UNC alumna wants to see more women in top business roles

When asked her exact job title, Sallie Krawcheck laughed knowingly and said, “I try to defy convention.”

The UNC alumna has done so for a long time as a senior financial executive on Wall Street. She held positions which often meant being the only woman in the room. Now, she’s working to increase the number of women in those rooms.

On Oct. 23, Krawcheck will be in Cary to launch the regional chapter of the Ellevate Network, the global professional women’s network she bought and re-launched two years ago. Krawcheck believes networking is critical to getting women ahead in business.

“Nobody comes to class to tell you that when you are in school, in your 20s or mid-30s when men begin to move ahead of women — they have stronger networks than women do,” Krawcheck said.

Ellevate, a subscription-based membership program, bridges personal and professional networking between women at different stages of their business careers, Triangle chapter co-president LisaMarie Smith said.

The network has grown to 34,000 members across more than 40 chapters.

“It’s about what we didn’t have coming out of school — a place to land in networking from the beginning, to understand the value and benefit of what a professional network does for you,” Smith said.

The least expensive level of Ellevate membership, for college students and young professional women, costs about $100 per year.

The chapter will partner with Wyrick Robbins Yates & Ponton LLP and the Kenan-Flagler Business School, which will provide training material. The business school will host two of six sessions planned for the year and will have discounted rates for students.

The Triangle chapter began as a roundtable talk with Center for Entrepreneurial Studies director Ted Zoller, assistant director Dina Rousset, Triangle chapter president Danielle Bishop and MBA student Charlotte Guice.

“We all have a passion for strong business leaders and bringing the full economic engagement of women to this business, as well as supporting entrepreneurial numbers to increase and helping women see this as more of a spirit and approach to work and not a limitation,” Smith said.

It’s an unusual partnership made possible by Krawcheck’s relationship with the school, Smith said.

Krawcheck graduated UNC in 1987 with a degree in journalism. At the time, there were few women leading large business corporations.

Today, women are 45 percent of the labor force of S&P 500 companies, but they only make up 4.8 percent of CEOs and 14.2 percent of executive officers, according to the Washington Post and CNN Money.

Coming out of Wall Street at the tail end of the financial crisis, Krawcheck wondered whether the lack of diversity influenced the economic downturn — essentially, whether simply too many people were agreeing.

“Nobody will talk about diversity as a solution for the crisis,” Krawcheck said.

“But the research is pretty definitive: The diversity of skin color, thought, disposition, background, education, you name it, makes for a more effective management team.”

The dearth of diversity inspired Krawcheck to start programs like Ellevate and to raise $10 million for the new women’s investment platform Ellevest.

“The linkage is that each of these is about the economic and financial engagement of women,” she said. “Closing the pay gap or the gender investment gap — these issues involve more women in the economy.”

Guice, CEO of Olly Oxen, said she is helping to connect Ellevate with the business school and reaching out to Carolina Women in Business to get more students involved.

“The really great thing about Ellevate is investing in yourself as a woman. It pulls so many neat resources in the Triangle because there are so many great entrepreneurs,” she said.

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