Tuck business administration professor Ella Bell launched ASCENT: Leading Multicultural Women to the Top last week in front of a crowd of 200 people at the National Museum of the American Indian in New York City. The non-profit organization, which she founded, sets out to close the gap found in the corporate work force between minority women and their Caucasian peers by developing skills and talent through research, education, networking and corporate sponsorship.
In an interview with The Dartmouth after the launch, Bell said she is "still in a state of shock." She described the event as "the launching of a dream come true," and believes that "ASCENT is an important new organization for women."
The organization provides leadership programs for women of color at every level of business from their first job to positions of corporate leadership. With ASCENT programs such as Building Talent and Advancing Talent, multicultural women are taught to develop leadership and succeed in executive business. A third ASCENT program, Finding Talent, works with its corporate partners to promote the hiring and advancement of multicultural women.
"We are working with women and managers to transform relations with managers, which will not only benefit women of color but all employees," Bell said.
Only 15 percent of women in private sector management positions and 6.3 percent of U.S. corporate managers are women of color, according to the press release for the event. Through ASCENT, Bell sets out to "fill a void in positioning multicultural women."
Bell said that the hardships faced by multicultural women have been ignored while companies focus on retaining women executives who might leave to fulfill familial obligations. She came to this conclusion while on her book tour with Stella Nkomo for their book, Our Separate Ways, which was released in 2001. In order to realign the companies' priorities, "it became clear we needed a vehicle to move past awareness and into advancement and action," Bell said.
"These women are more educated and better prepared to succeed in the corporate arena than at any other period in our history" Bell said in a statement. "They are sharp. They are talented and savvy. And they are ready and willing to take on the challenges of corporate America."
In 2004 Bell, partnered with the Tuck School of Business, set out to create a leadership organization for the advancement of women of color in business. Bell looks forward to the partnership between ASCENT and Tuck, noting that both the dean of the school, Paul Danos, and the senior associate dean, Robert Hanson, are her "fairy God angels in this process."
Tuck will provide the headquarters for the ASCENT program Creating Knowledge, which supports research in developing new and improved methods for advancing women of color and increasing their success in the workforce. Executive leadership training will be take place across the country in four month sessions starting in Dallas and at Tuck in Hanover, with plans to expand to New York, California and North Carolina.
Bell earned her B.A. at Mills College of Education and her graduate degrees from Columbia University and Case Western Reserve University. She has been a professor at the Tuck School of Business since 2000.
