KPMG Women’s Leadership Summit Helps Advance Women to the C-suite

By Anthony Birritteri, Editor-in-Chief On Jun 21, 2023

While more than 150 professional women golfers will begin competing tomorrow at the 69th KPMG Women’s PGA Championship at Baltusrol Golf Club in Springfield, more than 300 executive women from across the country today attended the KPMG Women’s Leadership Summit.

Also held at Baltusrol, the event – in the words of on-air NBC Sports personality and event emcee Kathryn Tappen – is meant to “shine a spotlight on the advancement and empowerment of women in golf and in business. We want to accelerate change, and today is all about inspiring greatness.”

According to KPMG U.S. Chair and CEO Paul Knopp, the summit is about advancing women to the C-suite. He pointed out that over the summit’s nine-year history, 1,500 of some 2,500 women attendees are either in the C-suite now or are on the cusp of entering it across the US.

Among the highlights of the day was a fireside chat with former US Secretary of State Dr. Condoleezza Rice, who answered questions on her personal career journey, leadership, decision making, and being the first Black woman to hold high-ranking government posts.

Growing up in the segregated south, Rice said her family told her she had to work twice as hard to succeed in life. “My parents didn’t actually say that was a terrible thing. They just said I had to be twice as good and twice as confident. The paradox is that I am actually glad that I grew up in segregated Birmingham, Alabama.”

She stressed that it is important to have good mentors; people who care about your career, who see things in you that you don’t see in yourself. Rice added that her mentors did not look like her. “They were old white men, because if I waited for a black female role model who was a Soviet specialist, I’d still be waiting. … All that mattered was that [these mentors] cared about me.”

When asked by KPMG’s Knopp about being “a first” person to achieve something based on gender or race, Rice commented, “Rarely do people set out to be first. You sort of end up being the first at something. My good friend, the late [astronaut] Sally Ride said she didn’t want to be the first woman in space; she just wanted to be in space. I think you can take pressure off yourself by saying ‘alright, I’m just here to do a job.’

“The other point is to have confidence in yourself,” Rice continued. “I was a specialist on the Soviet military. A lot of times I would walk into a room and people would stare at me as if I was in the wrong meeting. But I knew I was in the right meeting, and eventually I knew they were going to get to the place where they knew I was in the right meeting.”

Rice also discussed the issue of making tough decisions based on competing values. She gave the example of attacking a terrorist stronghold: “I knew that civilians would be killed, but if you don’t attack, many more people may die. So, you have these competing values, both of which are equally moral in some sense, and you must choose between them,” she said.

With much talk about inclusion in the workplace today, Rice said that the practice works both ways. “Don’t wait for someone to include you. Try to include them,” she said. “Sometimes you need to bridge the other way, don’t wait for people to bridge to you.”

Discussing diversity, equity & inclusion, KPMG’s Knopp said the company, through its Accelerate 2025 initiative, is trying to hire more diverse talent and have that talent succeed and lead.

“I believe that when it comes to talent, DEI is paramount. We are not going to be successful as an organization unless we are more diverse, equitable and inclusive than we historically have been. We must put that at the center of our talent strategy,” he said.

Since taking over as title sponsor of the Women’s PGA Championship nine years ago, Knopp said KPMG has helped drive much change in women’s golf, with LPGA players having the opportunity to play on historic courses like Baltusrol. He also talked about increasing network coverage and the exposure of playing in a major market like the New York/New Jersey metro area.

“We are proud to be part of that positive change on the LPGA tour and to be a catalyst over the last nine years,” Knopp said, adding that the purses for five major LPGA events have grown from an average of $3.35 million to $7.46 million over that period, with total purses on the LPGA tour growing from $59 million to $104 million.

For the KPMG Women’s PGA Championship at Baltusrol, which runs from June 22-25, the 156 women players will compete for a $9 million purse.

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