Katten Selected Among "2020+ Top Companies for Executive Women"

(CHICAGO) Katten announced today that the firm was named one of the "2020+ Top Companies for Executive Women" by Working Mother Media and as such was listed among the top 75 workplaces for women who want to advance through the corporate ranks.

"This distinction truly is an honor not just because we have long been focused on cultivating and maintaining a supportive culture that champions the ongoing involvement and leadership of women across our firm, but also because we are listed among a wide selection of great companies," said Katten Chairman Roger P. Furey.

Katten was one of only a few law firms that earned a spot on the list alongside a number of Fortune 100 companies.

The recognition highlights companies that focus on succession planning, gender pay parity, support programs and work-life balance programs. The selected companies answered more than 200 questions on topics including female representation at all levels, particularly top earners and women in the leadership roles. The survey responses, based on 2019 data, also reported the number of female employees who have access to and have participated in programs and policies that promote the advancement of women. To be considered, companies must have a minimum of two women on their boards of directors, a US-based CEO and at least 1,000 US employees.

"Increasing the representation of women in our senior ranks is a priority at Katten," said partner Kenya S. Woodruff, national chair of Katten’s Women’s Leadership Forum (WLF). "Our internal programming this year has focused on career growth for women at the firm and the pipeline of future leaders at Katten. We launched a six-part business development boot camp series because the potential for generating business and cultivating client relationships plays a key role in compensation as well as elevating attorneys to the partner levels."

Specifically, the boot camp offers sessions on personal branding, leveraging the firm’s internal resources to identify business targets and prepare strategies to develop and expand business relationships, and guiding attorneys on how to successfully implement their action plans for business development. Last year’s WLF training series centered on overcoming imposter syndrome to empower female attorneys to be even more successful.

In addition, Katten helps female attorneys achieve career goals and stay on track toward continued success through career coaching services, mentoring opportunities, and a new committee created to assess and make recommendations regarding standards for partnership in an effort to impact promotion and retention of women attorneys.

Complementing the career-focused initiatives that foster a supportive work environment for women at Katten are the flexible work programs such as the paid four-week sabbatical program offered to associates; an enhanced remote work policy that allows for more flexible schedules to accommodate caregiving and distance-learning needs during the pandemic; and an expanded parental leave policy that offers a standard 12-week, gender-neutral paid leave plus eight weeks to birth mothers and those who have exceptional circumstances, such as becoming adoptive and surrogate parents.

"Because what gets measured gets done, our Top Companies list stresses the number of women in senior positions," says Betty Spence, president of the National Association for Female Executives, a division of Working Mother Media. "Most important, we are the only organization that counts women holding revenue-generating operations positions with profit-and-loss responsibility, as those are the jobs that are the path to the top."