Women in Business

Prominent alumnae attend NYC summit to examine issues faced by women in business

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5:26 p.m., May 6, 2016--Maybe women in business need to be more honest about the business — about the opportunities, the tradeoffs and, ultimately, the challenges they’ll be up against. 

That was the resounding advice to come from the second University of Delaware Women in Business Summit, held Wednesday, May 4, in New York City to pool the expertise of nearly a dozen prominent alumnae in leadership positions. 

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Organized by UD’s Lerner College of Business and Economics and the Office of Development and Alumni Relations, the event aimed to assess and address opportunities to increase gender diversity in academic majors and the workforce.

“We need to tell women that [careers in finance and economics] will be incredibly rewarding,” says Sharon French, a 1987 graduate and executive vice president of OppenheimerFunds, a leading global asset manager. “But we also need to say, ‘Here are the tradeoffs.’”

At the top of the list is time, and its inevitable counterpart, the work-life balance. 

“My 18-year-old daughter asks me about it all the time,” says Lesley Corydon, a 1987 graduate and managing director at JPMorgan Chase. “She’s thinking about 10 years from now, and I want to say, ‘Yes, you can do it all!’ But then I think about Wall Street — and the perceptions — and the time required.”

In industries like banking, trading and private equity, alumnae agreed, the unfortunate reality is a lack of flexibility on hours. Time, as the saying goes, is money. And making the latter requires a great deal of the former.   

But the need for more women in business is more critical than ever. Take the statistics:  2.4 percent of Fortune 500 CEOs are women; 7.6 percent of Fortune 500 top-earners are women; 15.7 percent of board seats are held by women. 

Nationally, women account for 58 percent of the college student body, but 36.3 percent of MBA recipients. At UD’s Lerner College, women comprise 43 percent of the student population. 

“We’re not where we need to be as business schools, and we’re not there as businesses,” said Lerner Dean Bruce Weber. “But I believe we in Lerner have the opportunity to be a harbinger of change, to tee up critical topics and move the needle on women in business in leadership roles.” 

The Lerner College wants to inspire high potential women to build their confidence, capabilities and networks to successfully move into senior leadership. To that end, the college hosted  a Women in Business Summit earlier this spring to pool the expertise of University graduates in leadership roles. Next steps include strengthening the alumnae mentoring network for current students and developing a Women’s Leadership Certificate Program, aimed at preparing motivated and talented women to break into the C-suite levels within their organizations.  Future summits will help plan these initiatives. 

For more on the topic, please follow #UDWomeninBiz on social media. 

 

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