Georgie Dickins, founder and CEO of Women in Leadership Global (WILG), a membership network for female leaders in finance, recently led the WILG team in ringing the Nasdaq opening bell to celebrate a major achievement – the launch of her book Women in Leadership: 500 Lessons to Our Younger Selves.
"It was an incredible moment, a celebration of community and collaboration that will stay in the memory bank for a long time," said Dickins, who as well as founding WILG is the co-founder and managing director of Cajetan Group, a boutique business specializing in leadership development and executive coaching.
At Cajetan Group, Dickins works with global leaders, visionaries, and changemakers as a trusted advisor, thinking partner and coach, drawing on her experiences from working in financial services.
From starting as an intern at Lehman Brothers to working in front office leadership roles at JP Morgan, ICAP and Thomson Reuters, Dickins has more than two decades of experience in the financial services industry. She also sits on the board of trustees at Switch the Play Foundation, a UK charity dedicated to supporting sportspeople to successfully transition into life outside of sport, and serves as an advisory board member for the non-profit Women in Derivatives (WIND).
Recounting how she moved from corporate life to co-founding a coaching and advisory business, Dickins said she felt she had an entrepreneurial flair that had not been exercised in the industry. It was her own leadership coach who suggested executive coaching, given her love of human behavior, her ability to forge deep connections and her talent to disrupt and transform a person’s thinking.
At first starting a new venture seemed daunting, so Dickins went into months of research to learn more about coaching and advisory as a career to understand if the type of advice and support she could offer was valuable.
Thus, Cajetan was born. Through her coaching work at Cajetan, Dickins met female leaders from the industry who sought guidance for personal and professional success, and she soon realized that when it came to the challenges she had faced over the years in the industry; chronic people pleasing, perfectionist tendencies, allowing the inner critic to live free in her headspace, operating in the energy redzone and the pressure to hide insecurities and anxieties…she was not alone.
"Women do an amazing job of appearing swan-like. We are graceful, calm and composed on the outside. No one sees what’s behind the mask. No one sees what's going on beneath the surface. Often there is an underlying pressure women place on themselves to be perfect and confident, or at least to appear so. We fear there is no room for mistakes," Dickins said, "and rarely do we know what good enough looks like."
Dickins’ experience in running a coaching business, and the realization that there were golden threads in the challenges facing all female leaders, became a catalyst for the formation of Women in Leadership Global.
Started in 2019, WILG is a network that provides the support and empowerment that Dickins wished she had had earlier in her career. Two years after its formation, executive performance coach Klaudia Gorczyca joined WILG to help expand the programmes it offers to members.
"I wanted to create an extraordinary network for high performing individuals to connect, to collaborate, to champion, to inspire and to challenge each other - a trusted outlet where we could celebrate our successes together, and equally, a place where we could bring our challenges. Leadership can be an incredibly lonely place and people forget leaders are human beings and there are days where they will move mountains and equally there are days where they wobble," Dickins shares.
WILG offers five six-month programmes – Expeditions, Constellations, Explorers, Quartermasters, and Luminaries. All are referral, invitation-only and cohort-based. Dickins runs the Constellations programme designed for accomplished female leaders with 20Y+ experience (C-Suite and senior leaders) from the financial services sector. Each cohort is named after a constellation of stars to symbolize growth and expansion through connection with other women leaders.
The Expeditions programme is run by Gorczyca and is designed for the high potential mid-level leaders (10Y+) looking to build their leadership skills in a supportive environment. The Explorers programme is for women who are considering a career transition. Quartermasters is offered to male leaders who are actively seeking to ensure gender diversity in all roles and levels. The Luminaries programme focuses on public and private CEOs, who are wanting to lead their teams and organisations with excellence.
Dickins offers these programmes and resources to achieve a larger goal: to harness the power of inspiring women leaders and, to advance the face of leadership across the world’s most powerful industries.
The women who enroll in a membership are not showing up as a representative of their companies, Dickins said. They are asked not to share their titles, and instead, introduce themselves by name only. This helps deconstruct levels and expectations and creates an inclusive environment that encourages genuine human connection without biases or filters getting in the way.
Presently the network is focused on women leaders and male allies within the financial services industry.
"We've decided to be intentional and deliberate about keeping it niche because there are some specific challenges in financial services. It’s very nuanced and while our network is about elevation and growth, it's also about this powerful peer network," she said.
Book launch
This year, Dickins published Women in Leadership: 500 Lessons to Our Younger Selves, a book chock full of advice for women in finance. The concept of the book started with what Dickins calls "espresso shots."
"At the beginning of last year, I started sharing insights with the community. I called them espresso shots. So, every Saturday they receive 10 espresso shots from me of kernels of wisdom, knowledge, and insights. When I was journaling last August, I thought, what if we can make this into a book?"
It turned out that Dickins and other female leaders had hundreds of "espresso shots" to share with women climbing their own career mountains and navigating challenges, setbacks, curveballs, and speed bumps. These shots of wisdom offer advice that each contributor wished they could have known when they were younger, and the lessons they experienced that influenced and shaped their trajectories.
Dickins sums up her top piece of advice to women in the financial services industry in three words: "You’ve got this."
"Confidence is a result and not a requirement. There can be discomfort in the unknown, but there is a discernible difference between scary and dangerous. Scary often means being on the path of creating and achieving extraordinary things. Tap in and listen to your inner advocate rather than the inner critic. Believe in yourself and set that precedent so others believe in you too. Confidence is an inside job."
For more information on Women in Leadership Global (WILG) visit womeninleadershipglobal.com.
