In honor of Women’s History Month, MarketSource is launching its Women’s Employee Resource Group (ERG). The Women’s ERG strives to empower women at MarketSource by developing and maintaining a vibrant, inclusive community, tools that foster growth, and a safe space for productive discussions around issues women face, including achieving work–life balance, realizing career aspirations, and overcoming obstacles to achieving their goals.
Co-led by Jessica Sears, director, financial operations, and Lisa Walsh, executive director of automotive, the Women’s ERG will offer programming, resources, and events that help members grow personally and professionally and deepen their influence and impact within their teams and beyond. The group will tackle topics such as wellness, taming your inner critic, mentorship and sponsorship, promotions, grit, personal brand, negotiation skills, setting and keeping boundaries, motherhood/parenthood, communication styles, financial planning, and unconscious biases.
The group will also work to ensure women’s voices are invited into business decisions and to help teams at every level understand the impact of decisions on the women at MarketSource. In addition to cultivating a thriving inclusive culture, the Women’s ERG increases MarketSource’s ability to attract, retain and promote women and to align with our customers and the communities where we live and work.
“I’ve been fortunate to have worked with influential mentors who changed the trajectory of my career,” said Sears. “I expect the Women’s ERG to surface important ideas and perspectives that will help MarketSource continue and expand its leadership in supporting women and fostering the next generation of female leaders.”
The penalties for low diversity on executive teams are intensifying, says McKinsey & Co., finding that companies with representation of women exceeding 30% are significantly more likely to financially outperform those with 30% or fewer.
In addition to the business case for diversity, there is also a direct connection between inclusion and innovation, a MarketSource business imperative. According to Great Place to Work, innovation can only flourish when employees feel safe bringing their whole selves to work, which requires a high-trust culture of inclusion.
Walsh commented, “There are many women working at MarketSource at all levels of the organization. It has been so exciting to see them grow their careers and voices over the past fifteen years. Many of them have mentored others, as a part of an ERG or other company initiative, or they have just taken this on themselves. It is so wonderful to see them growing their leadership skills! Their contributions are essential to the health of our organization and to our ability to innovate as we help our clients achieve their goals. We want to give them every opportunity to grow and contribute. The Women’s ERG is an important tool to help them do that.”
MarketSource also offers a 10-month Women in Leadership program, which offers women coaching, mentoring, and networking opportunities to help women explore and realize their leadership potential.
About MarketSource
MarketSource, an Allegis Group company, is a sales acceleration company focused on delivering better outcomes for many of the world’s most iconic brands. We design and operationalize managed sales and customer experience solutions in B2B and retail environments. Our solutions are purpose-built and tech-enabled to deliver measurable improvements in business outcomes.