Joining The Groundswell An Interview With Charlene Li

By: Bailey McCann

1457984966_d3504fbe29_m.jpgRecently I spoke with Charlene Li co-author of Groundswell: Winning in a World Transformed by Social Technology and analyst at Forrester Research. She spoke to me about how women can utilize the strategies in her book and the power of social media to leverage their networks and engage customers. Li presents five core strategies for using the power of social media, they are:

  1. Listening
  2. Talking
  3. Energizing
  4. Supporting
  5. Embracing

Each of these strategies are outlined in detail in the book. In our interview, Li focused specifically on listening, “listening can help market research by engaging the audience and finding what people are saying.” She also went on to point out that by listening to what people are saying, you can avoid social media fatigue by presenting only the most highly relevant content.

“Connecting customers to other customers,” and being a “one stop shop,” for all the information in your business, including information on your competitors can put you ahead in the marketplace.
Read more

/by

Dressing Your Resume For Success

By: Kathryn Sollmann, Co-founder Women@Work Network

Most women know what to wear to give the right impression in the right situation. Yet, even many women who spend thousands of dollars on each season’s fashions present themselves as paupers on resume paper.

At Women@Work we call it the “under-dressed” resume — resumes that don’t look right, sound right or project the image women so carefully craft in every other aspect of their lives.You can’t throw a resume together in a couple of hours. If you do, it’s obvious to an employer. You can run to the supermarket in your sweatpants with wet hair and no make-up, and hope that you don’t see anyone you know, but when you send out an under-dressed resume, there’s nowhere to hide.

When employers get an under-dressed resume, they wonder if you’ll take the time to make the right impression in a client meeting, if your reports will be thorough, or if you’ll embarrass the team with a presentation that you prepared in the 11th hour.

How do you know if your resume is as outdated as last season’s shoes, or as unimpressive as an old flannel shirt? Read the top 7 signs that your resume is not on the Best Dressed Resume List, and then spend more time with one or two of the most important sheets of paper in any professional woman’s life.

Read more

/by

Women Mean Business: Getting Leaders to Promote Women on Performance, Not Quotas

By: Alison Maitland

Senior business men offered their take on promoting women at an evening debate in Geneva on June 6 about our book, Why Women Mean Business: Understanding The Emergence Of Our Next Economic Revolution (previously featured on The Glass Hammer on February 5 and April 8).

The executives represented a great cross-section of global business: Gianni Ciserani is president of Procter & Gamble, in western Europe; Paolo Fellin head of marketing in Europe for Caterpillar, the heavy industrial group; and Peter Lorange recently retired as president of IMD, the Lausanne-based business school that educates executives of multinationals like P&G and Caterpillar.

It was also an interesting setting for the latest in a series of presentations that my co-author Avivah Wittenberg-Cox and I have done on the book. Switzerland is one of Europe’s most socially conservative countries: women represent just 6% of directors on major company boards and it’s predicted that it will take 70 years at current progress to reach gender parity in business leadership. Women often have to choose between career and family; 40% of university-educated women aged 40 are childless.

Read more

/by

Surviving Market Volatility: Advice from Risk Management Practitioners

Please join 100 Women in Hedge Funds for a discussion on portfolio risk management. As we reflect back on a heart-wrenching first quarter of 2008, where market volatility caused a number of spectacular collapses in hedge funds, not to mention banks, we ponder what best industry practices in risk management would have helped preserve capital in a tumultuous market. Our panelists come with a wealth of experience in managing various risks, both financial and business risks, in hedge funds and we look forward to their thoughts in the following areas:

* The usefulness of quantitative models, such as Value at Risk and stress testing
* Portfolio liquidity management in times of financial distress
* Investor liquidity management – risk of portfolio liquidity versus investor liquidity
* Lessons learned from the current liquidity crisis
* Best practice in managing counterparty risk
Networking and cocktails before and after session

RSVP required

/by

The Firing of Erin Callan

By: Bailey McCann164271111_69fa367db7_m.jpg

Last week’s big news in the on going fall out inside the financial services industry was the fall of Erin Callan and Joseph Gregory. While there are varying levels of speculation on why Ms. Callan was demoted so quickly after her promotion to the CFO position, one thing is clear: in this industry when things get tough CEO’s start shuffling the desk chairs. When banks start to falter, the pressure hits everyone in the bank but ultimately lands squarely on the CEO.

Richard Fuld, the CEO of Lehman is no exception and now makes the most current example. Promoting Callan to the CFO position was controversial, and it seems clear when the quick turnaround didn’t happen he moved her out. Fuld has been the CEO of Lehman for a long time, but if he can’t pull the bank out of its disarray he may well be the next casualty of this economic downturn.

Read more

/by

Debating The Glass Ceiling – is it a Myth?

By: Caroline Shannon

Before she even approached the age of 22, a computer-savvy Laura McHolm had already graduated from the University of California at Berkeley, worked with the likes of big-time companies, like Apple and Intel, created and marketed games, such as Pac Man and Atari, and earned her computer law degree from the University of Oxford.

Just ask her and she’ll tell you she punched right through what is referred to as a “glass ceiling,” the invisible barrier that has been held responsible for hindering women’s career advancement. But that’s not to say she wouldn’t agree with the notion that gender bias is still 100 percent alive and well.

“It does exist – just look at the number of CEOs who are women, senators who are women, presidents who are women, managers who are women,” said McHolm, who is now the co-founder of NorthStar Moving Corporation, one of San Fernando Valley’s 50 fastest growing companies. “I don’t believe that 51 percent of the population just decided, ‘No, I don’t want to do that.” Read more

/by

Managing Maternity for Women in IT Careers

In this highly interactive workshop you will be exploring the dual roles of being a mother and a committed IT professional.

You will address childcare and working options tailored to individual values and look at how to maintain professional relationships whilst setting appropriate boundaries.

This workshop will give you tangible take-away tools, helping to smooth transition between the maternity announcement, handover to replacement cover and return to work.

Through one-to-one work as well as group discussion you will improve your confidence by aligning your personal and professional values and feel better prepared for what it means to be a successful working mother.

This workshop will be facilitated by Dr Suzanne Doyle-MorrisSuzanne is a professional speaker and accredited coach who received her PhD in Educational Research from the

University of
Cambridge. Her doctoral dissertation focused on the experiences of successful women in male-dominated fields. Today she helps these organisations retain, recruit and develop their high potential female employees. For more information on her and her services, please visit www.doylemorris.com

If this course is of interest to you, please email Sarah Lilley at slilley@womenin.co.uk or call on 020 7422 9213.

/by

Office Attire – Could Carrie Make It In The Boardroom?

By: Caroline Shannon

satc_carrie_s3_396x502_033020041903.jpgWhen Adryenn Ashley was in her 20s, she dressed Sex and the City style every day – cleavage, heavy makeup and perfectly coiffed hair all the way.

But then, one of her mentors told her the reason behind her low-key, makeup-free appearance: “She said, ‘Because that’s the naked truth,’” Ashley said. “For her, it upped the honesty factor she conveyed in the workplace.”

Now, Ashley, a certified divorce financial analyst and the owner of self-promotion company Wow! Is Me, says she realizes her revealing work attire was only putting her in a situation where people were admiring the contents of her push-up bras and not her IQ.
Read more

/by

News You Can Use: The SIFMA Technology Management Conference

,

Tuesday kicked off the beginning of the annual SIFMA Technology Management Conference at the Hilton Club in New York City. For those who don’t know, this conference hosted by the Securities Industry and Financial Markets Association, last three days, and provides updates on emerging trends for technology and technology management.

I spent a lot of time in the exhibition rooms looking at what all the vendors had to offer, as well as talking to people about emerging technologies in financial services. Virtualization is the next big thing for Wall Street data centers. The bulk of the people at the conference were showing all types of virtualization applications tailored for financial services, promising to make your firm everything from highly organized, to environmentally green and faster than the speed of light to boot.

Read more

/by

2008 Technology Management Conference & Exhibit

SIFMA’s 28th Annual Technology Management Conference & Exhibit is the industry’s leading event with over 300 vendors and 7,000 attendees.

The conference will address:

Communications, market data, information security, trading room support, web and Internet technology, and information systems.

The conference will focus on the rapidly-changing use of technology to drive productivity, comply with regulatory requirements, and adapt to converging markets, products and investors.

The Exhibit will explore:

Products and services in data processing, market data, information security, trading room support, web and Internet technology, information systems and other related technology activities.

For more information regarding the program, please contact Art Trager at atrager@sifma.orgor 212-313-1246

For registration costs link to: https://events.sifma.org/2008/107/event.aspx?id=534

/by