Columbia Law Alum And Legal Recruiter Cynthia Dow On How Lawyers Can Be Chosen For The C-Suite

According to Dow, the best organizations go well beyond ensuring they recruit and promote diverse talent.

By  
on

Cynthia Dow (Photo via Russell Reynolds Associates)

“I took pictures with Beyoncé, I met Mama Knowles / I’m the rose that came from the concrete in the Rolls / I’m like gold, I’m life goals, man, I’m chosen, I’m floatin’, ayy.” — Cardi B

Yesterday, the Minority Corporate Counsel Association (MCCA) launched its new Inclusive Leader Program in partnership with Microsoft Corp. to address the growing need for diverse and inclusive leaders to disrupt homogeneity in legal leadership.

As highlighted in MCCA’s announcement:

The program is comprised of the Inclusion Index, developed with Russell Reynolds Associates, which will assess the diversity of leadership and opportunities for inclusion at law firms and in corporate legal departments across the country, and an Inclusive Leadership Summit to provide opportunities for leaders to share best practices and challenges in developing an inclusive workplace.

This week, I had the opportunity to catch up with Cynthia Dow, a former Biglaw attorney, general counsel (GC), and current leader of the Legal Officers Practice at Russell Reynolds Associates. I found her insight, as someone who has once practiced law and whose current mission it is to diversify the higher ranks of our profession, to be both tactical and practical. I believe you will find her words of wisdom quite illuminating as well.

Without further ado, here is a (lightly edited and condensed) write-up of our conversation:

Sponsored

Renwei Chung (RC): Can you share with us a little bit about your career path from Columbia Law to your current role at Russell Reynolds Associates?

Cynthia Dow (CD): After law school, I followed a fairly traditional Biglaw career path, clerking for a federal district judge before joining Baker Botts as a litigation and then labor & employment associate in the Dallas office. I next joined a venture-backed technology company as their first GC during the telecom boom & bust in the late 90s before joining Cadbury Schweppes as an AGC for about six years.

I made the switch to leadership consulting and executive coaching and joined RRA about nine years ago. Since joining the firm, I have focused on GC and CCO searches as well as leadership & succession, diversity & inclusion, and board advisory work.

RC: From your experience in human capital consulting and recruiting, what are the best organizations doing to foster diverse talent?

CD: The best organizations go well beyond ensuring they recruit and promote diverse talent. They create truly robust career paths for high potential talent, moving individuals every few years into stretch assignments and providing high-quality developmental feedback. They ensure rising talent has sponsorship from senior people with influence who will help to identify opportunities, foster relationships and encourage the individual to extend themselves.

Sponsored

Last but certainly not least, they create a respectful and inclusive work environment where individuals can thrive and bring their full potential to bear.

RC: Can you share with us some of the interesting or surprising facts from the recently published research by your firm?

CD: In 2017, 13% of the F500 GC roles turned over, and 37% of the new appointees were female (an uptick again from 2016 which was already a record year for females appointed to F500 GC roles).

So far in 2018, there have been 13 new appointments, 5 of which have been female. These include the likes of Jennifer Zachary at Merck and Karen Patton Seymour at Goldman Sachs to F100 GC positions, with both moving directly from roles at law firms. When we zoom in on 2017 F500 moves, we see that 52% were promoted internally. This has increased since 2016 as organizations increasingly look to promote homegrown talent into the top role.

When going to an external candidate, the new hire typically had in-house experience, many with GC experience elsewhere.

Overall, 74% of external candidates and 80% of external female appointments came from another corporation. In the three years between 2015 and 2017, we saw a decline in hiring talent from law firms directly into the GC role, with just 18% of all hires from law firms, and just 6% of the women appointed as GCs.

However, in 2018 to date, there have been three female new hires from law firms, including at Merck and Goldman Sachs as mentioned as well as Rashida La Lande to GC at Kraft Heinz, although it is too early to confirm the trend away from law firms is reversing.

RC: What are some tips you have for women or minority candidates hoping to enter the C-Suite?

CD: The first is to catalog your own professional strengths and development areas. What are the formative experiences you still need to acquire? What are the roles, projects or initiatives where you can? The next is to get honest feedback from trusted and candid sources on your soft skills, interpersonal impact and executive presence to make you more polished, memorable and impactful. This can be through a 360 or facilitated by your HR business partner.

Second, it is critical to take control of your own development, including volunteering for challenging assignments, pushing yourself out of your comfort zone and engaging your manager in dialogue about your aspirations, development needs and possible assignments or opportunity to have additional impact. Ultimately, your success will be less due to your technical skills and experience than your ability to influence, lead others and serve as a collaborative and effective business partner and enterprise leader.

RC: What advice do you have for someone thinking about making the leap from Biglaw to in-house?

CD: Many senior lawyers cite their first move in-house as a very gratifying and critical step in their career path which allows them to get closer to a single business and set of stakeholders and to develop a new skillset of calculated risk-taking, collaborative business partnership, and team leadership skills which many do not have the opportunity to develop in a law firm. It can, however, be challenging to find the ideal entry point.

My advice is to be somewhat opportunistic in this endeavor — making the move when the chemistry and culture fit seems strong, the organization is high quality and on a business trajectory which interests you, and the role plays to your strengths while offering opportunities for growth over time either through evolving business needs or future potential roles.

RC: What are the most common mistakes you see individuals make as they contemplate or explore a new opportunity?

CD: The two most limiting behaviors are not keeping as wide a geographic scope as possible, and failing to take the long view by not treating every interaction as one that is the start of a long-lasting relationship. While relocation may be truly impossible, it is important to realize that desired location of a role is the hardest piece to control and might be less important than the industry, quality of company and team, role and scope or remuneration; being able to relax requirements on location as much as possible can raise the flow and quality of opportunities.

Second, the best candidates treat every interaction with a potential employer and the executives they meet as well as advisors and recruiters as gold — being timely with thank you notes as well as direct with feedback and reservations so as to not waste anyone’s time and burn bridges.

RC: It was great chatting with you. Is there anything else you would like to share with our audience?

CD: I recently witnessed two of the most outstanding examples of great candidate behavior and interview execution which landed them each the role, despite them initially being disadvantaged on the basis of the scope or relevance of their experience.

In one case, the candidate invested 15-20 hours of research into the company which quickly overcame any reservation that he lacked industry experience as it built confidence that he would quickly get up to speed. In the second, the candidate consistently exhibited such poise, maturity, self-awareness, thoughtfulness, and strategic perspective that any reservation about his ability to scale up to the role was put to rest completely after each round of interviews.

These candidates really brought home to me how far great, deep preparation and well-placed and balanced confidence will take you!

If you’re interested in connecting, feel free to contact me by email at Cynthia.dow@russellreynolds.com or LinkedIn at www.linkedin.com/in/cynthiadow.

On behalf of everyone here at Above the Law, I would like to thank Cynthia Dow for taking the time to share her story with our audience. We wish her continued success in her career.

Renwei Chung is the Diversity Columnist at Above the Law. You can contact Renwei by email at projectrenwei@gmail.com, follow him on Twitter (@renweichung), or connect with him on LinkedIn. 

Topics

, ,