There is a scene in the movie Almost Famous where Phillip Seymour Hoffman’s character advises a young journalist on how to treat people whom he encounters. He reminds the youth that you never know who you are going to run into on your long journey to the middle.
I say you never know who you are going to run into around the block, at your next job or at that cocktail party after the Futures Industry Expo. That’s why when giving your resignation, do it with tact and respect.
“Always keep a positive thought, because a positive thought cannot be denied.”
This is the motto of The CityKids, a group of underprivileged youth in New York City who are empowering themselves to rise about circumstances and be positive role models for their peers through their participation in The CityKids Repertory, a traveling performing arts troupe. This program is sponsored by The CityKids Foundation, a nonprofit organization based in New York City, whose mission is to engage young people to positively change their own lives, their communities and the world through their participation in a variety of free, after-school, weekend and summer educational and artistic leadership development programs. These initiatives encourage youth to come up with their own solutions to issues that affect their daily lives, such as drugs, gangs, teen pregnancy and dating violence.
For the last two years, I have been fortunate enough to serve on CityKids Private Sector Partners (PSP), a junior board of the CityKids Foundation, whose aim is to connect CityKids with corporate, private and individual donors and to cultivate future CityKids board members. Every year, PSP organizes a series of fundraising and social events which financially support CityKids’ leadership programs for economically disadvantaged inner-city youth and build support for the Foundation’s mission among young professionals in New York.
After a long (or short) career in finance or law, working long hours, earning the big bucks, and gaining recognition in their field, many women come to a cross roads in their career path. While there is nothing at all wrong with working in the private sector and helping companies merge, do major deals, structure financing for important transactions or litigate big securities lawsuits, after spending years doing this type of work, some people find themselves yearning to have a job where they can give back to society.
Additionally, the long hours that are the hallmark of work in finance and law have long had a reputation for being less than family friendly, as The Glass Hammer has documented in many an article. Women, who often have greater child-care and family responsibilities than their male counterparts, bear the brunt of this. So its totally understandable that many female corporate stars dream of escaping Wall Street for a better lifestyle and a more rewarding career.
Last week, the New York State Bar Association’s Special Committee on Balanced Lives in the Law released their long awaited report.
According to an April 9, 2008 article in the New York Law Journal, the Committee’s report, which was adopted unanimously by the State Bar’s House of Delegates last week found what many attorneys already know to be true: the law is an increasingly demanding profession, where attorneys find less and less time to spend with families and fulfill civic obligations which have traditionally been a hallmark of their profession. The report notes that young attorneys who are eager to engage in pro bono activities and serve on the boards of charitable organizations or bar committees lack the time to do so.
Contributed by Sophie Fletcher
The financial technology landscape is evolving from a trading floor-based industry to one that relies on algorithms, electronic trading platforms and wireless handhelds. In this second installment of “Top Financial Technologies Women Should Know About,” we examine the impact of the FAST Protocol trading technology on financial markets. This computer software language is gaining recognition because of its ability to reduce traffic and speed up data flow within our network bandwidths. Women, as savvy investors and market participants, should be familiar with this technology as it becomes an industry standard in today’s capital markets as well as a solution for growing Internet capacity.
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You have heard the rumors that your company is going to be announcing yet another round of write-downs and lay offs. Maybe you have been sneaking off during your lunch hour to make clandestine calls to headhunters and surreptitiously sending out resumes from your gmail account during work. Or maybe, in the last month or two of bloodletting on Wall Street, your boss sat you down, thanked you for your years of service to the company, and told you all about the wonderful severance package the company was prepared to offer you, before shaking your hand with a grimace and ushering you out the door.
In that case, perhaps you have recently enjoyed a relaxing week or two of vacation, catching up with friends and family and cleaning up your apartment. Or maybe you have been of getting up at noon and watching day time talk shows, while sitting on your couch in your underwear and eating Capt’n Crunch.
Contributed by Heather Cassell
California has a reputation for its progressive politics as well as being a well of innovative inventions and opportunities, but the golden state doesn’t have a sunny disposition when it comes to women’s leadership.
Nearly half, 49.8 percent, of California’s 400 publicly held companies have no women executive officers, according to a University of California at Davis Graduate School of Management report revealed last October, and only 34.3 percent of the state’s public companies have only one woman on its board of directors. This means that in such a trend setting, policy establishing progressive state women make up only 27 percent of the active directors and executive officers of California’s 400 largest public companies. But for the largest publicly held companies headquartered in California the number of women who comprise directors’ and executives’ chairs in 2007 drops to 10.4 percent and this is a slight increase from 10.2 percent in 2006, according to the report.
Contributed by Caroline Ceniza-Levine of SixFigureStart
When looking for a new job, timing is everything. For a hiring company, matching candidates to jobs is as much about finding the right candidate as it is finding her at the right time (i.e., when there is an appropriate job available). If there is a great candidate but no job, there is no match. Maybe the hiring manager/ recruiter will remember that great candidate when a job comes up, but maybe not. Maybe the recruiter will ask if she’s still available, but maybe she’ll just assume she’s not.
Contributed by Sophie Fletcher
Technology is changing the financial arena. No longer limited by execution venue, exchange or geographical brokers and dealers, trading moves to where liquidity is greatest and so, the market evolves. As players in this dynamic market, women should be familiar with the technology behind the process of making educated trades. The Glass Hammer has compiled a brief run-down of the top technologies our readers should be familiar with. The first in this five part series is Algorithmic Trading technology.
Successful collaboration brings all the good things Corporate America has to offer:
So it’s surprising that more people don’t practice collaboration at work on a more consistent basis. Perhaps there are not enough role models out there. If you are lucky enough to have a manager that collaborates well, take note and try to learn from his or her behavior. On the chance that you don’t, here are some behaviors you may want to think about developing, in order to improve your capacity for collaboration: Read more