Worcester Business Journal

10 Worcester Business Journal | February 19, 2018 | wbjournal.com Companies with a greater mix of women in leadership positions have better performance records Gender diversity = PROFITS BY GRANT WELKER Worcester Business Journal News Editor J ennifer Conrad didn't have high expectations when she inter- viewed for a management posi- tion at the Leominster headquar- ters for Fidelity Bank. After all, she was seven-and-a-half-months pregnant. "I felt like it was such a wasted effort," Conrad said. But "when I stepped out of the bank that day, I said, 'I need to be here.'" She was hired. And a decade later, Conrad, Fidelity Bank's senior vice president and senior cash management officer, serves as an example of a com- pany's culture prioritizing having women in executive positions in equal numbers as men. "She was a very talented person and culturally aligned with how we treat our clients," said Ed Manzi, the Fidelity Bank CEO who hired Conrad and still leads the 10-branch bank. "It just seemed like the right thing to do." With nine women among its top 16 executives, Fidelity Bank is an outlier in the Central Massachusetts business com- munity, as only four of the 42 local for- profit companies examined by WBJ had at least 40 percent women among their senior executives and board members. Fidelity Bank has seen its total assets more than double in a decade to $659 million in 2016, and in the past year has grown through acquisitions of Barre Savings Bank and Colonial Co-operative Bank in Gardner. This type of financial success is a common thread among businesses with greater gender diversity in their leadership. Companies with women in at least 15 percent of senior management positions have 18-percent more profits than companies where women comprise less than 10 percent of those seats, according to a 2016 study by Swiss mul- tinational financial insti- tution Credit Suisse. The best performance was shown in companies where women make up half of senior leadership positions. "You don't get a diverse lens of what's happening inside and outside your com- pany" without diversity, said Susan Adams, a Bentley University professor who's conducted research for the women advocacy group The Boston Club. "Women live different lives than men," Adams said. "They can see things differently." Woman-led profits Companies with women in the top leadership position (i.e. CEOs) were shown in the Credit Suisse study to perform better than those led by men, with 19-percent better profits. Among the 75 Central Massachusetts business organizations – including nonprofits – studied by WBJ, only nine led led by a woman, and none of those were pub- lic companies. One of the most recent female public- company CEOs in Central Massachusetts was Carol Meyrowitz, who led TJX Cos. from 2007 to 2016. The Framingham- and Marlborough-based owner of retail chains Marshalls, T.J.Maxx and HomeGoods touts relatively high lev- els of women throughout the business. Globally, 77 percent of TJX's work- force is female, as are 51 percent of The Boardroom Gap SECOND IN A THREE-PART SERIES Select members of Fidelity Bank's executive team (from left, back row) Connie Loveland, chief financial officer; James Notaro, vice president of deposit operations; Lisa Krywucki, senior commercial credit officer; Edward Manzi, chairman & CEO; Dee Sendrowski, senior vice president and human resources director; Christopher McCarthy, president & COO; Sheila Julien, senior vice president for strategic capabilities; (from left, front row) Laurie Benson, senior vice president and head of retail; Derek Beahn, vice president for marketing; Jennifer Ledoux, senior compliance & risk officer; Barry Bliss, chief commercial banking officer; Jennifer Conrad, senior cash management officer.

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