In celebration of Women’s History Month, we’re spotlighting Liaison employees who identify as women whose contributions have been integral to our success.
Jess Scholz, Liaison’s Senior Manager, Client Success and Support, recently shared her thoughts about a professional journey that included the realization that you “can’t be everything to everyone at the same time.”
What’s one of the greatest challenges you’ve faced as a person who identifies as a woman in the workplace?
Jess Scholz (JS): I think one of the biggest daily challenges that I and most women continue to face is the constant need to moderate our tone and counterbalance any type of assertiveness in written or verbal communication lest we be seen as overly aggressive. Emails and chats are always read and re-read and re-written and re-read again. I have often fallen back on the stereotypically female overuse of exclamation points or smiley faces to reassure my reader that I am being friendly and non-threatening. An outburst or raised voice is out of the question. Having to explain ourselves or have facts questioned, often multiple times for the same issue, must always be done as blandly as possible. While all employees do and should make efforts to be tactful and professional when communicating with their coworkers and clients, it is often a blind spot for men just how much time and effort their female counterparts have put in to achieve the same level of “acceptable” communication, and how much more quickly and often it is a source of complaint when the author is female.
What is the most impactful professional lesson you’ve learned since you began your career?
JS: I have always been the type of person who tries to excel in every aspect of what I’m committed to doing, however, becoming a mom forced me to realize that I’m always going to be dropping the ball somewhere, and it’s better to make that decision consciously than to keep juggling fruitlessly. When I first returned to work after having my son, I think externally a lot of people thought I had it all together and dove right back in. If they saw that, it was because I was such a basket case that no matter how hard I worked I felt like it wasn’t enough and I could never keep all the plates spinning.
To get back to myself, and get back to a place where I felt in control of my life, I had to accept that I can’t be everything to everyone at the same time, and that is okay. Instead of dealing with everything all the time, I have learned to be fully present in what I’m doing right at this moment. If right now I’m trying to make sure CASPA (Liaison’s Centralized Application Service for Physician Assistants) launches on time, that is what I’m committed to right now. If right now I’m problem solving an internal issue, that is what I’m committed to right now. If I’m doing bedtime storytime, that is what I’m committed to right now, and whatever the goal is for the next moment can wait until the next moment. This compartmentalization and boundary-setting came in especially handy during the pandemic, when work life and the rest of our lives became so much more intertwined. Overall I think it has made me a more efficient, productive and even-keeled co-worker.
What advice would you give your 18-year-old self?
JS: Don’t use other people as your measure of success, don’t read the damn college alumni magazine and whatever you do, don’t think anyone has their career path all figured out by age 22. The pressure those in high school and college feel now is astronomical; college brochures tout their newly accepted freshman who solved a water shortage in some distant country, the alumni who is rewriting social policy in the latest Presidential Administration and the other one who is one year out of school and the CEO of a new NGO. Employers talk about how Millennials and now Gen Z enter the workforce acting entitled when I would argue they have it all backwards — these kids are coming in feeling like FAILURES. In our meritocracy society — which has pushed them into a dog-eat-dog race from the day they started preschool until the day they graduated — they have been raised to think that doing anything less than world-changing isn’t good enough. That perfectly respectable entry level job feels like they screwed up, that they aren’t trying hard enough. Coupled with the burden of student debt, the salary they can barely live on often reinforces that misplaced notion.
18-year-old Jess, 38-year-old Jess still doesn’t know what she wants to be when she grows up and she’s doing better than the girl who was biologically altering zebrafish at 20.
What challenges have you seen women face in the higher ed industry?
JS: Campus culture varies significantly from school to school in higher education, but for many young women attending institutions in which a toxic patriarchal culture is the norm, it can create a significant barrier to their ability to succeed, both academically and professionally.
As a student, I had the unique position of experiencing higher education from two opposing perspectives. While both colleges I attended were co-ed, my undergrad had previously been a female-only institution, integrated in the 1980s, and my graduate school had previously been a male-only institution, integrated in the 1970s. The cultural differences as a result of this were in stark contrast; I never felt at my undergrad I had gone to a “women’s school,” but from the first day of graduate school I was definitely at a men’s school. While an undergrad, I had felt equal to and respected by the male population, whereas in grad school — for the first time – I was routinely belittled, harassed and made to fear for my personal safety. Within the first month I was thrown to the floor at a party by a male I had rejected and no one, of any gender, intervened. Parties were often attended by 50+ year old alumni, sitting in corners and preying on intoxicated 18-year olds. I worked the same library manager job I had in undergrad and suddenly I had male students and alumni refusing to allow me to help them and demanding a male employee instead. Working in the campus bookstore, I had a male customer tell me to put down a book I was reading because “only smart people can read those kinds of books.”
Any suggestion by the women on campus that there was a significant and systemic problem was immediately met by attacks by their fellow students, staff and alumni. While these may not have been the actions of “all men,” very nearly all men participated in their perpetuation by claiming that “rape culture” did not exist, even when it so obviously did. During my tenure, the administrator in charge of sexual assault walked off the job because she was so frustrated by the refusal of any action by the administration. Since I left, a significant scandal regarding the sexual abuse of doctoral students by their PhD sponsors while I was there has been highly publicized. Many impressionable young women I attended with didn’t have the benefit of the alternate experience I had. The idea that “this is just the way it is” was normalized in them, a sentiment which they carried forward into their lives and careers post-graduation.
Campuses which avoid this, like my undergrad, work very strongly and actively to fight against this type of culture. Through those efforts, they can succeed in creating an atmosphere in which women can focus on cultivating their college experience rather than trying to merely survive it. However, this push is not happening strongly enough nor in enough places to best serve the greater female student population.
What has been your biggest career achievement?
JS: Professionally, I’m most proud of the team I’ve helped build at Liaison. The fact that it operates both independently of — and yet in such critical conjunction with — almost every other group at Liaison has been hugely rewarding. I usually describe CSMs as “keeping the trains running on time” and I have relished seeing some of our best front-line employees grow and flourish in the role and move on to do even greater things here. I am extremely proud that we have been able to spin off an entire new team from the CSMs which exclusively handles client support and does a stellar job at it — much more so than we did when we tried to hold it together ourselves. I’m proud of the career path that we’ve created from the front lines, through CSS, up through CSMs and beyond.
Finally, I’m proud of the sense of camaraderie that has developed among these teams and that the people we have built into these roles really enjoy their jobs and enjoy being at Liaison. It makes my job not only easier but enjoyable when I have such a great group of people to work alongside.
Who are your favorite women in history, women who inspire/empower you?
JS: Growing up as a dancer, Maria Tallchief was always one of my heroes. A Native American and the first famous American-born ballerina, she not only revolutionized the art form but refused to be anyone other than herself. She adamantly used her real surname throughout her career despite constant pressure to change it, turned technical weaknesses into strengths and played up her natural athleticism to create roles such as The Firebird, which paved the way for an entirely new style of movement which dominates American dance today.
What are you most proud of?
JS: While “be yourself” is a terribly overused phrase, its meaning is often under appreciated. It sounds easy enough to do, but in reality, despite being a strong-willed person, I often found myself in my teens and early twenties conforming to the expectations, needs and desires of others in personal or professional relationships. It is often the case, especially with women, to care about the opinions of others too much and to create a version of ourselves which we think that others want us to be — a version they might find more appealing, or more popular or more successful. As I’ve gotten older I have chosen more and more to care less about how others see me and more about how I see me, and that repeated choice has made me a better, stronger, more honest and more fulfilled person.