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A new kind of career playbook for a new era of feminism, offering women a new set of rules for professional success: one that plays to their strengths and builds on the power they already have. Weren't women supposed to have "arrived"? Perhaps with the nation's first female President, equal pay on the horizon, true diversity in the workplace to come thereafter? Or, at least the end of "fat-shaming" and "locker room talk"? Well, we aren't quite there yet. But does that mean that progress for women in business has come to a screeching halt? It's true that the old rules didn't get us as far as we hoped. But we can go the distance, and we can close the gaps that still exist. We just need a new way. In fact, there are many reasons to be optimistic about the future, says former Wall Street powerhouse-turned-entrepreneur Sallie Krawcheck. That's because the business world is changing fast -driven largely by technology - and it's changing in ways that give us more power and opportunities than ever ... and even more than we yet realize. Success for professional women will no longer be about trying to compete at the men's version of the game, she says. And it will no longer be about contorting ourselves to men's expectations of how powerful people behave. Instead, it's about embracing and investing in our innate strengths as women - and bringing them proudly and unapologetically, to work. When we do, she says, we gain the power to advance in our careers in more natural ways. We gain the power to initiate courageous conversations in the workplace. We gain the power to forge non-traditional career paths; to leave companies that don't respect our worth, and instead, go start our own. And we gain the power to invest our economic muscle in making our lives, and the world, better. Here Krawcheck draws on her experiences at the highest levels of business, both as one of the few women at the top rungs of the biggest boy's club in the world, and as an entrepreneur, to show women how to seize this seismic shift in power to take their careers to the next level. This change is real, and it's coming fast. It's time to own it.
About the Author
Sallie Krawcheck's professional mission is to help women reach their financial and professional goals. This spans several businesses: she is the CEO and Co-Founder of Ellevest, a just-launched digital investment platform for women. She is also the Chair of Ellevate Network, the global professional woman's network. And she is the Chair of the Pax Ellevate Global Woman's Index Fund, which invests in the top-rated companies in the world for advancing women.
Krawcheck is the past CEO of Merrill Lynch Wealth Management, the largest wealth management business in the world, at $2.2 trillion in client balances.
She has a track record of turning around and innovating to drive growth in a number of businesses. These include:
* Reversing the decline in Merrill Lynch's profitability and Advisor headcount and stabilizing US Trust while at Bank of America, gaining share across the wealth management businesses;
* Separating research from investment banking at Citi, to restore the business' reputation and profitability in the wake of the Wall Street research scandal;
* Substantially growing Sanford Bernstein's research business by avoiding the conflicts of investment banking; and
* Integrating and launching the innovative Merrill Edge, Merrill Lynch's on-line offering.
In addition, alone among senior Wall Street executives, Krawcheck reimbursed individual investor clients for a portion of losses incurred during the financial downturn from poorly performing products sold by Citi and, later again, at Bank of America.
Prior to joining Bank of America, Krawcheck was the CEO and Chair for Citi Global Wealth Management, responsible for Smith Barney, the Citi Private Bank, and Citi Investment Research. During her time at Citi, she was also a member of the senior leadership committee and executive committee.
Krawcheck joined Citi in October 2002 as Chair and CEO of Smith Barney, where she oversaw the global management of the Smith Barney and Citi Investment Research businesses. In 2004, she was appointed Chief Financial Officer for Citigroup. In this role she was responsible for a number of asset dispositions, including the sales of Travelers P&C and Citi Asset Management.
Prior to joining Citi, Krawcheck was Chair and CEO of Sanford C. Bernstein & Company. She began her career as a research analyst, covering the financial services industry, a role in which she was consistently ranked first in her field by "Institutional Investor."
Krawcheck was named number 9 on Fast Company's 2014 "100 Most Creative People in Business" list, as well as one of "10 Up and Coming Leaders to Watch" by Entrepreneur Magazine. During the research scandals, Fortune Magazine called her "The Last Honest Analyst" and noted that hers was the most influential voice for research quality and integrity. She has be
