#52Women52Weeks: Social sustainability in business is as easy as right & wrong, says Sue Reinhold, PhD.

Sue Reinhold, Ph.D. is a social entrepreneur who leads companies and not-for-profit agencies in transition. Working with boards and leadership teams, she helps entities through major leadership transitions and to stabilize the platform and to pave the way for the next long-term leader. Her career spans academia to investment management to finance to strategy, from the Fortune 200 to her own successful startups as well as turnarounds. She also teaches Jewish Bible, and vlogs weekly on the Bible and progressive politics.

?1) When will you usually get called in to help companies or not-for-profits?

When there is a sentinel event or issue and the platform needs stabilizing or retooling – they have lost a top leader and are forced into a transition period before hiring a new leader, the board knows it needs foundational work on strategic direction but also needs the trains to run on time or there’s a financial crisis at the entity. 

The engagement will be heavily driven by collaboration with board and leadership, and I can serve as a clearing kind of exec who gets the entity ready for the new long-term leader.  

2) What drives you most professionally?

First, honesty. If you are showing up do it as yourself it’s a lot easier. And it’s a lot easier to learn the hard things if you are straight up with yourself and others. 

Second, learning opportunities and being able to leverage what I’ve learned across my career. I’ve done a lot of things in my career but I don’t feel like a dilettante; I’ve been able to master a number of disciplines which I think has helped me raise my game in every environment I’ve worked in.

Third, collaboration. I don’t want to be the smartest person in the room, I want the best idea in the room. I manage like a coach in many settings; part of my job is to bring out the best in younger/junior leaders. 

3) How does ethical and moral responsibility most play a part in corporate strategy?

There is an adage that even a super-religious person can be a ‘scoundrel inside the bounds of the Bible.’ J.P. Morgan was once asked what it took to be a good banker, and he answered, ‘the fear of God.’ All this to say that strategy is a plan to get you to winning; if you do the right thing, and I know it sounds old fashioned, you will win – the right way. And yes, there is a wrong way to win. 

While the mandate to raise shareholder or business owner value is a firm one for a leader in the for-profit world, we became too focused on that as the sole value for business leaders in the past generation. In so doing we created a whole host of bad outcomes for society, our workforces, our educational system, and our customers. I am a big fan of B Corporations, that adopt a stakeholder approach to capitalism and that are evaluated on a rigorous set of metrics for social sustainability. My last business was one. 

4) Out of the many careers you've had thus far, which one was your favorite? 

Somewhere, in an alternate universe, I’m a college professor. That would have been fun, but I liked the rough and tumble of the capital markets a lot, too. I also loved the one-on-one counseling I was able to do with my clients at my financial advisory firm– very personal and people are really beautiful when they are vulnerable. I liked starting up a very successful not-for-profit that's grown to a point where I am leaving the board in a few months, and I also really enjoyed helping turn one around during the financial crisis. 

Of all my careers I think my favorite one was building a strategy team at a Fortune 200 company. It was a great blend of analysis, leadership, management, brand focus, team-building, and ability to act to effect change. But, since I’m a college professor somewhere, I still have a book in me, and I am working on that. 

5) Is becoming a woman rabbi any more difficult than a man doing so?

Not technically – many denominations now permit women to study Torah and become rabbis, but I think, like in finance and top executive management, women have to find the internal strength to muster the confidence to step into what was traditionally such a man’s role. 

Interestingly enough, there are now more women than men in rabbinic school, and there is talk of that vocation becoming ‘feminized’ and devalued as a result, as proportionately fewer men enter into it. But I have a rabbi friend – a man - who says most of the mensches he knows are women. I also know amazing Jewish teachers –women and men, who aren’t rabbis, whose flock I would join in a heartbeat!

I admire anyone who has studied and trained hard and who wants to lead in this way. Marrying people is fun, and turning kids onto their religion is fun, and leading services is fun, but you also see people broken, and you have to bury them. It doesn’t get much more tough than that. 

Link with Sue Reinhold HERE

Link with a different woman of industry every Thursday #52Women52Weeks

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