After a role as Vice President and Head of Global Medical Affairs at AbbVie, Maria Rivas is currently Senior Vice President for Global Medical Affairs at Merck. With a range of experience in the pharmaceutical industry including at Abbvie, Bayer and Lilly, Maria Rivas is especially interested in mentoring and developing women leaders. "I chose Endocrinology as my medical subspecialty because I was inspired by strong female faculty role models at New York Presbyterian's Department of Endocrinology," says Maria. When she entered the pharmaceutical industry, she benefited from both male and female mentors and leaders. She does credit one particular female executive with challenging her to think differently about her career path. "An HR executive dared to ask "why not", why wouldn't I consider transferring to headquarters and taking on a larger role. I am eternally grateful to this leader for having pushed me to consider a career move I had previously thought out of reach."
Though there have been advances overall in terms of gender parity in the workplace, women are still largely underrepresented in corporate contexts and seem less likely than men to advance in their careers or income. This may be due to several factors. While most CEOs agree that gender diversity is important, less than half of their employees feel that commitment to be true. Family support programs like parental leave are much more available, but employees aren’t using them due to a workplace culture that discourages time off. Women are working hard to advance in their careers and companies are implementing programs to try to help, but, women still face more challenges in their careers than men in the current corporate climate.
Thus it is vital that both male and female leaders mentor and champion female talent in stretch assignments and provide them the support needed to succeed in these roles.
