Introducing SSON's Newest Column: Uncovering the Women Shaping the Future of GBS

For modern GBS, diversity in leadership remains a moral and business imperative. Looking at gender diversity, for example, organizations benefit from a broader range of perspectives, stronger decision-making, and a culture of innovation. Elevating female leadership is about both equality and building the future of business on a foundation that is inclusive, resilient, and forward-thinking. 

From SSOWomen’s Days to spirited debates surrounding GBS leadership, at SSON, we’ve worked to create platforms where women can share experiences, build skills, and connect with peers. These initiatives reflect our belief that real progress comes from dialogue, collaboration, and celebrating the value of community. 

As such, SSON’s new column, Women Who Lead: The Women Shaping the Future of GBS, continues that work in written form. This series is a living archive of the women shaping GBS today, their career journeys, leadership lessons, and perspectives on the future. More than just profiles, these stories aim to inspire, educate, and connect professionals across the industry, strengthening a community that is leading GBS into tomorrow.

For our first edition, we are joined by the GBS powerhouse Deborah Kops. With deep experience in the GBS industry, Deborah has built a reputation for “seeing beyond the current state of play and daring people to think outside the box.” Today, as Principal and Co-founder of Sourcing Change, she partners “with GBS leaders who want to move beyond delivery and cost as their north star, rethinking talent models, future-ready capabilities, and resourcing strategies.” We spoke with Deborah about what has kept her rooted in the GBS industry, her reputation as a contrarian, and the hard lessons she’s learned along the way. 

A Career Across Every Seat in the GBS Orchestra 

SSON: Your career spans provider, buyer, founder, board, and advisory roles; truly every angle of GBS. Looking back, what was the thread that kept pulling you deeper into the GBS space? 

Deborah: If you look at my career on paper, it reads like a tour of duty through every seat in the GBS orchestra- provider, buyer, founder, board member, advisor- all starting with an architectural education. Some people see randomness; I see connecting the dots.  

The common thread is curiosity about why this model, the promise of global, integrated, and efficient service delivery, often falls short of its potential. 

Every new role gave me a different lens: the provider seat taught me about scale and margins; the buyer seat revealed just how maddeningly hard it is to sell transformation inside the enterprise; the founder role showed me the gaps no one was filling; and the advisory and board seats gave me perspective on how GBS fits (or doesn’t) into the larger enterprise strategy. My career connective tissue is a belief that GBS, when it’s not dumbed down to a cost-take-out factory, can change how companies work. That belief keeps pulling me back. 

What engages me is the mix of intellectual puzzles, political theater, and human drama. GBS is never just about delivering business processes; it’s about legitimacy, power, and identity inside the enterprise. That’s catnip for me. 

The Competitive Edge of Speaking Hard Truths

SSON: You are certainly positioned as a defining voice in the GBS space, but has being contrarian ever come at a cost in your career? If so, how did you turn that into a strength? 

Deborah: Being contrarian isn’t a branding exercise for me. It’s survival. If all you do in GBS is parrot the conventional wisdom, e.g., “scale is everything,” “standardization solves all ills,” “talent isn’t the problem, it’s just cost,” then you end up designing the same failing models over and over. My contrarian streak has definitely come at a cost. Not every buyer likes hearing that their “world-class” operation is actually mediocre. Not every provider appreciates being told their shiny slide deck won’t fix a governance train wreck. 

The cost is sometimes tangible: assignments lost, invitations not extended, colleagues rolling their eyes at my unwillingness to drink the Kool-Aid of the month. But here’s the thing: contrarianism, if it’s backed by evidence and delivered with clarity, becomes a competitive advantage.  

Clients may not love hearing the hard truths in the moment, but they remember who told them. And when the wheels fall off, as they often do in GBS, they come back to the person who didn’t sugarcoat it. 

What I learned is that contrarianism only pays off if you marry it with pragmatism. Pointing out flaws is easy. Turning that into a path forward is the trick. Over time, I stopped worrying about being labeled “difficult” or a prima donna and started leaning into being “usefully provocative.” That shift has turned contrarianism from a career risk into a calling card. 

Final Thoughts: How Women Leaders Can Shape Their GBS Careers 

SSON: What hard-earned lesson from your experience in senior leadership would you pass on to rising women in GBS? 

Deborah: GBS is a curious animal, both highly visible and strangely invisible. Everyone depends on it, yet few truly understand it. That ambiguity can be brutal on women trying to rise in the field.  

You’re often judged not on outcomes but on perceptions of legitimacy. The hard-earned lesson I’d pass on is this: own your narrative before someone else writes it for you. 

In my early leadership years, I assumed good work spoke for itself. It doesn’t. In GBS, good work is invisible precisely because it removes friction. If you don’t tell the story of impact, of resilience, of talent bets, you’ll be cast as “the cost-cutter,” “the process lady,” or worse, “the back office.” That narrative will cap your trajectory faster than any lack of skill. 

To rising women, I’d also say: don’t confuse consensus with influence. In matrixed environments, it’s tempting to play nice and wait for everyone to align. But real influence comes from knowing when to say no, when to draw a line, and when to push the enterprise to face uncomfortable truths.  

The best GBS leaders I know, many of them women, are those who combine empathy with a clear spine. 

Finally, remember that career paths in GBS are rarely linear. This isn’t investment banking or law with set rungs on a ladder. You may move sideways, diagonally, or even backwards at times. Don’t let that unsettle you. Each role, each vantage point, gives you ammunition to lead at the next level. Play the long game and keep your sense of humor intact.