Latest / The Diversity Career Podcast with Fexingo: Inclusion, Equity, and Underrepresented Professionals / How One Company Built a Career Ladder for First-Gen Professionals
Transcript
- Lucas: There's a stat I keep coming back to. First-generation college graduates — folks who are the first in their family to earn a four-year degree — make up roughly a third of the U.S. college-educated workforce. But when you look at senior leadership in professional services, that number plummets to something like six percent. Luna: So there's a massive drop-off somewhere between entry-level and partner. And it's not just about performance. Lucas: Exactly. And the traditional explanation is that first-gen professionals lack 'social capital' — the networks, the insider knowledge of how to navigate corporate culture. But one firm decided that wasn't an explanation, it was a design problem. Luna: Which firm? And what did they actually change? Lucas: PwC. Around 2022 they launched what they called the 'First-Gen Career Lattice' — not a ladder, a lattice. It's a formal framework that rethinks how promotions happen, what's evaluated, and who makes the call. Luna: Why lattice versus ladder? That sounds like more than semantics. Lucas: It is. A ladder implies one path up — you do your time, check the boxes, get promoted. But the problem for first-gen professionals is that the 'boxes' often assume you had a parent who could tell you how to network with a managing director or what to wear to a client dinner. The lattice creates multiple paths — technical expertise, client relationship, people leadership — and evaluates them separately. So you can advance by being really good at data analysis without having to also be the person who plays golf with the CEO. Luna: That's interesting because a lot of companies say they value different tracks, but the promotion committee still rewards the 'relationship' track more heavily. Lucas: Right, which is exactly the bias PwC tried to address. They made two structural changes. First, they defined explicit, observable behaviors for each level and each track. Things like 'presents analysis to a senior stakeholder' — not 'demonstrates executive presence,' which is subjective code for 'acts like someone who grew up around executives.' Luna: And the second change? Lucas: They changed who sits on the promotion panel. They added representatives from employee resource groups — including the first-gen network — to actually review the dossiers. And they trained managers on what 'potential' looks like in candidates who might not have had the same exposure. The result? Over two years, retention of first-gen managers increased by 17 percent. That's not a pilot program, that's a 50,000-person firm shifting its core people process. Luna: Seventeen percent is significant. And I imagine it's cheaper than recruiting and training replacements. Lucas: Absolutely. Turnover costs for experienced hires in professional services can run 150 to 200 percent of annual salary. So retaining someone who's already productive — and who might have felt overlooked — is a huge ROI. Luna: It also sends a signal to current employees that the firm sees the structural barrier, not just the individual. That kind of trust is hard to measure but it's real. Lucas: Speaking of the economics of how we do this show — we keep it ad-free, and a small group of listeners helps make that possible through buy me a coffee dot com slash fexingo. It's not a big ask, just an honest one. If the show helps you think through your own career path, chipping in a few bucks a month keeps these episodes coming without any sponsor pressure. Luna: Yeah, and it genuinely lets us cover topics like this one — a deep dive into a single company's structural change — without having to make it clickbait or rush to a conclusion. Lucas: Exactly. So back to the lattice. The other piece that's often overlooked is how they handle sponsorship. Most firms say 'get a sponsor,' but first-gen professionals often don't know how to ask, or their managers don't naturally gravitate toward them. Luna: So PwC made sponsorship part of the manager's job description, not a favor. Lucas: Exactly. They assigned every first-gen manager a formal sponsor from the senior leadership team, with clear expectations: meet monthly, review the person's project portfolio, actively advocate for them on promotion committees. And they tracked whether that happened. It wasn't a suggestion, it was a performance metric for the sponsor. Luna: That's a big shift. Usually sponsorship is organic and can reinforce existing networks. This forces it to be intentional. Lucas: Right. And the data showed it worked. Within two years, first-gen professionals who had a formal sponsor were 35 percent more likely to be promoted to senior manager than those who didn't. That's not just correlation — the program was randomized in a pilot phase. Luna: Randomized? That's unusual for a corporate initiative. They wanted to measure causality. Lucas: Yes. They ran a six-month pilot with a control group. That's rare but it's why I trust the 35 percent number. It's not just a before and after comparison that could have been influenced by other factors. Luna: So what's the takeaway for a listener at a company that doesn't have PwC's budget? Can you replicate parts of this? Lucas: I think so. The most transferable piece is the behavior-based evaluation criteria. Any company can sit down with its ERGs and ask: 'What does good look like at each level, without assuming a background in corporate culture?' Write it down. Use it in performance reviews. Luna: Even something like changing how you ask for feedback in promotion packets — instead of 'Does this person have gravitas?' ask 'Has this person independently led a client presentation that resulted in a new project?' Lucas: Exactly. And the second piece is sponsorship transparency. You don't need a formal program to start — you can ask your senior leaders to each take one first-gen high-potential and meet with them monthly. Just track it in a spreadsheet. That's cheap. Luna: It's also about accountability. If it's not tracked, it doesn't happen. Lucas: One more stat. PwC also found that first-gen professionals were 25 percent less likely to apply for a promotion than their peers with similar performance ratings. Not because they weren't qualified, but because they didn't know they were ready. So they added a 'promotion confidence' workshop — basically demystifying the criteria and telling people, 'You already meet these thresholds.' Luna: That's such a simple fix. And it costs almost nothing. Lucas: Right. And it's the kind of thing that compounds. People who get promoted earlier get more challenging assignments, build more networks, and then get promoted again. Fixing that first bottleneck changes someone's entire career trajectory. Luna: It also changes the pipeline for the next generation. When first-gen professionals see someone like them making senior manager, they start to believe it's possible. Lucas: That's the whole point. Structural changes aren't just about retention numbers — they're about creating a self-sustaining cycle. And the data from PwC shows it can happen.