Name: Broad Strokes for January 12, 2017: Ivanka Steps Back & Ellen Pao is Back!
Uploaded: 2017-01-12
Duration: 4 min 33 s
Description: We discuss Ivanka Trump's decision to distance herself from her company and Ellen Pao's return to VC.

[ MUSIC ] Welcome to BROAD STROKES, for [ UNKNOWN ] show we talk about the news it matters to women. So, this week kick up with a lot news about women in the white house. Lets start with Ivanka Trump. Trump came out to announce that she is stepping back, both from the Trump organization And from her own company. She's doing this because her husband has accepted a formal advising role in the White House. And both she and Jared Kushner need to step away from their businesses in order to meet the ethics rules. When I read this headline, I was like what? No, I mean this is someone who's kind of built her entire brand, her entire premise on Working her book is called women who work. I mean I get that she is gonna have more power now obviously she is gonna have the ear of her dad who's gonna be the president, her husband is now a senior advisor. But still why she taking a back seat to her husband? This is so classic, so Typical and so not Ivanka. I agree with you completely. I wrote about this this week. It was really interesting for me to see how many people disagreed with that idea. I actually got a phone call [ LAUGH ] that morning from Patty Sellers, who is one of the Cofounders of our Fortune Most Powerful Women franchise, and she completely disagrees. Which I get. Ivanka is going to have a lot of power in this backstage role. But it is just like we've seen this narrative so many times. Where women are sacrificing their careers so that their husband's careers can move forward. So I really want to see See Ivanka or some other women kind of take the forefront in the White House. And not just be whispering in the ears of men. That's a perfect segue for us to talk about. A woman who did take a forward facing role in the White House this week. Deena Powell who is a partner at Goldman Sachs. Deena is an immigrant from Egypt. She is someone who's known to To execute, she's worked int he State Department before. And she's actually partnered with Fortune's Most Powerful Women, to launch a mentorship initiative between the State Department and Fortune. I think the news that she's gonna be an advisor to Trump has been my silver lining this week. To have someone who's known to execute Kind of out there being a champion for women. I think that that's super exciting. Yeah, I cannot wait to see what Deena does. So let's also talk about this story that we reported on in Fortune this week about corporate boards. So it was looking at how people are paid on corporate boards. And assuming that we would find a pay gap For women, for minorities as compared to their white male counterparts. And the surprising thing is that when you look at boards in aggregate, in fact, women and minorities are making more. But if you actually look deeper and closer at the numbers, the picture starts to resemble what we're used to a lot more closely. What's happening is that while overall they're making more, if you look at each individual board, they're making way less. It's interesting to think about what's going on here What it boils down to is that there are so few women and minority directors. So if you're a large high- profile company, you know you can't have an all white male board, so you're gonna go out there and look for diverse directors. But a lot of these companies are Only considering a very small pool of women for these jobs. What we really need to see is companies start to think differently about who's a qualified director. We need to see companies taking more chances on women with different types of experience. Right. Another big piece of news this week was Ellen Pao. She is taking a new role at VC firm Kapor Capital, as well as a diversity and inclusion role at their Social Impact foundation. This is huge news for Pao. She's best known for being the woman who launched a gender discrimination suit against Kleiner Perkins. This was a Big long high profile, you might think damaging lawsuit and for her to not sort of slink away after losing but to stay out there and to really make herself into somebody who will not let Silicon Valley forget that there are not enough women, I think is really admirable. For all the [ UNKNOWN ] back out there. She is the second woman that we see kinda make a second comeback this year [ UNKNOWN ] Folks news last summer, she has been on the TV show she has [ UNKNOWN ] model, publication So here you have two women kind of had huge gender- related lawsuits. Came back from them, are getting on with their lives, getting on with their careers. I think this is an extremely helpful positive signal for women out there. Now I completely agree, but at the same time I think it's important for us to realize that, these are two women who are really well known, They have a lot of resources. They're not the average woman and it really is still a struggle for some of these women to come back after they've been through a suit like that. Unfortunately, that's all the time we have this week for Broad Strokes. Come back next Friday for another episode on Fortune. com. [ MUSIC ]

We discuss Ivanka Trump's decision to distance herself from her company and Ellen Pao's return to VC.

Broad Strokes for January 12, 2017: Ivanka Steps Back &amp; Ellen Pao is Back!

Broad Strokes for January 12, 2017: Ivanka Steps Back & Ellen Pao is Back!