Like it or not, starting a family will normally change a woman's career trajectory, even in finance
Like it or not, starting a family will normally change a woman’s career trajectory, sometimes dramatically.
Wealth Professional spoke to some women leaders about their experiences.
Susan Latremoille, author of The RichLife: Managing Wealth and Purpose, is director of wealth management and wealth advisor for Latremoille Group at Richardson GMP. She believes women can have both motherhood and a great career, but that family should always come first.
“It’s just a matter of how hard and smart you’re prepared to work, how diligent, industrious, how dedicated you are. I think sometimes we make a big deal of the barriers. How about thinking about it as an opportunity? It takes a lot out of you, it’s not easy, but it is absolutely doable,” she told Wealth Professional.
Latremoille, who started her career in equity sales at Merrill Lynch in 1983, left her job when she started a family, because flexible working was not an option. By contrast, when her second child came along, she was at home building her own business and could not afford to take maternity leave. A senior executive, she employed a nanny and says lower income earners would need the help of their families.
She said women must establish their priorities: “Family first, always, with career a close second,” which also means incorporating ‘self care’, and not taking on too many extracurricular responsibilities. Charity work shared with the whole family is one way to achieve philanthropic goals without impacting family time, she said.
Tea Nicola, co-founder and CEO of Canadian online investment service, WealthBar, told Wealth Professional that most wealth advisors in Canada are self-employed and can therefore work relatively flexibly. But she warned of a two key risks of which new mothers should be aware: having children earlier in a career could impact the first crucial five years of building a new business; and financial advice businesses cutting pregnant women out of their successor plans. She said: “The perception is that [a pregnant woman] is no longer devoted to the clients.”
Jamie Hoobanoff, founder of The Leadership Agency specializing in sales and leadership recruitment for start-ups, told Wealth Professional that young, high growth companies are having to evolve their practices around maternity leave in order to remain agile.
She says there are still cases of women being penalized in their careers due to maternity leave, but that this is mitigated by the greater choice available to women due to technology and the internet, which makes the world of business easier to access than in the past.
Furthermore, opportunities to grow have exploded. She said: “The average tenure for a leader today is 2.7 years, whereas for the previous generation it was 10 years. People have a lot more choice and empowerment when it comes to their career,” said Hoobanoff.
