AWSCPA's Financial Services Corporate Sponsor:

Event draws from entire area
NEW YORK CITY AFFILIATE HOLIDAY EVENT
By Kristi Biondo, CPA, PricewaterhouseCoopers, AWSCPA National Director-East and Anne Sforzo, CPA, New York City Affiliate Director of Publicity

On December 11th, the New York City Affiliate hosted a holiday networking event at PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP in Midtown Manhattan with over 200 people in attendance.  The event was sponsored by the Office of Diversity and Experienced Recruiting of PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP and was an excellent opportunity for members and nonmembers alike to meet other women accounting and finance professionals including members of the New York City Affiliate of the AWSCPA.  The attendees were a mix of PwC employees, women from the other Big Four, regional firms and industry. 

All attendees received gift bags which included AWSCPA informational brochures and Post-Its, PricewaterhouseCoopers Diversity pamphlets (Confronting the Issues of Diversity), and cosmetics donated by Maybelline.   Approximately a dozen women signed up for membership during the evening with a number more expressing interest in the AWSCPA organization. Results of the survey included in the on-line registration website for the event indicated that a large number of women were interested in receiving more information about the organization and/or are willing to serve on a committee or hold a board position within the AWSCPA.

The event included a presentation, which qualified for 1 CPE Credit, by Kathleen Cashman, President of Cashman Consulting LLC, an International Management Consulting and Training firm. Kathleen has been with the organization for over 19 years.  Cashman Consulting LLC services organizations in the area of Leadership.  Kathleen and one of her clients, WOMEN Unlimited, Inc. has partnered for the past 5 years with Cashman Consulting and Kathleen serves as the North East Regional Director. Kathleen also gave this presentation to the New Jersey Affiliate in July 2007.  Kathleen presented “Critical Success Factors for Women: Remove the Limits!”  The discussion included what the success factors are, how critical they are to us, how they impact our success today and tomorrow and how to tap into our potential! A summary of the challenges discussed and the strategies suggested during the evening have been attached below.  

The presentation was followed by a wine-tasting hosted by Miyoko Idrissi, a wine consultant from Traveling Vineyard.  Miyoko took us through five wine samples and we had the opportunity to place orders for wine and accessories. Miyoko joined the Traveling Vineyard team to share her love of wine with others, mostly to educate wine lovers like her on the incredible organic experience this elixir will do to our palate.  If you would like to order wine, please contact Miyoko, directly, at miyoko.idrissi@tiffany.com.  Wine and accessories can be viewed at www.ttvstore.com.  Both Kathleen and Miyoko donated their time, free of cost for this event and and our thanks go out to them for their continued support of the AWSCPA organization.

Frances Valenzuela, a student from Long Island University Brooklyn Campus was the winner of a freeCPA review course. She had a choice of receiving a review course from Becker, Kaplan or Yaeger.  Frances is the President Elect of the Accounting Society and President of Business Opportunity for Student Success at her university.  She is in the BS/MS program in accounting, and double majors in Philosophy.  She also participates in the VITA program and currently holds an internship at Kongisberg Wolf and Co.  Congratulations on your win!

Overall, the event was a huge success with the AWSCPA NYC affiliate receiving both informal positive feedback as well as positive feedback indicated on the event evaluations provided at the end of the evening. For more information on upcoming event please visit our local website for upcoming events in 2008.

CRITICAL SUCCESS FACTORS! UNLEASH THE LIMITS!

What are the critical success factors for Women in Our business today?  To begin to answer this question we must first understand some of the challenges women face today – Some of the challenges for women today are:

• Work-Life Balance – roles
• Time challenges – doing it all
• Gender bias
• Networking – finding places to network and gain benefit
• Building relationships that work
• Lack of Mentors
• Lack of Role Models
• Lack of access to Mentors
• Breaking into the Old Boys Network
• Stereotypes – perceptions of women:  Too emotional, too wordy
• Being too Nice
• Being too hard on other women – unwilling to help them succeed
• Wanting to be liked – lack of conflict resolution skills
• Being able to influence others
• Self Promotion – men do it well

It is not a complete list and certainly these challenges are not new – but what is important to recognize is that while they have been around for decades, there are strategies that others are using that are working – we just need to know what some of these strategies are so that the above challenges – and then some – don’t limit your success – however you define it!

What then, are the critical things that women need to do to resonate in the world of business today and not let these challenges limit their success? And some strategies for success?   Some of the

Success factors are:

• Be willing to educate - particularly men – when something happens or doesn’t be willing to address it without emotion – it might hurt but you need to stay focused on the change – be like a duck!
  
  Most Senior leaders are men- there are few women in senior positions – this is not just the Financial Industries challenge – this is across all industries.  Since this is the case, remember most Senior Leaders will not understand or even see the challenges for women.  They might even say there are not challenges for women today.  Your job is to educate from your perspective.  By sharing these challenges you might just be able to change your corporate landscape to be more open for you and other’s to do their best work.
  
  
• Be willing to take a risk.  The risks we need to take are to step outside of our own comfort zones when it comes to building relationships, speaking with others, building our reputation – or sharing our accomplishments and dealing with disagreements.  We need to be willing to approach others who you believe will benefit you with their knowledge and experience – asking for mentorship.
  
  
• Be willing to push back and push off – delegate where possible – be a resource connector – is someone else more appropriate to handle this task or this challenge?
  
  
• Be willing to take part if the “sports” conversations – a simple strategy is be aware of what season it is.  Glance at the headlines or listen to the news cast.  Then be able to interject into the conversations – you don’t need to have watched the game to participate in this game.  This will send the message – you want to belong.  Then as the conversations moves forward it will feel less awkward on all sides and better relations will be had.
  

• Be willing to accept a compliment – when someone says – great job – you might have in the past said – “it was nothing” – knowing full well it was something – the hours, the effort, the things you put off to get this accomplished!  Change your response to:  “Thank you and Thank you for noticing my efforts”.  This should spark a question – what were the efforts?  You can then share how you made this a priority, this caused you to stretch or because of limited resources, it caused you to re-prioritize other work so that this could meet deadline and required some personal adjustments – you don’t need to give detail (remember the 20,000 words) all you need to do is laser your points.

• Be aware of your communication – both style and words – remember some words have different meanings to different people.  Be as specific as you can without using extra words.  The objective is to create understanding not impress when there is better understanding you get better relationships.

• Build your network – internal and external.  Be curious about others – start each conversation with a question or two – this will create an environment of participation and ease.  Start by finding things in common – it can in many cases only take minutes to create this commonality – build on this and then ask your questions – what do you want to know from this person about them – everyone has a story.  Be willing to listen before you your story.  Build a network of other women both internally and externally – women want and need relationships and support – be the best you can be at providing this:  We are all friends – we just don’t know it yet!
  
  
• Be the role model you wish you had.  Pay it forward.  Mentor and Coach another women on purpose.  And seek out mentoring and coaching for yourself.  Identify one or two people who you want to learn more from.
  

What will be the critical Success Factors moving forward?  We know these will continue to be critical and there will be additional ones – so keep identifying the challenges – and ask yourself – how do I not let this limit me?