Last fall, Susan Maruya, a principal at PSB Boisjoli LLP in Montréal, sent out 32 invitations to the kickoff of its new Women in Leadership program, all to women at management level in the accounting firm. Every single person showed up.
“The response has been phenomenal,” says Maruya, one of three women spearheading the creation of the program. “When we reached out to see if they’d be interested, they were all interested. Wow! How rare is that? Clearly there’s some sort of need that brought us together.”
While the invitation was exclusively to women, Maruya says the goal wasn’t to exclude men, but to open it up initially to women in leadership and find out what’s on their mind. She doesn’t see why men can’t be invited later if they want to support the initiative.
“The first meeting was about finding out what the women wanted to do with the group,” says Maruya. “We have a lot of managers who are young moms or in that sandwich generation with children on one side and elderly parents on the other. A lot of that responsibility traditionally falls on the woman, so you wind up having to balance things.
“We’re all at very different stages, but we can certainly get together to support each other in our daily work or personal life.”
The group met again two months later to discuss career-life integration, everyone’s top concern. Maruya said she felt personally empowered by being there with the others, a feeling many of the participants expressed after the session.
“We’re all quite alike,” says Maruya. “You just don’t realize it because we’re in different departments so we don’t always get to work with each other. One of the younger ladies said she appreciated just hearing some of the life experiences that we’ve gone through. As a leader, you don’t always realize that when you’re just talking, you’re actually mentoring without even knowing it.”
Tara Balevi, a 29-year-old tax manager, joined the group for the opportunity to hear other people’s perspectives that aren’t part of her everyday routine and to learn from the strong women she looks up to in the firm.
“It brought me closer to a group of women at my firm that I may not have connected with on this level before,” says Balevi. “This group had similar feelings, concerns and struggles that I faced and made me realize I am not alone.”
Balevi also liked that the group took a collaborative approach which allowed for future meetings to be catered to this specific group of women. The leaders of this initiative emailed a choice of topics that might interest them plus the option of suggesting anything else.
“An unexpected and wonderful outcome from that meeting was it connected me to a colleague who has since become a mentor for me,” says Balevi. “This connection wasn’t set up by the group but organically happened as a result of us all coming together.”
David Savage, 38, a recently appointed partner who started as a summer intern 13 years ago, describes the firm’s culture as one that really promotes the values of collaboration and mentorship, especially of the younger staff. That’s something he’s experienced in his own journey at the firm.
“I think mentorship is extremely important in terms of the idea of the transfer of knowledge, especially in our industry,” says Savage. “Working directly with many of the partners here throughout my career has played a key role in my development. It’s been tremendously valuable to me, and it’s something I try to emulate when I’m working with the new summer interns who come into the firm. It’s just something ingrained in the culture.”
