Week 5: Theory in Action

With my fifth week completed, marking the halfway point of my internship at CVS Health|Aetna, I have had enough exposure to my organization within the enterprise, Aetna Better Health of Kentucky, to evaluate the social identity theory of leadership with regards to gender and my manager, Paige Mankovich. As a Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies minor, I am greatly interested in how gender affects and is affected by one’s leadership style. During one of our weekly meetings, I decided to ask Paige about her experience throughout her journey in higher education (specifically as a law school student) and as an employee and leader relative to her gender identity as a woman. Paige told me about how after graduating from law school, she worked at a smaller insurance company as inhouse counsel before transitioning to Aetna. Always, she told me, she has been surrounded by female leaders who were promoted at the same level as men. Seeing this environment in her daily life throughout her career has been transformative for Paige and her understanding of gender identity. She has cultivated and sustained strong mentorships with women leaders throughout her career on the basis of understanding and respecting how gender historically has impacted their participation in corporate America. Paige also interestingly mentioned how a couple of times throughout her career, she has been pitted against other women at similar levels as her by managerial figures but has refused to play into that imposed competition. As a result, Paige believes that her team and company are strengthened when everyone is proud of each others’ accolades and accomplishments, rather than jealous or resentful. Paige also pointed out how inspiring it was for women leaders in the enterprise to watch the journey of Karen Lynch, the first woman to ever run a Fortune 500 company ranked as high as CVS Health (ranked fourth on the list). Karen provides an exemplary career path based on foundations of support, collaboration, community, and trust and has created a social identity that revolves around those attributes. Overall, it was refreshing to hear about how gender has impacted Paige’s perception of her place inside the office.