Accomplished leaders in public service Cietta Kiandoli and Glen Martin represent the University of Maryland’s Robert H. Smith School of Business among Poets & Quants’ Best & Brightest Executive MBAs from the Class of 2023.

In the workplace, success sometimes comes down to how competitive you are. And sometimes it comes down to how competitive the people are who are advocating on your behalf.

From the earliest weeks of the pandemic, Maryland Smith’s Nicole Coomber was noticing a worrying trend. Upwardly mobile professionals across her social media networks were opting to step back from their careers, overwhelmed by the new demands of their work lives and home lives.

SMITH BRAIN TRUST — On Women’s Equality Day last week at the White House, Apple, Facebook, Microsoft, General Motors and other big U.S. companies signed an “Equal Pay Pledge” to close the gender pay gap for their employees. On the same day, a pair of states passed laws for the same objective — to eliminate the often-cited statistic of U.S.

When a company promotes a woman to its top management team for the first time, you might expect the following to happen: The company grows comfortable with women in positions of power, women perceive new career paths and the movement toward gender equity snowballs.

Companies work fairly hard to place one woman — but only one — in a top management position, according to research by Cristian Dezső, an associate professor at the Robert H. Smith School of Business, and two co-authors. The article found evidence of a “quota” effect: Once a company had appointed one woman to a top-tier job, the chances of a second woman landing an elite position at the same firm drop substantially — by about 50 percent, in fact.

SMITH BRAIN TRUST -- Companies work fairly hard to place one woman -- but only one -- in a top management position, according to research by Cristian Desző, an associate professor at the Robert H. Smith School of Business, and two co-authors.

In this edition of Smith Business Close-Up with the University of Maryland’s Robert H. Smith School of Business, Cristian Dezsö talks about the wage gap between men and women and how the children of CEO come into play. The gap between wages earned by men and women is still a pervasive worldwide phenomenon. But new research finds that when an organization’s male CEO has a daughter, the relative pay for women at those firms goes up, narrowing the gap.

In this edition of Smith Business Close-Up with the University of Maryland’s Robert H. Smith School of Business, Cristian Dezsö talks about the wage gap between men and women and how the children of CEO come into play. The gap between wages earned by men and women is still a pervasive worldwide phenomenon. But new research finds that when an organization’s male CEO has a daughter, the relative pay for women at those firms goes up, narrowing the gap.