CEO: Joseph L. Hooley
Headquarters: Boston, Massachusetts
Website: www.statestreet.com

ALIGNING INCLUSION WITH BUSINESS PRACTICES TO ADVANCE OPPORTUNITIES FOR WOMEN

State Street Corporation, a worldwide financial services holding company, is driving a culture that’s advancing opportunities for women around the world. The company’s Professional Women’s Network’s (PWN) Mentoring Circles is aligning diversity and inclusion with business outcomes. The growing network provides career progression and professional development opportunities, connecting more than 4,000 employees across the globe.

State Street operates with over 30,000 employees in more than 100 geographic markets worldwide, with $29 trillion in assets under custody and administration and $2.4 trillion under management. With global mentoring, its employees are able to create connections and strengthen their work community across locations, functions and business lines.

GLOBAL ADVISORY BOARD GUIDANCE

PWN works closely with a Global Advisory Board that provides guidance to its 26 global chapters, representing the company’s largest employee resource group. “Inclusion and diversity are strategic imperatives at State Street, and our employee networks are essential in making sure we provide a supporting and working environment for the workforce,” said Managing Director of Global Inclusion Julianne Haskell.

The board has an equal number of female and male executives that “… not only helps to change the conversation on the PWN efforts, but also allows us to potentially reach an entire new demographic,” Haskell said.

These executive-led, group-based women’s mentoring forums are aimed at helping members advance their personal and professional goals. This helps put one of State Street’s core values, “Stronger Together”, into action by helping participants gain new knowledge, shape perspectives, and forge new and lasting relationships. Its circles are small, cross-functional groups that include junior level associates, middle managers and senior leaders who work together to share insights, experience and support.

While PWN has developed a guide which includes research-based topics that are proven to enable the advancement and promotion of women, each Mentoring Circle agrees on the topics they want to explore. Common themes have included: effective communication, power of networking, psychology of success, work/life balance, personal branding, executive presence, owner’s mindset and introverts vs extroverts.

GLOBAL GROWTH

The response from those involved has been tremendous, and has helped to increase the number of participants by 270 percent over two years. It has also enhanced the quality of interaction in the group. The group started as a pilot program with 10 circles in 2014 led by executives with 100 mentees and quickly grew to 50 circles strong led by executives with more than 250 mentees.

This successful Mentoring Circles Program has been adopted by several global PWN chapters across the organization. The group has expanded to locations such as Sacramento, Hong Kong, Edinburgh, London, Kansas City and New York City.

In addition, this program has also been critical in engaging men in supporting women’s advancement in the organization. Last year, forty percent of the groups’ 1,500 members in Massachusetts attributed career progression to PWN. What’s more, 75 percent said they developed professional skills through engaging in this network, according to Haskell.

State Street’s PWN was recently recognized with the 2016 ERG Council Honors Award from the Association of ERGs & Councils.