CAREER ADVANCEMENT.

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Tonya Parker
Senior deputy director
Two years at Fannie Mae

NOTHING DETERMINES CAREER success more than the ability to use your skills to get promotions and raises. According to workplace experts, employee success and satisfaction may be intertwined.

"People feel satisfied when they know there are no barriers in front of them," says Catalyst senior director of research, Katherine Giscombe, Ph.D. Her firm is a nonprofit organization that tracks the progress of women in corporations. "The better a manager is at helping a subordinate develop, the better the employee will feel and be."

Most of the companies on our list have management-training and/or mentoring programs. For instance, at Verizon, 62 percent of African-American women are in management-training programs. At Aetna, 42 percent of Black women are receiving management training. And 27.8 percent of African-American women at Fannie Mae and 35 percent at AFLAC are in mentoring programs.

"Having African-Americans and women in leadership positions was a key reason I decided to move to Fannie Mae," says Tonya Parker, senior deputy director in Fannie Mae's Oregon office. Parker, 32, had been working as the director of Portland's Housing and Community Development office when she was recruited to do the same tasks on a statewide level at Fannie Mae. A sense of the company's environment--which emphasized networking and mentoring--kicked in early. "When I went to the national Fannie Mae conference, there were other African-American colleagues who introduced themselves and told me whom I should connect with."

According to Giscombe, "African-American women who have a mentor are more likely to get promoted. And those who have more than one mentor are most likely to get promoted." That's good for women like Parker. "Fannie Mae is paying for my M.B.A," she says. "My mentors suggested I go for it."

Formal mentoring and management-training programs can help employees move up the corporate ladder.

Tonya Parker