Recorded live at the WBL Summit — part of the Inspiring Women WBL Series.

A real estate executive in New York spent years as the only woman at the table in a male-dominated industry, learning the rules of a game no one had taught her. Her husband, watching her navigate corporate rooms full of men, kept asking pointed questions. Why did you say it that way? Don't you see how that lands? That was the moment Julie Zuraw started writing down what she was learning.

Years later, Lead Like a Woman is a program she has delivered to female executives around the world, and Julie is now President & CEO of Invest Ahead, the national forum formerly known as the Thirty Percent Coalition, representing over 90 institutional investors, pension funds, asset managers, and private equity firms with more than $8 trillion in assets under management.

But the path there was anything but linear. Julie started her career running the branding division at what is now Publicis, left with a few women to build a consulting practice, then went in-house with a real estate client and ran that company for ten years before running a second New York real estate firm as COO. Large, male-dominated, high-stakes. She figured the game out the hard way, and built the program she wished she'd had.

Today Julie is leading the organization that pioneered the 30% goal for women on public company boards back in 2011, when only about 12% of US corporate board seats were held by women. The moral argument was obvious. The business case was obvious. But the progress was slow, and in the current climate some of it is actively being rolled back.

In this episode of Inspiring Women, recorded at the WBL Summit, host Laurie McGraw sits down with Julie Zuraw, President & CEO of Invest Ahead, to talk about what it actually takes to move the needle on boardroom diversity, and what she tells executive women about building real power in rooms that weren't designed for them.

They discuss:

▪ How Julie's years running male-dominated real estate companies in New York taught her there was a game being played, and why her husband's feedback became the founding insight for Lead Like a Woman

▪ Why the fundamental rule of finance — diversify or your risk goes up — has always been the business case for diverse boards, and why the opposition has always been social rather than economic

▪ How Invest Ahead's members engage with the companies they invest in as shareholders, why those conversations can take years to land, and why they still work

▪ The private equity program that pulls curated candidate profiles from pipeline organizations like LCDA, LEAP Pinnacle, ELC, and 50/50 Women on Boards, so deal teams have a broader bench before the next board seat opens

▪ Why "I can't find the talent" is a ridiculous argument, and what's actually happening when boards default to the same small network every time

▪ The California SB 826 story — seven years of fighting to pass it, Judicial Watch's lawsuit, the ruling still in the courts — and why hundreds of women got onto boards through Invest Ahead regardless of whether the law survives

▪ Why the advice to "just be more confident" is terrible advice, and where real personal power actually comes from

▪ The difference between female and male communication rituals, why the compliment game doesn't land in male-dominated hierarchies, and why that's not a reason to stop being who you are

▪ Julie's single piece of advice to the several hundred executive women in the room at WBL: you are the only one who decides you are worthy, and you are the only one who can decide you are not

Julie Zuraw has spent her career inside rooms that weren't built for her, and she walked out of every one of them having figured out how they actually work. Now she is running the organization that gets other women into those rooms — and teaching them the game before they walk in.

This episode is part of the Inspiring Women WBL Series, recorded on-site at the WBL Summit. WBL (Women Business Leaders of the US Health Care Industry Foundation) brings together senior women leaders across healthcare to connect, learn, and lead. Learn more about WBL at wbl.org.

#InspiringWomen #WBL #WBLSummit #WomenInLeadership #BoardDiversity #InvestAhead #LeadLikeAWoman

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Inspiring Women is hosted by Laurie McGraw. Subscribe for more conversations with the women shaping healthcare, finance, and business at the highest levels.