Edition No 84. Is the C-Suite Broken?

Dear Women Who Do,

The C Suite sure does need an overhaul. Existing approaches to supporting, motivating and advancing women just aren’t delivering, leaving many executive leaders either languishing, frustrated or worse, walking away. Meanwhile DEI initiatives meant to counteract this are falling behind due to a lack of stakeholder support.

If we want to retain our best female talent, it’s time to innovate, meet the times and in particular, meet women where they are. How? This week we offer a few solutions and we’ll continue to explore this topic over the coming weeks.

Start by diving into some recent WIE Suite articles below, and read on to explore further.

• Christina Blacken on the role of narrative intelligence.
• BET CEO Debra Lee on board diversity.
• Ideas for practicing transformational leadership.
• CEO of Claire V, Claire Vivier on prioritizing diversity.

WIE Suite Woman

Vanessa Barboni Hallik, CEO of Another Tomorrow, on Leadership

Vanessa Barboni Hallik is the founder and CEO of Another Tomorrow, a B Corp Certified end-to-end sustainable design company with a fully digitized product eco-system delivering technology-enabled transparency, authenticated recommerce and an on-ramp to Web3 applications. She is also an investor in early-stage companies with strong ESG commitments positioned to catalyze systemic change. Vanessa serves on the Board of the Accountability Counsel and on the Advisory Board for Harvard's Carr Center for Human Rights Policy.

Do you have any tips for female entrepreneurs who are running successful businesses but haven’t reached the type of named brand scale you have?

I think it’s helpful to really know where you want to go, make that vision crystal clear in your mind and determine what is critical to make that vision a reality and focus on THAT.  The energy and focus that comes with that clarity has helped me tremendously vs. times when I have been more scattershot. And scale isn’t always the goal and if that’s the case, don’t be afraid to name that for yourself and focus on building the kind of business that you want.

But also - help each other out there. Without any expectation of anything in return. I see this all the time with the Wie Suite and I think it is part of its utter magic. Let’s create an ecosystem of support where we can all thrive. 

Read more of the interview here.

Move the Needle

What's Happening with DEI in the C-Suite?

In the aftermath of the George Floyd protests and the pandemic, DEI catapulted to the top of every company’s To Do list. Pledges were made, teams were boosted and budgets were increased. There was a sense of hope that finally, finally, we were tackling diversity, equity and inclusion with the seriousness and sense of urgency it deserved. And then slowly but surely that urgency ebbed away.

We spoke with six women at the top about how they’ve seen the focus on DEI shift in the C-suite over the past few years and what they believe that means for women in leadership overall.

“It’s not just that the focus on DEI is in decline; in certain sectors, it is being actively deprioritized,” Benish Shah, a go-to-market executive and team architect, states. “I’ve seen a marked return to command and control cultures where employers believe the economy has shifted power away from employees....It’s a short sighted view on company needs, and often reflects inexperienced leadership.”

Read the full article here.

Masterclass Moments: Leadership

How to Create Equitable Workplaces

Caroline is a founding partner of Have Her Back Consulting, a female-owned business backed by IPG. She works with brave companies to tackle gender equity differently, leveraging her creative craft to solve inequity in unique ways that inspire and deliver impact.  She spent her 25-year career as a creative leader, most recently as Chief Creative Officer at Golin where she delivered award-winning creative campaigns - from Cannes Lions to PR Week to Clios for McDonald’s, Clif Bar, Unilever among others.

"First and foremost, we wanted to define what we mean when we're talking about flexibility, because we often find that for companies their definition of flexibility is a bit different. So flexible is defined as the ability to make your own arrangements as needed, versus hybrid, which is defined as working scheduled days on site and some off site. Now, we know a lot of corporate America has moved into a hybrid environment. But, what's so interesting is that what our research clearly shows that women strongly prefer and just prefer overall, 79% said they prefer flexibility. Just 4% said they prefer hybrid. Women aren't defining flexibility as hybrid. And that's a really important nuance that we need to make sure that we're empowering our companies to understand.

Read the full article here.

Community News

MEMBER NEWS

• CEO Cindy Gallop is seeking a CTO for her company MakeLoveNotPorn.

EVENTS

• May 11, Jess Weber, CEO of Creatively and former executive recruiter at Russell Reynolds Associates, will share tips and best practices for navigating a job search as a c-suite executive by building relationships with executive search firms and tapping into your peer network.

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