She Suite speaker says successful leadership includes ‘heart and connection’

How do companies deal with the damaging effects of disconnection and disengagement in the workplace?

By leaning on the innate skills that female leaders bring to business, said Rachel Wallis Andreasson, EMBA 2012, the keynote speaker at WashU Olin’s She Suite celebration of women in business on March 6, 2025.

Andreasson is coauthor of “The Sixth Level: Capitalize on the Power of Women’s Psychology for Sustainable Leadership.” She’s also a board member, shareholder, and former CEO of Wallis Companies, her family’s business based in Cuba, Missouri.

Her message to the She Suite audience was that women instinctively bring vital talents and abilities to leadership: seeking connection, expressing emotion, exhibiting care, and applying novel problem-solving processes. Leaders — both male and female — should use these talents to forge deeper ties that move business and society forward.

“I grew up in a male-dominated industry and I remember some of the labels that were given to me: ‘You’re too aggressive, you’re too soft, you’re too into the people,’” Andreasson said. “If I could have had this language back then, I would have said, ‘I’m leading at the sixth level with heart and connection, and this is the best way to lead.’”

The annual She Suite conference brings together accomplished women, many of them Olin alumni and faculty, to discuss their strategies for success. The event is timed to coincide with International Women’s Day.

This year’s She Suite comes as WashU Olin reached a significant milestone. Women’s enrollment in Olin’s full-time MBA program reached 53% this year, making it one of eight major business schools to achieve gender parity, according to the Forté Foundation, which advocates for increasing opportunities for women in business education and professional development.

In her address to the 300-plus attendees in Emerson Auditorium, Andreasson urged current students to take full advantage of the opportunities she enjoyed during her executive MBA experience at Olin.

Nurture these relationships with everyone who is at WashU, who is giving a pathway for better leadership.

—Rachel Wallis Andreasson

She called out the progress made by women in business leadership over the decades but noted that there is still a long way to go since only 10% of Fortune 500 companies are led by female CEOs.

Andreasson contended that women leaders are uniquely equipped to deal with the contemporary challenges faced by a range of companies: burnout; lack of employee engagement and retention; and communications breakdowns, particularly in hybrid work environments.

She and her coauthors advocate for a different style of leadership called the “sixth level,” one informed by traits that are often seen as particularly female. The name is a reference to Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, a theory that ranks five levels of human needs, from physical needs such as food, water, and shelter to self-actualization.

Andreasson said the sixth level describes a person in relation to others — how well leaders create an ethic of care for those they lead. Its four hallmarks are motivation to make a difference, mutuality or connection, justness, and ingenuity.

She described how she put this theory into practice in her family’s company, which runs convenience stores and related businesses throughout Missouri. During a major acquisition, she made a point of meeting with employees of the acquired company to be transparent about their plans, and to assure them that their tenure would be recognized and their benefits would be retained. In doing so, she drew on an insight from her Olin EMBA that merging company cultures is vital to the success of an acquisition.

“I applied the sixth level, and it ended up being the most synergistic and financially successful acquisition of our family’s history so far,” she said.

In addition to Andreasson’s speech, the She Suite event included a discussion by Olin Professor Hillary Anger Elfenbein about the art of negotiation and a panel discussion of the value of mentorship led by Professor Staci Thomas. Panelists included Ali Appleton, EMBA 2017, vice president for government relations for Equifax; Stephanie Uder, EMBA 2017, senior vice president and chief pharmacy officer for Gainwell Technologies; and Akberet Boykin Farr, Women’s Leadership Forum certificate, vice president for human resources for Emerson Electric.