Sallie Krawcheck is 
ELEVATING Women

The Ellevate Global Network Owner Says Networking Is 
The Number One Unwritten Rule of Success in Business
                                              

Sallie Krawcheck, Ellevate Global Network

by Heidi Suprun

Ellevate Global Network launched its Houston Chapter this year and its owner, Sallie Krawcheck flew to Houston to speak to 150 business women. She shared smart, real world advice at the event held at the JW Marriott Downtown.   

The largest group of its kind, Ellevate has more than 30,000 members from across industries. Started as “85 Broads” in 1997 the organization was created as a networking space for women at Goldman Sachs by the first woman ever promoted into sales management at the firm. The Goldman address in NY is 85 Broad Street, so the women called themselves "85 Broads". Krawcheck, a former executive at Bank of America and Citigroup, bought the group in 2013 and changed the name to Ellevate to better describe its mission to elevate woman in all aspects and phases of their lives and careers and serve as a powerful resource for women looking to ascend their careers. 
Since then, the organization has quickly expanded into new markets, as networking is cited as the number one unwritten rule of success in business. 

Krawcheck has received many awards and honors during her career. She was recently named number nine on Fast Company’s “100 Most Creative People 2014” list, as well as one of “10 Up and Coming Leaders to Watch” by Entrepreneur Magazine. Fortune called her “The Last Honest Analyst” during the research scandals and noted that hers was the most influential voice for research quality and integrity. Krawcheck has also been listed as one of Forbes’ and Fortune’s “Most Powerful Women” in business and is a past recipient of CNBC's “Business Leader of the Future Award.”  We interviewed Krawcheck while she was in town. 

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CB!:    How can the Ellevate network assist women in their careers and what makes Ellevate different from other networking groups? 

Krawcheck:   "I'd say there's room for lots of networking groups. We still have lots of room to go to advance woman and so I really embrace the other women's networking groups whether it be the Lean In groups, whether it be the out on the West Coast - Women 2.0 or Levo League. There are 64 million professional women in the United States and we're advancing through business but there's plenty to go.   We are global, so there's 64 million in the United States and even more globally."

 "Networking has been called the number one unwritten rule of success in business and coming together and exchanging information, knowledge business tips etc. makes all the difference in the world.  I always say who you know is what you know. I got to the Ellevate network by sitting next to Arthur Levitt it on an airplane. (The former chairman of the SEC) who introduced me. I had a line of introductions that was nine people long. One was an entrepreneur who introduced me to a venture capitalist - Nine people later I met the woman who owned at the time 85 Broads - today the Ellevate network. And so this idea of coming together and sharing information-- the pie can grow. It's not if I tell you something then it's subtracts from me. It can actually help all of us grow in my thinking." 

CB!:    What do you think it's going to take to put more women in corporate leadership positions? 

Krawcheck:  "I think the first thing is it needs to have the support of the Chief Executive Officer. Without the support of the man or woman at the top you might as well just forget it.  We survey our women and  what we found is you could have it as a corporate mission but if you don't have someone sitting there actively thinking about it all the time our gender biases take over. I'll give you a real example of my gender bias. So, a handful of years ago when I was running Smith Barney we were doing our promotions and there was a young man that came up to be promoted and what was said about him is 'Oh my gosh -he's aggressive. He'll break some eggs. He gets it done. He's beat plan.' And we said great and he was promoted.'" 

 "The next one up was a woman. 'You know she beat plan. The  market's really good this year -- but she does in a way that's aggressive and she'll break an egg.'   We advised her to get an executive coach in order to make her more effective.  Right?   And I didn't catch it, because the word aggressive with a man is a positive and with a woman can be a negative and they can be exactly the same. It was actually several people later that one of the gentleman in the room said do we realize what we just did? We attributed his success to him and her success to the market. And we reversed course and promoted them both. That was me, and my head of HR by the way was a woman. So we both had gender biases. But what I fret about so much in this country is that Sheryl Sandberg's Lean in - if taken to an extreme - means we should all act like that. And the power of diversity is diversity and we also need to make sure that we are training our managers -  not trying change our women - but change our managers too and that has to come from The CEO." 

CB!:   Why do you feel it's good business to invest in companies with women in leadership positions?

Krawcheck:  "Because the research shows they drive good results, and again it's not women are great and men aren't. It's diversity is great. When you have a team that is all of the same it's not aggregate, right?  The analogy that I use is a bunch of UNC basketball players from the past come together and the five best players in a group of 20 are Kendall Marshall and Jimmy Black and Marcus Page and Phil Ford and Raymond Felton. And the question is have they ever won a national championship and the answer is no because they're all point guards - Right? Adding another point guard when you have five point guards doesn't add anything. Adding a shooting guard, adding a center, adding a couple of forwards means something. What research shows and the reason that you invest in them is because it shows that diverse teams have high returns on capital, lower risk, greater innovation, greater client focus, greater long-term focus. The power of diversity is so great that a diverse team outperforms a smarter team." 

What advice do you have for women over 40 who lose their executive positions? 

CB!:  "It has happened to me. I drank a lot of wine. A lot of wine... I tried to learn from it. The day after I was reorganized out of Bank of America - - I was fired --I mean they said reorganized but there was a group of us they sent home. I sat on the sofa for a day and I drank. The second day I called every member and I said thank you for the opportunity of a lifetime . What could I have done better? So I immediately tried to learn from it. The third is get back up. Increasingly as business changes so quickly everybody's going to fail. if you're not failing in some way in your career you're not trying hard enough. You're playing it too safe. Everybody's gonna fail. Don't be embarrassed by it. Failure is not fatal. You can get another opportunity tomorrow or the next day or the next day. And sure, it might not be that job at that company but for creative individuals who can move into being entrepreneurs, who can move into new industries - get back up. Learn from it and get back up." 

Ellevate Houston 

The Houston Chapter hosts member social and business events, mentoring round tables, speakers, and educational and professional development programs based on member interest.   The group will host a fashion show at Tootsies on August 11.  

"Houston is a very social community already, but communication and internet learning provide access to elite networks, communities, and educational opportunities in a more impactful way than ever before." said Jennifer Roosth, President of the Houston Ellevate chapter.  "The Houston chapter, which is the third chapter in Texas to form, is rapidly growing.  She added that the local chapter is coordinating with the Austin and Dallas chapters on statewide events. "Members are utilizing the benefits in different ways,"  said Roosth. "One woman on my Board loves the online chatrooms and she goes to online seminars every day. One friend needed a platform for an article she wrote so she posted it on the website. One friend works for a multinational company and she's got meetings in different countries all the time and she calls people in the network and has dinner with them." Roosth said people who have met at the events are interacting and doing business together.  


For more info on Ellevate membership and to register for the event visit: 
www.ellevatenetwork.com/chapters/50-usa-houston.