Amy Cohen:
Welcome, everyone, and thank you for joining us tonight. My name is Amy Cohen and I am a member of the Class of 1985. I am also a vice president of the alumni board and proud to say I am the co-chair of the Brandeis Women's Network.
Amy Cohen:
For those of you who don't know us, the Brandeis Women's Network is a relatively young organization. Our mission is to build and foster connections between Brandeis women. Since our formation in the summer of 2019, our network has grown tremendously. We are happy to say we have a vibrant Facebook group of almost 1400 Brandeis alumna and mothers of Brandeisians, which you can find by searching Brandeis Women on Facebook, one word.
Amy Cohen:
Additionally, we've been thrilled to offer a variety of programming to the entire Brandeis community such as tonight's Women and Law event. Please be sure to check your email and social media for invitations to our upcoming programs. If you haven't yet RSVP'd to our evening with Hadassah Lieberman on April 28th, I strongly encourage you to do so.
Amy Cohen:
Before we begin tonight's program, I have a few housekeeping matters to share. First, we will be reserving time at the end of the discussion for questions. If you have a question, we're asking that you post it in the Q&A function. We will not be using the chat function tonight for questions. That being said, we expect to have quite a few questions tonight and we have limited time but we will do our best to get to as many as we can.
Amy Cohen:
Also, this evening is being recorded and a copy of this conversation will be available in Brandeis' virtual library found on the Brandeis Alumni Association website. Our moderator this evening is Talee Potter, class of 1997, and a graduate of the Benjamin Cardozo School of Law at Yeshiva University. Talee is an alumni board member, my co-chair with the Brandeis Women's Network, and serves as deputy general counsel and senior vice president of Bank Leumi. Prior to taking this position, Talee served as assistant general counsel at JP Morgan Chase and Company.
Amy Cohen:
Our panelists for tonight, Linda Heller Kamm, class of 1961, is a member of the Brandeis board of trustees. Linda was just one of three women in her law school class at Boston College. Nevertheless, by 1975, she was general counsel to the US House Committee on Budget. In 1977, Linda made history by becoming the first woman appointed general counsel to a US Cabinet department, the Department of Transportation. There, she oversaw the expansion of airline routes and accessible public transportation nationwide and was instrumental in opening all positions in the Coast Guard to women.
Amy Cohen:
Following her government service, Linda joined Foley and Lardner, one of the nation's oldest law firms, as its first female partner. Linda is a former vice chair of the American Jewish World Service and former co-president of Americans For Peace Now. At Brandeis, she's a founding board member of the Hadassah-Brandeis Institute and Our Generation Speaks, which trains Israelis and Palestinians in collaborative entrepreneurship. She has been a Brandeis fellow since 2012. Each year, the university recognizes an undergraduate who excels in advocacy for social justice with the Linda Heller Kamm Award.
Amy Cohen:
Nicole Marra, class of 1992, is a graduate of New York University School of Law. Nicole, the founder and CEO of Fixer Advisory Group, is an award winning senior executive, entrepreneur, board member and attorney. Before launching Fixer Advisory Group, Nicole was the general counsel for Gucci where she led legal, real estate, compliance, security and crisis management for the company.
Amy Cohen:
During her tenure with Gucci, Nicole also ran business and legal affairs for other world class luxury brands including Alexander McQueen, Balenciaga, Bottega Veneta, St. Laurent, and Stella McCartney. Nicole has used her legal training and experience to deliver transformative results for companies around the world.
Amy Cohen:
Talee, I am now going to turn the program over to you.
Talee Potter:
Thank you, Amy for that introduction. Thank you, Linda and Nicole for joining us tonight. It's 2021 and we're still talking about the representation of women in the legal profession. Just to put it in perspective, according to the Association of Corporate Counsel, the statistically typical general counsel lives in California, has nine plus years of experience, is male, and is between the ages of 35 and 54.
Talee Potter:
According to the Minority Corporate Counsel Association, 29% of general counsels at the Fortune 1000 companies were women last year. Those numbers were even lower for Fortune 100 companies.
Talee Potter:
On the law firm side, women are still 47% of associates compared to 30% of non-equity partner and about 20% of equity partners. Another interesting statistic, which I think will be interesting for this conversation is that men are twice as likely to move into a GC position from a partner position than women, who are more likely to come from another in-house position.
Talee Potter:
What are these statistics telling us? What can we learn from them? Is it that women's risk taking appetites are holding them back from holding leadership positions in corporations? Is it that we're not placing enough importance on leadership skills or executive communication? What is it? Is it that we're not gaining enough visibility in the marketplace?
Talee Potter:
Nicole and Linda, you both successfully shattered the glass ceiling. You did it in your respective legal sectors. The perspectives you share come from different sectors. Linda, you from government and law firm. Nicole, you from the corporate arena. But you both did it. You succeeded and we want to learn how.
Talee Potter:
Without further ado, Linda, maybe we can start with you, if you can share a little bit about your journey, tell us your story.
Linda Heller Kamm:
Okay. Delighted to be with you. When I went to law school, as I believe Amy mentioned, I was one of three women. It was really a networking story. I was working as a lobbyist on civil rights in Boston, Boston College Law School, Father Dryan came in and said, "Come to law school. There are no women in the class" and two weeks later, I was there.
Linda Heller Kamm:
When I got out of law school, there wasn't a law firm in Boston that would have me. It was unfair to their clients, they said they couldn't send a woman to court, whatever, and I went to Washington to work for the federal government.
Linda Heller Kamm:
As I look back on my career in Washington, it's networking, which was the highest priority. I got to my first job in Washington because I'd worked on a political campaign in Boston. The uncle of the candidate, who lost overwhelmingly, happened to be the Speaker of the House, John McCormack. He helped me get a job.
Linda Heller Kamm:
Then I worked at the Department of Housing and I happened to work on the 1968 Housing Bill and in the course of that, I met people in Senator Mondale's office, the late great Senator Mondale, from my point of view, and when this guy moved to another job, he took me with him. When Jimmy Carter said to his cabinet nominees, "I'm not going to appoint anybody on your team unless you have a woman or a minority", my then-boss, the chair of the Budget Committee, called me up and said, "Gee, I'm lucky I know you."
Linda Heller Kamm:
Like so many things, it's a matter of contacts and networking. Even more than how much you know. As Talee and I talked the other day, when I went to the Department of Transportation, which was is where I was the general counsel, my first reaction hearing that maybe I should lead the Budget Committee to do that, was to say, "Oh my goodness. I don't know anything about transportation."
Linda Heller Kamm:
Luckily, a friend was in my office at that time and said to me, "Look up the last three general counsels of transportation and see what they knew about transportation" and it turned out, they were in worse shape than I was. One was a constitutional law professor at Harvard.
Linda Heller Kamm:
Basically, I came to the conclusion that as women, we always tend to think we need to be over-educated and that it was my understanding of the system from my years of experience in Washington made me at least as qualified as some of the people that had subject matter experience because, after all, there were lots of lawyers there who knew what they were doing.
Linda Heller Kamm:
That, to me, is the most important thing is to not devalue your talents and to network to the greatest extent while you're doing your legal work. You're really not advancing your career as much as you might think.
Talee Potter:
Right. You took a risk, you took a chance, and it's certainly paid off.
Linda Heller Kamm:
Exactly.
Talee Potter:
Nicole, can you tell us a little bit about your journey? It's a different path. You're on mute. Nicole, you're on mute.
Nicole Marra:
My apologies. I have dogs in the background so I was trying to be polite. You'll have to excuse me if they make an appearance. Yeah. I couldn't agree more with what Linda shared in terms of networking and not undervaluing yourself and really having to rely tremendously on relationships and the networks that you build over the years. That has a lot to do I think with ultimately where I am now.
Nicole Marra:
Just to give you a little bit of background on my journey here, it's super nonlinear. It's the most unusual I think journey and I've talked with law students at Harvard, at Yale, at NYU, and as the general counsel of Gucci, they're always very curious to know how I got there and if I had this grand plan and it really certainly was not a grand plan at all by any means.
Nicole Marra:
I think to recap for everyone, I graduated from NYU, I didn't know what I wanted to do, I took a job doing litigation at a firm. I thought maybe I wanted to do family law. I had done a lot of pro bono work in that area. Ultimately, it wasn't for me. I couldn't really get that excited about it.
Nicole Marra:
I decided to pivot. I had always been really interested in the arts and fashion and I quit my first job as a lawyer, became an assistant to a talent manager, and then became an associate producer on a production of an independent film and took some pretty big risks to just follow my passions really.
Nicole Marra:
After a couple of years, I realized maybe I had been a little bit foolish and immature and that I should probably try the law again, give it another shot, and so I did at that point join a small entertainment law firm in New York. I really started training then I would say. There was this unusual little hiccup in the beginning but at the same time it was all for learning and during that time, I met one of my best friends who, ultimately, became a big Broadway theater producer who connected me to other people.
Nicole Marra:
To Linda's point about networking, you always really have to be out there and not even with any intent necessarily of an end goal but rather just to be connecting with people and really enjoying those connections and building them over the years.
Nicole Marra:
Entertainment law firm, a couple entertainment law firms. I left a firm when I was told by the senior partner at the firm that if he was my father, he would recommend that I do something else, which was right after I shared that I was newly pregnant. Needless to say, that was ... My son is now about to turn 18. It was a while ago but not that long ago. The person who said that to me should have known better.
Nicole Marra:
I was horrified and mortified and thought, "My God. This man who is a successful senior lawyer told me I should go do something else. I must be horrible. I must be terrible at my job. I must not know what I'm doing." It really was incredibly traumatic and sort of I took such a hit to my confidence that I think ... Such an out-sized hit than it should have delivered.
Nicole Marra:
I picked myself back up and I couldn't be there anymore and I didn't know what to do anyway. I decided to start my own practice, to do some consulting work, which I then did for eight years while I raised my two young children. In that time, I did a lot of networking and I worked with a consulting firm and I had a lot of really interesting jobs in-house as a seconded lawyer. I built my own clients. I kept it very small and tried to be flexible.
Nicole Marra:
Speaking about why so many women leave the law, it's really not very hospitable to raising a family. It certainly wasn't at the firm that I came from. Then in 2010 ... I did that for about eight years. At that point, I guess I had been out of law school for maybe 14, 15 years and then I was introduced to the worldwide general counsel for Gucci Group, who was a US lawyer based in London and she needed help because there was an issue with the GC in the US. I came in and I thought at that time I would never want to work five days a week in a corporate office again. I had had my own practice, I had had flexibility, I had to be able to go to playdates and things like that.
Nicole Marra:
As I got more involved and engaged in the role and I learned that there were so many things that I didn't know, speaking of transportation, I didn't know anything about retail leasing or many other things about retail. I knew intellectual property and commercial transactions. I had to definitely be willing, ready and able to take that risk. I think it helped that I had had eight years to recover from that painful incident and to build my confidence back up.
Nicole Marra:
I had the experience of working with the team at Gucci for six months as a consultant so I felt ... They really wanted me to join and they did a search and I put my hat in the ring and I got ready and got back into the corporate world in a big way and then 10 years later, I decided that it was time for another change and I founded my own company.
Nicole Marra:
Now I'm the CEO and founder of Fixer Advisory Group, which is a consulting firm that helps provide retail and consumer brands with the kind of strategic support and expertise and advice that me and my colleagues gave to companies like Gucci and the other brands that we mentioned. It's a new adventure. You're muted.
Talee Potter:
Thanks for sharing that, Nicole. That was a fascinating story, particularly, when I think about the nonlinear aspect of your career. I wonder ... One of the things that in the articles that I've read, they say that holds women back from holding positions as general counsel is business savvy, whether or not women have sufficient legal and business knowledge in order to serve as an effective general counsel. Did you find that your nonlinear career path and working in the business world and having those experiences, did those help you in your role as general counsel?
Nicole Marra:
Definitely. I mean, I think that as a young associate in a law firm, it's very hard to have that kind of perspective. The years that I spent in between working at a law firm and going to Gucci, I did spend a lot of time working with in-house departments and really understanding the business nuances, the way in which the legal department functioned within an organization, but the pluses and minuses and that really did help me to understand how to approach working with business colleagues but, in this case, there were a lot of other challenges as well because I was at Gucci America, which is part of an Italian organization which is also owned by a French organization, where all of the leaders, for the most part, and still are, European white men.
Nicole Marra:
In certain ways, and I think this is the case for some organizations, not all, the general counsel role is viewed in some ways I think in my experience as a safe woman role. The GC and the head of HR, the chief human resource officer, in my experience, are often viewed as the female C suite roles that companies are almost a little bit more comfortable with rather than necessarily the commercial roles.
Talee Potter:
Thank you for that. Linda, when I think about your career, I also think about whether or not your experience as a lobbyist also ... How did that contribute or help you in your career and your progression?
Linda Heller Kamm:
Well, I'm not sure it did. I was a lobbyist for about a year in Boston. It certainly got me started because it got me to law school. I had been working on civil rights legislation and I realized that a legal career might not change what I was doing but it would give me credentials. In fact, it opened up a whole universe of other options. I always tried to keep my legal career sort of on the track of my original interest and it turned out that it wasn't that difficult to do, particularly as long as I stayed in government service and became a charter in private practice. I concluded that I was not well suited to it.
Linda Heller Kamm:
I thought it was important always in all the jobs I had to get the work done but to also leave time to pursue the legal interest that I had and to prioritize within the field those things that were most relevant to me.
Linda Heller Kamm:
The one message I would give people who are starting out would be to say that when you're working on your inbox, someone else is controlling your time. To give an example, I was swept up in the Department of Transportation and a lot of departmental issues but I had a couple of priorities of my own. One was making transportation more accessible to the handicapped or disabled and I'm very grateful now that that was a priority then.
Linda Heller Kamm:
Also, to work on both hiring women and making sure that women were able to reach all the positions in the department then. That was particularly challenging in the case of the Coast Guard. Ultimately, that happened and then, of course, there are issues then once women are there, in the same way as once I had joined a law firm as the first woman. It's a challenge to make sure that you're taken seriously, that you get paid equally, and that those become proxies for basically full citizenship in the enterprise. That was important as well.
Talee Potter:
Thank you, Linda. You mentioned your work in promoting equality, whether it's involving the cadets and hiring and elevating women in your organization. I'd love to talk for a minute about mentorship and sponsorship. It sounds like that's something that you did and you give a hand up to many women, who I understand are now following in your footprints and are successful themselves.
Talee Potter:
Did you have a mentor or sponsor? If not, can you tell us a little bit about the role that you've played in that as a mentor or sponsor for others?
Linda Heller Kamm:
Yeah. I wouldn't say that I had a mentor, a specific mentor or sponsor. I was lucky to be engaged in activities that brought me in touch with a lot of people and at different times, they provided different kinds of advice and introductions and whatever.
Linda Heller Kamm:
I try to, again, stress that from my point of view, having one mentor is not necessarily the best example because that mentor leaves, moves on, does something different and then you're still in the same place. I like to think of it then and now, I try to mentor younger people and I know they call me for specific kinds of issues but they have other mentors who can be more helpful in other parts of their work or their lives.
Linda Heller Kamm:
I think definitely taking advantage of the skills and experience of people who have been around the track is extremely important. I don't know people who get to be partner because they did the best research. I think it's a lot more complicated than that and that I didn't necessarily find that the people who buried themselves in the law were the ones who were most effective in the long run.
Linda Heller Kamm:
Hiring, when you get a position where you can hire, that's where you can have a tremendous impact. The people that I hired in the Department of Transportation in the late '70s have only retired in the last five to 10 years. They were able to have a great impact on the direction of the agency and that's one of the things that I'm most proud of.
Talee Potter:
That's great. Thank you. Nicole, you mentioned also that you essentially were pulled into Gucci. It sounds like you had some great sponsors behind the scenes working for you. Can you tell us a little bit more about that experience and how you've served as a sponsor or mentor?
Nicole Marra:
Sure. I don't think I really have had specific mentors that I can point to. Along the way, I've had lots of great relationships and I remember talking a lot at one point about the difference between mentorship and sponsorship and how that works but, for me, I've really enjoyed being a mentor and a sponsor to other women.
Nicole Marra:
I think I've had the experience of forming bonds with deep friendships and trusting relationships with many women and men who have helped along the way. It's like, for me, I think that what you have is your integrity, especially in the business world. There's often unpopular decisions that you have to make. To me, sticking with them and always being my authentic self as much as I possibly could has always been my guiding principle and it's always led me to a good place. I think that it's enabled me to build relationships, friendships, and so I think that it becomes a bit more of what I, in recent years, as I started thinking about making a transition out of the GC role and into a founder role, think of as my personal board.
Nicole Marra:
I've heard people talk about that as well. Really, I think that over the years I didn't think about it that way but I think I did. I had a board of friends and colleagues, from various different parts of my life and they weren't all lawyers or GCs or CEOs. They really varied quite a lot, including a psychic and a shaman and a couple psychiatrists and a few interesting characters mixed in because it's always really interesting to have someone else's perspective too on your situation. You might not see it in the moment from all the different angles. I knew I certainly grew a lot that way.
Nicole Marra:
Then as it happened, I was fortunate enough to be able to build a department at Gucci that over the years, there were different members and it was pretty small but I built an all-women department.
Nicole Marra:
I was able to work with some incredible, incredible women around the world. In my organization and a lot of the GCs in the legal department happened to be women. It was incredibly empowering. I had three general counsels that I reported to in Italy in the course of my 10 years. Two of them were women.
Nicole Marra:
When I was getting ready to make the transition to launch my own business and also I wanted to convert Gucci into a client and I wanted to give my number two person ... I was her sponsor. I sponsored her to become the next general counsel and she did.
Nicole Marra:
It's been extremely rewarding to have had that experience and to sort of sit up and look around a little bit in this point in my career and see what an incredible group of professionals, both male and female, that I'm surrounded with and that come from many different industries and professions really.
Talee Potter:
What I'm hearing loud and clear from you ladies is, to borrow from my former employer, the right relationship really is everything. Building your network and building relationships really seems, from what I hear from you, the key to success and progression.
Talee Potter:
Can you tell us a little bit about ... This is tough. There's been bias against women in the corporate world, in government, some of it is about ... We talked a little bit earlier about women's business savvy, whether or not women are savvy enough from a business perspective to be able to carry the role of a general counsel, whether women are rain makers sufficiently in order to serve in that role.
Talee Potter:
I think many of those things have been overcome over the years and some of these biases have been set aside. What do you see are some of the land mines out there? What are the things for women to avoid or how to handle themselves in this world where we're still dealing with some remnants of bias or discrimination, for lack of a better word. We can start with Linda perhaps.
Linda Heller Kamm:
I think that you have to be tough and you have to be serious about what you're doing. You have to protest when you are not treated equally. I think we've all been in meetings where we've said something and nobody paid attention and 15 minutes later, some guy comes up with the same idea and you have to bring them back to say, "Well, as I mentioned earlier, this makes sense for a variety of reasons." If you don't stick up for yourself and don't assert your worth in the relationship, you're not ever going to be taken seriously.
Linda Heller Kamm:
I'd like to tell a story about ... I worked for a Congressional committee on reorganizing the House of Representatives and about a year into this project, I discovered that I was the majority counsel but the minority counsel was getting paid almost twice as much as I was. I really liked this job and I was learning a lot. I had to decide whether to confront the chairman and say this was unacceptable. Now it's a little easier to do it than it was at that time.
Linda Heller Kamm:
The chairman without any concern about it at all said, "Well, he's got a wife and family" and blah, blah, blah. I had two kids and some babysitting responsibilities as well. At that point, I had to decide whether I was going to say this is unacceptable and either you match my salary or I'm gone, which meant that I had to have a backup plan. I always felt whatever I was doing that I had to not narrow my scope so much that I didn't have a backup plan.
Linda Heller Kamm:
Ultimately, he matched my salary. If that hadn't happened, I wouldn't have been considered for my next job, which was as the general counsel of the budget committee because before I would have been regarded as a junior lawyer. At every stage, it wasn't even about the money. It was about making sure that one is appreciated and recognized for the skills and not being taken advantage of.
Linda Heller Kamm:
It became a joke later on, if I went to get myself a cup of coffee and carried one back for the secretary of transportation and he'd say, "Really? You don't see this as a lack of status?" I said, "Well, now we've got to the point where I hope you would do that for me as well." It takes a focus on being treated with the same respect as the others do to make people that you work with internalize it. I hope that it's become easier over the years than it was when I started out.
Talee Potter:
Nicole, do you have any thoughts about this?
Nicole Marra:
Yeah. I think that in certain ways, when I think about these issues and I'll share a few anecdotes also, I think that in some ways it's become more insidious and worse because not to compare it but the fact is that everyone now knows that it's not okay to have the really overt, really open discriminatory behavior, sexism. What happens is that it gets buried and it gets hidden and it gets tucked away so that it seems like everything is ... People know how to say the right things on the surface but in reality, when you really start digging into an organization or you dig deeper, there is not necessarily a sense of fairness.
Nicole Marra:
At the end of the day, I think there's still a lot of it that goes on. In my case, I've always been fairly strong and direct and confident in my advice and expertise or knowing where to go and find it, which is such a big part of what we do as general counsel is to really figure out who can help us when we don't know the answer and how to find that information, but many times I was told I was too direct and I shouldn't be so confrontational and I should be softer, don't be so strong, by men and women alike. It was like, "Well, do you want your lawyer to be soft?"
Nicole Marra:
The fact is that over time, I actually found that I ... Some of it I felt was sexist and some it I felt was also interesting ... I worked with a coach. I will say I worked with a coach for over 12 years, off and on, and I will say that it was really a very helpful exercise for me and something that I would highly recommend in general.
Nicole Marra:
As I got older and more experienced, I was able to have a more quiet confidence and strength rather than being very demanding, aggressive, upfront. It might have been in part because I spent time in a European organization where Americans tend to be too direct and me, as an American woman lawyer, I was like a triple threat that way.
Nicole Marra:
There is, number one, building relationships like we were talking about before, that I think can help. Standing your ground but doing so with a sense of quiet confidence and not reacting as much as maybe you want to inside. I think keeping a little bit of ... You know, taking a beat, letting your emotions cool off. It never helps to be explosive or to be heated about things. I think often women get an extra bad rap for that whereas for a man if he's pissed off or whatever it's just fine and a man, if he's direct, he's strong and a woman, she's too aggressive.
Nicole Marra:
I still think a lot of those preconceived kinds of stereotypical notions exist. People know how to cover them up a little bit better than they used to but it's really up to us as women lawyers to I think work to take down those barriers but, at the same time, to see how we can play a role in standing firm, showing quiet confidence, being strong and not letting it crush us or enrage us either because I think how you respond to it can also have a big impact on how you're able to move forward.
Talee Potter:
Thank you, Nicole. Nicole, I heard you say earlier that you built a department that's 100% women, which is incredible. Very unusual to hear that, an all-female in-house legal department. It's amazing. You, Linda, also worked tremendously. You were a trailblazer and helped so many women climb the ranks. This is the Brandeis Women's Network and this is what we're about. We're about women helping women. I love hearing that from the two of you.
Talee Potter:
What would you say, what advice would you give, or what suggestions can you offer on how women can help other women climb the ranks and support each other? Linda, maybe we can start with you.
Linda Heller Kamm:
Well, I don't think it's difficult at all. I mean, I think that one reaches out to them as people, essentially. Somebody new is in the office, if you make a special effort to have coffee and let them know that you're available, that that's really the key to it.
Linda Heller Kamm:
I think that maintaining the connections and being open about your own experiences help the people who come along behind you. I think there's also a role in advocating for hiring more women and making sure that when there's a list of people considered that includes a diverse list of people and that old boys network isn't allowed to persist.
Linda Heller Kamm:
I think ... There's kind of a joke. When I was in the Carter administration, the women general counsels had a poker game, which allowed us to meet and talk to each other. When something happened in our department, somebody else would say, "I know her. I know Linda. She's okay. She can do this" and then they'd call me and give me a heads up. I think it's not that you're doing something special for women but it's that you need to be cognizant sometimes that women need that help more simply because it takes a long time to change habits in the workforce.
Talee Potter:
Nicole?
Nicole Marra:
You know, I think that building personal relationships and giving people a chance is incredibly important. I think that in my experience ... This might not be the PC thing to say but the women are better. The women are so much better at multi-tasking and getting a million things done and working in a fast-paced environment and, to me, it's not been hard to make those decisions.
Nicole Marra:
It's funny because I find myself in my new company, I have an all-female team already and it's just a few people. I have wonderful male colleagues. It's not to say that there's anything wrong with them but there really is a huge I think gender-based benefit to the way women work together collaboratively and can support each other.
Nicole Marra:
It's not always like that. Look, every woman is not there to support every other woman and that's something I'm sure we've all ready about and understood. I think it's not a zero sum game. It's not a competition. When everyone is able to be respectful and collaborate everyone succeeds in my view. It really goes back, again, to the original themes about building those relationships.
Talee Potter:
What advice ... You both have had such rich and beautiful careers. What advice would you give the younger version of yourself?
Linda Heller Kamm:
I'd say just to have fun with it, to make sure you have time for family and for efforts or hobbies or causes that are important to you, that you don't have to work harder than the guys, you just have to do your job. If it's not working for you, something else will. That you don't have to be stuck in a place where your skills and what you have to offer isn't well respected.
Talee Potter:
Any thoughts, Nicole?
Nicole Marra:
Absolutely. Yeah. I think I would tell my younger self, first and foremost, it's going to be okay. Relax. Also, I think really it's really important to trust your instincts, listen to your intuition, listen to what you're feeling and what you're reading in yourself, in how you're responding to a situation and what's happening around you.
Nicole Marra:
For me, my success is very much attributable to the relentless pursuit of my passions. I was interested in film and television and the entertainment world. I was interested in fashion. I really was interested in learning all of these different parts of the business that I was working for and now I'm interested in doing something else.
Nicole Marra:
If you are able to do that, you can really I think rely on the fact that following your passions is going to take you to a place where you will succeed and to not be so worried about doing the right thing as much as doing the thing that's right for you.
Talee Potter:
I love that. That advice actually echoes what we talked about earlier, about how not everything in life is linear and I think that's a corollary to that, taking risks and embracing the change.
Talee Potter:
We have some questions from the audience. What advice do you have for Brandeis students to do to prepare for a career in the law? Linda, let's start with you.
Linda Heller Kamm:
Probably keep doing what you're doing. Take advantage of your undergraduate years to do all the things that you want to have as much time to do later, which is ... The regrets I have are not about the courses I took and my history major but about the music and the art and the other opportunities that are basically lost. To just cast a wide net and take a look at all your options before you settle into what your passion really is but to do something that you really care about that feels important and then you're more likely to do well with it.
Nicole Marra:
Yeah. Absolutely. I was a psychology major at Brandeis and I loved it. That's come in so much handy for me and I've used it so much in my career. I think, again, do what you're interested in, take advantage of exploring different areas. There is no specific path. I think a lot of women get very caught up in making the right choices and doing things the right way and taking the steps that are going to lead them. You don't know necessarily, especially as a student, where you're going to be, your interests are going to lie.
Nicole Marra:
I think exploring as much as you can, not feeling like there's only one way to do anything, trying different classes, different fields of study, different internships, different jobs, taking time, there's no rush. Take a gap year. Do something interesting. There's no rush. I definitely think having those experiences, having some time in the real world, if you will, before going to law school is very valuable and really exploring your options ahead of time.
Talee Potter:
Nicole, I'm going to ask you this question to start with. Do you think the pandemic has impacted women in the workplace more than men? If so, how?
Nicole Marra:
I think exponentially more. I think there's no question about that. There's been a lot written about that as well. The reality is that women tend to, and I think have historically and continue to, bear a lot more of the burden of responsibility for taking care of children. Even if it's not directly caring for them in the traditional ways but being responsible for the play dates and the doctor's appointments and the camps and the school and all of the associated tasks that go along with family.
Nicole Marra:
At the end of the day, if you're in a household where there's a partnership, husband and wife, same sex partnership, whatever it may be, I think that the wife is often the one who is ending up taking on the extra burden of continuing to work from home or do whatever she has to do plus all of the family responsibilities plus who is taking care of the house?
Nicole Marra:
Very often, and this isn't all men, but they don't see the mess on the counter. It's like they don't see it. You know? Or the laundry is piling up and it's like nobody sees it. I think as women, as a general rule, the pandemic has taken an incredible toll and has really put an enormous amount of burden and that silent work that women often do.
Talee Potter:
Linda, do you have any thoughts on this topic?
Linda Heller Kamm:
Not really. My kids are grown and I'm retired so I have the leisure to schedule myself. It certainly appears that this time has been particularly difficult for women and, hopefully, will bring about some reassessment about just how much work is enough work.
Nicole Marra:
I guess I would also add that it's important to take care of yourself. To women in that role, it's important to remember to take care of yourself and to take that down time, to take that nap, to do whatever it is in your situation where whatever you can do to continue to take care of yourself and not view that as being selfish or indulgent but especially during these times, like during the pandemic and during any kind of extra stressful situation, it's really important to remember that you're only going to be able to take care of everyone and perform your best if you're taking care of yourself.
Talee Potter:
Another question, how you played out a dispute towards resolution and kept your focus as things unfolded one way or another? We'll start with Linda.
Linda Heller Kamm:
I'm sorry. I didn't hear the first part of the question.
Talee Potter:
How you played out a dispute towards resolution and kept your focus as things unfolded one way or another.
Linda Heller Kamm:
I think keeping your focus is what it's all about and to be clear about your priorities and be clear about which elements of what you want to do are essential to accomplishing the mission. We'd all like things to be exactly as we planned them but sometimes you get further by trimming your objectives and coming back later to fulfill the rest of the endeavor.
Linda Heller Kamm:
An awful lot of the issues that I've worked on, particularly in the area of women's rights, are a continuing saga. We haven't got it right yet. You know, progress is happening all the time and I think that realism about what's achievable at any given point while stretching to get as much as possible is really the balancing act that's most important.
Talee Potter:
Nicole, do you have any thoughts?
Nicole Marra:
I want to be sure I understood the question but regarding how to resolve disputes? Like when I find myself in a dispute?
Talee Potter:
It seems the question is how you manage a dispute towards resolution and how you kept your focus as things unfolded one way or another.
Nicole Marra:
I think really being very thoughtful about the stakeholders and the agendas and the issues at play. I mean, I've been negotiating nonstop in dispute situations and in non-dispute situations for more than 15, 20 years and even before that. I think over time, number one, you develop a style. It's important to take stock of who's invested in outcomes and why, how you can get to find avenues for getting to a resolution.
Nicole Marra:
Again, not getting too heated in the moment, taking a step back if you need to, not taking things too personally, even if it feels that way, taking time to reset yourself, check in with someone else, get someone else's advice, and really be thinking about who the different parties are and what their issues are and how they can get addressed as opposed to ... It's not always what you see on the surface. Often it's what's not said that can be very important. Really, reading the situation and thinking about all the different stakeholders.
Talee Potter:
Over the past hour, the themes that I've heard from you are that we, women, need to take more risks, we need to get up from our desks and not focus just on getting our work done on time but also get up and look around and network and build relationships and connections. We need to help other women, give a hand up, not a hand out but a hand up. Connect with people, build trust. Did I miss anything? Anything else that we want to impart our listeners before we end our session tonight?
Linda Heller Kamm:
I would just say and look out for yourself. Do not hold back when you're not being treated either equally or fairly, because if you get into a pattern where that's acceptable, it's then very difficult to move forward.
Nicole Marra:
Yeah and to trust your instincts. Don't second guess yourself. If you feel strongly about something, that it's either not right or doesn't feel right or that it's not something that you're really enjoying and really passionate about, listen to that.
Talee Potter:
Linda, Nicole, thank you for a wonderful discussion. This has been ... I've personally enjoyed hearing about your journey and your story and I'm sure our listeners did as well. For those on the line, just a reminder that next week, next Tuesday, we have an event with Hadassah Lieberman. That should be an interesting discussion. She'll be talking about her new book As A Daughter of Holocaust Survivors.
Talee Potter:
Again, visit us on Brandeis Women and our Facebook group. We also have a LinkedIn group that we're growing and nurturing. Keep in touch and we hope to see you soon. Have a good evening. Thank you.