Women have come a long way over the past handful of decades.
But, according to turnaround executive Kathleen Brush, it’s not far enough – at least in the corporate world. That’s why she decided to found the Kathleen Brush Women in Executive Leadership Program at Florida Atlantic University in Boca Raton, where she earned her MBA.
“At this point in my life, when I’ve been reasonably successful, I’ve thought about what I’d like to be known for,” says Brush, 62, who now lives in Seattle. “There is nothing dearer to my heart than leadership and nothing more important that moving more women up into leadership roles.”
Once Brush came up with the idea for the program, she marshalled the hard data proving the need for it. For example, although women hold 52 percent of all professional jobs nationwide, only 5 percent of chief executive officers were female as of 2018. Brush believes gender bias plays a major role in this– but so does the fact that leadership is still weighted toward men.
Yet, Brush has observed that “women have many of the qualities for effective leadership,” she says. “These qualities are natural to women, such as empathy and being collaborative.”
Armed with convincing data, Brush contacted four universities. FAU was the most enthusiastic. The reason, according to Paige Garrido, the FAU administrator in charge of the Kathleen Brush Women in Executive Leadership Program, was that the school already runs many leadership programs. The university researched the concept thoroughly.
“Across the board, everyone saw the need for this,” Garrido says. “Businesses are seeing it as an aid to succession planning.”
The program was launched in September with Brush as the first speaker. It consists of six one-day sessions (held on weekends), online teaching, homework and matching participants with C-suite executives. The first cohort included South Florida executives from organizations such as Citibank, the City of West Palm Beach and Carnival Cruise Line, and, in most cases, the companies paid the participation fee.
Brush believes the program is a big step forward, but she isn’t done fighting for workplace equality.
“We are not going to be able to solve the gender bias problem all at once,” she says. “We need more women at executive levels, and then we’ll be able to make changes that are good for all of us.” O