I bumped into PWA by chance. I was surfing the web looking for information on networking, which I believe to be a useful resource for job searching.I consciously chose to work in consulting more than 6 years ago: I wanted to learn as much as possible and as quickly as possible, I wanted to change frequently, I wanted to travel, I wanted to stimulate my brain. About a year ago, I realized that I was ready for a change: to make the move from consulting to a company position. I wanted to be in charge and to make decisions. I was tired of simply suggesting and then waiting, and hoping that someone would follow my recommendations!

I was struggling to find a new job and nothing seemed to work. I was aware of the importance of relationships and I felt like I was missing a piece of the puzzle: an international environment in which to compare myself and find inspiration from different attitudes towards life, relationships, work, and open-minded people that were accustomed to dealing with change.

When I came across the PWA website, I read the contents quickly. It sounded interesting, so I decided to attend an event as a guest. It turned to be Margaret Heffernan’s speech which really electrified me. “This is great! Inspiring, ironic, dramatically real, this is exactly what I am looking for”, I thought. In front of me there was this great woman who had built up a great career while successfully overcoming challenges that all of us may encounter sooner or later. And she was still human and even making mistakes! Her message to me was: it’s tough, you’ll make the wrong choices sometimes, you’ll act badly sometimes, but if you are true to yourself and to your values you can reach your goals and change things for the better.

I joined PWA in February and now, 7 months later, I can attest to what PWA means to me and how it has influenced my professional and personal life.

My primary driver to PWA was looking for a new job. I was interested in others’ suggestions and experiences on professional improvement and career growth. I knew that in my search something wasn’t working, but I couldn’t pinpoint what – CV, past experiences, positions I was applying for? Through PWA I had the chance to meet many people – face to face as well as online – willing to help me improve my search and pushing me to think and act positively.

Once my objectives were clarified, I became very proactive and started making full use of all network resources. I visited the EuropeanPWN website a lot: I looked at the forum almost every day in particular for job postings and applied for a couple of them. It didn’t immediately lead to interviews, but I received some very good suggestions on my CV format and content. I found an advert on Monster and since a PWA member was working for them, I wrote her an e-mail asking about the position and the company itself.

Valerie Ryder suggested that I look for headhunters in the members’ directory on our website to ask for advice. I did, and my e-mails led to a chat with a headhunter that quickly turned into an interview and now might even turn into an offer. But that’s not all. As I wanted to personally contribute to the association, I recently started collaborating as a volunteer with the PWA board and met a member working in a complementary industry, which quickly turned into various concrete business opportunities.

What I really want to stress about my experience is the unqualified support I received from all the people I contacted within the PWA and EuropeanPWN. They actually helped me focus on the “what” and “where” of my search. I am looking for a BIG change and it definitely requires some serious thinking: most of the time, smart questions coming from smart people help you to define and clarify your own ideas.

My secondary – but no less important – driver to join PWA was the opportunity to meet people, women willing to grow professionally and in most cases with international backgrounds. And I did have the chance to meet a lot of interesting people: every time I attend a PWA event, I meet someone new or get to know better somebody that I’ve met previously. What I find really great is that you feel people are willing to tell their stories and experiences and listen to yours; they are willing to help and are enthusiastic about participating and making this association grow.

In the end I would say that PWA has positively influenced the way I perceive myself as a professional and as a human being, bringing new challenges and interests as well as new friends. After searching without results for some time, I was quite frankly a bit depressed. Things changed when I had the opportunity to meet people who have their own success stories to tell, a lot of good hints and lists of “dos and don’ts” to share and who are truly available and willing to help.

Even if PWA is not where I find my new job, it has certainly helped me to regain my enthusiasm and my belief that I will achieve my objectives. It’s only a matter of time and commitment.

Monica Pesce
PWA Member

Inspiring. This is how Valerie Ryder defined the W.I.N. Conference to me. My curiosity grew as I found out more: the program sounded really interesting and it would be held in Rome – an exciting location that was also easy to reach.Having done little else but work for the last six years, this couldn’t have come at a better time as I was planning to make some changes in my life. Plus, I needed to make time just for me: to think, to meet new people, to learn, to become inspired. With that in mind I signed up for the conference. It turned out to be an experience that not only changed how I looked at business but also how I relate to other women. I would like to share just some of the key learnings I brought home.

During the opening ceremony, Kristin Engvig, founder and CEO of W.I.N., shared networking tips that can be effective in all aspects of our lives:

• Be open to learn (and learn to be more open)
• Be willing to connect
• Be quick to contribute
• Be ready to help others
• Be ready to take risks
• Commit
• Be prepared to have fun and expect magic

Change was a central theme and was no better echoed than in a speech by Jordy Kool from HP in which he quoted Charles Darwin: “It is not the strongest that survive, nor the most intelligent, but the ones most responsive to change”. This is a key message for the 21st century as we, as women, have a natural aptitude for change.

I discovered how important women are in making consumer decisions. In recent years the number of wealthy women has increased dramatically in comparison with their male counterparts. Why, then, do most companies still not take into account our needs when they develop and market their products? This is an interesting issue for those among us who work for such companies: how can we persuade them that they should intelligently recognize that gender differences are relevant?

A wide variety of workshops provided invaluable opportunities to interact, exchange ideas and meet extraordinary people, including Maryann Valiulis, a bright funny woman who I like immediately and whose workshop, “Women and Ambition”, I attended. I’m confident that she and I will collaborate a great deal in the future.

The conference is an eye-opening experience that will enable you to learn new ways of doing old things and overcoming difficulties. Should you go? If you are willing to connect with other women, are prepared to give and to take and want to commit and take some risks, then it will make a difference. The exuberance and passion at W.I.N. is highly contagious.

By attending the conference I started an important journey to better understand my inclinations and priorities are. I want to grow, to focus on my future goals and improve my abilities to reach them. W.I.N. provided an inspirational setting and highly useful tools for doing just that.

I would like to close quoting something I heard during the Gala dinner. It sounds funny but still is something we should really remind ourselves more often: “Remember that there is a special place in hell for women who don’t help other women”.

 Monica Pesce

As the mission of PWA Milan and EuropeanPWN is to promote the professional progress of women through all their career phases, from potential through the pipeline to power, we would like to launch the Women on Boards series, a new series of articles dedicated to this topic.The goals of this series of articles are different:

• To offer examples of women that made it to the top position, either through articles published by the most important magazines and newspapers or interviews to Italian and International women that reached the top – the famous role models that we all need;
• To summarize the key steps to a board position, providing tips and information to those of you that might seriously consider this career path;
• To hopefully inspire some of you, that never thought of the possibility to sit on a board before.

After the article published in our October newsletter 10 steps to board-readiness, the second article of the series gives me the opportunity to share with you an interesting feature of the BNET website (BNET provides working professionals with the tools, advice, and insight they need to succeed in today’s workplace. As they declare “This isn’t a site for those who merely punch the clock: It’s for people who are committed to nurturing their own excellence, who believe in the meaning of work, and who know that a fulfilling career is an excellent way to make personal ambitions come true”) entitled How to lead in the boardroom.

As Mirella Visser – our EuropeanPWN Board President – underlined, the articles are “very American”, meaning focused on the American economic context, as the frequent reference to American regulations make immediately clear. Still it represents an interesting opportunity for us all to reflect on how this financial crisis might (or is going to) affect the way people (we) perceive our board position and responsibilities and provides some interesting views on what a board position requires today and how to prepare for the role.

Starting to think of our newsletter and articles as a powerful tool to start discussion and interaction – as it will become as soon as the new website is online – we would appreciate your views, opinions, suggestions and reflections on this topic.

Monica Pesce

This summer I went to the US on holiday and, as I usually do when I enter a bookshop, I bought and read a very interesting book Blink – The power of thinking without thinking by Malcolm Gladwell. Apart from the stimulating content of the book, one paragraph in particular attracted my attention, The Warren Harding error: why we fall for tall, dark and handsome men.The key concept of the book is that rapid cognition, or thin slicing as Gladwell defines it, is extraordinarily powerful thanks to “our ability to very quickly get below the surface of a situation”. But this impressive capacity we all have has of course a “dark side”: the Warren Harding error, the reason why more frequently than we’d be willing to admit we end up with mediocre people in huge responsibility positions (and if you want to know more about Warren Harding, read the book!).

A group of psychologists started to study the role unconscious associations play in our beliefs and behaviours and created the Implicit Association Test (IAT), based on the fact that we are quicker in connecting pairs of ideas that are already somehow related in our minds than in connecting pairs that are unfamiliar to us.

Words flash on the computer screen and you must connect them to two opposing categories, with a system measuring how quickly you make connections and when you make mistakes. The test bases the measurement of associations on how quick you connect words, that according to the IAT psychologists is a consequence of the fact that we are quicker at connecting words when they are based on prior associations.

Malcolm Gladwell took the test himself on race, stating that he believes races are equal. He took the test more than once and ended up with the same result: positive pro-white associations. His conclusion on what this test is telling us is that our attitudes towards core concepts such as race, gender or sexual orientation operate on two different levels.

We have conscious attitudes that are our declared values, things we choose to believe in and that drive our deliberate behaviour. But the IAT test measures the second level: our unconscious attitudes, the rapid associations that come out before we even have time to think. The irritating thing about this test is that you might end up realizing your unconscious associations are incompatible with your stated values.

The reason why we make such associations is simply because we are surrounded by connections between the dominant group (white people, men) and positive things, on the newspapers, on television. As Malcolm Gladwell states, “The IAT is more than just an abstract measure of attitudes. It’s also a powerful predictor of how we act in certain kinds of spontaneous situations”, meaning that our unconscious associations could affect the way we act and feel during a job interview, for example.

Would you like to test yourself and your unconscious associations? Take a test, we would love to get your comments on the test itself and on how you felt after you took it!

Test your unconscious assumptions at https://implicit.harvard.edu/implicit/

Monica Pesce

According to research by McKinsey, businesses with more women at the top enjoy greater success and do more good. The research, which surveyed over 115,000 employees from 231 public and private enterprises, asked employees about various business aspects, from leadership to innovation. The findings indicate that when women make up over 30% of senior management, the work environment encourages higher employee performance. Monica Pesce is one of the ten women interviewed for this special feature in Donna Impresa.

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