In this edition of Author Talks, McKinsey Global Publishing’s Raju Narisetti chats with Julia Boorstin, senior media and tech correspondent at CNBC, about her new book When Women Lead: What They Achieve, Why They Succeed, and How We Can Learn from Them (Simon & Schuster, October 2022). Boorstin spent the pandemic lockdown examining the management styles of more than 60 female CEOs who helm leading companies in healthcare, beauty, biotech, and more.

We work with professional women all the time on their career negotiations: training them, advising their employers, and studying their successes and pitfalls. One of us (Kathryn) is a negotiation coach and trainer and the other (Hannah) is a scholar and educator.

For women in management, there’s never been a better time to quit. Women leaders are leaving their companies at the highest rate ever, and the gap between women and men in senior roles quitting their jobs is the largest it’s ever been, according to new data from LeanIn.org and McKinsey & Company, which started tracking these numbers in 2015.

SFA's Women in Securitization (WiS) is pleased to announce our annual WiS Year-End Event, taking place on December 7, 2022 in New York, NY. Our featured speaker, Dr. Jen Welter, is first-ever female NFL coach. Dr. Jen Welter helped lead the Arizona Cardinals to a Western conference division title in 2015, and became head coach for the first Australian Women's National Football team in 2017.

Returnships can help employees brush up their skills after a career break. See how role-model companies use these programs to find top talent. At the height of the pandemic, the workforce contracted drastically — resulting from layoffs, furloughs and competing priorities at home. In the post-vaccine, return-to-the-office world, many of those employees have re-entered the workforce. However, women who left the market have yet to return to their pre-pandemic roles. As of February 2022, there were over 1.1 million fewer women participating in the labor force than before the pandemic, according to analysis from the National Women’s Law Center. Meanwhile, their male counterparts returned to the market in droves.

The share of woman-led Fortune 500 companies has hit a record high, with 44 female CEOs at the helm of some of the largest corporations in the U.S. But perhaps the biggest takeaway from this year’s list is just how uneventful the changes in women’s leadership are—a sign that female CEOs are finding stability and staying power atop Fortune 500 companies. The Fortune 500, which ranks the 500 largest U.S. companies by revenue, is viewed as a microcosm of the overall U.S. business landscape. While the number of women CEOs who run businesses on the list can fluctuate throughout the year, it’s a useful snapshot of the corporate leadership zeitgeist. Female CEOs join the rarified group when they’re hired or promoted into the chief executive job, or if their company makes the Fortune 500 as a new entrant.

Dalia Feldheim says managers and executives, regardless of gender, can combat widespread burnout by embracing conventionally feminine leadership traits. In this edition of Author Talks, McKinsey Global Publishing’s Raju Narisetti chats with former marketing executive Dalia Feldheim about her new book, Dare to Lead like a Girl: How to Survive and Thrive in the Corporate Jungle (Rowman & Littlefield, June 2022).

A look at the social and psychological factors that can make networking uncomfortable and how to overcome them. We tend to have a range of reactions to the prospect of networking. Some of us love making connections and sharing information with new people. Some of us dread the awkward introductions and small talk.

We all need encouragement from other people. Regardless of gender, role or organization, everyone needs some kind of external validation to keep moving forward with momentum and motivation, to build resilience, and to understand where we excel or bring positive impact. When we receive feedback from others, be they team members, colleagues or bosses, we gain valuable insights into the actions and behaviors that matter to them. These insights can, in turn, help us determine and prioritize exactly where it is that we can add value from a position of strength. “Societal patterns have changed over time, and we have far greater female representation in leadership,” says Darden Professor Laura Morgan Roberts. “But there is still a significant praise deficit that women face in life and in work. We do receive positive feedback, but research shows that, compared to men, this feedback often conforms to gender stereotypes — things like nurturing or care giving.”

WiS is hosting volunteering events with Junior Achievement (JA) throughout various cities to educate JA participants on financial literacy.