Reading List || The Financial Times: Power With Grace ~ Christine Lagarde
13/12/2011 § Leave a comment
Christine Lagarde. Image via the FT.
When Christine Lagarde took the reins at the IMF from embattled and embarrassed Dominique Strauss-Kahn, I will admit that aside from the remarkable milestones she represents — the first female managing director of the IMF, first female finance minister of a G7 country, first female head of international law firm Baker & McKenzie — there is something about her style that resonates deeply with me. Here I use the term “style” loosely, as I do not specifically mean her manner of dress or hairstyle. While I do love both, it has more to do with what Gillian Tett calls her “power with grace” in Tett’s recent article on Lagarde for the Women of 2011: Special Edition of the Financial Times:
But Lagarde is also being watched – as a potent female watershed. Never before has a woman held such a powerful position in global finance; the world of money has hitherto been dominated by men, not just inside banks but in bureaucracies too. Lagarde herself has often lamented this pattern, joking, for example, that the financial crisis might have been different if there had been “Lehman Sisters” and pointing out that the euro’s “fragile” foundations were created by its “founding fathers”, not mothers, since “regrettably, there was no woman at the table at the time.” Or, as she recently told me on the telephone: “I wish that there were more women in finance – I think it would be much healthier. We don’t know if it would have been different with more women [in 2008] but my intuition tells me it possibly might have been.”
Read the article here.
And from Forbes, Lagarde talks about being a lawyer, gender, diversity and the role of the IMF in the global economic crisis. Especially interesting to hear the reasons she prefers to use the title “Chairman.”
Also on the list:
The Smithsonian: Unflinching Portraits of Pearl Harbor Survivors
Business of Fashion: Digital Scorecard | Valentino Garavani Virtual Museum
LIFE Magazine, 17 Jan 1969: While Burton romances Rex, Liz weighs her power and her future
The diamond is 33.9 carats and when I first saw it I said, “It can’t be real.” And Mrs. Burton belted back happily, “You bet your sweet ass it’s real. It’s the Krupp Diamond.”
Quite Continental 
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