Tag Archives: leveling the playing field for women in jobs and careers

Good News & A First – Chief Performance Officer Nancy Killefer

I think it should be pretty clear by now that our U.S. government could perform a lot better.  To say the Barack Obama has selected Nancy Killefer to be his CPO, according to two Democratic officials.least.

And one of the things which has often kept change from happening is that “good old boys”, the entrenched and entitled, are often fond of the “status quo”, whatever that may be.  It’s what has kept them in office and empowered, and, lately, digging a deeper financial hole for ourselves.  A trillion dollar hole,  we now are discovering, with other trillions of dollars of debt to come.  Not a very good performance review.

So, when someone mentions “change”, I’m all for it.  I’m particularly for it when “change” may be embodied and spear headed by a particularly capable woman.

Obama to tap new position- CNN.com.

That’s why, when I see President-elect Obama has created a new position, “chief performance officer,” to work on the federal budget and on reforming government, and is selecting a woman with credentials as long as your arm for the job, I am both relieved and glad to hear it.

The woman selected is Nancy Killefer, a senior director for McKinsey & Company,management consulting firm and former assistant secretary of the treasury in the Clinton administration.

Nancy Killefer is a senior director in the Washington, D.C. office of McKinsey & Company, Inc. and a leader of of their Public Sector Practice, specializing in developing strategies and improving organizational effectiveness for government clients.

Killefer has the credentials, big time.

After receiving a B.A. with honors in economics from Vassar College and her M.B.A. from the Sloan School of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Killefer joined McKinsey in 1979. McKinsey, by the way, was once again named by Working Mother magazine as one of the “100 Best Companies” for working mothers. So, Killefer has selected an employer that offers a supportive environment for women, leading by example.

From 1997 to 2000, Killefer served as Assistant Secretary for Management, CFO, and COO at the United States Department of the Treasury.  In addition to overall management responsibilities for Treasury’s 14 bureaus and 160,000 people, she led a major modernization at the Internal Revenue Service, prepared Treasury’s systems for Y2K, and reshaped management processes, including installing an asset management program across the Treasury Department.

After returning to McKinsey in 2000, she joined the IRS Oversight Board, a public-private entity akin to a corporate board that oversees the IRS.  She served there from 2000 to 2005 and was its Chairperson from 2002 to 2004.

Yep.  Ms. Killefer knows how to manage people and money.

Evidently, she knows how to slice through bureaucracy to do it.

We get it. She’s good.  That should always be the first bar.  But we can see that it often hasn’t been. Performance during the Katrina crisis and other such catastophic failures show us that selecting from “the old boy’s club” is a dicey proposition, a gamble that often does not pay off.  And, when it fails, it takes us all down with it.  Two wars and a recession, simultaneously, offer further evidence that this criteria for leadership is deeply flawed.

But Nancy Killefer offers a lot more than her abilities.

She brings her values.

Killeferis’ public service gives us a glimpse us into her values.

Killeferis serves on The Retirement Security Project, which released a paper recently on “Retirement Security for Women: Progress to Date and Policies for Tomorrow.” With half of all working women, due to lower wages and time off for child birth, saving an estimated $34,000 in IRA or 401(k)-style saving accounts, as compared to an estimated $70,000 for men, this paper offers an array of policy solutions aimed at closing the saving gap between men and women.

Ok.  Ms. Killeferis is concerned about working women and the economic policies affecting them.

Even more convincing proof of Ms. Killeferis’ values and priorities is her service on the Board of Advisors of  Catalyst. Catalyst is a premier organization which seeks to level the playing field for women by setting benchmarks and working with Fortune 500 and other companies to support them in achieving those goals.

(Catayst was founded at the beginning of the modern U.S. women’s movement and declared it was “time to fix the companies, not the women”. One of their research papers, released in 2005, for example, was Women “Take Care,” Men “Take Charge:” Stereotyping of U.S. Business Leaders Exposed )

We don’t know very much about Nancy Killeferis yet.  But we like what see.  And this is change we can believe in.

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Who Will Our Country Support With The Economic Stimulus Package?

A little less than a month ago, I wrote a blog post, How About A Stimulus Package For Women’s “Human Capital” Jobs?

I was inspired by a NYTimes.com piece, Where Are the New Jobs for Women? , in which Linda R. Hirshman examines the Obama administration’s proposed stimulus package and women’s place in it, saying :

“BARACK OBAMA has announced a plan to stimulate the economy by creating 2.5 million jobs over the next two years…but there are almost no women on this road to recovery.

The bulk of the stimulus program will provide jobs for men, because building projects generate jobs in construction, where women make up only 9 percent of the work force.

It turns out that green jobs are almost entirely male as well, especially in the alternative energy area.”

She goes on to suggest that the stimulus package include infusions of funds for workers, like teachers, who build our human capital.

Now, about an hour ago, Katherine Franke, has come along with an article,  Stimulating Gender Equality, posted on the Feminist Law Professors ,cross-posted from Columbia Law School’s Gender & Sexuality Law Blog, which takes Linda Hirshman to task for her position, stating that “the solution to gender-bias in the federal bailout isn’t to reinforce other gender asymmetries in the wage labor market. Sure, schools and hospitals should get ample amounts of funding in the stimulus package, but not because women work there, rather because our schools and hospitals are crumbling.”

She adds:

“The hard work we need to do RIGHT NOW is make it clear to the Obama Administration that a serious commitment to gender equality requires that they tie the funding of road construction, school rebuilding, development of green technologies – and even the financial services industry – to non-discrimination on the basis of sex and race, but also to data collection and reporting on who is getting the money. Who owns the companies that get stimulus funding, who gets hired by those companies, and what work they’re doing. Affirmative action has become a dirty word, but there are plenty of other means by which the work traditionally done by white men can be transformed into work that does not have a proper gender and racial identity. New apprenticeship programs for women and people of color who have been closed out of certain industries will be needed – particularly for those who are retooling themselves after having been laid off.”

Look, I agree with that, too. I say, why can’t we do both?  Fund the workplaces where women are now….because they are vital to our future…..and move more women into the construction trades…. because there are good jobs there which will accomplish vital goals, as well.

Starting years ago, as part of the mission of AdvancingWomen.com to level the playing field,  I was comparing wages and how fast you could rise in some of the non-traditional jobs compared to many types of low to mid-level white collar jobs.  I used to travel to colleges, particularly community colleges, presenting on the relative ease of entry, better pay scales and opportunity to rise rapidly, in jobs like fork lift operator and helicopter pilot.  I brought with me real women holding these jobs as living, breathing examples that this was a viable alternative to dead-end or low paying work.

Part of the change we need, at this moment, may be the stimulus package.  But another part of it is that women must educate themselves and understand the opportunities out there.  I guarantee that a master carpenter or a helicopter pilot will make more than most teachers. Not that they should, but they do. And this is reality we’re dealing with.

Let’s put Victorian, yesteryear thinking behind us, pull on those overalls, strap on our tool belt or our goggles and helmet and start making more money.  Having more resources can be an integral part of having a greater say over our future, which is what, I think, most of us want.

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