Partner at Egon Zehnder
A senior consultant with more than 20 years experience in accounting and financial services, Henny has mentored thousands of entrepreneurs and business leaders to help them find and fulfill their aspirations.
The eldest in a modest family of three daughters, self-sufficiency and economic independence prevailed over personal vocation when Henny had to make her career choices. She studied accounting, a path that seemed more stable and lucrative than the job of French teacher she had initially dreamt of. After starting her career as a consultant for a Jakarta-based US enterprise, she eventually managed to obtain a full-ride scholarship and pursued her studies at the prestigious Harvard Business School.
But teaching and mentoring have always been Henny’s “thing”, ever since she tutored other highschool students. Her passion for guiding people towards self-advancement never left. Over her 20-year-long career at Egon Zehnder, a global management and executive search firm, she has been advising and encouraging numerous businessmen and women, who hold top-level positions in the financial sector, including BTPN Syariah’s President Director Ratih Rachmawaty. As an active mentor at Endeavour, a nonprofit organization supporting high-impact entrepreneurs in emerging markets, she has also sowed the seeds of many Indonesian startup’s success over the last few years.
Henny never deliberately applied a gender lens when supporting her mentees, but she noticed the gender gap at the two extremities of the career pyramid. Firstly, women are still a minority among the early-stage entrepreneurs who take the mic at Endeavour’s pitching competition. For Henny, the entrepreneurial journey is an insecure one, without the “safety net” child-bearers might look for. Secondly, women though women commonly hold middle management positions, gender diversity is still a far-fetched reality at the top-tier. For Henny, women’s “self-imposed” glass-ceiling is the primary obstacle to reach senior managerial roles. “Women tend to lower their ambition and to exert self-restraint when formulating job or salary expectations to their hierarchy” observed Henny.
To foster the shift in mindset, Henny champions the Harvard Business School’s “Women on Board” global campaign, to attract more senior business women on corporate boards in Indonesia. For Henny, peer-to-peer networks and role models play a key role in backing up women’s ambition. She is herself involved in several groups of women in finance or consultancy. ”The community is relatively new but is growing in Jakarta, where several top strategy consulting firms, like Kearney and McKinsey, are now led by women” says Henny confidently.
enterprises must shoulder their share of responsibility too. Before joining Egon Zehnder, Henny held a hectic job with another enterprise, involving constant business trips abroad. Then, she had her first child. Travelling six days a week became increasingly difficult with a two year-old daughter at home. Egon Zehnder was just opening an office in Jakarta and offered her more flexible work arrangements. 23 years later, she is still at Egon Zehnder and has witnessed the increasing share of women in the enterprise, due to a sustained effort to foster gender equality in the workplace. ”When I first joined the firm, women accounted for only 15% of total staff worldwide. There is now a perfect gender parity, except at our Jakarta’s office: we have only one male employee!” she laughs. Offering childcare facilities and flexible schedules seem like basic matters, but are nonetheless as important as building women’s self-confidence.
Henny has a lot of success stories worth sharing, both with corporate leaders and self-doubting talents, to show that they both have a role to help women break their own glass-ceiling.
