Creating Community to Empower Women in Finance with Sheryl Hickerson

It’s no secret that the financial services industry is a white, male-dominated space. Percentages over the years may have improved slightly, but signs of real progress seem far away. Craving connection with people you can relate to is a normal part of the human experience, but when these communities don’t exist, how do you get started building it yourself? 

For years, Sheryl Hickerson felt out of place in the financial services space and decided to do something about it. In 2018, she founded Females and Finance, a mission-driven company striving to hire, mentor, train, and advance 100,000 women in financial services and financial technology by 2025. Rebekah, Mac, and Sheryl discuss channeling creativity to start a business, how the support network fosters openness and vulnerability, and what the future holds for Females and Finance. 

In this episode, Sheryl talks to Rebekah and Mac about how she got Females and Finance off the ground, the biggest mistakes people make in community building, and how fear of failure holds us back. 

Key Takeaways

• [03:03] - How did the Females and Finance community get started?
• [06:18] - What is the goal of Females and Finance? 
• [09:24] - How Females and Finance creates a space of openness and vulnerability. 
• [13:06] - Sheryl’s response to haters.
• [15:56] - How Sheryl channels creativity to build a business. 
• [21:35] - Sheryl’s advice for expanding your network.
• [27:13] - The biggest mistakes people make in community building.
• [28:41] - Why the fear of failure holds us back.
• [31:10] - How to support Females and Finance. 
• [37:45] - Why compliance is necessary.

Quotes

[08:40] - “It feels better when you can actually come back and say, ‘I made a commitment to do this, and here's what I did with that goal.’ Numbers do matter.” ~ Sheryl Hickerson

[24:47] - “We each have an ability to build something very special for ourselves. Do it, and guard that like you would a moat around a castle because the wrong people will try to penetrate your community. ” ~ Sheryl Hickerson

[28:42] - “I hear a lot about the word fail, and I stop people as soon as they say, ‘oh, it's my fault.’ No, you learn. You learned something.” ~ Sheryl Hickerson

Links

• Sheryl Hickerson on LinkedIn
• Females and Finance
• The Fearless Pledge
• Give and Take: Why Helping Others Drives Our Success by Adam Grant
• The Art of Work: A Proven Path to Discovering What You Were Meant to Do by Jeff Goins

Connect with our hosts

• Smartria
• Mac on LinkedIn
• Rebekah on LinkedIn

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Learn more about Smartria

Creativity, Community, and Compliance is brought to you by Smartria, an award-winning compliance management platform for compliance consulting firms and RIA networks. We excel at making the complex and frustrating world of compliance simple to manage and easy to understand. Want to get a behind-the-scenes tour and check it out? Reach out to us at hello@smartria.com and take a peek at our website, smartria.com.