http://www.roycecarlton.com/speaker/profile/Sylvia-Ann-Hewlett.html
http://www.roycecarlton.com/speaker/video/Sylvia-Ann-Hewlett.html (video on brain drain of women and minorities)
PROFILE
President of the Center for Work-Life Policy, economist and Columbia University professor Sylvia Ann Hewlett is a leading expert in the fields of talent management, workplace transformation, diversity and inclusion.
Dr. Hewlett has been charting new ground for companies and employees with her bestselling books and cutting edge research. Her book, Off-Ramps and On-Ramps (Harvard Business School Press), was named one of the top 10 business books of 2007 by Amazon.
Her most recent book, Top Talent: Keeping Your Best People When You Need Them Most, published by Harvard Business School Press in October 2009 is part of the Memo to the CEO series. Hewlett explains how companies can hold onto, re-engage and re-energize their star performers.
In Fall 2011, Hewlett will release her book Winning the War for Talent in Emerging Markets: Why Women Are the Solution, which explains how companies can strengthen their workforce in expanding markets by attracting and retaining talented women.
Hewlett is also the author of eight Harvard Business Review articles, and co-author of nine research publications on issues including leveraging talent, sustaining high performance, and reversing the brain drain.
Shumeet Banerji, CEO, Booz & Company comments “Sylvia Hewlett makes a compelling case for the intangibles that genuinely help you engage your top talent and, ultimately, build the bottom line—during bear or bull markets.”
Dr. Hewlett is the founding director of the Hidden Brain Drain a Task Force, comprised of 64 global companies committed to the full realization of female and multicultural talent. Working with Goldman Sachs, BP, GE, Microsoft and others, Dr. Hewlett has authored and developed innovative models of best practice.
In addition to her Columbia University appointment where she directs the Gender and Policy Program in the School of International and Public Affairs, Dr. Hewlett is the founding President of the Center for Work-Life Policy, a Manhattan-based think tank. She recently received the Isabel Benham Award from the Women's Bond Club and Woman of the Year Award from the Financial Women's Association. She writes regularly for the Harvard Business Review and the Financial Times and has appeared on Oprah and Charlie Rose.
“The event was very good. All the feedback I received about her discussion was excellent. She was also very generous with her time, as people stood in line to speak with her personally after the event.”
-Association for Corporate Growth
BIOGRAPHY
Sylvia Ann Hewlett is an economist and the founding president of the Center for Work-Life Policy (CWLP), a Manhattan-based think tank where she chairs the “Hidden Brain Drain,” a task force of 60 global companies committed to global talent innovation. She also directs the Gender and Policy Program at the School of International and Public Affairs, Columbia University. She is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, the Century Association and the World Economic Forum Council on Women’s Empowerment.
Hewlett is the author of eight Harvard Business Review articles and ten critically acclaimed nonfiction books including When the Bough Breaks (Basic Books, winner of a Robert F. Kennedy Memorial Book Prize), Off-Ramps and On-Ramps (Harvard Business School Press, named as one of the best business books of 2007 by Amazon.com), Top Talent: Keeping Performance Up When Business Is Down (Harvard Business Press) and Winning the War for Talent in Emerging Markets: Why Women Are the Solution (Harvard Business Press, forthcoming 2011). Her writings have appeared in The New York Times, The Financial Times, Foreign Affairs, and the International Herald Tribune and she is a featured blogger on Harvard Business Online.
Hewlett is the founder of Sylvia Ann Hewlett Associates LLC, a boutique consultancy. In 2009 Sylvia Ann Hewlett Associates formed an alliance with Booz & Company focused on helping organizations leverage top talent across the divides of culture, gender and generation.
Dr. Hewlett has taught at Cambridge, Columbia and Princeton universities and held fellowships at the Institute for Public Policy Research in London and the Center for the Study of Values in Public Life at Harvard. In the 1980s she became the first woman to head up the Economic Policy Council—a think tank composed of 125 business and labor leaders. She recently received the Isabel Benham Award from the Women's Bond Club and Woman of the Year Award from the Financial Women's Association.
Hewlett is a well-known speaker on the international stage. She has keynoted International Women’s Day at the IMF, given the featured address at Pfizer’s Emerging Markets Leadership Summit in Dubai, and spoken at the White House with co-author Cornel West. She is a frequent guest on TV and radio, appearing on Oprah, NewsHour with Jim Lehrer, Charlie Rose, ABC World News Tonight, The Today Show, The View, BBC World News and Talk of the Nation—and she has been lampooned on Saturday Night Live.
A Kennedy Scholar and graduate of Cambridge University, Hewlett earned her PhD in economics at London University.
Hewlett, S. A. (2002). "Executive women and the myth of having it all." Harv Bus Rev 80(4): 66-73, 125.
When it comes to having a high-powered career and a family, the painful truth is that women in the United States don't "have it all." At midlife, in fact, at least a third of the country's high-achieving women--a category that includes high wage earners across a variety of professions--do not have children. For many, this wasn't a conscious choice: Indeed, most yearn for motherhood. So finds economist Sylvia Ann Hewlett, who recently fielded a nationwide survey to explore the professional and private lives of highly educated and high-earning women. Other findings are similarly disturbing. Many of these women who are raising children have suffered insurmountable career setbacks. In addition, today's young women will likely experience even starker trade-offs. In general, Hewlett's data show that, for too many women, the demands of ambitious careers, the asymmetries of male-female relationships, and the difficulties of conceiving later in life undermine the possibility of combining high-level work with family. By contrast, Hewlett's research reveals that high-achieving men continue to "have it all." Of the men she surveyed, 79% report wanting children, and 75% have them. Indeed, the more successful the man, the more likely he is to have a spouse and children. The opposite holds true for women, particularly the highest-achieving women in Hewlett's survey: At age 40, 49% of these ultra-achievers are childless, while 19% of their male peers are. The facts and figures are bleak but, the author contends, could be liberating if they spur action. Hewlett urges lawmakers and corporations to establish policies that support working parents. But recognizing that changes won't happen overnight, she exhorts young women to be more deliberate about their career and family choices.
Hewlett, S. A. (2004). "Fast-track women and the quest for children." Fertil Steril 81 Suppl 2: 15-18.
Childlessness is a tremendously important issue for American women. Women's reproductive lives remain extremely different from men's so that women cannot simply clone the male competitive model in the labor market. A new model is called for to enhance women's chances of crafting lives they want to lead.
Hewlett, S. A. and C. B. Luce (2005). "Off-ramps and on-ramps: keeping talented women on the road to success." Harv Bus Rev 83(3): 43-46, 48, 50-44 passim.
Most professional women step off the career fast track at some point. With children to raise, elderly parents to care for, and other pulls on their time, these women are confronted with one off-ramp after another. When they feel pushed at the same time by long hours and unsatisfying work, the decision to leave becomes even easier. But woe to the woman who intends for that exit to be temporary. The on-ramps for professional women to get back on track are few and far between, the authors confirm. Their new survey research reveals for the first time the extent of the problem--what percentage of highly qualified women leave work and for how long, what obstacles they face coming back, and what price they pay for their time-outs. And what are the implications for corporate America? One thing at least seems clear: As market and economic factors align in ways guaranteed to make talent constraints and skill shortages huge issues again, employers must learn to reverse this brain drain. Like it or not, large numbers of highly qualified, committed women need to take time out of the workplace. The trick is to help them maintain connections that will allow them to reenter the workforce without being marginalized for the rest of their lives. Strategies for building such connections include creating reduced-hour jobs, providing flexibility in the workday and in the arc of a career, removing the stigma of taking time off, refusing to burn bridges, offering outlets for altruism, and nurturing women's ambition.
Hewlett, S. A. and C. B. Luce (2006). "Extreme jobs: the dangerous allure of the 70-hour workweek." Harv Bus Rev 84(12): 49-59, 162.
Today's overachieving professionals labor longer, take on more responsibility, and earn more than the workaholics of yore. They hold what Hewlett and Luce call "extreme jobs", which entail workweeks of 60 or more hours and have at least five often characteristics-such as tight deadlines and lots of travel--culled from the authors' research on this work model. A project of the Hidden Brain Drain Task Force, a private-sector initiative, this research consists of two large surveys (one of high earners across various professions in the United States and the other of high-earning managers in large multinational corporations) that map the shape and scope of such jobs, as well as focus groups and in-depth interviews that get at extreme workers' attitudes and motivations. In this article, Hewlett and Luce consider their data in relation to increasing competitive pressures, vastly improved communication technology, cultural shifts, and other sweeping changes that have made high-stakes employment more prominent. What emerges is a complex picture of the all-consuming career-rewarding in many ways, but not without danger to individuals and to society. By and large, extreme professionals don't feel exploited; they feel exalted. A strong majority of them in the United States-66%-say they love their jobs, and in the global companies survey, this figure rises to 76%. The authors' research suggests, however, that women are at a disadvantage. Although they don't shirk the pressure or responsibility of extreme work, they are not matching the hours logged by their male colleagues. This constitutes a barrier for ambitious women, but it also means that employers face a real opportunity: They can find better ways to tap the talents of women who will commit to hard work and responsibility but cannot put in over-long days.
Hewlett, S. A., C. B. Luce, et al. (2008). "Stopping the exodus of women in science." Harv Bus Rev 86(6): 22-24, 139.
A new study reveals that U.S. companies face a troubling brain drain: Fifty-two percent of female scientists, engineers, and technologists abandon their chosen professions. If companies understand why women drop out, however, they can create targeted interventions and head off a talent shortage.
Hewlett, S. A., C. B. Luce, et al. (2005). "Leadership in your midst: tapping the hidden strengths of minority executives." Harv Bus Rev 83(11): 74-82, 166.
All companies value leadership-some of them enough to invest dearly in cultivating it. But few management teams seem to value one engine of leadership development that is right under their noses, churning out the kind of talent they need most. It's the complicated, overburdened but very rich lives of their minority managers. Minority professionals-particularly women of color-are called upon inordinately to lend their skills and guidance to activities outside their jobs. Sylvia Ann Hewlett, who heads the Center for Work-Life Policy, and her coauthors, Carolyn Buck Luce of Ernst & Young and Cornel West of Princeton, present new research on the extent to which minority professionals take on community service and other responsibilities outside the workplace and more than their share of recruiting, mentoring, and committee work within the workplace. These invisible lives, argue the authors, can be a source of competitive strength if companies can learn to recognize and further cultivate the cultural capital they represent. But it's hard to convince minority professionals that their employer respects and values their off-hours responsibilities. A lack of trust keeps many people from revealing much about their personal lives. The authors outline four ways companies can leverage hidden skills: Develop a new level of awareness of minority professionals' invisible lives; appreciate the outsize burdens these professionals carry and try to lighten them; build trust by putting teeth into diversity goals; and, to finish the job of leadership development, help minorities reflect on their off-hours experiences, extract and generalize the lessons, and apply what's been learned in other settings.
Hewlett, S. A., L. Sherbin, et al. (2009). "How Gen Y and Boomers will reshape your agenda." Harv Bus Rev 87(7-8): 71-76, 153.
When it comes to workplace preferences, Generation Y workers closely resemble Baby Boomers. Because these two huge cohorts now coexist in the workforce, their shared values will hold sway in the companies that hire them. The authors, from the Center for Work-Life Policy, conducted two large-scale surveys that reveal those values. Gen Ys and Boomers are eager to contribute to positive social change, and they seek out workplaces where they can do that. They expect flexibility and the option to work remotely, but they also want to connect deeply with colleagues. They believe in employer loyalty but desire to embark on learning odysseys. Innovative firms are responding by crafting reward packages that benefit both generations of workers--and their employers.
Ohmae, K., S. A. Hewlett, et al. (1991). "The boundaries of business: commentaries from the experts." Harv Bus Rev 69(4): 127-140.
The World Leadership Survey, which began a worldwide dialogue on a set of important issues facing managers in the 1990s, continues with commentaries from four recognized experts, each of whom addresses the survey results from a different perspective. Kenichi Ohmae, chairman of McKinsey and Company in Tokyo, addresses "The Perils of Protectionism." Ohmae argues that the old definitions of national boundaries and corporate interests reflect obsolete economic theories. The real test of national well-being, Ohmae suggests, should be the economic welfare of a nation's citizens. Sylvia Ann Hewlett, economist and former director of the Economic Policy Council in New York, analyzes the survey in terms of "The Human Resource Deficit." According to Hewlett, four principles should guide corporate strategies in the 1990s: human resource development should move up the scale of corporate priorities; a family-friendly workplace will attract and keep talented workers; companies will take limited direct responsibility for training and education; the private sector will promote public investment in social issues. James E. Austin, the Richard P. Chapman Professor of Business at the Harvard Business School, writes about "The Developing-Country Difference." In developing countries, Austin observes, managers display attitudes and follow practices that diverge from those in developed nations. In particular, the role of government, investments in education and technology, and environmental concerns set these nations apart. Michel Crozier, president of the Centre de Sociologie des Organisations in Paris, writes about "The Changing Organization." In the 1990s, Crozier argues, managers need to break from old management theories and practice, questioning hierarchy, control, distance, access to information-the whole managerial system.