Confessions of an Office Newbie

Contributed by Rebecca Ang

Oh my God, that girl from accounting is walking straight towards me. Oh, what is her name? Is she the one on my team or is it the other brunette with the bangs? Why do they both have bangs?

Am I supposed to say hello? Look past her? Look at the floor? Do I ask her how she’s doing? What if she asks first? What if we ask each other at the same time and the awkward jinx thing happens? Neither of us will know when to say we’re doing fine. Will we have to say it at the same time?.

Or even worse, what if we say ‘how are you’ like we’re singing a round, one right after another?

“Hihowareyou?” stumbles out of my mouth.

She is already two feet past me, the wind from her pistachio green wool cardigan stinging my fragile cheek.

That was my first week at my new job. Now that I’m in my sixth week, I feel like she and I really understand each other.

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Secrets of NYC’s Top Female Attorneys

Recently, New York’s women leaders in law sounded off to New York Magazine about what it takes to succeed as an attorney at the top firms and at the top of their practice areas in New York. The women, whose practice areas range from securities litigation to corporate law to immigration, seemed to have one piece of advice across the board, which was: “Be willing to work hard, and long. If you don’t love your job, you won’t make it through all the tough work it takes to succeed in this field.”

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Ringing the closing bell at NASDAQ

If you had been in Times Square at 4:00 pm on May 28, 2008 and happened to have looked up at the NASDAQ exchange you would have seen the most unusual sight. You would have seen 80 designer handbags sitting on the ledge of the window. Why? The owners of those handbags were ringing the closing bell. 80 women who are C-level executives who sit on corporate and non-profit boards and are all part of a community of 425 women known as Women Corporate Directors (WCD). (www.womencorporatedirectors.com)

It was an amazing atmosphere- I have been in many rooms full of silver haired men in pinstripe suits but this is the first time I had seen such power consolidated in a group of women.

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Global Trade Insights From Harold (Terry) McGraw III, Chairman, President & CEO of McGraw-Hill Companies

Join us for an evening with Harold (Terry) McGraw III to participate in an insightful discussion about American competitiveness in a rapidly transforming global economy.

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Ask-A-Recruiter: My Job Title Doesn’t Accurately Reflect my Responsibilities

Contributed by Caroline Ceniza-Levine of SixFigureStart

This question came up at a recent coaching session with a new client: My last job has a title that sounds much more administrative than the actual job. How do I accurately list the title on my resume without pigeonholing myself into administrative jobs with a similar title?

There are few jobseekers who can get a job on the strength of their resume alone. Someone who is working at a brand name company and wants to transition to a competitor in the same function is an example of a jobseeker that can probably get hits from her resume alone.

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30 Under 30: Jessica Zemple, Intellectual Property Exchange International

At 30, Jessica Zemple has taken on a big challenge. Her job is to build the technology infrastructure for the trading of an entirely new asset class. Traditionally, stocks and options for technology corporations derive their price from the market valuation of the enterprise as a whole. Zemple and the Intellectual Property Exchange International (IPXI) are asking investors to shift their thinking from broad-based valuations to looking at the specific valuation of intellectual property portfolios.

Jessica explained that a study by Ned Davis Research indicated that in 1975, intangible assets (patents, copyrights, trademarks and trade secrets) comprised 16.8 percent of the market capitalization of companies in the S&P 500. That number increased to almost 80 percent in 2005. “We went from manufacturing products to manufacturing ideas,” Zemple said. “We feel the economic inversion is the perfect opportunity to build a new marketplace and we have several products that will allow investors, speculators, and hedgers to gain access to a new asset class, developing precise exposures to underlying technologies along the way.”

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Spotlight on: Erin Callan, CFO of Lehman Bros.

164271111_69fa367db7_m.jpgOne week after Zoe Cruz was let go as President of Morgan Stanley, Erin Callan was appointed CFO of Lehman Brothers. And thus, the torch was passed to the new highest ranking woman on Wall Street. She has since proved a force to be reckoned with, bringing her unconventional management style (and note-worthy sense of personal style) to corner office on Wall Street.

As documented in a recent profile in the Wall Street Journal, entitled “Lehman’s Straight Shooter,” Ms. Callan has eschewed the “fly below the radar” model of other Wall Street CFOs. She has made the most of her fashion-forward and outgoing image by appearing frequently on television and making bold predictions about the future direction of markets.

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Where are the Women Business Gurus?

By Bailey McCann

2401674702_8d2928ec1c_m.jpgRecently, the Wall Street Journal released its ranking of top business gurus, compiled by Babson College professor Thomas H. Davenport. The top 20 included household names like Bill Gates, as well as several authors currently featured the business section at your local bookstore. The one thing missing was women. Only one woman made it onto the list in 2003 and this year’s update saw none get added to the list. We weren’t the only ones to notice – several other sources including New York Magazine and Independent Street, one of the Wall Street Journal’s own blogs, have commented on the dearth of female gurus in business. The lack of women on this list begs the obvious question, where are we?

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Gender in Politics and Business – The Clinton Legacy

837481204_c32a33e794_m.jpgLast night, a speech to his supporters in Iowa when he announced that he now had a majority of pledged delegates in the Democratic primary, Barack Obama said of his adversary, Hillary Clinton, “We have had our disagreements during this campaign, but we all admire her courage, her commitment and her perseverance. No matter how this primary ends, Senator Clinton has shattered myths and broken barriers and changed the America in which my daughters and yours will come of age.”

While it is certainly true that Senator Clinton’s historic run for the White House has changed the way that Americans think about the idea of a female Commander in Chief, it is easy to be gracious when you are winning. By now, most media pundits and political experts agree that there is mathematically no way that Senator Clinton can garner the requisite number of delgates. Still, as her campaign almost surely is drawing to a close, whether she acknowledges it or not, what legacy will her bid for the presidency leave for women?

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Rising Stars Series: Interview with Ani M. Vartanian, VP of Rockwood Capital

Contributed by Heather Cassell

What a fascinating and dramatic world we live in, at least from Ani M. Vartanian’s perspective. With the credit crunch, Bear Stearns crumbling, foreclosure crisis, historical election year, political scandals, and the year hasn’t even hit the halfway mark yet.

“It’s better than reality TV,” said Vartanian, 32, vice president of the acquisition and asset management team of Rockwood Capital, a $6.2 billion private real estate investment company.

Vartanian likes to keep her finger on the pulse of the intersections between politics, business, and public policy, which has helped her rapidly climb the investment real estate ladder.

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