First American Financial Corp. kicked off the 10th year of the company’s “Women in Leadership” program by gathering the 2021 class at a multi-day leadership conference in Orlando, Fla., hosted by Linkage, a global leadership development firm.
Each year, First American business leaders identify around a dozen of the company’s top-performing and emerging women leaders to participate in the program. It’s designed to cultivate women leaders and provide a forum for participants to have important conversations about the company and their own professional development.
Sally French Tyler, executive vice president and group president of First American Title’s residential and commercial operations, co-founded First American’s Women in Leadership program with Mark Rutherford, senior vice president and head of human resources, to further engage leadership in a company whose employee base is approximately 70 percent women.
“When we launched the program in 2012, the first in the title and settlement industry, we recognized the tremendous opportunity to engage with and support the emerging women leaders within the company,” Tyler said in a release. “We continue to expand the program to reach even more of the women making a difference within First American and the industry, and often the program enhancements are generated by graduates of the program.”
Earlier this year, First American launched the Women in Leadership Mentoring Program, a 12-month program that engages alumnae of the Women in Leadership program as mentors for the next generation of women leaders. In 2019, the company introduced its Spark program, an initiative focused on providing leadership development and networking opportunities to a broader group of women within First American through virtual events.