Redefining the Insurance Landscape
Insurance Networking News, October 2006
-- Unknown
This month's cover story proves that much is indeed being discovered by what some call a growing minority: women in upper management.
Advertisement
Catalyst, a New York nonprofit research and advocacy organization that studies women at work, reports that in 2005, women held 16.4% of general corporate officer positions (those appointed or elected by the board) up just 0.7% of one percentage point from 2002.
Yet some prior research from Catalyst reveals that companies across all industries stand to reap benefits from women in management. In fact, the group reports that Fortune 500 companies with the highest percentages of women corporate officers yielded, on average, a 35.1% higher return on equity and 34% higher total return to shareholders than those with the lowest percentages of women corporate officers.
What about women in insurance technology management? As you'll learn from the following individual profiles, no one can debate the fact that women are making a solid contribution to the insurance industry.
In this exclusive coverage, INN presents profiles of six women in insurance technology management whose love of the industry and pursuit of industry excellence, leadership and professional performance has fostered more than just a positive return to shareholders-their influence has the potential to redefine the insurance services landscape.
PROFILE:
Judy Campbell
Senior Vice President and CIO
New York Life Insurance Co.
Confidence and enthusiasm are two words Judy Campbell uses to describe what it takes for a woman to succeed in insurance and technology. "You have to be able to be confident in what it is you know but enthusiastic about what you don't know," she says.
However, enthusiasm in the workplace, Campbell says, is often hard to come by in women. "Women sometimes think if they're acting enthusiastic, they're less than professional, and I think they have to overcome that," she says.
Campbell has done just that. She enthusiastically describes some of her greatest achievements-the most important being her children. "I was divorced when my kids were five, seven and nine years old. I was a single mother their whole lives and still managed to be successful without doing too much damage to them-of course you'd have to ask them that," she jokes. "But they're pretty successful young women now; that I can say."
Helping women find success doesn't stop in Campbell's home. She, along with Sheila Davidson and Jessie Colgate-senior-level women at New York Life-started a women's leadership project at the company about five years ago. The project includes Q&A sessions, lunches and other activities to enable women just beginning their careers or those striving in the middle management ranks to interact with senior-level women and discuss their careers and leadership potential.
"We had a wonderful speaker who talked about Eleanor Roosevelt's leadership style - it was just thrilling, and we've done a lot of that (kind of thing)."
Management Style
When it comes to a woman's ability to manage, Campbell says, at the risk of sounding sexist, women are better managers than men. "As daughters and mothers and sisters, we learn how to listen a lot better early on in our life," she says, adding that some men have mothers or fathers who really teach them how to listen. "But in most cases women have had to do that because of societal norms in the environment. We listen and hear everybody's perspective-we may not necessarily understand it, but we do listen to it, and we usually let it influence where we're going to go."
Listening to everyone's perspective is at the heart of Campbell's management style, which she describes as a mix of collaborative and participative. "People use to say women don't know how to lead because they didn't play enough sports or they didn't have the military (experience), and I think just the opposite," she says. "In today's environment and with the kinds of people we need to manage-the last thing we need is a hierarchical, militaristic way of managing-most people in today's environment don't really respond to that kind of management."
For more information on related topics, visit the following channels:
