Learning to juggle

Peggy Cohen, vice president and managing director (Northeast region) for RR Donnelley's Global Capital Markets financial services offering, discusses women's intiatives, working mothers and the work'life balance, with Lucy McNulty.

There are women out there who, once they break through the proverbial ‘glass ceiling’, don’t want to help other women do the same,” says Peggy Cohen, vice president and managing director (Northeast region) for RR Donnelley’s Global Capital Markets financial services offering, and co-chair of the Women in Law Empowerment Forum (WILEF). “But I feel it is my duty to help women more junior than me succeed.”
What is clear from Cohen’s heartfelt response to my query about self-motivation, and indeed the rest of our conversation, is that she is a professional driven both by an unwavering ambition to succeed and a compassionate determination to promote gender equality in the workplace. Throughout her career, Cohen has not only worked determinedly to rise up the ranks in traditionally male-dominated markets, from high net worth industry, such as private banking where she spent 18 years working for both Bankers Trust Company (now Deutsche Bank) and later banking giant Citigroup, to Capital Markets financial printing at RR Donnelley where she has worked since 2003. But she has also ensured she incorporates the establishment of organisations dedicated to tackling the issues affecting working women in every role she has worked in. In fact under her guidance, a global partnership for women was set up at Bankers Trust Company, an internal women’s organisation at Citigroup and most recently WILEF, an organisation specifically targeted at women in the legal profession, at RR Donnelley.
So why is she so passionate about the issues affecting working women? Her concern is, Cohen asserts, a direct result of her own experience as a young junior starting her career. “When I first started out I felt I was very lacking in guidance and good role models,” explains Cohen. “I want to ensure women today don’t have to cope with that situation themselves. For, over the years I have realised that as women we really need to take ownership of our own careers. Yet many women need guidance in doing that and that is where I hope to help.”
It is undoubtedly an admirable resolve but does not wholly explain why someone whose career has always been in sales management would involve themselves in a support group solely geared towards women in the legal profession. “One of our missions at RR Donnelley is to educate our clients, and as the majority of our clients work in the legal market establishing WILEF seemed like a different and beneficial way to support our legal client base,” explains Cohen. “As a senior manager at RR Donnelley who has always considered the issues affecting working women to be hugely important, I naturally wanted to be very involved in the project.” And involved she certainly has been, playing a crucial role from day one as co-chair of the New York-based forum, together with Elizabeth ‘Betiayn’ Tursi of Tursi Law Marketing Management, a consultant employed by RR Donnelley to liaise with the legal profession on matters requiring legal know-how and know-who.
The result is a group which focuses solely on addressing ‘the work side of the work/life balance,’ as Cohen explains, through an “Oprah Winfrey-esque setting” which incorporates a moderator and panel of male and female experts sharing success stories on various topics from mentoring and networking to business development. “Although our programmes are geared towards all women lawyers, attendees tend to be 65 to 70 per cent associates as they are the demographic that we are providing with a toolbox of information which can not only encourage greater success in their professional careers but can also help keep careers going in a down economy,” explains Cohen.
Associates, from the Am Law 100/200 firms invited to every WILEF event via an ever expanding mailing list, can learn a variety of skills including how to show your value to the firm when work dries up or how best to respond when requested to move practice group, for example. It is hoped that this information will foster empowerment and career growth by enabling participants to easily draw up models of best practice, Cohen explains. Tursi and Cohen work collaboratively, with the help of WILEF’s advisory board of leading women in top US law firms (including female partners at Latham & Watkins, Sullivan & Cromwell and Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom) to choose topical subjects for discussion and establish panels of experts for each meeting who they feel are the right role models for attendees. “In this way we hope the subsequent dialogue will outline the most beneficial path for those present to follow in any given situation from networking to closing a business deal,” says Cohen.
It is, it would seem, a slice of diversity initiative heaven but for a business professional like Cohen who must juggle the commitments of a demanding senior management role with those associated with bringing up her two sons on top of everything involved in running and promoting WILEF, has it all come together as easily as she implies? “It’s truly a juggling act but it’s worth it,” she says. “But learning to juggle is a skill you must learn as a working mother and the major obstacles I have faced have had more to do with my trying to do it all and not delegating as I should both at home and professionally.”
But although Cohen may be aware trying to do it all can lead to problems, she is showing no signs of stopping, outlining ambitious plans for the future development of WILEF. “We have plenty of ideas in the pipeline regarding the forum,” she says. “For example, we would like to expand out of the New York market, establish programmes that are specifically geared toward associates or partners rather than offering one programme for all and invest more time into helping young attorneys understand more about what being an attorney is really like today as often their perception is not the reality.”
It is an unsurprisingly ambitious plan which Cohen, who readily admits to having worked her entire career and “never really taking time off” when her children were born, will undoubtedly follow through with aplomb.
But for the time being she is content to focus on ensuring that the panellists and subject matter of WILEF programmes is on target, and participants are benefiting from all the events on offer. “We want to ensure our panellists and our programmes are as up to date as possible,” she says. “So we send out feedback forms after each event as we know that when we are on target, word spreads and the number of women attending WILEF sessions expands.”
Through determination, collaboration and much careful planning Cohen, a relative newcomer to the legal world, Tursi and the WILEF advisory board have succeeded in launching a forum which female lawyers from New-York based Am Law 100/200 firms are now clamouring to participate in. It is, however, relatively easy for other women to follow in her footsteps, Cohen claims, so long as they work to ensure the initiative they establish “focuses on problem solving and demonstrating added value so that the organisation can flourish,” she says. Indeed, ensuring the organisation flourishes, especially in the current economic climate, will be a hurdle for anyone wishing to launch an initiative such as WILEF. So who does Cohen look to for inspiration when faced with obstacles such as this? Who motivates her to keep going in face of opposition? “Janet Hanson, the author of More Than 85 Broads: Women Making Career Choices, Taking Risks, and Defining Success - On Their Own Terms, is my inspiration,” she says perhaps unsurprisingly given that Hanson is the women behind 85 Broads - the groundbreaking global network community for “trailblazing, visionary women who aspire to use their talent and leadership savvy to effect professional, educational, economic, and cultural change for all women globally”1. From the beginning of her career at investment banking giant Goldman Sachs she has been a leading champion of women in business, Cohen explains, “She is an inspiration for many women.” It is a description which it would seem could be just as easily applied to Cohen, herself.

Reference

https://secure.85broads.com/public/about_whoweare