In honor of Women's History Month and International Women’s Day, Cheryl Gilberg, Chief Communications & Marketing Officer, sits down with Darlene Pasquill, Head of Equity Division, and Shirley Liu, Head of Derivatives Risk Solutions, to discuss their careers, advice to their younger selves, and furthering inclusion in the workplace.
Transcript
Cheryl Gilberg
Welcome Darlene and Shirley to the studio as we celebrate Women's History Month. Let's start off by talking about the strides that women have made reaching senior roles in corporate America. The good news is that there's more female CEOs of Fortune 500 companies than have ever been before. As we all know, it's still only 33 out of 500. So maybe you could just share with me a little bit about the development and do you think we're on the right path towards the future of closing the gender gap?
Darlene Pasquill
I would say that, while 33 of 500 is a move forward, it still is under 7%. I recently read a McKinsey Study that highlighted that women are most underrepresented across most levels of organizations despite having more college degrees than men for 30 years plus. So what I think needs to happen to move forward is that we do need organizations to recognize early where we are, and to take the moves to be able to give women roles that they can have to prepare them to move up. Because you can't turn the switch overnight and take somebody who hasn't done a lot of different experiences across the organization and make them CEO.
Shirley Liu
Just using our own organization as an example. We, I feel like as part of Mizuho, I feel very proud to say that two out of our three key divisions are headed by women. And I completely agree with Darlene, who heads Equity, that having organizations focus on finding talented women, giving them opportunity to take a leadership role, is really an important step for us to move this forward.
Cheryl Gilberg
We can really I think see that happening, especially here in Mizuho as you just mentioned. What do you think about the financial industry in general and how it's changed for women in the industry?
Shirley Liu
I still recall when I first started as an analyst. People just, at least my perception at the time when I walk into the room, they just thought junior women to be shy, introverted, you're not going to talk, so they didn't actually expect you to say anything. And that was actually very interesting. I think nowadays, that perception I feel like really has gone away, people really have much more appreciation about women talent.
Darlene Pasquill
I guess I would add that, I started in the mid-90s, coming out of business school where I came from a class of 800 of which there were 20% women onto Wall Street, so I think we did see a pickup of women 10 years ago. Some of that has started to tail off again as more women are attracted to other industries. Like technology and Silicon Valley and other startups. Having said that, I think that we still need to do what we can do to attract and to educate people early. Firms know that diversity pays and diversity is good for business as you think about wanting to look like your customers. I was at one of the largest institutions earlier this week and the last question they asked me was, "What is Mizuho doing to improve diversity?" And the reason they asked me about that was they too are trying to improve diversity on their trading desk so that they can actually continue and attract the right talent to grow the business.
Cheryl Gilberg
So actually, you just brought up a really good point, so, while we're on that topic of D&I what do you think we as women, senior leaders, can do to actually ensure that we're being inclusive and also what can we do to contribute to the broader D&I platform?
Shirley Liu
I personally as one of the co-heads of our, one of the D&I network Asian-American Association. I look at D&I and diversity very much as one big initiative. I believe if a firm gets it right then it's just going to be focusing on how do you attract the best talent, how can we ensure that we take away the bias that we inherently might have, and be focusing on bringing the best talent, cultivating the talent, and keeping them in the firm. So I believe very much that diversity is something not just specific to gender or race but very much holistic.
Darlene Pasquill
It's important to educate the managers, so the managers that I'm bringing in, the people I'm bringing in, to build the culture across Equities they all appreciate it and know that we want more diversity. They know that it's good for business. I want to work around people that will teach me. I don't want to teach people everything, and I need great people with great minds who are of diverse backgrounds so I can change and evolve the business.
Cheryl Gilberg
What are some of the strategies that you've learned that you think can help women achieve a more prominent role in the organization?
Darlene Pasquill
I think advice to people starting out in their career, early on, as you think about where you want to be in 10 or 15 years, choose a supportive partner as you think about long term. How you're going to manage, if you choose to manage, a family and a job. I think about being prepared or over prepared. I don't think anyone ever failed a test because they were over-prepared. So I think it's really important to think about being over-prepared and then the last thing is think about getting a sponsor and aligning with people and networking. Shirley and I talked earlier about, really in my career, I focused just on clients and driving my business and driving revenues, and what I missed along the way was not spending the necessary time to grab coffee with people in other different divisions or other parts of the business because I perceived that as taking time away from my core job and you have to have strong results to move up. So it's not about just networking. But that networking can help you get where you want to go because you'll understand where the puck's going ahead of where it goes as you're thinking about your career.
Shirley Liu
We need employees and our team members to be happy with their life, so that they can actually bring their best self to work. So I just want women to believe that it is doable. You can have a successful career and have a happy family.
Cheryl Gilberg
Darlene, I actually heard you speak at a recent Women's Network event, and you were talking a little bit about positivity and how you always try to keep a positive attitude regardless of what's going on. Can you talk a little more about this and how you're able to maintain that level of positivity despite daily challenges, heavy workload, external pressure, stress, etc.?
Darlene Pasquill
I think at the highest level, it's much more fun to be positive than negative. I am a strong believer that you need a positive team that respect the organization and that buy in and that want to drive the business further. I need people to drive the business who think it's not what happens to me, it's how I react to what happens to me. I'm a big believer that we can do whatever we set our minds to do and despite the challenges in the industry that if we have a winning team and a team that has that positive attitude, then we will be successful.
Cheryl Gilberg
Thinking back to when you either first started in your career or maybe five years in, maybe 10, what advice would you give to your younger self? Something that maybe you know now that you wish you knew then.
Darlene Pasquill
I think it's important to tell your younger self or others to take a step back, think about where you might want to be in five or 10 years, and think about the other skillsets you might need to get there. And maybe sometimes it's okay to take a step back to move forward.
Shirley Liu
I recall one senior woman telling me that, "Shirley, this is really a marathon. "You sprint too hard." And I want to tell my younger self "Relax a little bit, remember that this is a marathon."
Cheryl Gilberg
And you talk about loving your career and enjoying the financial services world, but if you weren't working in financial services, what do you think you would want to do?
Shirley Liu
Outside of work I do love to cook very much. So I think I would be a very poor chef.
Darlene Pasquill
See and, I'm much more capitalistic I guess, where I would probably try to position myself to be a CEO of a technology company. Or another company or something that's entrepreneurial. The one area of Mizuho I absolutely love is the entrepreneurial part of it. Shirley talked about growing products and attracting teams and working across the organization with so many great business partners, that to me is almost like working at a startup and building a business on your own and leading that. And that to me is super attractive.
Cheryl Gilberg
Great, well that's all the questions I have.
Darlene Pasquill
Thank you very much for having us.
Cheryl Gilberg
Thank you.
Shirley Liu
Thank you very much for having us.
Cheryl Gilberg
Thank you both.