Linda Descano, CFA and Chief Administrative Officer of Global Marketing & Corporate Affairs at Citi is also the dynamo president behind Women & Co.^® — a division of Citi that provides women with educational resources for navigating life transitions and planning their financial future. Linda understands their financial needs. She says, “The more we can help women enter the pipeline and get to the table, the better.”

 

From the beginning, Women & Co. has helped serve women’s unique needs: We tend to live longer, spend more years in retirement and are more likely to take time out of the workforce to care for our families. “Women really are the Chief Financial Officers of their households, when we used to be the Chief Purchasing Officers,” says Linda. Post-recession, many of us have recalibrated our behaviors, putting the value and securityelements back in as our business acumen grows. According to Harvard Business Review, women own 40% of businesses in the U.S., a number growing at twice the rate of U.S. firms as a whole. Increasingly, banks and financial institutions are taking notice.

 

My grandmothers inspire me. One worked by choice, the other by necessity. Neither finished elementary school. My mother, who didn’t graduate from high school, has five sisters. I’ve grown up really fortunate surrounded by women as mentors and watching them as active decision makers in their families. Because they didn’t have formal educations, these women encouraged all of us — I’m the eldest of 26 grandchildren — to succeed. As such, the older female relatives endowed me with much responsibility; all their aspirations with that obligation rode on my shoulders. The choices and sacrifices my grandmothers made moved us forward. They taught us, as the Dakota Indians believed, “You will be known forever by the tracks you leave behind.”

 

I learned from experience, and don’t want other women to make the same mistakes I made. In my first marriage, my husband handled our finances while I focused on my career. By the time the partnership dissolved, we’d amassed much credit card debt. Working as a director and portfolio manager in Citi’s Private Portfolio Group, I realized women asked different questions than men. So I put aside our canned presentations and took notice. At a Citi-sponsored women’s conference in 2000, we repeatedly heard one message: Women wanted to talk about money, but no one in the financial industry was listening. And, Women & Co. was born. I continue to seize the wonderful opportunity to listen to women, hear how they navigate their finances and help them create a Plan B.

 

2010 marks our 10th anniversary. Ten years of incredibly rich ongoing dialogues with women from all walks of life and in incredibly varied situations have shaped our mission in terms of topics, how we engage and communicate. We like to say, “It’s more Women, less Co.”

 

I consider myself both mentor and mentee. I formally mentor one woman through the Step Up Women’s Network and informally coach and support women inside and outside Citi. I turn to my own personal Board of Directors (men and women) as a sounding board to help me think through opportunities and decisions in my professional and personal lives. I believe in lifelong learning and continually embracing new technologies. Mentoring provides an opportunity to see the world through others’ eyes. If we don’t help each other, no one else will. Going beyond formal mentoring relationships, it’s about being open and gracious. I model by example. And I help underprivileged girls through gifting and offering my time, even if only 10 minutes on the phone. Among her many accomplishments, Linda was the New York recipient of the 2009 Corporate w2wlink Ascendancy Award for her career achievements and commitment to mentoring women.

 

I would better appreciate my strengths and look at the glass as half full. I’ve always looked at what I don’t have, rather than celebrating my achievements. I’d tell her to be thankful for the fact that I have 10 fingers and 10 toes, am a good writer, likeable, and have realized good fortune in succeeding. I’d get over my shortcomings. Live in the moment, and be thankful.