Women and Men, Work and Power

Jessica Bibliowicz
President and COO
John A. Levin and Co.
New York, NY
levco3@earthlink.com

It's an age-old formula and a Wall Street credo: If you've got money, you've got power. Now that more women have money, the Street needs women. Firms are scrambling to create marketing programs targeted at women and investment funds run by women.

Wall Street is a tough place to work - for men and women. But women have always faced special disadvantages. My approach has been to turn those disadvantages into advantages. When I was younger, for example, I'd give presentations to institutional investors, and I'd be the only woman in the room. But that negative often became a positive. The men tended to listen to me more closely because I was a woman - a curiosity. And they tended to remember me the next time I made a presentation.

That was early in the game. What we need now is lots more women in senior jobs helping other women along. I am very big on mentoring. You can't talk to a man in this business who says he succeeded on his own. Which doesn't mean that men can't be great mentors for women. I've had two mentors in my career, and both were men.

But Wall Street needs more women in top jobs. People everywhere tend to hire and promote people who are like them. And there's still a certain mystery surrounding women on Wall Street. Do we work less hard than men? Are we more temperamental? The more women a company has, the less mysterious we become. John A. Levin & Co. is an $8 billion investment adviser. Previously Jessica Bibliowicz was head of Smith Barney Mutual Funds, the ninth-largest fund complex in the United States.

Janice Gjertsen
Business Development
Digital City New York
New York, New York
janicegj@digitalcity.com

So many of us are so confused about gender. For years, I've seen women trying to act like men. More recently, I've seen men trying to act like women. It won't work. The only way to be powerfully successful, whether you're a man or a woman, is to be who you are.

A lot of my work involves contract negotiations and deals with media companies. I see the same patterns over and over again: Men are oriented toward power, toward making fast decisions in a black-or-white mode. Woman are more skilled at relationships. They see shades of gray and explore issues from different angles. It's instinctual. Men come to the negotiating table in full battle armor. I don't do that. I believe it goes against a woman's nature to be aggressive, rude, or abrupt. I never know how to react to these kinds of women, and neither do men.

What's interesting is that the kinds of companies we admire today are also those that depend increasingly on female attributes. We are in the relationship era: It's all about getting close to customers, striking up joint ventures, partnering with suppliers. Warriors don't make good CEOs in companies based on relationships. The new CEO is a Seeder, Feeder, and Weeder - and those are women's roles. The power that a woman has when she has the courage to be a woman is mighty - even in a man's world.

Janice Gjertsen cofounded Total New York, which was purchased by Digital City in 1997. Digital City, the largest locally focused online network, delivers news, community resources, and entertainment in 14 different cities.

Katherine D'Urso
Director of Marketing, Field Operations
Coopers & Lybrand
New York, New York
vkatherine.durso@us.coopers.com

Supplicants don't get respect. At best, they get pity. Usually they get ignored. After all, power is much more attractive than weakness. Whether you work in a 16,000-person firm like Coopers & Lybrand or a 50-person startup, the only way you'll change things is by working to change them. I have three pieces of advice to offer.

Don't mourn, organize! When progress for women at C&L wasn't happening as quickly as many of us would have liked, the women partners banded together and created their own annual meeting. Then they invited the firm's top executives to listen to their concerns, to discuss issues, and to work on solutions. Nick Moore, our chairman and a long-time champion of women at the firm, made real commitments to breaking the glass ceiling - commitments that he backed up with action. The women did not ask for "help." They commanded attention - and got it.

One of the results of those meetings was the C&L 100, a formal mentoring program that I was asked to join. It has helped me enormously. My male mentor was vital in helping me navigate difficult career waters - and I can thank this program for my recent promotion.