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Don't Try To Be A Man, And More Honest Tips From Highly Successful Women

This article is more than 9 years old.

If you're a woman who's spent any time at all in the corporate world, you might recognize yourself in Ruzwana Bashir's story. Before cofounding travel site Peek, British-born Bashir spent the formative years of her career in the relative boys clubs of Goldman Sachs and Blackstone.

At the latter, Bashir, now 31, was the first woman in her group. She often felt compelled to exercise what are often seen as male traits in the office. She was, in her own words, aggressive, assertive and masculine.

"In that environment as a woman, you can feel crowd-forced to conforming," Bashir explained to a room full of young entrepreneurs and achievers on Monday at Forbes' inaugural Under 30 summit in Philadelphia.

Bashir realized later, upon entering Harvard Business School and being forced to examine her own traits as a business person, that what are often seen as feminine attributes can serve an entrepreneur or executive just as well, if not better, than stereotypically male characteristics.

"Those 'female' traits of empathy and compassion -- of being collaborative -- are true business strengths," she said.

Today, as the CEO of a tech company in male-dominated Silicon Valley, Bashir ensures her workforce is diverse (Peek is 50/50 men and women at present, with numerous nationalities represented) -- and also makes a point of giving young women employees her full support.

This includes introducing them to possible mentors. She also sets an example by being authentic, allowing vulnerabilities to show through, rather than mirroring male traits.

"Don't wear that boxy trouser suit because you feel like you have to," she said. "Wear whatever you want."

Bashir was joined on stage at the Under 30 Summit by Cinnabon president Kat Cole and Shannon Galpin, founder of women's advocacy nonprofit Mountain2Mountain, on a panel called Brutally Honest Tales of Successful Women moderated by Denise Restauri, Forbes contributor and author of Their Roaring Thirties: Brutally Honest Career Talk From Women Who Beat The Youth Trap.

Shannon Galpin told of finding herself in a unique position: a western woman working in a world where men don't just run the show but have all the rights. Her nonprofit Mountain2Mountain educates and provides opportunities for girls and women in conflict regions, including Afghanistan.

Galpin recalled her first visit to Kandahar Women's Prison in her organization's early years. "The thing that was really striking to me was I felt completely helpless," she said. "I was not in a position to help these women in any real, tangible way. I think that is the most debilitating thing."

She soon realized that she could use her unusual position to advocate for the Afghan women she'd met in prisons and elsewhere, many of whom had survived rape and other forms of abuse. As a western, non-Muslim woman, she was viewed, as she tells it, as essentially gender neutral by the men in charge.

She could use her voice to advocate for women who might otherwise not have the same access to the seats of power entirely occupied by men. She was also able to speak freely with Afghan women. ("They'd often tell a radically different story," she said.)

Galpin has implemented mid-wifery and literacy programs in rural parts of the country, helped install computer labs in girls' schools and set up kindergartens in women's prisons for the children of inmates. Much of her success can be attributed to her ability to make the most of an otherwise ugly culture of gender inequality, using her outsider status to help women.

Kat Cole has had to overcome sexist stereotyping in spite of her prodigious success. The former waitress was a director of Hooters Inc. by age 25 and the youngest of four VPs by 26. Now, she's the president of mall food favorite Cinnabon; she's helped turn the company into a $1 billion (revenues) giant with a growing supermarket presence.

That didn't stop commenters on a 2012 Forbes story on Cole's career positing that she'd slept her way to the top. As the product of a single-parent household who made her way to the C-suite without an undergraduate degree, Cole was more troubled than offended.

"It's sad that so few people with humble beginnings have reached the top that [the trading of sexual favors] is the assumption," she told the audience on Monday. Her advice to young women in business? Tell your own story so that no-one can fill in the gaps for you with innuendo or inaccuracies.  "Don't get sucked into the vortex of the negative vibe," she said.

Cole also warned against basking in the self-satisfaction of being, say, the youngest person in the room, or the only woman. "You don't have a voice automatically because you have a seat," she said.  "Enjoy the cushy seat for a moment, but if you don't use your voice there's someone waiting behind you who will."

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