Cracking the Corporate Code: Navigating Power Structures & Bureaucracy

Session Summary: This session equips professionals with practical strategies to understand and navigate complex organizational hierarchies, decision-making processes, and unwritten rules. It is especially relevant for women and underrepresented groups seeking to increase influence and advance their careers in matrixed or highly structured organizations.

Key areas include:

  • Decoding Organizational Politics: Identifying formal and informal power structures, key decision-makers, and influence pathways.

  • Understanding Decision Rights: Clarifying who makes what decisions and how to effectively contribute to those processes.

  • Navigating Bureaucracy: Techniques to work efficiently within multi-layered approval systems without losing momentum.

  • Building Strategic Relationships: How to cultivate mentors, sponsors, and allies to increase visibility and credibility.

  • Influencing Without Authority: Practical methods to gain alignment, advocate for initiatives, and drive change even when not in a formal leadership role.

This Session is Sponsored By:

Speakers

Jaime Skinner

Jaime Skinner is Vice President of Legal and General Counsel for Brenntag NA, the North American subsidiary of the global market leader in chemicals and ingredients distribution.  She began her career in private practice at law firms in Dallas, where she focused on litigation, complex restructuring transactions, and bankruptcy.  She then went in-house and joined Caterpillar’s legal team in 2007, where she had management responsibility and experience worldwide for a wide range of commercial, financial, regulatory, and litigation matters, including government investigations, class actions, and financing transactions.  After over a decade at Caterpillar, she became Associate General Counsel at a publicly traded government contractor, where she provided support to the executive office, managed the company’s eDiscovery and policy management programs, and led a wide variety of legal matters involving corporate governance, litigation, data privacy and data breach response, and government investigations.  Jaime holds an undergraduate degree from Columbia University and a J.D. from Washington University School of Law.