Women’s History Month provides an opportunity to shine light on the continued underrepresentation of women in various fields; and financial institutions are no exception. According to the World Economic Forum’s The Global Gap Report, although 46% of employees in the financial industry are women, only 15% are at the executive level.
This staggering statistic is one of the main reasons why I was so grateful to work on BMO’s Brand and Social team for my most recent co-op term, as a Brand & Advertising Coordinator. This team is led by incredible women, including Catherine Roche, the Chief Marketing Officer at BMO, Jennifer Carli, Head of Brand & Social, and Shelley Johnsen, the Director of Canadian Brand Advertising who was an incredible leader to work under.
For this Women’s History Month, I decided to sit down with Shelley Johnsen who has moved onto a new role as Managing Director of North American Business Banking, Branch Experience & Strategic Marketing at BMO to discuss her experiences as a female leader in the financial industry and as a passionate advocate of gender equality both in and outside of her office.
I first asked Shelley about what it’s like to work on a team that is almost solely composed of women, such as herself, Roche, Carli, and others like Melanie Miron, Ann-Marie Beauchemin and Kaleigh MacMaster; a rather unusual scene in a predominantly male industry. Johnsen said she has“always really gravitated towards women in working environments, even dating back to grade school in group projects.”
“While the banking industry is male dominated, in many ways, women run the show in marketing, so I’ve always comfortably occupied a seat at the table and had a lot of examples at the leadership level to look to for support and inspiration.”
Shelley’s support and inspiration stem from many on her team and beyond, including Jennifer Carli, Head of Brand and Social, who has been a mentor figure to Shelley since the beginning.
“Jennifer without a shadow of a doubt helped pave the way for my success in my career and I consider her a great friend. I’ve also learned so much in my career from women who have worked for me – Kaleigh MacMaster has such a thoughtful lens on incorporating representation and DEI in our work and she really opened my eyes to how we could push the boundaries of inclusion even further.”
Since I began working with Shelley, her advocacy and passion for gender equality was immediately apparent. “I’m not sure how I developed the chip on my shoulder regarding gender inequity at such a young age. I think part of it was seeing different lifestyle dynamics for women while growing up with a single working mom”, says Johnsen. “I’ve always been someone who observed, then challenged societal norms; asking the hard questions and not blindly accepting answers,” a tendency that Shelley said made her hyper-aware of the micro (and macro) aggressions against women in the workplace.
BMO’s purpose is to “boldly grow the good in business and life,” a purpose that highlights the values of employees and allows you to advocate for them both in and outside of the office; a shared merit between Shelley and I. Outside of her office, Shelley works with an organization in Chicago called iMentor, which partners individuals one-on-one for three years with a third year high school student from a low-income school. Shelley has been a mentor to two young women over the past six years and has helped them apply and get started with college or determine an alternative career path.
Shelley led BMO’s International Women’s Day campaign for 2020, called ‘Jane’s Story,’ which she describes as a “beautiful marrying of great marketing and giving women a level playing field in their financial lives”.
Johnsen and fellow leaders believe that media and culture are what influence societal beliefs and norms, and advertising is a component of that; thus, feel a sense of responsibility to push an agenda with BMO’s ads. With this, Shelley and the Brand Advertising team wanted to springboard off of all BMO’s advocacy from senior women leaders across the organization to communicate a provocative truth: the way society talks to women about money has a negative impact on their financial futures. In their insights research, Shelley says two things were abundantly clear. First, women do not invest at the same rate that men do, therefore significantly lessening their wealth potential, and second, in heterosexual partner relationships, the majority of women are in the dark about their shared finances. Consequently, Jane’s Story was born and immediately caught the attention of many Canadians nationwide:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MZN59zJDQiE**
“The challenge with unearthing a systemic societal issue was that we encountered naysayers along the way and people who denied that this was ‘still’ an issue. But, the overwhelming response from consumers, the press, and awards told us we were onto something”, says Johnsen.
Three years later, the legacy of Jane’s Story lives on at BMO, in the financial industry, and of course in Shelley’s own personal life. “The legacy and result for me is threefold. First, I started investing way more than before, reminding myself that I was building my own wealth potential, then, started talking to my girlfriends about investing and getting under the hoods of their finances with their partners.” She adds, “whenever anyone has a new baby girl, I put $100 in an envelope with instructions to put it into a brokerage account so that she can grow up and take me on a girls trip in thirty years, thanks to compounding returns.”
In closing my chat with Shelley, I wanted to ask her how she believes women can support other women best. “I think that generally women are great at building each other up, and that Shine Theory is abundant among women in healthy workplaces. The real opportunity is teaching and demonstrating how men can get better at profiling women’s work. The Old Boy Club is alive and well at many levels, and men allowing women to work their way in, is essential to really getting to equality in the workplace; including non-binary and 2SLGBTQ+ individuals as well.”
I’ve had the personal pleasure of witnessing Shelley’s commitment to gender equality in the workplace, whether it be through our team’s culture, the advertising our team produces including Jane’s Story and pushing the envelope of inclusion further. Learning more about her commitment outside of work was an absolute pleasure.
I’ve learned a tremendous amount from Shelley as I begin my career and I am so grateful to call her a mentor and a friend.
References:
https://www.weforum.org/reports/the-global-gender-gap-report-2017