Powering Women in Leadership with Scholarships

Still debating about investing in a master degree? INSEAD’s various scholarship options are aimed at fulfilling the global need for more women in leadership positions.

You don't need statistics to tell you that women still don't make up any significant number of the workforce in corporate leadership positions around the world. And this—to slightly modify what Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said when he was asked about gender-parity in his cabinet after his election—is 2017. 

Christina Law, Group President Asia & Latin America at General Mills, recounts a recent experience where she was part of a gathering of CEOs and corporate leaders in Singapore. “Out of the 12 leaders present, I was the only woman,” she says, “I can recall many other similar occasions”. To fix this, she adds, women must invest in themselves not only by committing themselves to their careers, but to their higher education as well. To help them, Law has instituted the INSEAD Christina Law MBA ‘91D Endowed Scholarship for Asian Women. “Now that I am in a position to give back and assist aspiring women, it’s my way of celebrating my 25 years of graduating from INSEAD,” she adds.

A perfect example of such commitment would be Yaesong Jung from Korea, who joined the MBA’18J class that started in September. Prior to coming to Singapore to pursue her MBA, Jung was supporting her parents as well as caring for her three-year-old son. “In Asia, women tend to take on multiple social roles, and it was quite tough for me to decide to go for higher studies,” she says, even though she had the full support of her husband and parents. “As I don’t come from a family of means, financing myself for the INSEAD MBA was a major concern.” While applying for her MBA, Jung decided to try for a scholarship and eventually won the Christina Law endowment, which she says covers a major chunk of her tuition fee. Today, she is part of a 200-strong class in the Singapore campus where over one-third of the candidates are women; a figure that has been climbing steadily in the past few years across INSEAD campuses.

This, says Christina Law, is an encouraging trend. “The idea is to support high potential women who may have financial difficulties to ensure entry not only into schools like INSEAD (where Law doubles as Board Member), but also competing effectively in the workforce,” she says. At General Mills, Law encourages a company culture that values diversity and prizes merit over gender differences. “Often, prevailing regional cultural attitudes can pose huge challenges on how women workforce is being perceived. To prevent these permeating into companies, we have to create the right overarching corporate culture and environment to support the growth and development of our female employees. According to her, this is a practical way in which corporate institutions can ensure fairness at the workplace, paving the way for meritorious women to take on larger roles as they grow in their careers. It is a gauntlet that Law herself had to run after she graduated from INSEAD in 1991; she is the perfect example of what a woman can achieve when given access to great education, networks, and opportunities.

At Professional Women’s Network (PWN) Global, Co-President Sonya Richardson, based in Utrecht in the Netherlands, concurs with Law. When it comes to women in a corporate environment, their talents are often underutilised and not sufficiently recognised,” she says. “This results in less equal opportunity, and that in turn affects the financial support women are awarded to join executive programmes.” To counter this very adversity, PWN Global and INSEAD came together and announced the INSEAD Professional Women’s Network Fellowship in January 2017. It’s a scholarship that’s open to all INSEAD Global Executive MBA (GEMBA) applicants who are association members of the PWN at the time of application, and covers up to a quarter of the tuition fee. This, says Richardson, is just one step towards balancing the genders in corporate leadership positions. “When a workplace is gender balanced, we know that the company performs better and employee and customer satisfaction goes up,” she adds. 

Having worked in both the corporate environment—as Communication Manager for McKinsey & Company—as well as a consultant to many other companies for over two decades, Richardson has been uniquely placed to observe how a largely masculine work culture is slowly becoming more receptive to women across industries. A recent example that she discusses is that of the global consulting giant Accenture, which announced in June this year that they will achieve complete gender equality by 2025 across all profiles, beginning with installing a minimum of 25% women managing directors by 2020. “There has been a lot of talk about balancing the gender disparity across industries, but it’s encouraging to see a big player like Accenture beginning to walk the talk,” says Richardson. And with more and more companies committing themselves—whether openly or internally—to gender equality, the need for women who can take on challenging roles will only rise. And that’s where INSEAD’s various scholarships come into play. Out of over 90 scholarships available, 10 are aimed specifically towards women applicants. In fact, the first two PWN Global Fellows have already been chosen, and Richardson says she looks forward to interacting with them in the coming months.

Now based in The Hague, Israel-born Carmit Glik is also pursuing her GEMBA from INSEAD currently. Mother to two daughters—one aged eight and the other four—she identifies the support of the family unit as the second most important factor after the financial one that can bolster a woman’s resolve to choose further studies. “My participation in the GEMBA program is a family project,” she says. Glik received the INSEAD GEMBA Scholarship for Women (which covered 15% of her tuition fee) as well as a second scholarship from the Danish Maritime Foundation (which covered 25%). For the rest, she applied for a loan. “Today, after less than a year of being in the programme, it’s such an empowering feeling to know that I have access to a worldwide network of peers and alumni,” she says. “It was a tough decision, but I made it and it’s worth it.” And that’s the advice—mirrored by what Yaesong Jung also feels: “Just be confident and do it!”—she would give to all future women applicants. “You have to calculate the opportunity cost of taking the leap; and I would always say that you go for it.” After all, it is 2017.

To find out more about the great deal that we have brokered for PWN Global members, visit the INSEAD site, HERE.