BY EDDY GOLDBERG
UPWARD!
Building and leveraging your network to advance your career
“Increasingly, leadership today is defined not
just by how many hours you spend at your
computer, but your ability to connect to others, says Carol Bartz, former Yahoo CEO
and Lisa Lambert, founder of UPWARD.”
T
self, what can I do to help effect change?”
Her answer? UPWARD, founded on
the premise that women need access to
the same types of informal networks and
mentorship that men often leverage to succeed in business. UPWARD’s first event
was in May 2013. Today the organization
has more than 1,600 members, obtained
through word of mouth. Lambert says the
nonprofit organization chose to focus on
senior professional women because there
hat’s the start of “Why women should
do less and network more,” an article
the two wrote for Fortune last November. It’s also the premise behind UPWARD
(Uniting Professional Women Accelerating Relationships & Development),
the global networking organization
for senior professional women that
Lambert founded in 2013.
“It’s something I had been thinking about for some time. I’ve seen
the disparity in opportunities for men
and women in high-tech and in venture capital,” says Lambert, who has
worked at Intel Corp. for nearly 18
years. “In venture capital, 4 percent
of the general partners are women,
just 4 percent, which is amazing to
me. And in tech, the numbers aren’t
much better.”
Across all industries, sadly, the
numbers say it all. If you look at the
professional workplace in America,
women are 51.5 percent of the professional workforce, says Lambert. Lisa Lambert
“But when you get to the executive
positions, the number drops to 13 percent, is ample support for younger women beand when you get to the CEO’s office, it ginning their careers.
drops to 4 percent.”
“If there is a glass ceiling and you can’t
While technology and venture capi- advance further than middle management,
tal are not exactly bastions of progress then you’re really stuck if you haven’t
for women, those numbers illustrate the built a professional network. That was
problem that Lambert, along with many the problem I sought to overcome with
women in business face: the conscious UPWARD: creating a global commuand unconscious bias about women in nity of professional women where we’re
executive and leadership positions, no 1) learning from each other; 2) educatmatter the industry.
ing ourselves; and 3) proactively helping
“If I’m experiencing it,” says Lambert, one another advance,” says Lambert. “If
vice president of Intel Capital, Intel’s ven- you’re stuck, there’s no reason to stay
ture capital arm, “then how many other stuck. There’s a way you can overcome
women are experiencing it? I’m a fairly that, and that is in relationship with other
senior woman at Intel, yet this happens senior professionals who have your interto me on a regular basis. So I asked my- ests in mind.”
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Heads up!
“A lot of us [women] are ‘heads down’ on
our jobs. We’re naturally work-oriented,
so we sometimes under-invest in other
important areas such as networking,”
says Lambert.
“When your head is down, you’re on
a mission,” says Shane Evans, president
of Massage Heights, who co-founded
the franchise in 2004 with her husband
Wayne. “It’s absolutely necessary at times,
there’s no doubt about it, especially
if you’ve just started the company.
You’re in growth mode, you’re just
pushing forward, and there are things
you have to do to gain that growth.”
Today the brand has 120 units, with
40 more on the way this year.
“I had my head down for 10
years, doing everything I needed to
do and more, working a lot of hours,
not really having any kind of balance
in my life. My kids forced that balance to some degree, but outside of
that, there was none,” she says. “If
you can find a way to balance that
kind of go-hard mentality—I’ve got
to do this, we’ve got to move fast,
get these things done, that passion
and diligence for growth—with selfgrowth, it’s a great combination that
can make a big difference in both
your personal and professional lives.”
In mid-2013, with the help of a business coach, Evans decided to lift her head
up. “My mission for the past 18 months
has been to make meaningful connections, both professional and personal,” she
says. “It has been my mission since I was
able to identify the one thing I could do
that no one else could do. And that one
thing was deliver the message of Massage
Heights: who we are as a brand, what we
stand for, what our values are, and pretty
much be the face of the brand.”
It wasn’t an easy transition. “Initially I
thought, How is that going to help? What
is that going to do? There are all these
things that have to be done. We’re a grow-
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