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Vote on Desiree Davidson's Story
Were they afraid we were planning a coup d'etat?
I spent my first summer during Columbia Law School at a firm in Philadelphia described as one of the best places in the city for black lawyers. I believed that if there was any place where I would have an equal chance at opportunities, be treated fairly and succeed, this would be it. There were three black female summer associates out of sixty that year but any time all three of us were in an office talking, one of the partners would knock on the door to see how we were doing. It happened too often to be a coincidence that sometimes we would purposely agree to meet in so-and-so's office to test our theory that we were being monitored. Like clock work, ten minutes after we would get together a partner would stop by.
Christopher Kamp's Experiences
Always in the back of my mind I knew that I was going to venture off and do my own thing. But it normally it takes something; there is always a catalyst that pushes you to go out there and try to do something on your own.
As I got more and more proficient in the job, there was more and more pressure to conform, to be someone other than who I was. There were little things. There were suggestions like, "you really need t
I had a great relationship with my boss. He came to me and said, "You've done a lot of great things here. You have worked on a lot of major transactions. I'm not having any problem at all with your performance, but I'm getting some feedback from my boss that you need to better manage your perceptions." I asked, "What do you mean by better manage perceptions?" He had a hard time explaining what that meant, but I guess it meant that I was suppose to kiss up more and do a little more brown-nosing.
My evaluations were never an issue, except for one criticism about managing perceptions. As a result, when bonus time came around, my bonus was reduced by two-thirds. So I asked, "Well, what happened? I had my best year ever and you've reduced my bonus by two-thirds." No one could explain why.
When I told my boss that I was upset with my bonus, he said, "This year I wasn't involved in the bonus process. Some of the senior people decided that they were going to give out bonuses based on thei
I had made a huge sacrifice. They were looking for someone to relocate from New York to North Carolina. I volunteered to do that and was told that I could be compensated accordingly. But not only was
I try to stay away from the office politics, but you need to promote yourself internally. Not just to your boss, but to your boss's boss. I was disadvantaged because I come from a military background, where you never really try to interact with senior personnel because you don't want to do or say anything that might cut your boss.
I was pretty involved in recruiting and I would spend some time with senior people and hear their thoughts about recruits; it was fascinating to me. A lot of the time performance or background was never an issue.
The company did have a mentorship program. I met up with someone and had lunch a couple of times and it was somewhat helpful. It wasn't really a genuine mentorship; it was just something the company put together and people were just going through the motions.
It was expected for me to do some recruiting for MBAs of color. Early on I got credit for doing it and I put it on my evaluation. It was something that I enjoyed doing, so I never bothered to try to explain that I was really working on some of these things.