In the long line of services promising to help women improve their lot at work, an entrant from a billionaire investor is attracting thousands of female financial professionals from around the world.
Poker Power is a dozen-course program created by longtime trader Jenny Just that uses the card game to teach risk-taking and negotiation techniques. Lessons, taught by seasoned players, start with skills such as how to read opponents and when to fold.
The students then adapt those techniques to workplace scenarios, like asking for a raise. Then they play Texas Hold ’em with others over Zoom. No money is at stake.
Abbey Perkins, chief information officer at New York–based trading firm StoneX, was drawn to Poker Power as a way to elevate the other women at her firm. She had worked with its founder, Just, and said its messaging resonated with her.
“‘All in’ sounds like throwing all your chips on the table. Well, it isn’t,” Perkins said. “It’s about being committed to the position you’ve taken.” In May, she brought the game to her firm. More than 125 of her colleagues played, and many are still at it.
There’s no shortage of books, classes and consultancies targeting working women looking to level up their careers. Although it’s unlikely that any individual action will put a dent in the gender pay gap or flood women into the C-suite , the lure of a tangible solution is strong. Demand among female MBA students for Power Poker at Northwestern University’s Kellogg School of Business was more than double the 100 spots offered. Almost 4,000 women in more than 20 countries have signed up to play.
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For Cathy Jerome, a senior marketing director with the NBA’s Washington Wizards, the program blew other career-development opportunities out of the water.
“There’s no comparison,” Jerome said via email.Just, co-founder of Peak6 Investments in Chicago, came up with the idea in 2019 with the hopes of recruiting more women to money-management roles, which tend to pay more. She’s had her own struggles with gender diversity at her firm—around […]
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