A middle market banking executive at JPMorgan Chase headquarters, Thelma Ferguson sees life as “a series of twists and turns, and those twists and turns come about fairly frequently.”
Whether sought out or occurring because “life just happens,” the twists and turns are where critical career and life choices are made, she told a largely female audience of about 300 people at “Driving Your Business: Women at the Wheel,” an annual panel seminar hosted by the White Plains and Connecticut offices of Citrin Cooperman and the accounting firm’s Women Entrepreneurs and Leaders Group.
Those choices involve risk, both Ferguson and her fellow panelists said when describing the paths of their careers, and successes, failures and a few regrets along the way, in banking, accounting and academia, journalism and media, and the winemaking industry.
“When you hit those pivotal points, you”™ve got a decision to make,” said Ferguson, who heads Chase”™s Northeast Middle Market Banking, overseeing seven market managers in a territory from Maine to metropolitan Washington, D.C.
For an employee frustrated or stymied in advancement at a company, she advised: “If the corporate culture doesn”™t suit you, then you”™ve got to take the risk and be willing to make a move.”
Ferguson said a pivotal point in her banking career, which began in her native Tennessee, was the transition from her executive job at Chase in Louisville, Ky., to metropolitan New York, where she was Chase”™s market manager for Manhattan, Brooklyn and Staten Island before her promotion. Her husband, a top corporate executive in Louisville, supported her and their family”™s move to New York. “The job was the means to an end of having a better life” for the couple and their daughter, she said.
“Having that work-life balance and having that candid conversation at home is essential,” Ferguson said. “I think if you have that and you have the support of one another, you can be successful at this.”
“You build a team at work,” said Janet Hasson, president and publisher of The Journal News Media Group, a Gannett company, “and you need to build a team at home. Often I did not do that.”
Hasson said she found the successful woman in the workplace must give up some control at home. “If you work as hard at home as you do at work, you will burn out,” she said. “You will sacrifice your own health.”
While Ferguson and Hasson rose through the ranks to top management positions at banks and newspapers, panelists Judith Huntington and Deborah Brenner followed less-beaten paths to their positions.
Brenner left the corporate world and a successful job marketing computer technology to eventually become a wine consultant and author and founder of Women of the Vine, a business that promotes women in the winemaking industry and operates a women”™s wine club. Huntington was a CPA with a bachelor”™s degree and a partner at KPMG L.L.P. who left the accounting firm to become chief financial officer at The College of New Rochelle, and was named the college”™s 13th president in 2011.
Huntington told the audience of her experience as a pioneer of flexible work arrangements at KPMG. “I was given a 70 percent workload and 70 percent pay level, but I worked 100 percent of the time,” she said.
Huntington and other panelists said women need to assert their workplace needs with bosses and employers to advance their careers and to navigate what Huntington called the “constant give and take” of work-life balance. “You have to be your own advocate and blaze your own trail and do what”™s right for you first,” she said.
Describing a college leader”™s formula for success, Huntington said, “You surround yourself with smart, passionate, innovative people ”“ and then you get out of their way.”
“For me, success is the opportunity to merge your sympathy, intellect and talents with something you”™re really passionate about,” said Huntington, who called her president”™s job “personally fulfilling.” Success, she said, comes from “good fortune, hard work, persevering, having a good skill set ”“ but more importantly, being passionate about something that inspires you.”
The college president told her audience the life stories shared by graduates in Commencement Day speeches often bring her to tears.
“I”™ve never been brought to tears at KPMGÂ ”“ not in a positive way,” she said.
That drew tears of laughter from some in the audience.
This was an amazing event.
This was a great program and the speakers were dynamic. Mary Palandino mentioned the 50th anniversary of the passage of the Civil Rights Act at the event since this was instrumental in bringing women into the workforce
On Tuesday, September 30th, the Manhattanville School of Business will be hosting a free symposium on Workplace Anti-Discrimination Laws at 50 from 6 – 8 pm. The public is welcome to join in this discussion.