On an October afternoon in 2014, about 20 of my female associates with differing backgrounds and professional roles gathered in the back room of Smokey Row Coffee Co. to make sense of how, together, we could pool our talents to make a difference not only in our own careers, but across an entire organization.

 

It was our first Mittera Women’s Group meeting, a grass-roots cultural initiative of Mittera Group Inc., a multiplatform communications company based in downtown Des Moines.

 

That initial meeting would spur future company programs and policies to include paid parental leave, paid volunteer time off and a mentorship program, among other things.

 

Mittera Group, an organization comprising more than 750 employees in nine locations across the Midwest, is largely a manufacturing company with a growing creative services division. Currently, our workforce is made up of about twice as many men as women with twice the number of male leaders — ratios far better than most in our industry.

 

It was this industrywide imbalance that would spark a movement that highlighted and advocated for more female leadership.

 

It wasn’t long after I joined Mittera Group that our CEO, Jon Troen, approached me about creating internal literature that would get the conversation going — a cultural series featuring female leaders in the organization who shared personal philosophies for getting ahead and getting inspired.

 

“Uncovering Company Culture” showcased a variety of women in positions that included executive leadership, customer service, sales, general management, creative directors and those working directly in the plants.

 

Talking about female leadership was a great first step for shaping the company’s rhetoric, but empowering and actually creating female leaders would be even better.  

Shortly after the series debuted, my colleagues — already very active proponents of women in leadership — spoke with our CEO about putting together a women’s group. A group of women hand-selected by their immediate supervisors came together armed with excitement and monstrous Post-it pads that would, by the end of the meeting, fill the walls of the back room in that coffeehouse.

 

We didn’t know it then, but our purpose would later be defined as to not only provide support and encourage leadership, but to identify, plan and implement initiatives that enhance company culture and processes.

 

It was known, however, that Mittera Group was full of untapped ambition, and when given the right resources, ambition makes things happen.

 

And that’s exactly we’ve done.