thank you so I'm feeling a little bit
like Robins Dean right now and then I
had to come after all of these amazing
speakers but I will do my best and we'll
focus on what is my life's work of
advancing women and girls that's pretty
much why I'm on the planet so my life is
simple I already know what's on my
tombstone and I'm just kind of project
managing my life backwards I've spent
the last couple of days in salt lake
city utah at the global girl scouts
convention how many of you were Girl
Scouts yes many of you and women at the
highest levels of leadership has
something in common they were all very
often Girl Scouts and they more than
often played organized sports and went
to girls school so if you have a girl in
your life and you're trying to ensure
that she gets to the top you can just do
those three things and forget everything
else that I say that I say today so I
was with 6,000 girls for a couple of
days I was humbly invited to serve on
the board of the National Girl Scouts em
USA and so I'm done I can die now I've
reached the pinnacle and I feel really
really humbled about that I also am
really lucky that I get to execute my
purpose as chief leadership officer at
Laveau League and I'm going to talk a
little bit about Laveau right now though
I'm very excited that I get to execute
my purpose for being on the planet with
all of you today so when Robin and also
Debbie talk about passion and purpose I
am the living breathing example of that
this is my mom Brenda she found out that
she was pregnant with me when she was 19
years old my parents are from watts la
how many of you are familiar with wats
que la so suffice it to say it was the
mid 1970s it was a rough place and a
rough time my mom didn't know very much
outside of watts but she knew that she
didn't want to raise her family in the
same environment that she was growing up
in and so she went to her uncle who was
an army recruiter
and she said this guy that's got me
pregnant he's got to join the army we're
going to get married and he's going to
join the army and that's how we're going
to get out of what so they were born
they were married the summer of 1973 and
I was born nine months later at Fort
Lewis army base in tacoma washington so
i am here in large part because of my
mother's vision and because of her
courage my parents broke a very vicious
cycle of poverty and addiction and
violence in one generation in one
generation based off of a very
fundamental truth which is that if you
want something you've never had before
you're going to have to do something
that you've never done before in order
to get it fancy that and I'm really
interested in figuring out new ways that
we can try to tackle this problem of how
do we get more women in to leadership my
journey has been focused on that for a
very long time I started my career and
in seattle at a place called seattle
girls school and it's a middle school
that focuses on math science and
technology it's my heart and it's still
there today and i wish there were
seattle girls schools all across the
world I then moved to Boston I worked at
Simmons College which is a women's
college in Boston before moving to New
York when I went to New York someone in
my network a mentors and when you get to
New York you go find Marie Wilson at the
White House project and for many of you
who don't know Marie Wilson built the
Miz foundation for women she started
take our daughters to work day she is a
champion in the cause of advancing women
in girls and I worked for Marie for a
number of years I don't know if any of
you have ever had a moment in your
career where you met someone and you
thought I just want to work for them and
that's what I said to Marie within 10
minutes of meeting her and I eventually
ran the White House Project before
advancing my leadership with what I'm
doing now at levo league and I'm also on
the launch team for lean in now many
people ask me why are you so focused
specifically on Gen Y women llevo is a
platform that is here to support Gen Y
women in advancing their leadership
and I always say because I've been very
focused on Millennials for a while that
it's the first generation of women to
assume that their career is the same
thing as how they're going to change the
world and I think that's really
important and they feel that way because
they did what we told them to do we told
them oh you can do anything and you can
be anything all you have to do is follow
your passion that's the most important
thing of course now they're in the
workforce and they realize that
following their passion isn't always the
key to success as Robin talked about but
that's part of why I spend my time with
them and I just want to show you a
little bit about how label League works
in less than a minute instead of me
talking to you about Laveau so if you
can go ahead and play meet Kelly like
many other young professionals Kelly has
high aspiration I want to make up for
management someday but she still doesn't
know how to get there I'm kind of
stressing out don't stress Kelly because
a lot of who I would like to dust away
from you it's about to hook you up with
the label yeah good or if you want to
move up in the world you have to connect
what other Gen Y is likely and find
mentors to help you figure things up
Kelly can tune in to office hours when
influential business women like Sheryl
Sandberg present and she can sign up for
local avo events Kelly can network while
she sweats it out how's that burnfield
Kelly love it labor 11 dying for pointed
advice about getting that raise Kelly
Canfield questions to mentors like
Jennifer directly if point ask for a
raise make sure you go and compared with
a number an increase of five to ten
percent it's difficult when she's ready
to ask for that promotion Kelly has the
advice and support to make it happen
Kelly's future is looking brighter nice
work Kelly
so label League is one solution it's one
innovation that we're trying out that
we're playing with to do things that
we've never done before levo league is
an initiative that's focused on one
segment of women so one of the
challenges that we have with women's
initiatives is that we often try to
speak and talk and serve all women as a
for one demographic okay and that's
really hard to do because women believe
it or not or very diverse so label
League has decided we're just going to
focus on the subset of women that have
just graduated from college there within
the first five years of their career
they've done everything we told them to
do they specifically have done exactly
what's required in order for them to get
their first job they've put their head
down they focused on achieving really
great results and they've been rewarded
and believe it or not because that cycle
has happened over and over and over
again in their lives up until this point
they think that that's the way to be
successful and as Robin has shown us
what happens is that they get into a
different ecosystem in which the rules
of engagement have changed but we didn't
tell them that when they were in college
I think that we should I think that
label II would need to exist if we
taught them that when they get into the
workforce all of a sudden they're
stumbling because they put their head
down they achieved really great results
but instead of getting rewarded the guy
next to them gets the promotion and then
they're really confused and they don't
understand why and that's why llevo
exists now of course we want more women
in leadership and sometimes people ask
well why is it really important that we
have more women in leadership I do
believe in equity i love reshma
announcing and declaring that she has a
feminist with a capital F I am like all
caps feminist if you can take that even
further and but part of the reason why i
feel it's really important to advance
women's leadership um has to do with my
experience when i was growing up my dad
used to have all of these conspiracy
theories about how there was the small
group of elite people that ran the world
and I would be so embarrassed when my
friends would come over and he would
warn us about these people I
used to think my dad was crazy now of
course as I've gotten older and I've
grown I've come to understand that my
dad actually wasn't crazy at all there
is in fact at the highest levels of
leadership people who make decisions
that impact every single one of us they
often sit around big wooden marble glass
tables and until that group of people is
diversified with more women with more
people of color with more members of the
LGBT community with more people with
disabilities with more people with more
perspectives then in my opinion the
business the biggest crisis that we face
is a crisis of leadership regardless of
what you care about if it's the
environment if it's health care if it's
technology if it's the economy if it's
education at the end of the day there
are people that are making decisions
that are trickling down and since we
know that a diverse group of people
coming together often leads to more
innovation then I really do believe that
in order for us to tackle some of the
world's biggest problems we simply need
more women and we need more of everyone
but women are half the population so if
you take all of the other groups of
people that I talked about and you just
take women then we've got we've pretty
much got it covered now there are a lot
of really great advances that we've made
and Robin talked about some of those you
know when it comes to women's leadership
women are graduating and higher numbers
than men we're over half of the
workforce and Kelly is the beneficiary
of a lot of that but it's also really
important to note that we have a lot of
really great challenges and I'm so glad
that Robin pointed out some of them I
mean at the highest we only have a small
percentage of women in political
leadership if you look at Robins pyramid
women are very small represented at the
very top of that and sometimes people
ask well what are the barriers to that
why don't we have more women in
positions of power and influence what's
going on there's a lot of barriers I
wish I had more time because I would
talk about the cultural barriers thank
goodness Robin touched on some of that
we have discrimination we have lack of
economic power but a lot of the work
that I've been doing is very focused on
the kellys of the world and what I've
observed
curved and the research that I've done
over what makes some Kelly successful in
advancing their leadership especially
when they're first entering the
workforce and why some of them slay oh
there's a success equation that I've
observed that means it's not rocket
science in order for you to advance and
I want to talk a little bit about this
success equation the first part of it
involves Kelly really exhibiting some
particular leadership assets and
exhibiting them through her mindset
through her abilities and her behaviors
one of them is what I call self
viability this is my son Kofi and he's
eight years old and not that long ago
Kofi came up to me he plopped himself
down on my lap and he looked at me dead
in my face and he said mom I can run
faster than you and I kind of laughed
and I said no you can't i said my legs
are longer than yours I've been running
longer than you have eyes and honey if
we went outside right now and raised I
would beat you and Cathy looked at me
and you know what he said let's go
outside let's go outside right now mom
and I left just like you did but of
course with my gender lens I thought
this is really incredible you know his
perception of his abilities are so far
away from the reality of his abilities
and if you fast forward I want you to
fast-forward 30 years from now right
when Kofi is at the company he sees a
job posting there are those ten
qualifications that it says you need to
have in order for you to even apply for
the job how many of those qualifications
do you think Kofi will need to have or
feel he needs to have an order for him
to apply right one to put Kofi my son
too and I'll be like oh it's mine the
job is mine my daughter on the other
hand I have a five-year-old daughter and
if you fast-forward 30 years from now
and she sees the job posting it'll have
the same ten qualifications my daughter
will have eight out of the ten you know
what she's going to call me and say
Oh mom there's this dream opportunity
it's a dream job but there's 10
qualifications and you know I only have
two others two of them I don't have I
don't know should I go to be school
should i get a mentor or what can I do
in order to compensate for the two that
I don't have and what we find with young
women women over all that are really
successful in advancing their leadership
is that they round up just like Kofi so
if there's anything that you take today
tell women to round up okay because
often where we're even more qualified
another asset and I can't talk about all
of them but one that I think is also
really important as ass notion of
political savvy does anybody recognize
this image okay a few people you may be
from the Pacific Northwest okay so this
is a mr. yuk sticker this sticker was a
part of a public health campaign that I
was a part of when I was a child
basically it was to help protect
children from poisons and parents were
expected to put these stickers on
household cleaning products on
medications they were doled out at
doctors offices at school and you were
supposed to train your children not to
touch anything with the mister yuck
sticker on it now whoever created this
campaign clearly does not have young
children because if you put a bright
green sticker on anything it's not
necessarily going to deter them but the
point was that you were supposed to
teach your children that mr. yuk was
yucky and that you were to avoid it and
the reason why that's there is because
when we talk about politics in the
context of the workplace this is exactly
how a lot of women feel about politics
it is yucky what we find is that these
young women who are very effective at
advancing their leadership the ones who
are the superstars really understand
that politics is just a part of the
ecosystem and they don't even think
about it as yucky or dirty in fact one
of them that I spoke to she says a lot
of my friends say they don't like
politics but I don't think they
understand if they're a member of a
family they've been playing politics
their entire life okay so to these women
politics is just understanding that
every environment that you're in is an
ecosystem and then in order for you to
be successful you need to know how to
navigate that eco
system and when they say every
environment they mean every environment
including this room this room right here
is a political ecosystem the third asset
that I want to say something about is
this whole notion of effective
storytelling so these young women who
are really successful in advancing their
leadership are very gifted at weaving a
personal narrative into and ask or into
a pitch or into an argument in a way
that really makes you want to listen to
them and makes you want to help them and
most fundamentally they understand that
people are compelled by those
individuals who have passion and purpose
and they've either achieve some clarity
or they've pretended that they've
achieved some clarity about what matters
most to them and how that's related to
where they've been and where they're
going and that's a really important part
of enabling others to achieve a shared
purpose which is the definition of
leadership that you shared that I love
so the first part of the success
equation is really about assets and
demonstrating these leadership assets
the second part is I want to go back to
Robin's Ward ambition and my favorite
book about ambition is Anna Feld's
necessary dreams so if you ever get an
opportunity to read that book I love the
way she defines ambition as really a
desire to achieve mastery of your craft
combined with a desire to want
recognition for it and the reason why
ambition is sticky with women is because
we are socially conditioned not to want
that recognition but that's an important
part of ambition ambition in this
context just means you know what your
next step is you have a sense of what it
is and the next step doesn't have to be
I'm going to be the CEO or I'm going to
be a senator it could be as simple as I
just need to get on that committee or I
just need to know that person or I just
need to show up at this conference it's
very important for you to have a sense
of what the next step is so that you can
apply your storytelling skills to the
third part of the success equation which
is really about access access to the
people who can help you along the way so
the biggest misnomer about leadership
advancement is that it's some kind of
soul endeavor hey leadership advancement
is a team sport it's a
sport for everyone it's a team sport for
guys but somehow we get into this notion
of III have to be successful I have to
achieve my goals and really it requires
a village I shared these images because
these are people that I have had access
to that have really played an important
role in the advancing my leadership and
I share them with you because I want to
make it very clear that the leader that
you see in front of you speaking today
is simply the cumulative investment of
other people of really phenomenal people
like Gloria Steinem like Geena Davis who
have really invested in me and invested
in my leadership and so the third part
of that success equation is really about
making sure that you've got those people
in your ecosystem that you've got them
in your network there's another
innovation around mentorship I want you
all to go check out levo league calm
because we're doing mentorship in a
different way but I don't have time to
play that one the success equation I
want to review again which is assets so
making sure that you are demonstrating
the assets through your mindset through
your abilities through your behaviors so
you just know what your next step is
right and it doesn't have to be a very
big step and that you've got the right
people in your ecosystem we hear a lot
about mentors and sponsors and some of
us are burnt out over both of those
terms but I do have to say when in women
like the lot of the ones that I server
getting out of college they really don't
understand those roles and the
importance of them mentors are people
whose primary value is in what they say
to you when you're in the room with them
they're people who helped you achieve
clarity through guidance and
encouragement when I came to levo a year
and a half ago and we surveyed our
constituency over eighty percent of the
young women in our network and keep in
mind they've all graduated from college
so that they didn't have a mentor so
part of what we're trying to do it level
is really redefining what a mentor is
because all of us have people in our
lives who help us to achieve clarity
through guidance and encouragement a
sponsor of course as someone who's
a value is in what they say about you to
other people when you're not in the room
and which is really important and people
who expend their political their social
in their economic capital on you but we
spend a lot of time away though talking
about and really supporting women and
making sure that they've got people who
are helping them but most importantly
they've got people who are laying their
bodies on the table in the rooms where
decisions are made about who's going to
move forward and there's always going to
be a conversation of happening about you
you want to inform that conversation and
you want to be a part of advancing your
own leadership I'm going to leave you
with this quote that my dad used to
always tell me I'm that I used and I
just think he was crazy when he would
say this to of course now I get it that
if you want something you've never had
before you'll have to do something
you've never done before in order to get
it so today tomorrow the next day if you
don't do anything just think about what
have I done today or what will I do
today that I didn't do the day before in
order to advance my own leadership but
also to advance the leadership of
another woman and we'll all be making
the world a better place so thank you
terrific great so questions from the
audience and great the crowd has warmed
up by preacher's daughter a mic
first of all I just graduated from
college so this was very exciting talk
I've read and I've also been taught or
learned in a class that the gender pay
gap doesn't just happen because men just
happen to get more promotions but that
part of it is that women don't ask or
don't ask enough or don't ask for enough
and men do so I'm just kind of curious
on your opinion on that and do you think
it has to do with like women's
confidence or our education and why does
that happen well part of it I mean it
does happen I've hired a lot of people
in my career mmm I would save all of the
women that I've hired only one has ever
asked me for more money than I offered
her every man I have hired has asked me
for more money than I offered him so I
mean I can tell you from that and I'm
sure many people who are managers with
hired people could tell you that same
pattern so it's absolutely true I think
though that instead of us blaming women
are just saying you know you haven't
learned to ask I think it's really
important to go back to the kind of
double standards that Robin addressed in
her talk which is that when women ask we
often are perceived differently than
when men ask and we know that we're not
fools and so that factors into our
decision-making about what we asked for
so I think that it's important that we
muster up the courage yes and the drive
to do that I also think it's important
that we support other women in doing it
and particularly when we're in positions
of hiring people and of making the
decisions that we give women a leg up
and I have had kind of gotten to a place
where I've said I said to more than one
woman you know the guy who you know I
offered this to or who he asked for more
and I would encourage you to do that
because of course we all take that into
consideration when we make offers we
assume this person's going to negotiate
so yes it's absolutely a pattern leo has
a campaign that we do and it's usually
around equal pay day in April which I
really wish we didn't even have to have
that day but it's called the ask for
more campaign and we do a lot of work
and a lot of kind of in-person
leadership development experiences
around what it means to ask and how to
ask in a way that your ass will be
perceived really well so what city are
you in I'm in Middletown New Jersey or
I'm working in New York but I'm from New
Jersey okay yeah so there's a local
llevo chapter so you should plug in if
you're not plugged in I just say there's
a professor at Carnegie Mellon I believe
her name is Linda Babcock she's done a
lot of research and helping women you
know get negotiation skills that are you
know so they don't seem as you know
being too aggressive or whatever but she
does a lot of great work that you can
find on online so it should be really
clear women are extraordinary
negotiators and we're extraordinary
asker's we just suck at doing it for
ourselves okay okay if I have to
negotiate on behalf of my child are you
kidding me so it's not that we don't
have the skill or we don't have the
talent we just need to figure out how to
psychologically make ourself feel like
if we get paid more money than it will
make the world a better place and then
somehow we're inspired and motivated to
do it like that this may be redundant
now that you've already said a few
things about the ask but when you were
talking about the ask one thing that
I've learned in my career is that when I
started to ask for things I would feel
awkward asking for and I almost asked as
a question to see if I had permission to
do it and I think what I've learned is
that men go much like your son and they
say they've got it all outlined why they
should be you know what what they have
everything all everything strategically
outline you know this is my value and
this is why it's almost like they just
it's it's an honest not and ask it's
just this is why you should do it
because it's it's a great thing you know
so I think for women we tend to almost
sound like we're questioning ourselves
when at least this is what I've
learned about myself is that I I was
learning I I had I was questioning
myself when I was doing the ask and so
I've had to really think about the ask
beforehand so that I could position
myself in a way that sounded more
convincing and not aggressive yeah and I
think that's important I have a friend
named ki orenstein she runs an
organization called the op ed project
which is phenomenal organization and one
of the things that Katie often talks
about is the abuse of virtues and it was
a bit of a hard pill for me to swallow
the first time I heard katie talk about
that but she talks about how women often
use virtues like humility in order to
not allow the world to benefit from our
talent and from our ingenuity because we
feel that that's a virtue that should be
so valued that if but if it hinders our
success and if it hinders our progress
and if it hinders our ability for the
world to benefit from our innovation and
our creativity then then Katie would say
that's an abuse of the virtues so you
know I know we did the hardest thing
that you could possibly do at the White
House Project we spent many years
convincing women to run for public
office how many of you would ever run
for office okay we have a few hands in
the you know a half a hand a kind of
wave of a hand okay but that's very
common very hard thing to get any of men
or women to say oh yeah me oh I would
totally run for office with white house
projects spent 15 years getting women to
say yes to doing that and we didn't do
it by telling women that they should
advance their leadership and that you
know we really wanted them to think
about their own ambition and their own
leadership trajectory we did it by
identifying issues in their community
that we knew that they would care about
and that weren't actually that progress
wasn't being made on and we would go to
them and we would say aren't you really
tired of your community being a food
desert don't you think that something
should be done about that and of course
they would say yes and say well we think
the best strategy for that happening is
for you to actually run for this seat
and then we got three people who we knew
were close to them to just also say to
the
we think that you should run because we
often believe other people more than we
believe our own selves about what we can
and should do and by the time you have
three people saying you know you should
really consider that you know you should
really consider that it's like oh maybe
I should consider that and you'd be
surprised and and many people you know
we did all of this leadership training
and all of these programs and people say
that was really great and no one at the
White House Project want to say actually
you just get three other people to tell
a woman to do something all of a sudden
she believes that she can do it I think
that worked on The Good Wife yeah so we
have a question over here and uh so
other than your history of tricking
people into running for office um what
is it that you do it label like
specifically what you're like what's
your month like yes so do you mean label
overall or tiffany both both so lay
though has an online and an offline
presence online when you go to lay
though you can do a number of things one
you can access a mentor who's there to
help you achieve clarity through
guidance and encouragement there are
people who volunteer their time they
have a personal dashboard anyone can ask
that person a question and they can
respond to it if they so choose if it's
an appropriate question you can make
your question public or private everyone
from warren buffett to sheryl sandberg
de soledad o'brien to little ol me is
sitting on the lave o site ready to
answer questions so that's one thing
that you can do you can also watch video
conversation so we have a platform
called office hours and literally it's
like an office hour someone is giving
their insight and their advice and you
can watch them we've been doing them
every week for the past couple of years
so there's a number that you can watch
you can look for a job there are
companies that post their job
opportunities on our site and you can
consume the content there's editorial we
have an editorial team that's producing
content so there's a number of things
that you can do on the site you can also
create your profile some people call us
the LinkedIn for Gen Y women we hate
that but you can create a profile and
you can curate content on your profile
so if you like an office hours if you
like an article
if you like the answer to a mentors
question you can populate your profile
with that so the people can understand
what's important to you offline you can
attend events in your local community we
have 33 local lethal chapters around the
world and so that's where you take what
you learned online and you apply it with
your community assisters offline I think
we've used up time where we have yeah
we're used up time thank you so much
thank you