Celebrating IWD: on attracting more women to leadership positions

Lucy Oddy, securitisation partner at Allen & Overy, is perceived as lucky to work in a team full of female talent. But, in the final article of our series celebrating International Women’s Day, she puts it down to a winning combination of supportive male colleagues and senior female role models.

I was describing my team to a candidate the other day and they said that I was “lucky”. I was explaining how diverse the team is and that I am surrounded by successful females at all levels.

In fact, because of this, I am often taken aback at the lack of senior female talent in leadership positions in the securitisation sector in general. Even in this day and age, when diversity is high on everyone’s agenda, it is not uncommon for me to attend a meeting or these days a Zoom call and for the other senior attendees to be men or indeed sometimes all of the other attendees are men.

For my own part, the men I have worked with during my career - both partners I have worked with in my own firm, those I have worked across from at other firms and my clients - have played a significant part in mentoring me and helping to give me the confidence and ambition to achieve my goals. Men have an important part to play in supporting women they work with or mentor and I don’t think that I would be where I am today without that support. When I look at my own team at A&O, the men we work with are incredibly supportive of the women in the team at all levels.

I am proud to say that in the A&O securitisation team, we have three very successful female partners, who are market leaders in their fields and over half of our associates are women. This has been a consistent trend in our team for at least the last 10 years.

Our team is a heavily transactional-based practice - working on difficult deals with challenging clients and sometimes working long hours. Notwithstanding this - which I have heard people say is something that puts females off securitisation and other jobs in finance - we have a team full of female talent.

Is this really all down to luck? I think not. This combination of supportive men and having female role models at a senior level has, in my view, engendered an environment where women feel confident to speak out and put themselves forward and believe that they can achieve their goals.

If women see other women in senior positions, who are successful at what they do, enjoy their jobs and are respected by their male colleagues and clients, that can give them something to aspire to. That aspiration or ambition to achieve, combined with talent and support, is a winning combination.

My message to any junior women working their way up the ladder is perhaps best expressed by one of my heroes, Winnie the Pooh: “You are braver than you believe, stronger than you feel and smarter than you think…”. Remember that.