Beyond Skill-Building: Insights for C-Suite Leaders on Attracting, Developing, and Retaining the Best Possible Workforce

Jennifer McCollum is President and CEO of Catalyst, a global nonprofit that accelerates progress for women by promoting workplace inclusion. Before joining Catalyst, McCollum was CEO of Linkage, Inc. (now part of SHRM), a top global leadership development firm.

Her earlier roles include executive leadership positions at Korn Ferry, Corporate Executive Board (now Gartner), and as founder of IntraVision, Inc., a leadership consulting firm.

She is the author of the bestselling book “In Her Own Voice: A Woman’s Rise to CEO.” The book shares data and personal stories to illuminate the challenges women face reaching leadership roles and provides actionable advice for leaders and organizations.

McCollum holds an MS in management and communications from the University of Stirling in Scotland and a BA in communications and psychology from Wake Forest University.

Q. Since its founding in 1962, Catalyst (the global nonprofit whose mission is to accelerate organizational performance and progress for women) has had a Who’s Who of Fortune 500 and elite consulting partners serve on its Board of Directors. Given their extremely busy schedules and potential other lucrative Board roles available to them, why do you believe they volunteer their time for your well-known entity?

McCollum. While I trust that our mission resonates with their decisions to donate their precious time, I believe that our forward-thinking research and insights are also reasons for them to engage with us. After all, when they look at the data for the institutions that their firms actively recruit from, they realize their organizational systems need to be effective and efficient to support the entire available talent pool of men and women.

Looking at the stats for recent entering classes at the Ivy League schools, women actually comprise slightly higher percentages at many of them with 54% at Penn and 51% at Harvard.¹ These stats are not surprising, as The Stanford Review recently referenced how an “astonishing seven out of ten high school valedictorians are girls.”²

With Catalyst’s groundbreaking research in areas like helping the historical “Big 8” accounting firms in the 1980s recognize an untapped female talent pool to support their growth aspirations,³ it is not surprising that the top executives of not only healthcare firms like Merck but also premier professional services employers like JPMorgan Chase and EY are on our Board of Directors. When the statistics show that 50% of your potential talent pool of the best of the best are women, one needs to ensure the best talent management systems are in place.

Q. Recent research, including Catalyst’s work, emphasizes that real progress for women in the workplace requires reshaping organizational systems like sponsorship, strategic networks, and stretch opportunities rather than focusing solely on individual capabilities. Why is this system’s approach critical compared to traditional diversity or skill-building programs?

McCollum. For many years, investments in advancing women tended to be disproportionately allocated toward training and mentoring which were necessary but inefficient in fully addressing systemic barriers to leadership.⁴ With less than 10% of the Fortune 500 CEOs being female, training has not changed the game for women.

Catalyst’s research is helping C-Suite leaders to understand that the system needs to change. Access to sponsors, decisions makers and especially stretch assignments are key elements in this career equation.

For example, Deutsche Bank launched its Accomplished Top Leaders Advancement Strategy (ATLAS) in 2009 to address gender imbalance at the senior level through a formal sponsorship model. By pairing high-performing women with executive sponsors who actively advocated for their advancement, the program helped participants gain visibility, take on stretch roles, and move into more senior leadership positions.

It demonstrated how structured sponsorship can drive meaningful progress where traditional training alone has fallen short. Moreover, while DE&I has been villainized in some firms, it does not mean that their critical work is any less important when those well intentioned organizations are creating systems to create equal playing fields for all, women or men, who step up to the plates.

Q. What three tactical actions do you recommend C-suite leaders take to embed systemic progress for women effectively into their organizations?

McCollum. Before turning to my three tactics, I would like to share some of the data and insights of our recent Catalyst 2025 "Risks of Retreat" report⁵ to underpin the discussion. This survey of 2,500 U.S. employees identified significant risks if organizations scale back their diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) efforts.

Key data points include: 76% of employees are more likely to stay with employers committed to DEI, while 43% say they would quit if such efforts are abandoned, with even higher risk among women, Gen Z, and millennials.

Financially, consumers prefer to buy from companies that support DEI. Legally, 78% of C-suite leaders and 83% of legal leaders agree that retreating increases the risk of discrimination claims.

Reputationally, a disconnect exists: Leaders often believe their commitment remains strong, but employees are more skeptical. Among companies that have rolled back DEI recently, 37% report lower employee morale and 33% note increased internal conflict.

These statistics and findings underscore that retreating from DEI poses greater talent, financial, legal, and reputational risks than maintaining such programs. With that in mind, here are my recommendations.

First, organizations need to institute sponsorship programs—and the key is that they are open to everyone and not left to chance. While mentors are good resources to talk with you about career advice, frankly, sponsors are more important since they talk about you (especially behind closed doors), where advocacy is key for promotional decisions.

I like to turn to a mentor and sponsor from my own life as an example.Melody Jones was in a position of power at CEB when I was hired and told me that this would be a tough new job, but that she would help me. Two years later, she helped build the case for my promotion and later helped guide me to an exit when the company was bought.

She has been an advocate for me since. Sponsors like this change the course of individual careers, but they also help companies retain top talent and build trust. This impact is amplified with a formal program, such as DeutscheBank’s.

Second, organizations have to expand their strategic networks. One example I often point to is how a Black woman had an incredible sponsor at GM who specifically offered to help map out her next career steps and provide his social capital to make key introductions. Ultimately, a CEO cannot leave this system to chance and needs people to audit if access is truly open for all.

Third, organizations should design equitable stretch assignments for all talented staff where they provide high-impact developmental roles that challenge, empower, and build visibility for diverse talent. From Catalyst’s research, equitable stretch assignments mitigate “prove-it-again” bias and accelerate female leadership by ensuring women are given high-visibility, high-impact opportunities that demonstrate their readiness for advancement. This ultimately strengthens the leadership pipeline by positioning more women for senior roles.

Finally, I would challenge your readership to embrace a concept we call gender partnership. Gender partnership is when everyone, men and women, actively co-create fair, inclusive environments, working together as mutually accountable partners to build workplaces where everyone can thrive.

This allows us to build the conditions that support opportunities, ambition, and advancement for everyone, together. The conversation we have had here highlights how meaningful change depends on this kind of collaboration. When we approach leadership and workplace culture as shared endeavors, we open the door to new possibilities for everyone who wants to contribute and succeed.

About the Author

Michael Wong is a Part-time Lecturer for the Wharton Communication Program at the University of Pennsylvania. As an Emeritus Co-President and board member of the Harvard Business School Healthcare Alumni Association as well as a Contributing Writer for the MIT Sloan Career Development Office, Michael’s ideas have been shared in the Harvard Business Review and MIT Sloan Management Review.

References

1. https://almanac.upenn.edu/articles/university-of-pennsylvania-class-of-2025, https://features.thecrimson.com/2021/freshman-survey/makeup-narrative/
2. Golchha, Aadi, Young Men in Crisis, The Stanford Review, September 30, 2024
3. https://www.uacpa.org/news/c13041b8-146e-409f-a4ea-c47beeed83a0:international-women-s-day-and-c-p-as
4. https://www.amazon.com/Her-Own-Voice-Overcoming-Leadership/dp/B0CW5D483X
5. https://www.catalyst.org/en-us/insights/2025/risks-of-retreat-report