Leyonna Barba and Monica Wheat are committed to advocating for diverse founders. Leyonna, managing director of Technology and Disruptive Commerce at JPMorgan Chase, and Monica Wheat, managing director of Techstars Detroit, have embraced diversity in funding throughout their careers. In this episode of the Women on the Move Podcast, they sit down with Host Sam Saperstein to talk about their passion for that cause, and how they encourage investors to get more proximate to a diverse group of founders. Ecosystems and networks Monica discusses how, after spending time working with start-ups and investing on her own internationally and in San Francisco, she ended up in Detroit and being drawn to Techstars’ mission. She initially tried to “copy and paste everything that was in San Francisco and bring it back to Detroit.” But she soon realized that didn’t work—there simply wasn’t the ecosystem in Detroit to replicate the Silicon Valley/San Francisco model. Founders didn’t have a network of other founders to rely on for encouragement or resources. “And that's where Techstars came in,” she recalls. “They not only came in and said, ‘here's a check and here's some support and some resources,’ but they kept coming back and they kept asking the questions like, ‘what do you need?’ And it gave us the courage to really think about Detroit and some of these other emerging markets shaping themselves versus trying to copy and paste what was in Silicon Valley.” Leyonna agrees that an established ecosystem is critical for start-up success. “To be successful in venture and within the tech ecosystem, you have to have a strong network, which is why for many founders, diverse founders, female founders, they've traditionally been locked out of those markets, locked out of those rooms,” she says. She’s proud of the work her team does at JPMorgan Chase in terms of being intentional around ensuring that diverse and female founders and veteran-owned business founders all have a voice at the table. “We have a lot of emerging diverse managers,” Leyonna says. “We've seen an increase in the number of those diverse focused funds over the last couple of years, making sure that they're in a room with potential opportunities for investment, bringing those networks together. I know that I sit in a very special place in intersection at JPMorgan Chase where the power of our network can be amplified if we use it to bring those parties together. And it's part of the reason that I love the work that we're doing with Techstars.”   Making change Leyonna and Monica agree that increasing the very small percentage of VC money that goes to diverse women—Sam currently notes that it stands at about 3 percent of all funding—will require funders to be deliberate in their attempts at inclusion. Monica says she doubts that any current funders are trying to purposefully divert money away from women- or black-owned businesses. “But you also have to be very intentional about the fact that you are including them. You have to be very intentional about the fact that you're making an environment that's not just for gamers and 18 to 22-year-olds, that it is for folks who are different ages and coming from different backgrounds,” she says. “The space of investing in women and investing in underrepresented founders is the biggest opportunity in investment to date because these are untapped markets that folks just really haven't had access to and the folks that are building in these spaces haven't had access to these markets.” Leyonna agrees and emphasizes that it can’t just be diverse fund managers who fund diverse owners—it needs to be all investors. “Not all investments and all the people you're investing in should look exactly like you or only solve problems for certain types of people,” she says. That’s one reason, she notes, that it’s critical to have women and other diverse people on boards and investment committees. She describes it as following the money trail. “And I think the beauty of what Techstars is doing with this $80 million that is powered by JPMorgan Chase is they are using the fund structure to show and to amplify that investing in diversity is not charity,” she says. “It is real dollars, it is good returns. And hopefully by continuing to see that performance, it will create a fear of missing out from others.”   Full transcript here   Disclaimer: The speakers’ opinions belong to them and may differ from opinions of JPMorgan Chase and its affiliates. Views presented on this podcast are those of the speakers; they are as of February 2, 2023 and they may not materialize.

What is the relationship between confidence and ambition? And if so, how does it contribute to success?"   Women on the Move Podcast Host, Sam Saperstein, welcomes Kat Zacharia, Head of Organizational Effectiveness at JPMorgan Chase & Co., to share her thoughts on what confidence means and how when coupled with ambition it can lead to success.   Full transcript here 

Jordann Windschauer believes everybody deserves to have quality food made from pure, nutrient-dense ingredients. Here, the CEO and Founder of Base Culture sits down with Women on the Move host Sam Saperstein to talk about her journey from making paleo-friendly baked goods in her apartment to running a 44,000 square foot facility producing items for national distribution. Beginning with a gym challenge Jordann was just out of college when she joined a CrossFit gym that was running a paleo challenge. Looking for ways to clean up her young adult lifestyle a bit, she signed up for the challenge. She recalls that she didn’t know one thing about paleo eating at the time, but she soon found that she was attracted to the simplicity of the ingredients—and she was a huge fan of the way it made her feel. Soon she was experimenting in her kitchen, trying to bake the perfect paleo banana bread and brownie. Her motivation was that she wanted to treat herself to something that was good for her and not just okay-tasting, but delicious. “It took me six months, because it's extremely different baking with seeds and nuts as opposed to flour and yeast and sugar and all of these traditional baking elements,” she recalls. “I was just doing it for my selfish wants and desires. I never really had a business in mind at this stage.” After those six months of experimenting and perfecting, her gym began its next biennial paleo challenge, and Jordann started bringing in her baked goods to share with friends. She still wasn’t thinking of a business, but the reaction from her gym friends helped her along that journey. They loved the baked goods and they really loved the idea that they didn’t have to bake them themselves—they could pay Jordann to bake extra for them. "I started a business on Facebook and would post online when I was going to make something and the people would place their orders and I would make everything at night and deliver it on the weekend,” she tells Sam. After her small business took off, scaling up seemed only natural. She began by naming her brand Paleo Box but after less than a year she landed on Base Culture. “We are trying to lead this global revolution around nutrition culture, to honor that and do it so that we're creating the best for you baked goods, that are held to our mammoth standards,” she says. “And how we describe our mammoth standards are essentially a bar that you cannot rise above. It's the highest bar possible. And we did that by creating our own manufacturing plant. We built a 44,000-square-foot plant to bring these products to life. We weren't just adding a product to a category that already existed, but doing it a little bit differently.” Ambition and embracing challenges While Sam notes that ambition is not always perceived as an admirable quality in women, Jordann embraces the label. “I would say that sometimes I'm blissfully ambitious and keep away those dark voices that come up,” she says. “We are in a stage of the business where those scary voices come in saying, ‘What if this isn't going to work?’ Or, ‘What if I let everyone down and what if I lose everyone's money who's invested in this? And what if I fail?’” Her advice for staying on track while also heeding your ambition is to stay true to your purpose. She notes that there is an “insane” amount of pressure on entrepreneurs to build an empire and do the impossible. Recognizing that so many decisions involve uncertainties and unknowns, Jordann says that knowing that you won’t always have the answers is critical. When you do need to make a decision, she says you should be able to say a full-bodied, unqualified yes. “When I look back at some of the things where we took a misstep here or there, I really know in my gut that there was something telling me at that point that something's not right and I ignored it for one reason or another,” she says. “So when you're making a decision, have the full body yes. And if you have any inkling of doubt, lean into that and explore it and either that doubt will subside or it will get bigger, and then listen to it even if it's not the easy choice.”   Full transcript here 

How has the discussion on ambition and the perception of ambitious women evolved over time? Why is it important that Women on the Move at JPMorgan Chase’s mission is to fuel female ambition?   Women on the Move Podcast Host Sam Saperstein breaks down why it’s important for women to be ambitious and why JPMorgan Chase has made it their mission to fuel female ambition.   Full transcript here 

Women on the Move host Sam Saperstein kicks off the podcast’s fourth year with a focus on the nuanced role that ambition plays in women’s lives. Here she sits down with Jamie Vinick, founder and president of the Women's Network, the largest collegiate women's networking organization in North America. With a mission to connect women to each other, to industry leaders, to resources and to mentorship, the Women’s Network grew from a pandemic-era launch at Syracuse University to a network including chapters on more than 120 college campuses in the United States and Canada with 45,000 members.   Filling a need on college campus Jamie tells Sam that her inspiration for starting the Women’s Network actually grew from an uninspiring event. After arriving at Syracuse University for her freshman year, feeling like she was “behind” her peers in terms of career focus, Jamie threw herself into attending campus speaker events, looking for inspiration. “There was one event in particular that really changed my college experience and has impacted my life,” she says. “I left that event feeling very uninspired and I took that lack of inspiration to heart and thought a lot about it and launched the Women's Network as a club on campus eight months later.” Jamie was dissatisfied with this particular event because of what she thought was a missed opportunity. “Here was this incredibly powerful accomplished woman who came in to speak about her career, and there really were no topics or conversations that centered around gender or in particular gender in the workplace,” she recalls. “And I felt like it was this tremendous missed opportunity to have nuanced, real, raw conversation on the challenges, the biases, the barriers that disproportionately often affect women more so than perhaps our male counterparts.” She also says she recognized a lack of community around women’s ambition and being able to celebrate having career interests and meeting people in a non-competitive environment. “And it was a culmination of the lack of conversation, the lack of community, the lack of true mentorship regardless of what industry you were interested in pursuing a career in that culminated into this idea.” By her sophomore year, Jamie was going dorm to dorm, knocking on more than a thousand freshman dorms to hand out flyers about the brand-new Women’s Network.    Expanding and building confidence Throughout her time at Syracuse, Jamie remained committed to building the Women’s Network. In the fall of her senior year, she turned down a full-time job opportunity, realizing that she wanted to focus on growing the network. In February, she chose five “random” college locations to launch proof of concepts. “We launched, and hundreds of people were coming out to these meetings, and then the next month Covid hits and everything was moved online,” she says. “No one knew what Zoom was. My professors didn't quite know how to lead a virtual classroom, and so I just put my head down, decided I wanted to see where this could go, and I doubled down on the work and we just kept launching. So we went from one school to about five additional universities to 16 to 22 to almost a hundred, in a little under two and a half years.” Celebratory of ambition Jamie explains how the Women’s Network functions: “The chapters operate in the sense of hosting their own events,” she says. “And then we also have national events open to members in the entire network. We host experiences such as speaker events, alumni receptions, networking trips, financial literacy workshops. Then we also host more social events as well.” She says the goal is to ensure members have access to the right networks, the right resources, and the right community. Today, Jamie says, she’s looking ahead to moving the Women’s Network beyond college campuses to reach women as they’re entering and advancing in the workplace. She notes that the mission really speaks to a broad range of women. “The concept of being very celebratory of ambition, which we talk all the time about in the Women's Network, has struck a deep nerve with a lot of people,” she says. “A lot of people initially join to either meet ambitious individuals or to explore their own career interests, and then they often stay because they want to develop leadership skills, build more confidence, access better mentorship or resources specific to their career or industry, and to have vulnerable conversation.” Full transcript here 

As I continue to grow in my career, I've become more and more interested in joining a board of directors. Do you have advice on joining a non-profit board to build your skillset and round out your portfolio? If I'm thinking of being on a corporate board one day is being on a non-profit board a step stone to that?"   Women on The Move host, Sam Saperstein, welcomes her colleague, Rebecca Thorton of the Director Advisory Services to give advice on how to join a board of directors   Full transcript here 

In this special episode from JPMorgan Chase's seventh Annual Leadership Day, Anu Aiyengar, JPMorgan Chase's global co-head of mergers and acquisitions, sits down with the highest-ranking female CEO ever in the Fortune 500, CVS Health CEO Karen Lynch. Karen discusses how her commitment to mental and physical health in her own life has carried over to the work she's doing at CVS Health.   Personal commitment to mental and physical health Karen tells Anu that she had an early traumatic experience with healthcare when, at age 12, she lost her mother to suicide. She and her siblings were then raised by an aunt, who also died early—when Karen was still in her 20s. She says that her mother didn’t know how or where to get the mental health she needed, and years later, sitting in her aunt’s hospital room, Karen realized she didn’t know the questions to ask or how to get the help she needed either.   “And both of those experiences sort of have fueled my passion around healthcare and really being able to make a difference so that people are educated about healthcare, that people have access to healthcare, that people understand their options that are available to them in healthcare,” she says. “So that's really the passion I get up with every single day, from a very young age.”   Karen notes that it wasn’t just her passion that got her to where she is today: she’s had help from many, including relatives, a high-school teacher, and mentors and sponsors throughout her career. From her aunt she learned the importance of being decisive and making decisions based on whatever information was available. “That was an important lesson because as leaders, as people kind of managing people, people are always, always looking at you and watching whether or not you're making those decisions,” she says.   Another key lesson Karen learned early was about the importance of taking care of your own mental and physical health. Today, she says, she does that through early morning workouts as well as end-of-the-day Duolingo lessons. “I think it's important for all of us to make sure we're taking care of our own selves because if you can't take care of yourself, you can't take care of others,” she notes.   Keeping the customer as the north star Leading CVS Health through the unprecedented challenge of the pandemic allowed Karen to put her leadership and priorities to the test. The last several years have seen huge changes in both mental and physical healthcare. “Before the pandemic we had 10,000 virtual visits for Telepsychiatry,” she says. “Last year we had 10 million. And so that just gives you a sense for the change and the ease that people have had with using virtual care.”   To thrive in the midst of all that change, Karen says she had to lean into focusing on her employees first, and then, most significantly, the customers and their evolving healthcare needs. “And we set sort of guideposts that we were focused on health and safety. We were focusing on our colleagues’ safety, focusing on the importance of getting Americans vaccinated and then looking around the corner,” she recalls. “So we had to tactically make sure that operationally we could do all the things that we had to do, but at the same time, we had to set a sort of a north star because everything in the world was changing around us and consumers expectations in healthcare were changing dramatically.”   In the end, Karen oversaw the shift in CVS Health “from kind of a corner drug store to this broad national healthcare company.” Today the company is focused on being in the community—meeting people’s growing interest in accessing care online. How does she do it all? “I think it's all about setting your own goal, setting your expectations, defining who you are and what you want to be and getting comfortable in your own skin,” she tells Anu. “And for women, sometimes that's hard. We just have to keep working at it. And I always say, there's always going to be those little voices in your head saying, You can't do this or questioning it. And you've just got to push beyond those voices and say, Yes, I can.”   Full transcript here 

I'm a new people manager and want to ensure I'm building a strong culture and highly effective team. What advice do you have for managing and growing a team?   Women on The Move host, Sam Saperstein, shares how to take a step back and think differently about managing your expanding team.   Full Transcript here 

In honor of JPMorgan Chase's seventh Annual Leadership Day, this episode features Lauren Tyler, Head of HR for J.P. Morgan Asset and Wealth Management, in conversation with two pioneers in the sports world: WNBA legend Sheryl Swoopes and Sam Rapoport, the NFL’s Senior Director of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion. Together they explore themes of inclusion, motherhood, and diversity in sports.   Breaking through in male-dominated fields Sheryl grew up with two brothers and began playing basketball at age 7. She emphasizes the impact that the federal Title IX legislation, passed 50 years ago this year, had on her early success and subsequent career. As a college basketball standout, Sherly couldn’t understand why the women’s’ teams always had the smaller gyms. She brought up the inequity with her coach, who told her to wait and see: Title IX would have an impact on that. Sheryl went on to be a pioneering force of that change: the first player drafted to the WNBA, then the first player signed—and the first active player to have a baby. “I take a lot of pride in who I am and what I've been able to do,” she tells Lauren. “For every little girl out there who has had dreams of someday playing in the WNBA and to see that dream come to fruition, I honestly couldn't ask for anything better.” Sam, meanwhile, grew up playing tackle football and was a quarterback in the Women's League. She moved on to a role with the NFL 21 years ago. “And about six, seven years ago, I looked around at the NFL and I asked myself, Where the hell are all the women?” she recalls. “It was all men on the coaching side, on the scouting side, on the officiating side. And I decided that I wanted to be the one to change that. And so I did what anyone who had found their passion would do: I cornered my boss.” That boss was legendary NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell, who “handed me the ball, put me in touch with the right people, and a couple months later, the NFL Women's Forum was born.” The Forum is a program where women in entry-level coaching positions get to meet with NFL head coaches, general managers, and owners. “We give them an opportunity to impress and potentially get hired,” Sam explains. “At the beginning of the season, we went from zeros across the board for women in every category to 15 women in coaching positions.”   Support from teammates and male leaders Both women say they wouldn’t have gotten where they are today without the extended hands of both their teammates and the male leaders who invited them in. For Sam, that started with Roger Goodell. It wasn’t all a smooth ride after that—she recalls plenty of pushback, including Tampa Bay Buccaneers fans tweeting a petition to change the team name to the Tampon Bay Buccaneers after two women were hired to the coaching staff. But one by one, NFL coaching giants signed on to help with the Women’s Forum. She recalls courting Coach Bill Belichick, nervously thinking he was a longshot to help with the Women’s Forum. But he emailed back within minutes, saying he’d be glad to help. She says he was enthusiastic and eager to help the female coaches he met with. “And at the end of the session, he gave all 15 coaches his personal email address, told them to email him questions, and they've all stayed in touch and continued to develop through Bill.” For her part, Sheryl says she credits her teammates with giving her the opportunity to shine. “Because I think to have a great team, you have to have different pieces and different players that are willing to accept their role,” she tells Lauren. “And without those players, there's no way I would've been the athlete that I was.” She also acknowledges male NBA stars and tells a story about meeting her hero Michael Jordan when she was pregnant. “I said, I would be honored if you would let me name my son after you,” she remembers. “And his response was, If he has a good jump shot. And my response was, He's gonna have a better jump shot than you ever had.” In the end, both women say, they’re most proud of knowing that they played a role in paving the way for young girls to see themselves in male-dominated professional sports.   Full transcript here

How should I transition back to work from maternity leave? Women on The Move host, Sam Saperstein, gives tips for a smooth transition back to work after having a child.`   Full transcript here 

After two decades as a successful banking executive, Cate Luzio realized she wanted to do something with bigger impact. She quit her job and self-funded Luminary, a membership-based career and personal growth platform with the mission of uplifting and supporting women through all phases of their professional journey. In this episode she sits down with Women on the Move host Sam Saperstein to discuss her journey as an entrepreneur, how she pivoted and thrived during the pandemic, and what she’s learned about the issues professional women across the country are facing. Jumping into entrepreneurship—and meeting a pandemic In 2018, after stints in high-level roles at Bank of America, JPMorgan Chase, and HSBC, Cate says she realized she had been involved in a lot of initiatives around investing in women and talent development, but “I just wasn't seeing the numbers and the needle move fast enough.” Knowing she wanted to focus on those issues, she quit her job without even knowing what exactly she would do. With the encouragement of a mentor from JPMorgan, Cate took the time to step back and think about what she really wanted to do. Soon she had a business plan that she was able to self-finance by leveraging her lifelong savings, and she launched Luminary in early 2019. Luminary was initially conceived as an in-person meeting space to help advance women in the workforce. But less than a year after the space opened in New York City, the pandemic brought in-person events to a screeching halt. Knowing she had to be ready for anything, Cate and her team set about examining expenses, contacting vendors, and re-defining their plans. “I look back at my original business plan, and there was not even a word of digital or virtual. It really was about that physical connection,” Cate recalls. “But what I realized pretty early on in the pandemic was it wasn't about physical, it was about connection.” Involving men in the gender equality journey In the end, the pandemic and resulting switch to online experiences didn’t stop Luminary’s growth. Cate says they’ve done more than 2,000 events, workshops, and programs since March of 2020, and have over 1,500 hours of content from all of these sessions. “We're working with thousands of women around the world and now male allies,” she tells Sam. “So that's the model. And then we work with great corporate members like JPMorgan Chase and many others to really invest in the women internally and get them access to, yes, bigger networks, but [also] additional learning outside of what they're getting within their company.” From the beginning, Cate knew she didn’t want to exclude men from Luminary. “The future of women in the workforce cannot evolve, progress, change without the support and assistance of men,” she notes. “And so I wanted to create a really inclusive environment, and that's why we don't have an application process. I want people to walk in physically or virtually and feel like this is a space where they can be themselves, thrive, learn, connect, develop.” Capacity constraints, defining success, and other top women’s issues Cate says one of the top issues facing women today is what she calls “capacity constraints.” By that, she means the common barriers such as time, transportation, and childcare, but also the ongoing tension between the messages that women get about success. “Women in particular are constantly being told, do a great job . . . that's how you're going to get promoted,” she says. “But at the same time, you better find mentors, you need to have a bigger network, you need to invest in your skills.” And the growth of remote and hybrid work has meant that there are even fewer boundaries between work and personal life. In the end, she says, it comes down to women not being able to “fit it all in.” A related issue Cate discusses is the ongoing pressure for women to be leaders, and to aspire to the c-suite. She’d like to see more of an emphasis on women defining their own vision of success. “[We] absolutely need more women in the c-level,” she tells Sam. “But not everybody should be at that level, and nor do they want to be. You can still have a phenomenal career and still invest in your skills and still get paid and still do well at your definition of success.” “Most women that I know are very driven and ambitious,” she continues. “They want to feel valued, they want to be acknowledged, they want to be recognized, they want to be paid, and they want to be able to have opportunities. And I think we have this incredible sense of guilt if we're not meeting everyone else's standards.”   Full Transcript here 

What are the best ways to become a mentor, and what is your responsibility as a mentor?   Women on The Move host, Sam Saperstein, shares what responsibilities you should expect to have when becoming a mentor.   Full transcript here 

Jaime Chapman and Stephanie Brown are on a mission to empower military spouses. Both military spouses themselves, the two founded and run the U.S. Military Spouse Chamber of Commerce. Here they talk with Women on the Move Host Sam Saperstein about the unique challenges facing military spouses, why the population is often drawn to entrepreneurship, and the work the Chamber is doing to foster military spouse entrepreneurs. Relocation, pay disparities, and other facts of military life Jaime and Stephanie both describe their own journeys as military spouses. Stephanie tells Sam that she was a business owner in Washington, DC, more than two decades ago when she met her late husband, got married, and moved overseas. “I very quickly became unemployed and unemployable,” she says. Jaime had served in the Army Reserves for six years and thought she was done with the military when she “married into the army” nearly seven years ago. Before they knew each other, both women shared the experience of learning how difficult it was to maintain their professional careers as military spouses, and both were involved in the world of entrepreneurship. Many factors combine to make employment complicated for military spouses: they relocate a lot, there’s often a lack of affordable—or any—childcare, and there’s often a lack of family or friends to help out due to the relocations. On top of that, they note, there’s a big disparity in pay between military spouses and other civilians. Perhaps because of these factors, military spouses have a particularly high rate of entrepreneurship. Both Stephanie and Jaime were entrepreneurs with a passion for helping others, and the two were initially brought together by a mutual colleague who recruited first Stephanie and then Jaime to work on a Military Spouse Entrepreneur Task Force. It was while working on that task force that the idea of the Military Spouse Chamber of Commerce first came to Stephanie. “I one day said to Jaime and [another colleague], you know, we really need to have a military spouse chamber of commerce because I've been working on this certification for military spouse–owned businesses for a long time with USAA and we need a forum through which we can provide this certification and really change things for spouses and small business owners,” she recalls. Launching a network for military spouse entrepreneurs The two women launched the U.S. Military Spouse Chamber of Commerce in 2020. As Stephanie describes, gaining recognized certification of military spouse-owned business was a driving force. “So what we began doing is researching how other third parties and the Veterans Administration actually reviewed and certified veteran-owned service, disabled veteran owned, minority owned, women owned, et cetera. And so we took those best practices and narrowed it down and kind of customized it for the lifestyle of the military spouse.” Another key aim of the organization, Jaime explains, was to help military spouse entrepreneurs with essential business functions like setting up retirement plans and employee benefits for themselves and their employees. “Because the first thing you should be asking when you're self-employed is, how do I save for retirement?” she notes. “But most people are more worried about setting up their website and logo and getting their business off the ground and marketing it when they should be thinking about taking care of themselves.” Today, Jaime notes, the Chamber has 1,100 military spouse members spread across 35 states in five countries running businesses ranging from artisanal handmade products to multi-seven-figure firms. The organization is involved in several legislative initiatives, including a push to streamline occupational licensing for relocating spouses. But Stephanie says one of the biggest benefits has been the recognition of the value of the community. “I think we also are beginning to recognize that there is a huge network out there of other military spouse, business owners that we can turn to, to collaborate, to mentor, which is really kind of the secret sauce,” she says. In terms of how others can support military spouses (and, in turn, support veterans and active military members, who also benefit from their spouses’ success), the two suggest a two-pronged approach. First, doing business with certified military spouse–owned businesses, either as an individual or as a business hiring contractors, helps them succeed. And second, anybody can support military spouse–owned businesses by seeking them out and buying from them.   Full transcript here 

My end of year review is coming up and I would like to request more resources to elevate the impact of our organization next year. How can I negotiate for additional support and even compensation?   Women on The Move host, Sam Saperstein, looks back on her on 2021 interview with negotiation expert, Kathryn Valentine, as she advises on negotiating compensation and useful resources to have in your pocket.   Full transcript here 

Cécile Chalifour wants to see a big wave of advocacy for affordable housing. As Head of the West Region for Community Development Banking at JPMorgan Chase & Co., she works with partners across the spectrum to support the bank's racial equity commitment by helping to build additional affordable housing units in the Western United States. Here she joins Women on the Move host Sam Saperstein to discuss her passion for the mission and her hope of seeing see more innovation in the housing sector. Finding her place in affordable housing Growing up in France, Cécile attended law school and planned to practice law in her home country. But when her father suddenly passed away at the age of 50, she changed course. Deciding that she didn’t want her life to be “the same,” she headed to the United States for what she thought would be a brief but exciting experience. Although she spoke French, German, and Russian, she knew no English. She rectified that via a book on how to learn English in 90 days. “And then because I was going for a job interview in affordable housing, I learned about low-income housing tax credits—I read a whole book about low-income housing tax,” she recalls. “My funny story is always that at the beginning, I was only able to talk about law and finance . . . and I could say nothing about everyday life.” With a family background in political activism and a personal belief in the common good, Cécile says the policy area of affordable housing was a natural fit for her. “Affordable housing is not just about brick and mortar . . . it’s about potentially changing somebody's life trajectory,” she tells Sam. “That means more opportunity, more ability to be healthy. Think about what it means for our communities. It means the better economy. It means all of us doing much better. Fundamentally, I believe that when you invest in affordable housing in our communities, we invest in ourselves—and that drives everything I do.” In her job in Community Development Banking, Cécile manages the company’s affordable housing platform for the Western U.S. region, including construction and permanent financing for large multifamily apartment buildings. They provide the conventional debt in a public and private partnership. Her focus is on deeply targeted housing which is rent restricted and income restricted. Technically that means housing that is below 60 percent of an area’s median income. “So there is an actual threshold,” she adds. “It can be homeless people. It can be people with a job. It happens to be a job that doesn't pay very well. A home for single mom, maybe her first home, a senior on fixed income who’s been living in car, a low income family . . . people with special needs or veterans. So that's what we do. We finance those projects.” Maintaining a focus on diversity and advocacy Coming from a racially diverse family, being a woman in the male-dominated field of commercial real estate, and as a mother to a neurodiverse child, Cécile says she strongly believes that diversity is imperative. She says that especially in the aftermath of George Floyd’s murder, she worked hard to focus on her own understanding of privilege and bias. “One of the hardest things I did as a leader was to have a conversation with my team, make myself vulnerable, having a very open conversation about race, what it meant to all of us,” she shares. As far as advocacy goes, she says she tries to encourage everyone to realize they can make a difference. “A lot of people react to affordable housing from a place of fear,” she says. “So please try to be an advocate when you can: don't be afraid to take risks, be willing to be uncomfortable.” Overall, she’s proud of the work the bank is doing to help people and communities thrive. “The bank is doing quite a lot,” she tells Sam. “And I'm very, very proud to work for a firm that's committing so much to my passion in many ways. Building on our investments, we are helping drive inclusive growth by committing 30 billion, by the end of 2025, to a variety of programs that are meant to encourage economy growth and opportunities for Black, Latino, and Hispanic populations.” “And that's the impact I'm hoping to have is to not just have been part of the status quo and deliver more projects,” Cécile concludes. “But to be part of the creative thinking on innovation to bring new tools.”   Full Transcript here 

I have been in my role for a while and I'm interested in being promoted. How should I talk with my manager about this and what do I need to do to prove that I'm ready for the next level?" Women on The Move host, Sam Saperstein, discusses what you should consider when asking for a promotion at work.   Full transcript here 

Catarina Rivera is on a mission to let people know it’s not just OK to talk about disability—it’s imperative to take action. Here she sits down with Women on the Move host Sam Saperstein to discuss her journey as a person with a disability, a successful entrepreneur, a public speaker, and a DEI consultant. Spreading awareness and smashing disability stigmas Catarina tells Sam that she’s Cuban and Puerto Rican, and grew up in Maryland speaking Spanish as her first language. She started wearing hearing aids as a toddler and was diagnosed with progressive vision disability called Usher Syndrome at age 17. Using a white cane to help her navigate the world, she graduated from college and started her career with Teach for America as an elementary school teacher, teaching bilingual education. Later she moved into nutrition and public health, earning an MPH degree and transitioning into roles in nonprofit organizations throughout New York City, focusing on food justice work, community engagement, and capacity building. In 2020, Catarina started her Instagram account @blindishlatina to share her story as a proud disabled Latina woman. “I started Blindish Latina because I wanted to see someone like me out there in the world,” she recalls. “I wanted to put myself out there as a professional, disabled Latina woman. I wanted to represent my story and create awareness among non-disabled people. It is said that knowing just one person of an identity group reduces prejudice and bias. So I wanted to be that disabled friend for people who don't have anyone in their life that's disabled.” Catarina says her goal with Blindish Latina is to raise awareness and help everybody become a disability ally who knows how to take action on behalf of disability issues. “I want people to look at the world and realize that if they're nondisabled, their world is not my world,” she explains. “It's not the same world for disabled people and it's not okay to just leave it how it is. It needs to be accessible, whatever your capacity is. Whatever your scope of influence is, you can make a difference, whether that's at your place of worship or at work or in your family? How can you create more accessibility and inclusion for everybody?” Inclusion in the workplace As a DEI consultant, the workplace is one of Catarina’s prime focus. She’s invested in helping people understand that people with disabilities are invaluable additions to the workforce. For one, they have extensive life experience as problem solvers and innovators. “It takes a lot of energy to be disabled in a world that's not designed for us, not adapted to us,” she says. Catarina has several simple suggestions for how to make the workplace more accessible. She tells Sam that her first goal is to make sure that a company is focusing on disability as part of diversity, equity, and inclusion work. Disability, she says, is absolutely a part of DEI, but it's not always seen that way, and it's not always prioritized. She notes that while there are more than a billion disabled people worldwide, 79 percent of disabled employees do not disclose their disabilities to HR. “There's a lot of people that are in the workforce and you don't know that they're disabled as well as another group of people who might not know themselves that they're disabled,” she ways. “All of this to say that in the workplace, disability needs to be talked about, there needs to be real inclusion built from the leadership standpoint.” Often, she says, companies focus on accommodations—but that’s not enough. “That's actually the bare minimum,” she tells Sam. Catarina emphasizes that to her, disability inclusion is strong when an organization has thoughtfully built inclusion and accessibility into every stage of the employee and customer experience. “The work has been done and employees don't have to ask for everything that they need,” she notes. “This means building in a lot of flexibility and choice and designing with accessibility in mind from the beginning.” As an example, she says, organizations can offer different ways during the hiring process for candidates to demonstrate their abilities—not just verbal interviews, but also a live activity or actionable task. She says she’s both hopeful for the future and has high expectations: “I would expect to see openly disabled executive leaders. I would expect there to be representation. I would also expect to see that accessibility is a mandatory part of all design processes, whether that's the design of an employee team-building experience or the design of a new product.”   Disclaimer: The speakers’ opinions belong to them and may differ from opinions of JPMorgan Chase & Co and its affiliates. Views presented on this podcast are those of the speakers; they are as of October 13th , 2022 and they may not materialize.”   Full transcript here 

What’s the key to successful leadership in times of fast-paced change? To Jen Piepszak and Marianne Lake, co-CEOs of Chase Consumer & Community Banking, it includes focusing on the customer and building and maintaining strong company culture. In this episode, the two leaders take the stage with Women on the Move Host Sam Saperstein as part of the sixth annual WOTM Leadership Day. As co-leaders, Marianne and Jen have split up the Consumer & Community Banking umbrella: Marianne runs consumer lending and connected commerce, and Jen heads up banking businesses and wealth management. Jen tells Sam that their successful partnership is built on a lengthy experience of mutual trust, respect, and friendship. And while they’ve split up the responsibilities, they spend a lot of time collaborating on issues that make all experiences easier for customers. “Be the CEO of whatever you’re running” When Sam asks Marianne about the traits she looks for in leaders and managers, Marianne shares that for her, this includes putting the customer first and communicating clearly with the team every step of the way. She says that being the CEO of whatever you’re working on includes understanding and focusing obsessively on customer needs and putting the customer—internal or external—at the center of all decision-making. “Oftentimes the best way you can obsess about the competition is obsessing about the customer,” she says. Once a leader has clarified their focus, Marianne says communication is key. “Whatever you have defined as success for your business or endeavor, you need to communicate it clearly, consistently, and often because people in the team can get behind what they understand,” she tells Sam.  After that, she says, a keen attention to the data analytics is necessary: She recommends being very disciplined about showing data-driven decisions that people can understand. “Jamie [Dimon, JPMorgan Chase CEO] has said often and I agree with him: data analyze, rinse, repeat,” she says. “It takes the emotion out of decisions.” Building and maintaining culture Jen and Marianne discussed one of the largest changes they’ve managed over the past 18 months—the sudden move to remote and then hybrid work, which the company continues to pilot and test. Jen says that there’s a difference between the initial fast-paced move to remote work versus what flexibility will ultimately look like going forward. She notes that the pandemic had a disproportionate impact on women and that the flexibility coming out of it will likely have a disproportionately positive impact on women as well. “I think it was extraordinary what we were able to do in a weekend really, turn our entire workforce into a remote workforce,” she says. “I do think that we have proven that you can maintain culture in a remote environment. We have yet to prove that you can build culture in a remote environment. And so I think having an office-based culture is incredibly important to this company for a very, very good reason.” Jen and Marianne both agree that while remote work offers valuable flexibility, the in-person experience is critical to establishing team relationships and ultimately building culture and trust. “And I think that is a huge motivating factor for anyone,” Jen says. “In person, you have that opportunity to build that culture. And yes, you also have that opportunity to take a little bit more time to work through an issue or solve a problem, or run next door to Marianne's office and say, what do you think about this?” Full transcript here 

This year most of my colleagues operated in a hybrid work environment, and that's how we'll continue into next year. I want to stay on track for a promotion and increased responsibility. How do I do that in a remote and in an in-person world?   WOTM host, Sam Saperstein, gives advice on how to make the most of a hybrid work environment and showing up when and where it matters.   Full transcript here

Silvana Montenegro was a college student in Brazil when she applied for an internship in human resources at JPMorgan Chase & Co. She had no idea what human resources even meant, but she knew she wanted to see the world, and JPMorgan seemed like a good first step. It’s 25 years later, and today she’s the firm’s Global Head of Advancing Hispanics & Latinos, and was recently named by Latino Leaders magazine as one of the country’s top 100 Latinas. In this episode, Silvana sits down with Women on the Move host Sam Saperstein to discuss her career, the importance of being curious and creating personal connections, and her thoughts on the future of the Hispanic and Latino community. Growing up in Brazil, Silvana was influenced by a father who wanted his children to see the world and appreciate history, and a social activist grandmother. She says she always dreamed of an international career, so she jumped at the chance to intern at JPMorgan Chase & Co. And although she started out knowing nothing about human resources, she was quickly drawn in when she realized it was all about lifting people up. “And because of my family background, I have always been very curious,” she tells Sam. “I went to university to study psychology. So the way I learn and I relate to the world is by learning about people's stories over the years, it gave me an appreciation of how can I be most impactful to lift people up.” Changing the narrative Silvana describes her role today as centered around creating access and opportunities for the Hispanic and Latino community. One critical factor to that mission, she says, is helping to change the narrative of how the community is perceived in the United States today. “I think we're probably better known for some of the barriers that we face and continue to face as well as the culture, right?” she notes. “When we see Latinos on TV, they're not presented in the most positive ones. I want to see more movies and more TV shows that actually portray the families as they are. The Latinos from the most affluent to those who actually face significant barriers.” She notes that she knows her team’s mission and the journey ahead is important, but for now it starts by portraying a more holistic narrative of the community. One key part of the narrative that she wants to emphasize is the Latino impact on the U.S. economy. She notes that Latinos make up nearly 20 percent of the U.S. population, and are also the youngest demographic. Providing the tools and services for community success A second component of Silvana’s goal is to do more to support Hispanics and Latinos to have the tools they need to grow and thrive. She says she sees opportunities in several areas. One is simple talent mobility and helping Latinos succeed at work. Another is promoting financial health education, particularly on both sides of the U.S.-Mexico border, with so many people working in the United States to provide for families in Mexico. “How can we think about cross-border products so that we can support the need?” she asks. “From the U.S. side, I think it's doing more to demonstrate to the community that we’re the bank for Hispanics. And it's the little things. It's being in the community, partnering with organizations that have trust in the community so that they can see and feel that we're there for them.” One product where Silvana sees big growth potential is digital account opening. “Because Latinos are very digital and that's how they engage,” she tells Sam. “And they tend to go to untraditional financial places to actually send money to their families. And the fees that they're paying are very high. So how can we help them send money to their families and do that banking seamlessly and not as expensively?” Looking forward, Silvana’s excited to build on the success of initiatives already underway both internally at JPMorgan Chase & Co. and with external partners such as the U.S. Hispanic Chamber of Commerce. “The funding that we provide actually enables the local chambers to provide coaching to the small businesses there,” she notes. “And we also have the opportunity to connect these businesses with our local business consultants. It's a very holistic approach. And right now we are in 11 markets, we're reaching 5,000 businesses, and we're making real change, giving them the tools they need to grow and thrive.”   Disclaimer: The speakers’ opinions belong to them and may differ from opinions of J.P. Morgan Chase & Co and its affiliates. Views presented on this podcast are those of the speakers; they are as of XYZ date and they may not materialize.”   Transcript here