long time that if there's a job posted and it has 10 things, 10 skills that you need to have, a woman will look at that and say, well, I have eight or nine but not 10. I'm not ready.

And where a man will look at that and say, he might have two, and he says, "I can do that job." So what you're talking about Naomi, is how important is, that they said, "No, no, we believe in you and you can do this." And then the second part what you mentioned was they mentored you through that along the way. So it wasn't just, here you go, throw you into the deep end of the pool. It was like they hung in with you to make sure you could swim. And that's a beautiful example.

Naomi Barrett: Yeah. It was so impactful. I think it also gave me insight into the type of leader I want to be and what I want to do as I go forward in my career as well.

Betsy Myers: Fantastic. And here you are in this big job.

Naomi Barrett: And here I am.

Betsy Myers: Yes, exactly. So I know, Beth, you have a story too, that you wanted to share with us.

Beth Leonard: Sure, thank you. So I was thinking about Naomi just for one second though, because I'm going to refer to it is, Naomi was voluntold.

Betsy Myers: Yes.

Beth Leonard: You were voluntold. And sometimes being voluntold is the best way, because someone believes in you and they're volunteering you to reach up. We use that one a lot, voluntold. So anyway, just thought it was perfect example of it. So I had the incredible opportunity-

Naomi Barrett: Exactly what happened.

Beth Leonard: Yeah, exactly. You were voluntold. A long time ago, I had been in, I was not a partner even yet at our old firm. I participated in a program called Minnesota 100 where they took high potential women, 100 of them obviously, and paired you up with some C-suite person to mentor you for a year. So that year goes by. The woman who was the CEO of that organization decided to leave. And she came to me and said, "I think we should do our own peer-to-peer mentoring group." This was way before those were things that anyone did. And we're going to be very committed and we're going to interview people. So we interviewed 11, we had 11 people in our group. Everyone was from a different discipline. So there was a lawyer, there was an accountant, there was a strategy, there was marketing. So everyone really was different.

And we came together under the premise that we were not going to talk about balance because that was something everyone's talking about back then. We weren't going to talk about anything personal until we got down to business. These 11 women committed to being together twice a month for an hour and a half and only talk about business and how to do things differently. And our roadmap was actually from an article in The New York Times about three women in the Boston healthcare industry. And they wondered why there were no women in any leadership spot, a C-suite in healthcare. And when they realized that they aligned together and it helped each other find those positions, that they got the jobs and five years later they had all of their cadre of women, and that was in C-suite jobs in the healthcare. So that was our premise.

So those women, I can take my entire career and draw a circle from those 10 women. And I can tell you from business development, from my outlook on life, because in our profession, sometimes we're very myopic and we don't look outside, and that's very difficult. So someone was an expert in HR. There were things back then we didn't know that you could actually negotiate your severance package on when you decide to leave. And this woman had been doing that at one of the large banks here, and she's like, "The men do it all the time." So the joke that every woman that was in that group negotiated their severance package out of where they were as opposed to seeing the writing on the wall. But it was things like that that we never learned, compensation, performance, bringing in consultants.

But from that it was like we developed a friendship that went beyond anything. Five of the women still come with me every year to Colorado. We have our weekend. Now we do puzzles. But we're still trying to fix things and put things together. But everyone's had different parts of their career. And this really was the formative part of my entire career. It was from those 10 women.

Betsy Myers: Wow. And the shared learning that you were just talking about, like what? You can actually negotiate your severance, those kinds of things. Because I think there's this feeling sometimes that we're alone and we're the only one going through this. And it's amazing the group stayed together for all the years through the different changes in your life.

Beth Leonard: And in a different format. And I just want to give one example of a story that was when I realized it was the aha. So one of the women in the group was on the board of a public traded company and they were doing the CFO search. So they had an outside search firm doing the work. And she came to me and said, "Hey, we have this position open, what do you think?" And I had a perfect woman who had been in retail space but definitely knew about sales per square foot. She was an expert. I sent her the resume. She said, "This woman would never have gotten through our screening." And she ultimately became a CFO. And I said, "Men do this all day long." So we did something great for another woman that got a position as a CFO in a publicly traded company, and she would've never made it past the gatekeepers.

Betsy Myers: Wow. Relationships, mentoring, support, this is all we're talking about in Female Alliance. Wow, this is such a great story. I was sitting here thinking I have to share a story in my own life that it was life-changing. So I found myself in the Clinton White House. I ran the office for women, which was a new office the president and first lady started. And I found it was the young person, the head of that office. And one of the things in Female Alliance and support is as we're growing our career, sometimes we're not always aware. It's not intentional for doing things that might be irritating other people or rubbing people the wrong way. So we started this new office for women in the White House that was actually on the president's side of the team. But obviously Mrs. Clinton and the first ladies team was extremely engaged and was the true leader in the women's issues area.

So my office was working on these issues and the deputy chief of staff at the time was a woman. Her name was Evelyn Lieberman. And I got a call from her to come see her. And I went to see her and she said, "Listen, I need to give you some feedback." She said, "Mrs. Clinton is not happy with you right now." Nobody wants that. Anyone to say the CEO... I said, "What?" And she said, "You are not communicating with the first lady's office. And she keeps finding out stuff that you're doing that she doesn't know about." So it was not intentional on my part, it was a blind spot. So she coached me on what to do. She said, "First you need to call the first lady, apologize. Figure out what's next. Then go meet with the chief of staff, deputy chief of staff, figure out how your office and the first lady's office will better coordinate, meet more regularly and collaborate better.

I will honestly say that that one conversation, that mentoring, that support saved my job in the White House. Because oftentimes it's not intentional, but how we have our female colleagues and associates that support us makes all the difference in the world. So I learned so much from that because sometimes we ignore when you see people are doing things and may not say anything. So part of it is just that alerting me to that blind spot was absolutely life-changing because I sometimes personally had an issue of managing up. It wasn't intentional, I would forget. So anyway, so another story in my own life that I really realized life changing.

Beth Leonard: That's great.

Betsy Myers: So Beth, I wanted to go to our next slide just to talk about that all of the incredible opportunities that female support and networks bring to us. And as we're just talking about enhanced career opportunities and how female alliances can provide access to valuable career opportunities as you were just telling the story about your friend, the CFO, and how networking... And I think sometimes people get uncomfortable about networking. How networking can lead to relationship building which leads to job referrals, mentorship opportunities and introduction to influential people, people that can make a difference.

A friend of mine who was a partner at a big accounting firm, Deloitte was sharing a story about how one of her young women on her team was up for partner and there was another young man that was up for partner. And the young woman worked really hard but didn't network. So when she went up for partner, the other partners were like, we don't know her. And where the young man was out going to lunches, coffees, asking for support. And one of the partners said to her, "We can't support you if we don't know you." So it's such a reminder that how we go out and build relationships with our alliances and that networking can be feel uncomfortable, but it's really just relationship building. And I know you have thoughts on that.

Beth Leonard: Yeah. I would not say that I started off being a networker. When I was talking about that Minnesota 100, I realized that if I didn't take advantage, and we're going to talk about career changing. I didn't take advantage of the opportunity in front of me that as much as I might've gotten some personal growth, it wouldn't have been what the firm was investing in me in. So every meeting, there was a 10 minutes where you were supposed to do, take a and gave you the topic and you had to add. So I'm like, okay, I'm going to go for this. I would never have gotten up in front of a group and spoken. So the topic was what I learned while standing on my feet. And this will really date me, but the Mall of America had just opened. You guys all know the Mall of America. 40 million people come and visit it every year.

And Nordstrom had just come here. And of course they had the amazing shoe department. So I did the Dave Letterman's top 10 list. What I learned, blah, blah, blah. And number one was you need comfortable shoes if you're going to stand on your feet. And I had the woman in charge of the shoe department speaking to 100 women. Today, I still have people who come to me like, "I remember you. You are the one that did the shoe thing at Minnesota 100." It still doesn't fail. It'll happen. Because I could never get to 100 people, but if they could all know me, then I became a resource for them in accounting and everything else. So to put myself out there in a way that I felt comfortable wasn't going to be too vulnerable, maybe vulnerable but not too vulnerable, it was a way for me to leverage and exponentially meet 100 people. Because I wasn't going to go to lunch with 100 people. It just wasn't going to happen.

Betsy Myers: That would be very, very strategic. Very strategic and also fun. It was fun. We put this happiness on networking, but it's a way to... Because I always say that old feeling like if I just work hard enough someone will notice, and we've got to move out. LinkedIn did a study of people who have never been a mentor and they were asked people who'd never been a mentor, why they'd never been for someone else. And the answer was, they'd never been asked.

Beth Leonard: Wow.

Betsy Myers: So we think sometimes, people are too busy. They wouldn't want to. But that reaching out and saying... I call it five minute mentoring, which is asking people for a cup of coffee or not a lot of their time, but just the ability to say, "Hey, I want to get to know you. You've inspired me or I'm working on this project that I think you could benefit you and you should know about," that kind of thing it just creates energy. The next one-

Beth Leonard: I think one of the things you alluded to that is really important to highlight is when we're acting as mentors and we're having the opportunity to do something, think about the person that keeps their head down and does a great job and pick them. Help them get out of their comfort zone. Help them look at an opportunity. Help them look at something, look at themselves differently. I think Naomi gave the story earlier about she did the proposal and then she was selected to do it. I was involved with, or I am involved with a very large nonprofit. It's half a billion in revenue. There's 1,800 employees. They're all over the globe. But the woman that they selected for the CEO for the last 10 years, she was the COO. And she'd done a search and they were trying to find a new CEO and everyone said she had all the characteristics.

So I was on the leadership position and I went to the chairman and I said, "Why aren't we picking this woman?" She said, "No." So I'm like, that's not right. It's got to be her. And they're like, she said, no. Well, you call her. Okay. So call her over a weekend. She answers. She thinks we're having a conversation about something else. She goes, "So do I have a topic? It might be uncomfortable." I go, "I really think you need to consider being the CEO." And she said, "Well, no. I already said no." I'm like, "No. I want you to go to the mirror. I want you to look at the person in the mirror and I want you to see that person is the CEO."

Betsy Myers: Love that.

Beth Leonard: I said, "You need to look at yourself as that person. Because when the new CEO comes in and they're not you, and you say, I could do this with one hand but hide behind my back, you are going to leave." And she's like, "No, I'm not... I'm like, "Spend the weekend looking at yourself, the CEO."

Betsy Myers: You know what that is? That is the sisterhood. That is the support network. This whole conversation day is about. And it goes right into our number two on the slide, which is increase in confidence. So how female networking female support boosts our confidence, because confidence is a huge issue. One of my favorite books is The Confidence Code written by Katty Kay and Claire Shipman. And it's all about what we struggle with, this lack of confidence. And what the big takeaway from their book was, confidence is taking action when you don't feel confident. So even when you don't, then confidence then gets built on confidence because you realize, I did it and I can do it. But the support of your female colleagues around that is really, really important. To push back on the imposter syndrome to our sometimes feeling we're not worthy is really, really important. And you really touched on that.

Beth Leonard: The confidence that we exude, it's infectious. And what I found out in being confident, the way to actually be the most confident is to sometimes say, I don't know. And it's okay. It's okay for you not to know everything. It's okay to not be the expert of the entire encyclopedia. It's really okay. So sometimes people actually think more of you when you say, "Hey, I don't know that answer. Let me get back to you." And that's a confident, because they're like, "Oh, great. She was honest with me. She took what I was saying seriously." And then you get back to them, you look it up, you find out, get other resources, whatever it is. But that's where you bring your whole network to bear on things that you don't necessarily know that can enhance someone's career or their opportunity or their experience. And that's something I think okay to say I don't know.

Betsy Myers: Oh my God and Beth you know that the old model of leadership was more of a masculine model of I know everything. I'm the leader so I have all the answers. And today we're a more integrated model of leadership so the integration of the masculine and the feminine, which is the leader actually is the one to ask the questions. To say, what do you think? Here's what we know. Here's what we don't know. What does my team on the ground think? So it is a whole different model and it is okay. And I think that's one of the reasons why often women leaders step back because I don't have all the answers. And I think part of leadership development is we're giving you permission to actually, you shouldn't know all the answers. Because part of it is the exploration of what is in front of you or what's coming and what your people on the front line think.

Beth Leonard: Right. I mean, you touched on leadership I know this is a little off the topic, but I learned that there are three types, command and control, that's not going to work today. Spoke and hub, where it's more distributed. And then there's a distributed model of leadership, which is your integrated model. And that type of leadership means that you're right. You get to ask the questions, but you are leading an entire integrated group that you are going to bring out the best in everybody. It doesn't have to be only women, but it's best in everybody. But people benefit from that in such a great way so we have to make sure that we're paying attention to everybody that's getting access to that distribution.

Betsy Myers: Absolutely. Yeah. It's really changed, hasn't it? The world has changed this notion of leadership. I worked for a while with Starbucks and their head of human resources, similar to the story you told about your colleague that you called, when they would offer someone the opportunity to apply for a position or a woman, and they would say no, when they thought that they were the ones for that position, she was a woman head of hr. She would go and say, "No. You actually are going to do this and we're going to support you along the way." So you called it what?

Beth Leonard: Voluntold?

Betsy Myers: Voluntold. Yeah. So she voluntold. No, you're going to do that, and like Naomi's experience, we're going to support you all along the way. That's that support to build the confidence.

Beth Leonard: And I would say just on the flip side of that notion is that if you're in a position that you think that you need more support, ask for the support. Ask for a coach, ask for who in the organization has done this job before? Ask for the support because that actually shows that you have self-awareness and you want to learn. But there will be resources that are available and it's really important that you recognize maybe some things that you need to learn and that they're not being offered ask for them.

Betsy Myers: That's a good growth mindset and I think sometimes with women we struggle with we have to be perfect. Or giving permission to say, we're not perfect. We're always growing, we're always evolving. And being willing to say that I don't know this and I do want to expand these skills, get this mentoring is part of our growth.

Beth Leonard: Absolutely.

Betsy Myers: The other thing, knowledge sharing is really important and skill development. Because knowledge sharing is, if I don't know that I'm messing up with the first lady, then I'm going to continue to mess up. And I always say blind spots to blind sighted. So how do we knowledge share with each other so that people you're not alone. We can exchange valuable insights, experiences, expertise, knowledge learned from each other. And it's so important that we collaborate and share. One of a great story that I love is that, that experience when women talk about this all the time, which is you're in a meeting and one of the women says something and people are like, yeah. And then the male leader says it and everyone's like, "Oh my God, that's a great idea." So that was happening in the Obama White House. So the women leaders got together, the women in the White House and said, "Let's support each other when that happens again."

So when it happened and one of the women would say something got looked over, the male leader said something, it's a great idea. They would jump in and say, "That's so great that you're supporting what Susan said." So that support too as well. I think that's really important.

Beth Leonard: Yeah. I totally agree. Obviously the first lady was not in the room in that one because that would never happen.

Betsy Myers: That is very true.

Beth Leonard: But it's funny. A similar type of story is so obviously a woman, a managing partner in our firm, our COO was a woman. Our male partners were like, we love it. We're the most organized group of people and you guys just tell us what to do and we're happy to do it. And it worked really well. But we had a group of high potentials and we were identifying some people and our executive committee was talking about it. And we had two women, and the three guys said, "Well, they have young families, so I don't think they need to do that." And I looked at them and I said, "Oh my God, you guys, you just did what happens all the time except for you did it with two women in the room and we're not going to let you do that." So we need to have you guys go to those two people and ask them if they want to be part of this high potential group. Let them opt out or let them say, I want to do it later, or let them say something else.

So that's almost the underlying piece by when you have women, and Naomi knows this very well with DEI work that she's been doing. You need to have women in the room so that you can at least combat some of those biases that happen, and they're not intentional. These were great guys who said, go ahead and run the firm. We don't want to have anything to do with this. But the biggest issue was, oh my God, those things still were happening with two women in the room who were supporting other women along the way. So that's like a thing that you have to watch out for just like you talked about in the White House. We're going to come together, we're going to make sure we support each other. It's very important.

Betsy Myers: Right. And knowledge sharing is important because we all learn. So a lot of male leaders realize, I didn't realize that. I made an assumption, I was incorrect about that. Because male allies is important too. So how we work together to share information across the line is important on both aspects.

The other thing, role modeling is really important because young women come in and they see other women going up the ranks. And how we support each other is really important for how young women choose where they want to work. When I was at Bentley University, I ran a center for women in business. And the young undergrads would come in to talk about companies they were choosing, and they would look to see how many women in the C-suite, how many women on the board, what programs do they have for their leadership development. So very, very important as we look the younger generations are looking for more of that engagement.

A few years ago, there was a study by McKinsey and it came out saying that younger women had less ambition because they were leaving organizations at an earlier rate. And the research actually showed, no. What was happening was they weren't feeling supported, they didn't feel mentored. They didn't feel like anyone was there to talk to them about next steps or how they were doing. So it wasn't a lack of ambition, it was a lack of wanting to be with a company that function in that way. So the world is absolutely changing in what the environment and the place that people want to work that we think differently about our workforce today and female alliance and how we support each other is a huge piece of it.

Beth Leonard: Yeah. And the only thing I would add to that is I think it's incredibly important. You have four generations working in the workplace today. And everybody does it differently and I have listened. I said I always learned the most from my kids because they were Gen Ziers, or millennials and Gen Ziers. So I listened to them. I said I learned more from them as they were going to making their decisions. And I was cognizant of the fact that the way I did it did not appeal to them. They're like, "We don't want to work like you do." Okay. Fair enough. But I think we need to listen to everybody who's in the workplace and it isn't a prescribed way to do things anymore.

And we have to be flexible and open-minded, and listen to all the generations, because otherwise you won't keep people engaged and they'll leave. And that's not the intention because good people opting out is definitely not what any organization wants to have happen. So I'm going to put the onus on both sides. It's also incumbent upon the younger generations, if you don't like what you're seeing as far as where your engagement or what you need, you have opportunities and there's on demand feedback all the time. Ask. Ask questions through those things. It's really important.

Betsy Myers: Oh my God, so important. Yeah, there's a lot of changes. Change the world of work and with COVID. With the virtual and hybrid and all that, we don't quite have a new normal yet. It's a very interesting time in our leadership. But back to the topic at hand. The other thing I think so important in our female networks and support is the emotional suppor.t So crucial for navigating. So in female alliances to have other people who understand and empathize with you and you don't feel like I'm the only one that has tried to grapple with Holman, work or a difficult pause... And I think it's really important. This is a key piece of the female alliances. So important and when someone has something wonderful happen to them, a promotion or something went well that we surround to celebrate.

But also when something goes bad. When someone has a difficult meeting or they got moved to a different position or whatever, that we also surround our sisters with the support of not ignoring what happened or, oh my God, did you hear the water cooler stuff. But actually to surround that woman leader with support. And that increases resilience. And that increases people to stay in your firm, in your organization to say, wow, this happened to me. Or I'm having this difficult issue at home and I have the love and support of the people around me.

Beth Leonard: I mean, listen, we spend a lot of time at the office, whatever that looks like. Whether it's virtual or in person or hybrid or whatever, and you need those people to really support you.

Betsy Myers: Yes. Totally. And the last one is advocacy and collaboration. And I just want to throw this on because it's so important the collective power of women in an organization that women can amplify our voices to push for policy changes. And I always say sometimes women don't realize that women have 80% of the purchase power where business owners and customers and more college graduates. And what I always remind women of, women have elected the president every year since Reagan in 1980. So the collective power of women who our elected officials are. And I think sometimes we just need a reminder. Just why so many organizations are saying we have so many women customers, we need to have more women in roles, because women like working with other women. So as a business case, also super, super important to remember.

Beth Leonard: Just to add one thing to that, the wealth transfer will go to women. The largest wealth transfer in the history of this world will go to women.

Betsy Myers: Yes. Exactly. So there's a lot of... It's interesting to see organizations really seeing this and making changes inside their organizations to address these big changes. So anything else on these that you want to add, Beth, before we move on?

Beth Leonard: No. I think this is great. We're going to have Sarah join us.

Betsy Myers: Wait, we're going to go real quickly before Sarah joins us. Just quickly. I just want to share three women who are working on these issues of women's alliances. Brooke Baldwin wrote a book called Huddle. Huddling is her term for women supporting women. And she talks about what happens when women stop leaning in and start leaning on each other. So she was a CNN reporter who went out and was part of the women's marches after the 2016 presidential race and she really realized how women support each other in so many ways. So the collective power of women. She left CNN and started her own organization on huddling and women's impact that women make.

Beth Leonard: That's great.

Betsy Myers: Ana Duvernary is amazing woman and she's the highest grossing female Black director in domestic box office history. She's the first Black woman to direct a film nominated for best picture at Oscar, Selma. And she, at this conference, she was talking to women. She said men are often defended by other men. She was talking to 10,000 women at a Pennsylvania conference. And she said, "If criticism comes, so do the fanboys who support the person being criticized by defending to protect them." She says, "As women, I'd love to see more of that among us. Being a fan girl or a vocal defender of women is a way of saying, you are not an imposter. You are fantastic." So then she talks about how important it is to hire, mentor, talk to each other. She was asked if she was fearless, and she said the word fearless is complicated. And I always think fear less. And if you're in a room, there's another woman there, talk to her, help her be fear less. So I love that. That's where the fan girl came up.

The next one was Diane Rosenfeld. Diane is a law professor at Harvard Law School, and she did research on the chimpanzees that are called the bonobos. And what's fascinating about the bonobos is that they have eradicated all male sexual violence. They're the only chimpanzee group that has done this. And how they do it is that when there is any female getting hurt in any way, they come to her aid. She always says whether they know her, like her, they come from the trees and jump on the male, they bite his ear, they ban him, and they support this with a woman chimpanzee. So they have extremely no sexual violence, no violence. So Diane's work is all about how we the sisterhood, that starts with the power of knowing that we have a selves worth defending and that we must defend our sisters. And very, very interesting work in her work.

So there's a movement, and I think it's really exciting that there's a lot of talk about how we support each other as women and have been doing it for years and years. How did women get the right to vote? Was the women's coalition. This isn't really a new concept. We're pulling on an old concept and saying, wow, this is really valuable for us.

Beth Leonard: How do we re imagine it? Okay. That's good.

Betsy Myers: So I'll move it, pass it on for Sarah. And Beth, if you want to introduce...

Beth Leonard: Yeah. So Sarah Brand is a partner at EisnerAmper, and we are thrilled to have her join us. Sarah, I will let you do a little introduction.

Sarah Brand: Thank you so much, ladies, for having me. So far, I'm not sure if I want to bite a man's ear or the real story. And I was lucky to be one of those 10,000 people at the Pennsylvania Conference for Women to hear about band girls so thank you so much. The question that you guys have discussed with me as to, do I have my huddle? Do I have my board of directors? And Beth listening to your story, I have had multiple huddles over time. You've been lucky to have your 10 people that maybe five you're still interacting with every year. But I've moved my job. I've been in Boston. I've been now down here as an audit partner in our Philadelphia practice. And I've had multiple huddles. They ebb and flow change, and it's not necessarily the same five people that I'm picking up the phone going, "I need a board meeting today. Let's get all my board of directors together."

So one of the questions that we had came up is how do you get that mentor group that Beth has? And my group came from different experiences. I have had a partner that I worked for when I was a senior manager who said to me, "There's a leadership, a mentorship program at the form of executive women here in Philadelphia put together. Fill out this form. I want to support you. I think you'd be great in this program." And that's where I had my one group where we met every month for one year. And it was awesome. We learned about all different things. How to do your compensation. How do we negotiate other things, personal things that I gained from that group. But then since then, I have colleagues that are part of my huddle group.

And Beth, you mentioned about listening to the younger generation. I like to think that I'm not old, but I'm really close to 50. So I think I'm getting there. And I listen to some of my colleagues who are in their 20s to get their opinion and they are part of my huddle. I can say that I have younger people that I want to hear their voice. I want to find out whether or not I'm making that mistake with the first lady, whoever that first lady might be. So listening to some of those young people have been very, very helpful in making me a great leader and getting me to the next stage. And the emotional support. You are right, Betsy. Between the ups and the downs, the highs and the lows, being able to cry. When I need to cry, there's no crying in baseball but there's definitely crying and accounting and it happens. And the good days are bad days. You just don't know what's happening to each person.

So my advice there would be to make sure that in order to find your huddle and your group, know it might change over time. We can't all be as lucky as Beth to have that group that stays the whole time. But it's okay. Empathize with someone who has to go out for a while to take care of a parent or to take care of a loved one. You might not hear from them from six months, but they are there to support you and you are there to support them. So making sure that you keep that connection alive and the heart rate going. And sometimes they're calling you and sometimes they're not.

A couple of other things to talk about that don't have to do with my two questions but I want to tag on them as it relates to shoes those of you who know me. I love shoes. Whether comfortable or uncomfortable I'm a shoe girl. And the reason I'm a shoe girl is to help me with networking. Some people have purses, I have shoes. And I went to an event yesterday to get inducted as the treasurer for the Navajo Group here in South Jersey. I had an awesome pair of shoes on and I had five different women that the way that they addressed me was, I love your shoes.

And it gives someone the ability to walk in and introduce themselves and not feel awkward. They can say, "I love your shoes. Where'd you get them?" They happen to be Amazon $41 that I had up on my screen and four different people took pictures of them. So we might have a lot of people wearing those same shoes. But allow yourself, how do you get your group? How do you get people to come to you? Give them them and get in? Whatever that in might be. Wear your hair different and start noticing other people too. If you feel uncomfortable, you can walk up to someone and say, "I love that dress. That's a fantastic dress. Where did you get it?" And then you can start talking about professional things and other things. So just be mindful of how you can step in.

The one last thing and I know I'm talking a lot here, Beth, that I did grasp on was, how do you get someone to talk to you and we're all busy? We're walking around the office, some of us are virtual. It's a little bit easier when you're together. But my suggestion to some people in order to be seen is, if you see me walking to go get a coffee and you have a question or you want... As a leader, I want to say, "Walk with me." I don't want to shut you down. I know I have my time is precious, but let's walk to the water cooler together. Let's go get that coffee together and we can connect and do two things at once.

Women are very good at multitasking, so take that opportunity to multitask and bring people in through, walk with me. I'm going to get a coffee. Or I'm hopping on the elevator, I'm going to grab lunch. Do you want to walk and talk? So you can start building that network and that comfort through the walking and talking but you exercise too, which is good for wellbeing month, which was two months ago. So yeah. So I'll pause there and throw back to you guys because I just gave a lot of great little tips and some advice.

Beth Leonard: Yeah. Actually, Sarah, I think you touched on a lot of really important items and that I like the walking and talking. The best advice I got a long time ago as I was afraid to go into a one partner's office, I mean, I'm telling you, I was afraid. And one of my other younger partners looked at me and said, "If you can't figure out how to cross the threshold, you will never be a partner here." And I'm like. So I concocted a topic and then it turned out he was not nearly as fearsome as I thought. But I think, Sarah, that's advice for everybody. Door open, go walk in, come up with a topic. I think that is incredibly important.

Betsy Myers: You know what I think that is, it's being strategic. What is it that I need to do to further my career or connect with this person with great advice.

Sarah Brand: So I'll give one other tip. I was sitting in an office and this office, everyone could see you. You walk up and down the stairs, you were the fishbowl. And someone came in and said to me, "You were in the worst office." And I said, "What are you talking about? I'm in the best office. The reason I'm coming to New York is to be seen. Why would I go sit in the back corner where only one person, if they walk my direction, they see me? I want people to know that I'm putting the effort forth. I want people to come into the office and sit and talk with me. So other people can see that I'm interacting, that I'm here to be a leader and to guide people." So being seen, the out of sight, out of mind thing, I think it never loses its flare. That's where it's at. It's going to always be there. So being in sight is huge.

Betsy Myers: Absolutely. It's building community. And I think we are getting some questions. And any of you have questions, put them in the chat box. But the one question we're getting which ties into this last question of our morning or conversation is, how do you find or start a mentoring group? And Beth, you talked about this, if someone doesn't have a group like yours, how do you suggest they go about it?

Beth Leonard: So interestingly enough and I'm going to be very interested to hear what Sarah says about her huddle because I think when we talk about going in and out. So my group actually, the Sinecon group, that's what we called ourselves, disbanded more than 20 years ago, but we're still close friends. So I joined WPO and our office, and now EisnerAmper is the sponsor of seven. We have one in New York now, which is great. WPO chapters, which are Women Presidents Organization. So that's one way. There's Vistage groups. There's things depending on what community you live in. Navo is also a very good resource. But it's one of those things like, when you're going to coffee. Ask Sarah about how she puts her together.

I have helped other people put together their own groups because it's really about a mindset and who you know. So ask someone who's done it. Ask someone who's had success. Today facilitated peer-to-peer mentoring groups are much more common than in the wild, wild west, which we were in the beginning. I do appreciate the facilitation part because there is someone who's a professional that actually knows how to do this. Sometimes you can ask. I just say there's a whole bunch of resources and just start asking questions. But yeah, Sarah, for sure you have this so go ahead.

Sarah Brand: Yeah. I agree with you, Beth. There's so many women groups or non women groups that are trying to mentor the next leaders. And if you were to just Google it in your geographic area or reach out to partners who are parts of groups, almost every single organization that I'm part of, mentoring is one of the pillars that they have. And there's some group out there. Facilitation is excellent and once you're actually part of a facilitated group for a year whatever the process might be, you also can walk out of there and you might feel great to say, I want to start this myself. So I just last month was on my first call with a group of women from the form of executive women here in Philadelphia where they had an accountant who was in there for years.

So I was not part of it. And that accountant decided that they wanted to step out of that group, so they just pulled me in so I've only done one call. Because some of those groups they try and not overload them with certain professions. They don't want six attorneys or multiple accountants. So that just rolled into me. But I'd say raise your hand, start looking, Google, ask questions, find out who within your organization are involved in different groups. You will find one. And if you need to start one, you guys can reach out to me and I'll help you try and navigate that path of putting something together. There's plenty of people who love to speak and talk and share their advice. So you will find someone that will come speak to you even if you don't have it facilitated in a way that a professional organization would have.

Betsy Myers: I'd just love to jump in because those of you that are listening, and I will say you can start your own. Because they don't have to be a big deal, I mean, it doesn't have to be this huge organized thing. It could be you calling on a few of the women in your organization to get together on a regular basis just to share how are you doing? What are you up against? How can we support you? So there's lots of ways to do it. When I was in the White House, one of the things that I did was, reached out to a high level woman in every federal agency to meet once, I think we met twice a month. To come to my office and bring ideas of what we could do to further women's advocacy and things that the president might be able to do.

So I just started that myself. It was such a fabulous thing that happened because they would come and bring ideas and things that was going on that I didn't know about. So I started to have a spoke to every one of the federal agencies on what they were doing on behalf of women. And then there's also possies and groups of women fan clubs for our personal lives. So sometimes people will say all of those that are dealing with teenagers, when I had a teenager. Anybody want to come together to talk about how you're navigating parenthood with teens? So there's lots of ways that you can do formal and informal ways of just huddling and bringing people together for support.

Beth Leonard: There's one last item I just want to bring up it's like... So I've been able to make recommendations like in Minnesota we have, Women's Health Leadership TRUST. We have women in tech. We have women... So even if it's a discipline related to what you like to do, there is likely to be a woman's forum, if you will, for mentoring or putting together a group.

Naomi Barrett: I just wanted to jump in really quickly on this because I think it's also important not to forget about your peer mentors. We're talking about women in leadership, but one thing that I have found is that I have a group of peers and we connect all of the time. We'll go out, update each other, what's going on in our lives, in the workplace. We might be in the same industry or not. And what has come from that is the alliance across functions and across organizations as well. So I've seen women get different roles at new organizations because they had a peer in that organization who said, "You know what? I'm going to go talk to the person who's hiring that job. You'd be perfect for it. We could totally do that."

And I think as we're talking about leadership, we can all be leaders regardless of where we sit in the organization. And I think peer mentoring builds leaders as well. And I don't want to forget about that thinking around leadership and how we can support women even if we are not necessarily in a leadership role at our organization. We have those connections that we can still make for other women, and we can't discount the importance of that as well.

Betsy Myers: Oh my God, I agree 100% Naomi with that, because each of us as a leader, no matter whether you're managing people with a leader of yourself. A leader of your life. So personal leadership and how you take the responsibility in your life to create the networks that you need to feel you really and support you. It can be two or three women too. It doesn't need to be 15 women. You can start with a couple women over lunch just to say, "How are you doing? Checking in. Here to support you."

Beth Leonard: Great. Well, I think that's about all we have for today. Is there any closing remarks any of you want to make?

Betsy Myers: Yeah. I just want to say it's been a pleasure to be with all of you, and I love how you all are taking on this topic of empower her and really discussing and diving deep into alliances. And that's what keeps us strong, that what keeps us motivated, is what keeps us educated and building our skills is to have that support. So I'm honored to work with you all and Naomi and Gail Kelman, you guys have been wonderful to work with. And Beth, really wonderful to get to know you as well too.

Beth Leonard: It's been great. I want to thank Sarah and certainly Astrid who keeps us all in line. This doesn't happen without all her help. But this is a great way to launch what we're trying to accomplish here. And I just want to remind everybody, we have three more that are coming. One is October 23rd, same time. Maureen Paradine, that's CHRO at EisnerAmper and Lisa Moore, the president and founder of No One Listens to Me, are going to discuss integrating curiosity and seek diversity of perspective. So a lot of the things we talked about today, just taking it to the next level.

Part three will be the role of men in the Female Alliance. I think everybody on this call will say they absolutely had men who voluntold them to do things. That were their supporters and champions. And I think that's a really important topic. And then the last one is celebrating Female Alliance on April 23rd diverse panel of women as they share their stories about how these female alliances guided their success. So Astrid, you want to take it away? We're really thrilled that everyone joined us and love your feedback. And I know that there'll be a questionnaire coming out or survey coming out with what you thought and what we can do differently or if you have suggestions for our next topics.

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