When the cries and demands of women in corporate America go unheard, organizations such as the Financial Women’s Association are the voices that answer. As president of the association committed to shaping female leaders in business and finance, Lily Klebanoff Blake spearheads the premier organization’s diversity initiatives. The association, which boasts 1,000 members nationwide, promotes female empowerment within major corporations.
“I think it’s essential for corporations to continue some of the diversity efforts that they have started. I think that there has been more access at the lower levels so that now, at least for women, you’re seeing the entry level in financial services with about 50 percent of the people coming [in] being women. The issue is that when you get to the higher levels, the pyramid grows smaller so there are only about 15 percent [of] women at the very top. The idea is to make sure that the organization is sensitive to their needs and I think that’s really changing with time,” explains Blake.
With FWA currently working with 23 corporate sponsors on Wall Street in terms of developing special programming to identify women’s specific needs, Blake’s priority is to have a strong diversity initiative. “We want to be as welcoming as possible. We’ve identified core organizations that we will work with specifically in terms of partnering with them so that we can reach out to their members and vice versa. We have some very concrete initiatives we are also going to be looking at in terms of trying to increase the diversity of the membership and leadership,” she says. – jason thompson
