Thriving As A Woman In a Male-Dominated Industry: Barbara Feigin On The Five Things You Need To Thrive and Succeed as a Woman In a Male-Dominated Industry

An Interview With Kelly Reeves

Dream big; work very, very hard; and never, ever quit

In the United States in 2022, fields such as Aircraft piloting, Agriculture, Architecture, Construction, Finance, and Information technology, are still male-dominated industries. For a woman who is working in a male-dominated environment, what exactly does it take to thrive and succeed? In this interview series, we are talking to successful women who work in a Male-Dominated Industry who can share their stories and experiences about navigating work and life as strong women in a male-dominated industry. As a part of this series, we had the distinct pleasure of interviewing Barbara Feigin.

Barbara Feigin graduated from Whitman College, earning a Bachelor of Arts degree in political science, and completed a graduate program in business administration run jointly by Harvard Business School and Radcliffe Graduate School. In her illustrious 30-year career at Grey Advertising (now Grey Global Group), she solidified her reputation as a visionary thinker. In all her years as a senior advertising executive and a corporate director, she was more often than not the only woman in the room. In 2017, Feigin was named one of the century’s Legendary Pioneers by Grey.Feigin has passed her swagger and hard work ethic on to her three high-achieving sons: Peter, President of the Milwaukee Bucks and FiservForum; Daniel, head of Trevor Day School, a nursery through 12th grade independent school in New York City; and Michael, managing editor at Trellus, an online healthcare start-up.

Thank you so much for doing this with us! Before we dig in, our readers would like to get to know you a bit more. Can you tell us a bit about your childhood “backstory”?

I fled with my Jewish father and Lutheran mother from Nazi Germany in July, 1940, when I was two years old. We went on a grueling, death-defying seventeen-day train trip from Berlin to Yokohama, Japan, and from there across the Pacific Ocean to Seattle. My parents came to America with nothing — no connections, no money, no English, no idea how they would make a life for our family. But they were elated to be in the land of the free and optimistic that somehow they would make it work. I grew up in Chehalis, a tiny town in southwest Washington State, yearning to become an authentic American girl. From there I went to Whitman College at a time when the options for women were to become nurses, teachers, typists, or to get married. None of those options appealed to me. I decided to go to a graduate program in business administration run jointly by the Harvard Business School and Radcliffe Graduate School. This was a time when women were not admitted to the male-only Harvard Business School.

Can you tell us the story about what led you to this particular career path?

In my time at the Harvard-Radcliffe Program in Business Administration

(H-RPBA) I learned about all facets of business and decided that I wanted a career in marketing, a field that seemed very exciting to me. But the career-path-building jobs in marketing were, and still are, in product and brand management, and these jobs were closed to women. So I went through the back door, into marketing research, first at the Vick Chemical Company (now part of Procter & Gamble), and with no career path opportunities available there, I eventually found my way into the advertising business, which I loved from the moment I arrived.

Can you share the most interesting story that happened to you since you began your career?

In my first job in the advertising business I worked for a large, very prominent and prestigious ad agency. I’d been there a few years when I learned I was pregnant. My plan was to work until the baby was born, take a few weeks off, and return to my job. When the time came to tell my boss about my pregnancy, he was very happy for me and my husband, Jim. But when I told him my plan, his face fell and his whole body sagged. He said, “Oh no, we don’t do that.” I asked him, “Do what?” He said, “We don’t have maternity leaves.” When I repeated my plan, he said, “I can’t help you with that; I have to go to the higher-ups.” And he did; he very anxiously went to bat for me. A few days later he called me into his office and said, “You have it! You have a maternity leave.” I was thrilled for myself, of course, but thrilled too to have the first maternity leave in this agency and thereby to have paved the way for all the women who came after me.

Which three character traits do you think were most instrumental to your success?

• Courage

There were times throughout my career when I had to do scary things — things that made me fearful. One of the first was when I graduated from the H-RPBA and wanted to go into marketing. I knew the center of marketing — the place where big things in marketing were happening, was New York. I knew I had to go to New York if I wanted to have a marketing career, but I had no connections, no friends, no place to live, no job, and no money. But despite all these obstacles, I screwed up my courage, got on the train in Boston, and made my way to New York, confident, as my parents had been when they came to America, that one way or another, I would make it work. And I did.

• Determination and Perseverance

I’d been at my first job in New York, as a marketing research trainee at the Vick Chemical Company, now part of Procter & Gamble, for about a year. I’d received good feedback about my performance and thought it was time to talk with my boss about my career path next steps and about compensation. When I sat down across from him in his office and explained why I was there, he stared at me for a moment and then threw his head back, roaring with laughter. I asked him why he was laughing, and he said, “Career path. . .there is no career path.” I asked him what he meant, and he responded, “Women. . .they get married, they have babies, and they leave.” I told him I expected to get married and to have babies, but I’d gone to business school and I was determined to have a career. He said, “If that’s what you want, Barbara, I can’t help you. You’ll have to leave.” And so I did. And I found my way into the male-dominated advertising business where I built a very successful career over many decades.

• Optimism and Resilience

Several years into my first job in advertising, I began to hear of the meteoric rise of an agency called Grey Advertising. Grey was reeling in one new, big, prestigious account after another. I thought, “I wonder what they’re doing to make this happen. What’s their secret sauce?” I did some due diligence and learned that Grey had developed a new approach to creating advertising. Rather than working from gut hunches, which was the norm at that time, Grey was developing innovative new consumer research and analytic tools to focus on the up-front, strategic, part of the advertising development equation. I thought, “I want to work there. I want to work in a place where the kind of work I do is foundational to the agency’s work — is its competitive edge. So, I wangled an interview at Grey and was turned down for the job; I did not have the right experience. But the woman who interviewed me told me to spend a year getting the experience she outlined and to come back after I’d done so, and she would hire me. I was very disappointed, but I had to pick myself up and move forward, optimistic that if I followed her advice, I’d get a job at Grey. I did so, and a year later was hired by Grey for what became a decades-long, highly successful career.

Can you help articulate a few of the biggest obstacles or challenges you’ve had to overcome while working in a male-dominated industry?

I played a central role in Grey’s new business efforts, working to develop Grey’s portfolio of accounts. I was more often than not, the only woman on Grey’s presentation team. We were quite successful in winning new accounts, but occasionally, we lost. When we did, I always thought it was my fault; I fussed and stewed trying to figure out what I’d done wrong. At the time, my three sons played basketball and I noticed that win or lose, after a game, they debriefed, talking not about whose fault it was if they lost but rather about what had gone well and what had gone poorly and needed to be improved. This was an epiphany for me. I realized that the men on my new business teams did the same thing. I stopped thinking it was my fault when we lost, and joined the men in a hard-nosed analysis of what we needed to do better next time.

When I first joined the board of directors of a NYSE company, once again as the only woman in the room, the male directors didn’t know what to do with me. They saw me as “the (token) woman,” talking and laughing among themselves and talking over me when I tried to say something. I realized I needed to raise my voice and keep raising my voice until they listened. When they did, they realized I had something of value to contribute. From then on, I was integrated into the full board.

Can you share a few of the things you’ve done to gain acceptance among your male peers and the general work community? What did your female co-workers do? Can you share some stories or examples?

As I’ve discussed in responses to other questions in this questionnaire. . .

• I led some well-regarded success stories with Grey’s clients, including Kool-Aid, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, Mars, Procter & Gamble, and 3M to name a few.
• I developed a reputation as a recognized authority on the American consumer.
• I represented Grey, speaking at business conferences around the world, highlighting the innovative work I helped lead.
• I was interviewed and quoted often in the business and popular press, including Good Morning, America, the New York Times, Fortune Magazine, Forbes, Business Week, the Wall Street Journal.
• I became chairman of a major industry association, the Advertising Research Foundation.
• I continued always to “dream big; work hard; and never quit”.

My female co-workers who had ambitions to become successful worked hard to build their credentials as well.

What do you think male-oriented organizations can do to enhance their recruiting efforts to attract more women?

The focus on enhancing recruiting efforts to attract more women needs to come from the top and needs to permeate the entire organization. The organization, driven by the leader, needs to understand the value women can bring to the organization — brains, talent, necessary skills, a different perspective, etc.

Recruiting to attract more women needs to be not simply a project, but rather part of the fabric of the organization.

What are the five things you need to thrive and succeed as a woman in a male-dominated industry?

• Dream big; work very, very hard; and never, ever quit

Throughout my forty-year career in the male-dominated advertising business, I was guided by a principle for living I’d learned from my mother. I tried always to dream big — to focus on the goal I was trying to achieve. It sometimes took time to get there, but I worked very, very hard to achieve that goal. And when I came up on bumps in the road, I kept trying to move forward and never quit. I was thrilled when at Grey’s centennial celebration I was named one of the century’s seven Legendary Pioneers. Big dreams can become reality!

• Bring something of value to the table

For me, this was my acknowledged expertise and recognition as an authority on the American consumer. This was an important credential that Grey leveraged among its clients, prospects, and the business community at large.

• Make your voice heard

When men talk over you, or talk only among themselves, keep raising your voice as I did when I first joined a NYSE board of directors. I raised my voice until it broke through and the male directors listened. Once they did and they realized I had something of value to contribute, I became integrated into the full board.

• Collaborate

I was very fortunate to work in a collaborative business — advertising, in which colleagues representing different disciplines worked together to define and solve problems and develop creative solutions. In my role as a leader, I worked hard to bring out the best thinking from each one in the group and to foster the cross-pollinating of ideas that was critical to our work. It was clear that the ideas of the group were always stronger than the ideas of any one of its members.

• Have a sense of humor

In a male-driven industry, it’s especially important to have a sense of humor: to laugh with your colleagues every day, often self-deprecatingly. One example: Grey had just provided its staff with computers. I took my laptop home so I could work on it and get comfortable with it over the weekend. My sons had guests that weekend, and I never had the time to work on my computer. On Monday, I had a meeting in my office, and as we were wrapping up, we were scheduling our next meeting. I went to my computer to check my calendar, and when I clicked on, a booming voice shouted, “Barbara Feigin, get your head out of you’re a**”! My darling children had done their secret work, and everyone in my office, including me, was convulsed with laughter.

Would you advise a woman friend to start a career in a field or industry that’s traditionally been mostly men? Can you explain what you mean?

I would advise a woman friend to start a career in whatever field excites her, irrespective of whether traditionally it’s been dominated by men. I would tell her to dream big about striving for what she wants to achieve, to expect to work very, very hard, and to anticipate challenges and obstacles along the way which she should work to figure out how to get around. I’d counsel her that the path may not be easy or her goals may not be quick to achieve, but when she does achieve them, she’ll have a great sense of satisfaction.

Have you seen things change for women working in male-dominated industries over the past ten years? How do you anticipate that it might improve in the future? Can you explain what you mean?

Yes, things have definitely changed for the better for women working in male-dominated industries in the past ten years. Women who have become CEO’s in industries such as the male-dominated automotive, technology, financial services, and airplane manufacturing businesses as well as others, have set the pathway for other women coming behind them. With more women becoming corporate directors, consciousness will be raised even higher as to the need for corporations to value women and to hire and promote them to leadership positions.

Is there a person in the world, or in the US with whom you would love to have a private breakfast or lunch with, and why?

I’d like to have breakfast or lunch with Warren Buffett. I’d like to know his answers to the same questions you’ve asked me.

Thank you for these fantastic insights. We greatly appreciate the time you spent on this.