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An Interview With Candice Georgiadis

Flexibility. Companies must offer employee-centered flexibility in where and when work gets done, which research shows can help keep people in their jobs and boost retention. There are increased opportunities to be more inclusive of all working parents through hybrid work arrangements and making this a reality is a critical step in fostering gender equitable organizations. Most importantly, employers need to make sure there is no stigma for choosing flexibility for either women or men.

As part of my series about “the five things we need to do to close the gender wage gap” I had the pleasure of interviewing Kim Borman.

Kim Borman is Executive Director of the Boston Women’s Workforce Council, a unique public-private partnership between the Boston Mayor’s office and Greater Boston employers dedicated to eliminating the gender/racial wage gap Kim brings over 25 years of expertise in private sector management, marketing and operations and a wide variety of experience in building and sustaining nonprofit organizations. She has held senior executive positions at a variety of top Boston advertising agencies as well as owned and managed her own agency, Avenue Brand, in Boston’s South End for several years. Throughout her career, Kim has been committed to equal pay for equal work and has the battle scars to prove it.

Kim also has many years of nonprofit engagement at organizations like Planned Parenthood, The Social Innovation Forum and The Rian Immigrant Center, where she currently sits as Vice President on the Board of Directors.

A graduate of Brown University and the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern, Kim recently earned her Master of Public Administration from the Harvard Kennedy School.

Thank you so much for joining us! Can you tell us the “backstory” that brought you to this career path?

I was in marketing for over 30 years and owned a marketing agency in Boston for seven years. I was lucky enough to be accepted into the Master of Public Administration program at the Harvard Kennedy School which I thought would prepare me best for this pivot into a mission driven career. Interestingly, it has been my background in marketing, building organizational infrastructure and client service that has helped me the most in leading the Boston Women’s Workforce Council. It all comes down to having the right message, the right people and systems and continuing engagement with members — all areas of focus during my marketing career.

Can you share a story about the funniest or most interesting mistake you made when you were first starting? Can you tell us what lesson you learned from that?

I started this job during the pandemic so, like everyone else, I made a lot of Zoom mistakes. Probably the funniest mistake I made was commenting to a professor at Boston University that he must be at his office because his ceiling was made of dilapidated acoustic tiling. He informed me that, no, he was at his home in his new finished office. Tough to get yourself out of that one when you’re face-to-face with your mistake. I told him it looked roomy, much better than an academic office. What did I learn? Not to comment on the background during a Zoom meeting.

Ok let’s jump to the main focus of our interview. Even in 2020, women still earn about 81 cents for every dollar a man makes. Can you explain the main factors that are causing the wage gap?

2020 numbers from the Boston Women’s Workforce Council show a 30-cent gap between what women and men earn. That gap is even wider for women of color, who earn up to 55 cents less than white men. If “equal pay for equal work” has been the law for more than 50 years, why is the gender wage gap still so high? Because the gender/racial pay gap is about more than paying women the same salary for the same job. It means advancing women so that they can earn higher salaries at the same rate as men. Closing the power gap is the only way to close the gender and racial wage gaps.

Can you share with our readers what your work is doing to help close the gender wage gap?

Founded in 2013, the BWWC is a unique public-private partnership between the Boston Mayor’s office and Greater Boston employers dedicated to eliminating the gender/racial wage gap. The BWWC recruits employers to sign the 100% Talent Compact, a pledge to examine their policies, work toward fixing pay and advancement inequities they might find, and anonymously share their payroll data on race and gender in order to provide a community snapshot on progress. The BWWC reports these results every two years. A new report is due in December of this year. This collaboration between the Mayor’s Office and Greater Boston employers to close the gap is a first-in-the-nation approach to removing the visible and invisible barriers to women’s advancement.

Can you recommend 5 things that need to be done on a broader societal level to close the gender wage gap.

Based on research from more than 250 Boston-area employers, we know the evidence-based practices that can bolster gender equity at work. Now is the time to rethink the way things were and implement a new normal, including:

  1. Flexibility. Companies must offer employee-centered flexibility in where and when work gets done, which research shows can help keep people in their jobs and boost retention. There are increased opportunities to be more inclusive of all working parents through hybrid work arrangements and making this a reality is a critical step in fostering gender equitable organizations. Most importantly, employers need to make sure there is no stigma for choosing flexibility for either women or men.
  2. Experimenting. Employers can experiment and learn to optimize across functions — try new things, test, and analyze.
  3. Training. We must train managers to supervise and support people in this new environment. For example, employers can front-line managers understand how to manage a hybrid team. This also means learning new skills in inclusive management and checking in with the whole person — not just how they show up at work.
  4. Inclusivity. Companies can design inclusive career tracks and results-oriented performance reviews that will make promotions more equitable.
  5. Innovation. Companies must forge fresh solutions to age-old challenges — and keep them in place for the long haul. Employers can look to models like Mass General Hospital, which addressed long-standing gender equity issues in academic medicine by enabling doctors to participate virtually in promotion-critical activities such as international presentations, visiting professorships, and Grand Rounds. Or Mass Mutual, which helped employees balance the multiple demands of work and personal commitments by providing up to 80 hours of additional paid time off, increasing the number of covered Employee Assistance Program (EAP) sessions, and providing online wellness classes dedicated to managing stress.

You are a person of great influence. If you could inspire a movement that would bring the most amount of good to the most amount of people, what would that be? You never know what your idea can trigger. 🙂

Find a minute a day to enjoy a belly laugh — talk with a colleague whose sense of humor you enjoy, watch a You-tube video of a late night show, ask your kids to tell you a joke — but just get out of your day and laugh!

Can you please give us your favorite “Life Lesson Quote”? Can you share how that was relevant to you in your life?

You see the same people on the way up the ladder as do on the way down. Make sure you treat all colleagues with respect and dignity. You can learn from everyone — a junior associate, the IT team, even a bad boss. Besides being the right thing to do, you never know where these people may end up and often you find yourselves reacquainted years later.

We are very blessed that some of the biggest names in Business, VC funding, Sports, and Entertainment read this column. Is there a person in the world, or in the US whom you would love to have a private breakfast or lunch with, and why? He or she might see this, especially if we tag them. 🙂

Oprah Winfrey. She has had an amazing career and is still at the top of her game. Is truly the best interviewer I have ever seen. That only happens when you gain trust and are known for asking smart questions.

This was really meaningful! Thank you so much for your time.


Kim Borman of Boston Women’s Workforce Council: 5 Things We Need To Do To Close The Gender Wage Gap was originally published in Authority Magazine on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.