Once you’ve reached the pinnacle of your career, what do you do next? This was a question that had been plaguing Dee Pok, a former Hollywood executive who held senior roles at Paramount and Focus Features. Her own success, and that of other women like her, had made her realize the truth behind the old adage that “it gets lonely at the top.”
“You know, the statistics are pretty dire,” she told me with a wry smile, “I think about 6 percent of CEOs of Fortune 500 companies are women. But change has to come from above. We can advocate for our interests, but we also really need people with the influence and power to make change happen.”
As a woman in leadership, she realized she had a lot of power. She also recognized that it came with a lot of responsibility towards other women. To fulfill this responsibility, in 2020, she founded The WIE Suite, a private membership community and peer learning platform for women in leadership, which acts as an ecosystem for women to support each other and redefine what success looks like for women – that is, women succeeding on their own terms and with a sisterhood sprouting behind them.
This formalized an idea she implemented in 2010, then called the “WIE Network,” a series of conferences on women in business that attracted a host of sensational speakers and partners, including Mellody Hobson, Arianna Huffington, Christy Turlington, Queen Rania, Melinda Gates, Thasunda Duckett, Diane von Furstenberg, Nancy Pelosi, and Naomi Campbell.
“Coming into this position, you’re really experiencing what other women are going through or about to go through: flexible working hours, maternity leave, the sandwich generation of people having to take care of elderly parents and children,” she says. “These are issues that women face that men don’t recognize in the same way or feel as viscerally. So I decided to focus specifically on women at the leadership level, because I knew we needed decision-makers who could really advocate for the next generation.”
Pok’s ideas are built on a foundation of female friendship and community, and are the opposite of the unhelpful yet pervasive rhetoric about women in the workplace. For decades, women have been made to feel that they have limited room to rise to the top. Tied up with this is the misconception that women don’t work well together and are highly competitive with each other. Not only does Pok dispel this belief, her entire initiative is a counter to it: suites are places where women can grow constructively, not competitively.
“This membership is about women supporting other women,” she emphasizes. “I belong to a few membership clubs and I go there to meet people I already know, but for us, it was more about finding a way to intentionally organize meetings with people who we think would benefit from meeting, rather than just saying, ‘Come here and let’s hear from you.'”
In addition to organized events, coaching is the lifeblood of The WIE Suite. Members are organized into various committees and groups where they either coach or are coached. “This way you’re in a group that really gets to know you and understands your habits — what you’re good at, what you like to do, when you might fail — and I think that’s really important when you’re working towards your goals,” Pok says. “With peer coaching, there’s a structured monthly check-in with members, and there’s a real format to how it’s carried out, so members can really see results.”
Some groups focus on specific areas: “You might want to talk about trends in your industry or discuss issues you’re wrestling with that only someone in your line of work would understand. That’s the value of these groups,” she says. WIE works with companies to address issues facing its members, helping them support and retain female talent.
Nearly 15 years after her initial idea, Pok is happier than ever with the work WIE Suite is accomplishing. “Having this purpose is a great thing in my life, and I’m doing what comes naturally – what I love,” she says. “Honestly, I would have done it for free.”
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