by Liz O’Donnell (Boston)
You may be sick of hearing about Facebook, but you need to get over it. It’s not going away. In fact it’s growing. Rapidly. The site has 175 million active users. According to Inside Facebook, an independent blog based in Palo Alto, California, that tracks Facebook statistics, Facebook is growing in every demographic, but the fastest growing segment is women over the age of 55. As of February 1, women comprise 56.2 percent of Facebook’s audience, up from 54.3 percent late last year. This is good news because Facebook, and other social networking tools, provide women a way to help raise their social capital.
Susan Mernit, a former vice president at Netscape and AOL and long-time social media strategist says social capital is something you can both earn and spend. That capital, according to Mernit and Deanna Zandt, a media technologist and consultant, comes from your connections, your reputation and your influence. The two experts recently spoke at the Women Action Media conference in Cambridge, Massachusetts about the ways men and women build and use social capital differently.
They say that women are more likely to use social networking tools to keep in touch with friends and family whereas men are more likely to use the tools to entertain and gain audiences. Women are also more likely to be concerned with the affects of social networking on their personal security whereas men tend to be more open with their digital profiles.
In addition to Facebook, there are other popular social media tools such as Flickr and Twitter. As of December 2008, 11 percent of online American adults said they used a service like Twitter according to the Pew Internet and American Life Project. The fact is the game has changed. When played correctly, social networking can help women build their reputations and increase their networks and therefore their influence.
The first step in building a social media strategy according to Mernit and Zandt is to establish goals. Are you hoping to increase your network or establish a professional expertise? Begin with the end in mind. This will help drive your online strategy.
The second step is to remember that social networking is all about authenticity. It is important you put yourself out there, but wisely. Women in financial services are especially hesitant to join social networks as they think it can be reckless and damaging to a career. And it can, if you post too personal data or blur the lines between your personal life and career. But there is no reason you can’t project an authentic, professional and controlled image of yourself on the Web. And as Mernit says, “Honey, if you don’t have a picture, it doesn’t count.” If you are going to use social media, you must commit to it and embrace it. “We are in a culture of public opinion,” says Mernit. “The web has become the means to measure that opinion.”
The third step is to understand that after authenticity, the most important value on social networking sites is reciprocity. Taking a “me, me, me” approach will backfire,” says Zandt, “Understand you are part of a gift ecosystem.” What she means is, just like with networking in the physical world, you can’t show up just to take, take, take. You need to earn social capital before you can spend it.
After the privacy concerns, perhaps the next biggest barrier for professional women is finding the time to participate in social networks. Zandt says “grooming” your social media sites, once they are set up, can be done in just one hour a day. You may be thinking you can’t possibly find another hour in the day. But haven’t you also been thinking you should really find more time to network in these troubled times? Building social capital can pay dividends in the physical world too.
FWA’s Fourth Annual Speed Networking Program
NewsBack by popular demand – speed networking. This is the event where you can make new contacts to build your business, win a promotion or find a job. You’ll meet people just like you who are interested in expanding their circle of contacts. The way it works: participants pair off for 10 minutes of conversation, then continue to switch partners every 10 minutes, allowing everyone to meet at least 5-6 new people in these mini-meetings. That’s in addition to the contacts you’ll make over refreshments before and after the structured speed networking program. In each partnering, you’ll have the opportunity to describe what you do, offer to provide helpful contacts, share information and resources and give feedback. Your partner will do the same for you.
Register here
Catalyst Award Winner: Gibbons PC
Industry Leaders, Leadership“The law firm is a service business. We don’t sell product: our greatest resource is human capital. So, we started our Women’s Initiative—we were one of the first law firms to begin such an endeavor—because we recognized that the face of the legal practice was changing. 50 % of law school graduates are women now; we wanted to attract the best of the best talent,” said Patrick C. Dunican, Jr., Chairman and Managing Director of Gibbons PC, a top law firm in the New York, New Jersey, Philadelphia and Delaware metropolitan regions.
Named one the nation’s top 200 firms by The American Lawyer, Gibbons recently won the Catalyst award for its Women’s Initiative. Christine Amalfe, Chair of Employment Law at Gibbons and co-founder of the Women’s Initiative 12 years ago, spoke of the importance of maintaining the firm’s commitment to the advancement of women, even in these difficult economic times. “In the law firm world, management changes a little more regularly than it does in the corporate world. Changes on the executive committee, rainmakers…lawyers come and go, especially women lawyers. Women have learned that they can walk away from firms that are not supportive and go to those that are supportive. We wanted to be on the receiving end.”
The Women’s Initiative at Gibbons provides professional opportunities for women including new and experienced Gibbons attorneys and Gibbons clients, to network, mentor and support the advancement of women in all professions. Amalfe justified the program’s expense, saying, “we have committed financial resources, hard work and sweat equity over many years to make things work. You can’t depend on what you said in 1997. In this economic environment, when firms are looking to cut costs and people are losing their jobs, you need to justify the existence of an initiative [which costs] a good amount of money every year. You justify it with the business case. There is no doubt that there is a business case for promoting, retaining and advancing women in law firms and in every company. And if the senior management gets that, even in difficult economic times, they will find a way to continue.” And, there is a business case for it, with Dunican crediting $6 million dollars of business to the Women’s Initiative. “Women [in our client organizations] are making the legal decisions. It is not the old boys’ club anymore.”
The Gibbons approach to the advancement and retention of women has several components, including education, internal and external communication, and organization of the firm around the business case and training and development. “First you have to educate…You have to tell your colleagues about how important it is,” adds Dunican, “and then you have to communicate…and for law firms like ours, this is ‘American flag and warm chocolate chip cookie’ stuff because our clients are asking us to identify our numbers; they are asking us how many women we have and then they look at us 5 years later to see how we are doing. This is really important to our business and we need to have a relentless focus on it.”
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WIIT: Career Management in a Spiraling Economy
NewsThe Professional Development Committee of Women In International Trade (WIIT) Invites you to a Brown Bag luncheon discussion on: “Career Management in a Spiraling Economy”
Featuring James Patton Regional Vice President, Robert Half Legal
RSVP to: ajackson@manatt.com
Women’s Network for a Sustainable Future’s New York Luncheon Panel
NewsGreen Design – Costs and Benefits for Business
A discussion of sustainable innovations for buildings, and the economic impact of green design on business and the public.
Including speakers from: XFOWLE Architects, Jonathan Rose and Companies, Cisco Connected Real Estate, Plaza Construction
A discussion of sustainable innovations for buildings, and the economic impact of green design on business and the public.
Sponsored by FXFOWLE Architects, Plaza Construction
“Your RSVP is important. Please let us know if your plans change so our host can arrange appropriate seating and refreshments. We appreciate your courtesy and consideration
Register here
Addressing the Elephant in the Boardroom: Domestic Violence in the Workplace
Office Politics“My life seemed a quintessential New York success story. I graduated Phi Beta Kappa and magna cum laude from Smith College and married an Ivy League graduate. Everyone thought I had married the perfect man. We lived in a brownstone just off Fifth Avenue and belonged to a country club. I was on the management track at Time, Inc. and my husband worked across the street at one of the city’s leading investment banks. My life was a perfect hell. My husband regularly tied me up, beat me, pushed me down the stairs and out of windows, locked me out of our home, isolated me from family and friends, and blamed me for literally everything. He also tried to prevent me from going to work by cutting up all of my clothes,” says Brooke McMurray, a former publishing executive at Time Incorporated, where she launched and marketed more than 30 magazines including People, Time, Sports Illustrated and Fortune. While her professional accomplishments are bright and impressive, her personal story is dark and chilling. And she is not alone.
A female VP consistently excelled at her job at U.S. Life (now part of AIG). She was well-liked by her coworkers and management alike. She was also battered for nearly 20 years before she sat down with her boss and asked for help after her husband had tried to strangle her the night before. She knew she also had to tell her coworkers or one of them might unknowingly let her enraged husband into the building. She gave a picture of him to security to protect not only herself, but also her colleagues.
When her boyfriend punched her, a female bank employee told coworkers she was mugged. She never told anyone that he took her car keys so she had to run all the way to work, obsessively kept track of her whereabouts and checked her work messages. She hid the abuse all the while she was working her way up to VP for community relations at a bank that became JPMorgan Chase. She kept quiet even as she filed for a restraining order and lodged a police complaint, only feeling safe enough to share her story once her partner had been deported.
In March of 2008, a vivacious, beloved partner in a commercial real estate company in Chicago was ambushed by her estranged boyfriend and shot in the back as she walked from her office to her car. A popular game designer at Microsoft (formerly a Harvard-educated public defender) was shot by her husband in the parking lot of her apartment building as she was leaving for work in July 2008.
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Association for Women in Computing: April Monthly Meeting
NewsPresentation Synopsis: Top 10 Things I’ve Learned
In the new economy driven by change and spurred by opportunities coming from all directions, where competition is tough and customers are more sophisticated and demanding, it is imminent that companies and organizations take the step to remove its sacred cows.
Register here
2009 Angel Capital Association Summit
NewsDuring the current recession, angel investors have become even more important. As angels help build innovative companies, we help create jobs and value in our economy. And, there has never been a more important time for angel investors to get ideas from peers and build skills with top professional development programs.
ACA’s 2009 Summit is the largest gathering of angel investing groups in North America. The event is designed for members of angel groups – both leaders and member investors – as a true peer exchange, with valuable information and thought-provoking discussion on best practices in the field and a way to better know your colleagues for future co-investment. The 2008 event attracted 380 attendees from more than 100 angel groups.
Click here to register. A copy of the Summit agenda is at the bottom of this page. Any questions regarding registration or logistics should be directed to Your Conference Connection (YCC), which is assisting ACA with the event.
Contact YCC at 910-452-0006 or acaregistration@teamycc.com. ACA will offer a special session for angels from outside the United States to exchange ideas and models of angel groups in other countries. More information about the invitation-only workshop on April 15th is available here.
Social Media as Social Capital
Expert AnswersYou may be sick of hearing about Facebook, but you need to get over it. It’s not going away. In fact it’s growing. Rapidly. The site has 175 million active users. According to Inside Facebook, an independent blog based in Palo Alto, California, that tracks Facebook statistics, Facebook is growing in every demographic, but the fastest growing segment is women over the age of 55. As of February 1, women comprise 56.2 percent of Facebook’s audience, up from 54.3 percent late last year. This is good news because Facebook, and other social networking tools, provide women a way to help raise their social capital.
Susan Mernit, a former vice president at Netscape and AOL and long-time social media strategist says social capital is something you can both earn and spend. That capital, according to Mernit and Deanna Zandt, a media technologist and consultant, comes from your connections, your reputation and your influence. The two experts recently spoke at the Women Action Media conference in Cambridge, Massachusetts about the ways men and women build and use social capital differently.
They say that women are more likely to use social networking tools to keep in touch with friends and family whereas men are more likely to use the tools to entertain and gain audiences. Women are also more likely to be concerned with the affects of social networking on their personal security whereas men tend to be more open with their digital profiles.
In addition to Facebook, there are other popular social media tools such as Flickr and Twitter. As of December 2008, 11 percent of online American adults said they used a service like Twitter according to the Pew Internet and American Life Project. The fact is the game has changed. When played correctly, social networking can help women build their reputations and increase their networks and therefore their influence.
The first step in building a social media strategy according to Mernit and Zandt is to establish goals. Are you hoping to increase your network or establish a professional expertise? Begin with the end in mind. This will help drive your online strategy.
The second step is to remember that social networking is all about authenticity. It is important you put yourself out there, but wisely. Women in financial services are especially hesitant to join social networks as they think it can be reckless and damaging to a career. And it can, if you post too personal data or blur the lines between your personal life and career. But there is no reason you can’t project an authentic, professional and controlled image of yourself on the Web. And as Mernit says, “Honey, if you don’t have a picture, it doesn’t count.” If you are going to use social media, you must commit to it and embrace it. “We are in a culture of public opinion,” says Mernit. “The web has become the means to measure that opinion.”
The third step is to understand that after authenticity, the most important value on social networking sites is reciprocity. Taking a “me, me, me” approach will backfire,” says Zandt, “Understand you are part of a gift ecosystem.” What she means is, just like with networking in the physical world, you can’t show up just to take, take, take. You need to earn social capital before you can spend it.
After the privacy concerns, perhaps the next biggest barrier for professional women is finding the time to participate in social networks. Zandt says “grooming” your social media sites, once they are set up, can be done in just one hour a day. You may be thinking you can’t possibly find another hour in the day. But haven’t you also been thinking you should really find more time to network in these troubled times? Building social capital can pay dividends in the physical world too.
Breakfast: Funds of Funds – New Directions/Strategic Planning in a New Landscape
News7:45 Registration/Breakfast
8:00-9:00 Current environment for funds of funds
Rachel Minard, Cogo Wolf Asset Mgt
Rob Picard, Navigant Consulting
9:00-10:00 Exploring distribution channels
Institutional expectations
David Bauer, Casey Quirk
Other speakers to be announced
10:00-11:00 Possible approaches and differentiation
Rachel Minard, Cogo Wolf Asset Mgt
Register here
Ask-A-Recruiter: Getting Noticed By Executive Recruiters
Ask A RecruiterHow does a person make themselves known to recruiters?
This question was posed during last month’s SixFigureStart Ask-A-Recruiter call. The caller worked as in-house counsel so did not get the same attention from recruiters as her attorney colleagues in law firms.
Refer. Build long-term relationships with recruiters by being helpful. Take recruiter calls, even when you’re not actively looking, and help them find people by referring quality leads. Remember that your referrals are a reflection on you, so only refer people who fit what they are working on and who will represent you well.
Get referred. Recruiters like to find you. They don’t typically see unsolicited candidates. So maintain a robust network, find out from your colleagues who the good recruiters are for your sector, and have your colleagues introduce you.
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