Twin Cities Business - Women Of Color Are Working Against The Odds. Kimberly Price recalls she was the only African- American attorney at a Twin Cities law firm in 1. M Co. The Washington, D. C., native had an impeccable education pedigree—an undergraduate degree from Bowdoin, a master’s from Princeton and a law degree from Columbia. She also had experience in mergers and acquisitions, which is why 3. Port Manteaux churns out silly new words when you feed it an idea or two. Enter a word (or two) above and you'll get back a bunch of portmanteaux created by jamming.New listings soar as sales plunge. Prices drop 6% in just one month. The magnificent house-price bubble in Toronto, which has raised eyebrows even across the jaded. An Indiana Corporation/Kryder Real Estate Time Line. M recruited her to join the venerable Minnesota manufacturer. During her job interview, attorney John Ursu, who is white, asked her what the last book she had read was. When she answered, “The Autobiography of Malcolm X,” she says, “He didn’t freak out.”After concluding that 3. M co- workers would respect her authentic self, she accepted the company’s job offer. Women hold three of those powerful 1. M, and Price is the only woman of color. As an African- American woman executive, Price is a rarity in corporate America. Women of color hold 4 percent of the senior vice president posts in U. S. The same study showed that women of color occupy just 3 percent of C- suite positions, while their male counterparts of color hold 1. C- suite and senior vice president levels. A great old machine, and one of jeff’s most recent acquisitions, this bike was built in the northern New Jersey work shop of the DeBacco brothers Angelo and Joe. Your personal information and card details are 100% secure. While Minnesota statistics aren’t readily available, experts believe that Minnesota women of color hold a single- digit percentage of C- suite jobs. Several women of color who’ve reached the top tiers of Minnesota corporations have taken disparate paths to career success. However, all of them developed the self- confidence to step forward and pursue challenging jobs, and they’ve figured out how to navigate the dynamics of corporations. Their career stories offer lessons for other women and businesses. As women have sought equal opportunities in colleges, athletics and the work world, major corporations increasingly are attempting to diversify their leadership by gender and race. Beyond equity arguments, there is a strong business case for hiring more women leaders, including women of color. Studies conducted by Mc. Kinsey and Co. Thirty years later, while the legal marketplace has changed, global companies are still looking for talented lawyers to serve as in- house counsel.“I could come in every day and work in new industries,” Price says. I was able to lead the transactions and come to the table with all I had to offer.”But Price notes that companies that want to diversify their corporate ranks with more women of color are going to need multiple strategies to make them feel welcome and invest in their careers.“One of the main reasons I stayed was the African- American Network,” she says, where people can get advice on everything from deciphering a complicated financial statement to finding a dance club.“One of my biggest accomplishments has been to bring other people of diverse backgrounds to the company,” Price says. If people move to Minnesota to join 3. M, she says, they also need to have a support system in the broader community. Some of her closest confidants in the Twin Cities are other African- American women in leadership roles in business and the nonprofit sector. Despite the small numbers of minority women in top positions, she says, “We don’t talk about what is holding us back, we talk about what is moving us forward.”3. M set a corporate goal to “double the pipeline of diverse talent in management by 2. The public corporation has been making progress in expanding the number of women in leadership roles. From 2. 01. 1 to 2. M’s vice president level and above increased from 1. Those figures include white women and women of color. The percentage of women manufacturing- facility managers jumped from 1. Cargill’s global reach. After earning her MBA from the University of Michigan, Pilar Cruz joined Cargill in 2. Colombia. She has risen through the management ranks at Cargill and held leadership positions for the company in Canada, Costa Rica, Nicaragua and England. Now she is a vice president and a role model for other women of color at Cargill. Seated in a glass- enclosed meeting room that overlooks Cargill’s Wayzata campus, Cruz says, “I am the head of strategy and mergers and acquisitions for Cargill, and we recently had a meeting with my counterparts from big companies. All of them are guys. But I am so comfortable with who I am.”Describing herself as “a short, petite, Hispanic lady,” Cruz says, “It is such a great opportunity for me to voice Cargill’s views and opinions precisely because I’m different.” Historically, Cargill’s top leadership had been a male bastion. In early 2. 01. 7, three women served on the company’s 1. Cruz is a visible example of a woman of color who has assumed increasing responsibility in Cargill’s management structure. Before she was promoted to her current job in 2. Cargill Meats Europe and has had other jobs that typically had been held by men in the agribusiness industry. Cruz says her success has flowed from a combination of hard work, embracing big challenges, self- confidence and early exposure to business and economics. When she was growing up in Colombia, she explains, “My dad had a senior job within the Federal Reserve.” He talked with her about his travels and explained the importance of trade and how business worked. One reason there aren’t more women in top leadership posts at U. S. Roberts had relocated eight times with Conoco. Phillips and wanted to return home to Minnesota to be near her aging parents.“They didn’t have a job,” she says. But Cargill was interested in what she could bring to the company. I go down just about every week for a couple of days,” Roberts says. Cargill was willing to give her some schedule flexibility and did not require her to move to Kansas. Roberts is the mother of school- age children and she wanted to keep her home base in Minnesota. She and Cargill figured out a way to make that happen.“You can have everything, just not at the same time,” Roberts says. There are days I am the best boss, and there are days I am the best friend and best daughter.”However, she notes, “For a lot of women, they harbor a lot of guilt about having to make those choices. My kids are incredibly well- adjusted for the fact that their mom travels a bunch, and they are very proud of what their mom does.”Cargill is retaining some of its key women of color by investing in them, Roberts says. In her case, David Dines, one of Cargill’s top 1. Roberts for a year. They met monthly for 9. It was giving me exposure to things that I didn’t have exposure to and even to other parts of Cargill.”She supports mentors and sponsorships to help women advance. The sponsor “is wearing your T- shirt in the room,” she explains. That’s where the sponsor comes in.”. She studied criminal justice as an undergraduate, but later worked as a paralegal and earned her MBA before she applied for a position at Cargill.“One of the things that has stood out to me during my career here is they will nourish your ambition,” Hill says. The potential is there.”Juggling work, children. Sophie Campbell- Smith relocated from Jamaica to the Twin Cities after her husband got a job in Minnesota. The move ended up being good for her career, because she landed a job with EY, formerly known as Ernst & Young. After growing up in Jamaica and working for a private accounting firm there, she joined EY in Minneapolis in 2. She also serves as EY’s Minneapolis Inclusiveness Council champion. In the United States and Canada, EY’s minority partners and staff account for about 3. That level of representation has nearly doubled since 2. Campbell- Smith says many companies talk about diversity, but that EY has taken action on many fronts.“I have tangible and personal experience about how we’ve activated that diversity and inclusiveness,” she says. For example, Discover EY and the Launch Internship Program offer exposure and training to college undergraduates. EY Unplugged is a program targeted at incoming minority staff, which helps them build relationships with peers, mentors and sponsors.“There is no shortage of mentors for all of our people,” Campbell- Smith says, adding that she has had multiple mentors inside and outside of EY. EY does a good job of making us feel we belong.”She notes that women of color also have benefitted from some of the EY programs aimed at retaining women overall. When some women have newborns, they choose to return to work at 7. We want to retain our amazing talent,” she says, so it is important to offer women flexibility. Campbell- Smith is the mother of 5- year- old twins and her pregnancy did not impede her career progress. In Minnesota, women of color hold only 3. Minnesota’s 8. 5 largest publicly held companies. That’s according to the Minnesota Census of Women in Corporate Leadership released this year by St. Catherine University. Cam Hoang, a partner with the Dorsey law firm, is tackling this issue when working with her corporate governance clients. Born in Vietnam and raised in Texas, Hoang came to Minnesota in 2. Harvard Law School. In addition to working with business clients at Dorsey, she also was senior counsel at General Mills.“The first step that any board needs to take is to ask: What contributions do they really want out of a new board member? Are they looking for someone who will give independent oversight over a management function?” Hoang says. Board members and CEOs need to make sure that their selection criteria is not too narrow or arbitrary.”She observes: “Is it really diverse to have a nine- member board and six of them are CEOs or ex- CEOs?”Some women of color are passed over for board seats because a corporation is wedded to a specific “perception of what a good leader is,” Hoang says.“A lot of women of color don’t fit into that comfort factor or that leadership mold as they are held by people in power,” she says.
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