Created by Declan Lafray
Published 04/29/24 AT 8:29 AM EDT
The numbers don't lie: more diverse organizations perform better. Various studies show that businesses with more diverse and inclusive cultures are more likely to exceed their financial targets. Diverse organizations also score better on employee performance and employee retention metrics.
Despite these positive business cases, the situation on the ground is not following suit. In 2023, women's share of executive roles fell for the first time in more than 20 years, according to a report by S&P. In 2022, out of around 15,000 C-suite positions across publicly traded firms in the US, women held 12.2%. That decreased to 11.8% in 2023.
With women making up roughly 50% of the population, there is still a long way to go to achieve gender parity in the executive sphere. This is why Lauren Argenti Rawlings founded Precita Placements, an executive search firm that places untapped and diverse talent in corporate leadership roles. Over the years, Precita has curated a network of highly qualified diverse VPs and C-level executives, and it is constantly growing its portfolio of contacts. Led by an all-female team, Precita assists corporate leaders who want to drive real change at their organizations by helping them meet and implement diversity standards.
According to Rawlings, women and diverse leaders need recruiters who can amplify their voices in the employment market. However, that doesn't mean that Precita is not going to place the "best athlete", a candidate with exceptional skills that meet the organization's needs, for the job.
Rawlings says that many organizations think too narrowly when searching for someone to fill a leadership role. Their criteria often focus on certain characteristics that exclude a large number of potential high-performing candidates. Precita encourages clients to think more broadly about their specifications, so they can get a diverse slate and a diverse placement without taking any steps down in terms of quality. Precita's high-touch, white-glove level of service has resulted in virtually all of its clients coming back for a second executive search soon after completing their first.
Early in her career, Rawlings realized that she was motivated by a mission-driven cause and was simultaneously connected with Trewstar, a search firm that places women on corporate boards. Diversifying boards and making the corporate world a better place for women was her true purpose. Rawlings worked closely with founder Beth Stewart to grow the company's initial operations.
After placing 45 women on Fortune 1000 boards with Beth and the Trewstar team, Rawlings decided to explore the broader recruitment field, so she joined a boutique tech executive recruiting firm in San Francisco before founding Precita in 2019. She named the company after Precita Park in San Francisco, where she frequently took walks and where she came up with the idea to further the Trewstar diversity mission and establish a firm that places women in VP and C-level positions, creating a pipeline for future board directors.
"Precita is Spanish for 'little dam', and it coincides with the work that we do," Rawlings says. "We have created a reservoir of highly qualified candidates who happen to be diverse and are usually not on the radar of our clients."
Rawlings shares that shortly after Precita was founded, in the wake of major societal change in 2020, wide-reaching conversations about diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) were top of mind for many corporate leaders. Businesses realized the need to make their teams more diverse, and her inquiries saw a boost. However, the trend seems to be on the reverse now, and the backlash against DEI means Precita and other like-minded organizations need to work doubly hard.
"There have been initiatives aiming to increase the proportion of women on boards or the C-suite to 20% or 30%. I believe that we need to aim higher because women make up half of the population," Rawlings says. "However, this is a multifaceted issue, with women dropping out of the workforce for different reasons. These issues need to be addressed from multiple angles and require significant action and resource investment, and executive search is just one of these angles. I know this also takes a lot of time, so my dream is for US corporate leadership to achieve full gender parity within my daughters' lifetimes, and I have spent almost my whole career pushing for that."
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