The 29th annual Women Thrive Conference hosted by MichBusiness recently provided a chance to recognize the achievements of some of the top women business leaders from around the state.
But the conference, held at The Henry Ford in Dearborn, also served as an opportunity for those accomplished women – recognized as Shooting Stars, Women in Leadership and MichBusiness Hall of Famers – to share their views in a variety of panel discussions that touched on topics ranging from culture to mentorship and leadership.
Hall of Fame panel, moderated by Sandy Pierce, Chair-Elect, Vice Chair, Detroit Riverfront Conservancy.
The panel featured discussion with the four newly inducted members of the Michigan Business Hall of Fame:
Lisa Lunsford, the co-founder and CEO at GS3 Global, a manufacturer in metro-Detroit.
Ursula Scroggs, the managing director of DKSS CPAs + Advisors, with offices in Troy and St. Clair Shores.
Milinda Ysasi, CEO at Grow, a Grand Rapids-based community development financial institution.
Valerie Vig, president at J.S. Vig Construction. Vig’s story demonstrates both the potential for women in construction and her work to encourage other women into the field.
Question: You’re obviously all successful leaders. How do you show up as a leader?
Vig: I would consider myself a coaching leader. I often talk about the fact that I’m a boots-on-the-ground type of leader. I like to be out in the field with my team, ensuring that if they need support or they need any help, that I’m there to give it to them so that they can succeed in whatever they’re doing.
Lunsford: I’m more of a servant leader. I believe that my team members come first and in doing so, we are able to build trust with our team members because that’s really key to get people to open up about the things they don’t know about yet, allowing us to then give them the skills that are necessary to be successful in their job.
Scroggs: I think collaborative is a good word, and I just want to make mention that although I’m kind of managing president, director of DKSS, I have an amazing partner, Laura Aarons. We’re a village and none of us can work alone. I think hiring people that are smarter than you is a sign of genius, and I feel like I’ve done that.
Ysasi: An influencing leader. I started my career in human resources working in a manufacturing plant, and it’s like a little city and you really don’t have that direct authority power. What you have is the ability to influence people by your behavior, by your thoughts, by asking curious questions. And so today … it can be easy to just say, go and do that. But having that curiosity and that influence serves me well.
Question: Talk about the role that mentorship played in your own career and what’s your approach to mentoring our next generation of leaders.
Scroggs: My mentors were males. I’m not quite so sure they knew what to do with me and my partner Laura, and so we just did whatever we wanted and asked for forgiveness, and it was successful. When we think about mentorship and leadership, I always think about a ladder and that with my teammates, you don’t get to move up the ladder unless you reach down and pull the people up that you are trying to grow to take your spot.
Ysasi: This has really been something I think so important with the creation of the Latina network of West Michigan. The Latina network was created because there were four of us in the community, and this was more than 10 years ago. And we kept on being the ones being asked to serve on a board (to provide) a Latina voice. It’s just recognizing that being a woman means a lot of different things.
Question: We’ve all had obstacles, barriers, failures, whatever challenges in our careers. Talk about a challenge that you’ve had in your career and how you’ve handled it.
Vig: I think the most important thing to do is to talk about what you do with the challenges or the failures. You have to take them as a learning experience. It’s really important. When we have run into problems within the industry, our team is inspired to present every problem back to the owner or the architect with a solution. We don’t give a problem without giving a solution. And so, I think that’s the most important thing.
Lunsford: I began my career as an entrepreneur. Failure will happen, it’s not an option, it’s going to happen. And what you do with that, that’s key. Are you going to use it as a steppingstone to get it to the next level, or are you just going to curl up, (and eat) ice cream all day?
Question: Describe a monumental moment in your business, how you handled it and what you learned from it.
Lunsford: Monumental pandemic, the great recession, the tariffs all monumental, right? But in 2019, we made the conscious decision to move away from high revenue, high volume business and go into more value-driven business … because the high volume was really draining our profitability, but that high revenue number, that’s an ego number. Everybody wants to be able to say, Hey, I’m a hundred million. I had a discussion with the team and said, okay, we’re going to get out of this business. We got to stop robbing from Peter to pay Paul, because Paul was getting all the money and everybody else was starving. So that was a struggle.
Scroggs: So, our organization has grown quite rapidly over the past 10 years, and certainly through organic growth, but a lot through acquisitions. My big lesson was bigger is not better. And while 90% of our acquisitions work great, one just didn’t work. We always talked about ‘we’re acquiring firms.’ We had to combine their firms with us. I’ll call it courage and the sadness to me that we needed to let go of something that did not work.
Question: Let’s pivot to navigating your responsibilities outside of the work environment, family caregiving, community involvement, whatever you choose to do outside of the work environment. How did you navigate when you’ve had such an incredible leadership role in your career?
Vig: It’s important to look at your life and be able to set priorities, use methods like time boxing to know what your priorities are. You want to be able to look at, we often use the word balance and what does balance mean? I sit down with my teams, and I talk about balance. Balance isn’t getting to work at eight, leaving at five every day. Balance is sometimes you’re working late, sometimes you’re working through the weekends, and you have to take all of it with a very good attitude and look at things as not that you have to do them, but that you get to do them and making sure that your life is an ebb and flow.
Ysasi: Well, this question is so timely. I feel like I’m coming out of a really intensive period of trying to balance all the responsibilities. I think it is recognizing that there’re going to be ebbs and flows in times when maybe you’re not giving your best and letting people know that I’m struggling right now.
The Women in Leadership panel discussion was moderated by local journalist and former WDIV reporter Paula Tutman.
The discussion featured:
Rachel Lutz, the founder and owner of The Peacock Room, which specializes in women’s apparel and accessories, stationery, gifts and furniture
Andrea Bogos Trapani, managing partner at Identity, a Birmingham-based national public relations, marketing and creative agency.
Kelly Burris, owner and founder of Burris Law, a Detroit firm specializing in intellectual property protection.
Jacqueline Howard, head of money wellness at Ally Financial, a digital financial services company.
Tina Jackson, the president and CEO at Work Skills Corporation, a non-profit vocational rehabilitation organization that has been dedicated to empowering individuals facing significant disabilities and employment barriers.
Question: What was the one critical moment that defined your success in your career?
Lutz: It is hard to pick one moment, but the biggest one was getting out of my own way and believing in myself. And I think that there are always these voices in your head that say, ‘you’re not ready for this.’ Having that confidence in my vision and stepping aside and believing in myself. I know it sounds a bit cheesy, but it’s very real and that continues to be an ongoing process.
Jackson: My story’s probably a little bit different. I actually answered an ad for an HR job, this role over 30 years ago this month, and I ended up meeting with the CEO, who was a disabled veteran. His name’s Rod and he became my mentor. So he, within my first six months, gave me the opportunity to start degree staffing division and said, you’ve got six months to make it profitable. And I ended up hitting the goal within the first 90 days, got promoted to executive leadership within my first seven years and then nine years later ended up taking over as president and CEO when he retired.
Burris: There are many pivotal moments in your life before you have a career when you’re a child like your grandmother telling you, don’t you ever let anyone tell you can’t do something. When I was an engineer, I befriended the CFO and one day she said to me, Kelly, you should look at becoming a patent attorney because business wasn’t that great. I thought, I don’t want to be a lawyer, I’m an engineer. And she said, patent attorneys, you have to understand the technology. You’ll be working with engineers all the time. That was pivotal for me.
Trapani: My career has been a series of base hits and opportunities that I am so grateful for that I truly believe there is divine intervention of something being meant to be. Two that are critically important are I got hired at Identity. My partner, who founded the agency, hired me 22 years ago. And as time went along, he said, I know my strengths and I see yours. And so we became business partners, and I have been leading the vision direction, how we show up in the world at Identity.
Question: What is leadership and what is good leadership? What is courageous leadership?
Jackson: I started out my career at 22 years old and I was quickly in the management and I’m having to navigate in a predominantly men’s world and 22 years old telling people what to do. They’ve never had a human resource force. And sometimes there’s this pressure that you feel like you have to act overly tough. And when you do that, then you lose authenticity. And so, what I have learned is that true leadership is really a combination. It’s confidence, it’s emotional intelligence. And then just really believing again in yourself.
