By Heather Chapman (New York City)
Mixing personal finance and cheese isn’t the usual combination, but Paula Harris, co-founder of WH Cornerstone Investments, is managing to mix the two nicely. At first spending her days in human resources before moving to the business development side of her business, Paula is still able to find time to peruse interests outside the office. Active in her community, Paula is the president of the board of directors for the Plymouth Philharmonic Orchestra and currently holds a seat on the Executive Committee of the board of directors for the South Shore Chamber of Commerce.
In addition to those commitments, she serves on Bridgewater State College’s School of Business Advisory Council, is the founding Director of the Boston-based Downtown Women’s Club’s South Shore Chapter. And yet she still has the time and energy too not only make her own cheese but to teach others how to do it as well.
Cheese-making wasn’t something that Paula had a life-long interest in, although she says she has always been a fan of good cheese. “A few years ago, I was involved in [successfully] protecting the O’Neil Dairy Farm from being developed. As I became more involved in the project, I realized that the future of profitable dairy farming comes from making products with milk versus selling raw milk. I have always loved good cheese, so I decided it would be fun to find out how to make it.”
Focusing her attentions on finding a credible instructor in the cheese-making process, Paula turned to the Internet, where she caught a lucky break. “I found [out] that there was a very well-known teacher—Ricki Carroll—based right here in Massachusetts.” Signing up for a weekend class, Paula was then challenged to teach a course by the woman who organized the local adult-education programs. Rising to the challenge, Paula agreed to teach the course before she’d even learned the first thing about cheese-making.
Falling in love with this art, Paula has turned this interest into a full-blown passion, sharing her knowledge with others who are interested in learning how to make their own cheese. She teaches a few courses each year, in addition to private demonstration parties, and doing a yearly demonstration on Farm Days at the Historic O’Neil farm.
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The Tension of the High Achieving New Mom
Work-LifeI started off as a coach for high-performing off-ramping women – women who step off the fast track to care for young babies – because I believed that was what I needed when I left my fast track job to care for my two boys born 16 months apart. I’d read the research about how these women lose their confidence and how the few that successfully returned to the workforce returned to lower pay and slower (mommy) tracks, and I wanted to do something about it.
After a few months of coaching only women out of the workforce (paid for by the employer they left who wanted them to come back), a potential corporate client asked if I would coach women who were still working. Specifically, they wanted me to coach three high-potential women who were pregnant. The Chief Diversity Officer said to me, “We find that these women who have achieved a lot in a short time, rising rapidly through the ranks, are the ones most likely not to return after maternity leave or they return and then quit after a few months.” It didn’t make sense to her that these were the women who left because they were the ones usually on executive track and therefore had more to lose! I accepted the assignment and learned so much from it that approximately 80% of the women I now coach are in the workforce, are not planning to “off-ramp” anytime soon, and are successfully dealing with what I call the tension of the high-achieving new mom.
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Corporate Counsel Webseries: Securities Enforcement Trends – SEC and DOJ Respond to the Crisis
NewsPublic outcry resulting from the ongoing financial market turbulence and corresponding loss of investor confidence has given the US Department of Justice (DOJ) and the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) a clear mandate to bring to justice the individuals and firms that contributed to the current crisis. Taking advantage of new leadership and resources to try to restore domestic and international trust in our national markets, these agencies are responding to this call to action by reinvigorating their approaches to investigation and enforcement.Please join Suzanne McDermott, Chief Compliance Officer and Associate General Counsel of Halcyon Asset Management LLC, and Bruce Bettigole and Sean Casey, both formerly with the DOJ and the SEC and now partners in Mayer Brown’s Securities Enforcement & Investigations group, for a discussion of recent developments in securities enforcement, including:
Register here.
Emerging Governance Trends, SOX and Beyond
NewsDid SOX have the intended effect? Is it a success? Has similar Canadian regulation been appropriate for our particular markets and culture?
Governance expert, Janis Riven, will provide a review of the changing landscape of governance since the emergence of Sarbanes Oxley and similar legislation and regulation to deal with the ‘Enron Scandals’ almost 10 years ago.
Note that this will be a formal sit-down dinner followed by our speakers.
Event Registration at https://awfandcma.eventbrite.com
2009 Oil and Gas Technology Leaders
NewsEnergy Hot Topics Series: Tomorrow’s Technology Today – 2009 Oil and Gas Technology Leaders
CALL FOR PAPERS!
Deadline for submission: 1 February 2009
Please submit via email to Abstracts@WorldOil.com
Gulf Publishing invites you to submit an abstract for review for the upcoming Energy Hot Topics Series – Tomorrow’s Technology Today: 2009 Oil and Gas Technology Leaders. This conference will discuss leading edge, breakthrough technologies and technology-related business issues in the following areas:
• Recent technology advances that may significantly impact/change the industry
• Key business issues related to technology development (impact of down market, etc.)
• The new horizon in oil and gas technology – what’s next?
• Unconventional resources and outlook for continued investment
Submitted abstracts should be approximately 250 words in length and include all authors, affiliations, pertinent contact information and proposed speaker. Presentations should be non-commercial in nature and appeal to management from operating and service companies, investors, academia, and decision makers in technical fields.
Selected papers may be candidates for publishing in World Oil magazine. Please e-mail Events@GulfPub.com for more information.
For more information or to Register
Mamas Don’t Let Your Babies Grow Up to be Lawyers
Office PoliticsWomen lawyers continue to struggle for equality at work such as equal pay and equal opportunities to make partner. Every generation makes a few more cracks in the glass ceiling for the one that follows. In fact, this fall, women are expected to surpass the number of male students entering law school. But the generation behind them, have other plans.
Gina Hayes, a patent and trademark attorney, thinks her daughter Amber would make a great lawyer. “The way her mind is, she’s real detailed. She definitely reminds me of me,” says Gina of her 11-year-old daughter.
The eleven-year-old girl only has eyes for horses. She has spent several summers riding and caring for horses at the Fox Chase Farm in Virginia. When she grows up, she wants to be a veterinarian. She is a strong rider and working toward becoming a jockey.
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Voice of Experience: Aileen Blake, Executive Vice President and Corporate Controller, Northern Trust
Voices of Experience“A couple of jobs I took along the way weren’t jobs I had my sight set on,” says Aileen Blake, Executive Vice President and Corporate Controller for Northern Trust, “but someone I trusted said they would be good opportunities. At the end of the day, those opportunities opened doors for me.”
For the most part, Blake has followed a direct and proven path. She studied accounting and business in college, took the CPA exam, and became a public accountant for PricewaterhouseCoopers. From there she held several jobs at major consumer packaged goods companies including Quaker Oats and Pepsi, did a stint overseas, and got an MBA from Kellogg School of Management.
Despite this classic pedigree, Blake tells her junior staff to always keep their considerations broad. “Think about the kinds of experiences you want to get and the kinds of tools you want to add to the tool kit,” she says. She believes that even challenging experiences can support a career trajectory.
“When I went to work in the UK, I was only six years out of college,” she says. “I was thrown into a challenging situation. There were cultural things that I didn’t get.”
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In Case You Missed It: News Round-up
NewsIn case you were too busy to have kept up with all the news, contributor Martin Mitchell has gathered some important market events from last week to help you start this week well informed:
Mergers and Acquisitions
Abu Dhabi-based Aabar Investments is to take a 9.1% stake in Daimler, the German car manufacturer. The deal will see Aabar pay a total of €1.95bn, €20.27 per share, and Daimler will increase it number of shares in issue by 10% to facilitate the investment.
Canadian oil company Suncor Energy is to buy rival Petro-Canada for C$19.6bn (£11bn) in an agreed all-share deal, creating North America’s 5th largest oil and gas producer. CIBC and Morgan Stanley advised Suncor, RBC and Deutsche advised Petro-Canada.
UK oil and gas company BG Group has won control of Australian group Pure Energy. 70% of the target’s shareholders have said yes, in a deal that could cost BG A$1.03bn (£497m).
Pharmaceutical giant GlaxoSmithKline is preparing to take a significant stake (estimated at 10%) in Aspen Pharmacare of South Africa. Aspen has a market capitalisation of R17bn (£1.23bn).
The Australian government cited national security concerns as it blocked a A$2.6bn ($1.8bn) bid by China’s Minmetals for Oz Minerals. Oz Minerals has a flagship asset located in a military zone in South Australia. Read more
International Corporate Citizenship Conference
NewsCorporate Citizenship: Leading Change, Finding Opportunity
How can recent gains in corporate citizenship be sustained during this enormously challenging economic time?What are the best corporate citizenship practices during a recession? What opportunities does the economic downturn present? These are no ordinary times. And so the 2009 International Corporate Citizenship Conference will be no ordinary conference. Now, more than ever, we will focus with laser-like precision on how companies can restore trust, rebuild brand equity and re-establish relationships with investors, customers and employees.
To register, click here.
“Opt Out” or Pushed Out: Are Women Choosing to Leave the Legal Profession?
News“Opt Out” or Pushed Out will address the controversial phenomenon described by some as “opting out,” the supposed trend of professional women leaving the workplace to devote their energies to family care-taking, full time. This conference will focus on the dynamics of the “trend” within the legal profession, inviting legal practitioners, professional students, and scholars to critically assess the structural, institutional, and societal reasons why women lawyers may be departing from the workplace.
It will also devote significant energy to the experiences of men and how they may be similar to – or different from – those of female attorneys. Conference panels will touch on topics of parenthood, social expectations that treat men and women differently, and how the legal field can learn from other professions that have begun to accommodate the reality of male and female professionals’ multi-faceted lives.
Men and women in the legal profession — practitioners, students, and scholars — will come together to critically assess the structural, institutional and societal pressures that affect all attorneys and have made balance particularly elusive for women. The aim is to generate concrete goals and methods for improving the structure of the workplace and social perceptions of the occupational choices that attorneys make.
Speakers Include:
Registration is FREE for Yale students, faculty, and staff, only $10 for students from other schools, and $35 for the general public. Click here to register.
Passions: The Art of Cheese
PassionsMixing personal finance and cheese isn’t the usual combination, but Paula Harris, co-founder of WH Cornerstone Investments, is managing to mix the two nicely. At first spending her days in human resources before moving to the business development side of her business, Paula is still able to find time to peruse interests outside the office. Active in her community, Paula is the president of the board of directors for the Plymouth Philharmonic Orchestra and currently holds a seat on the Executive Committee of the board of directors for the South Shore Chamber of Commerce.
In addition to those commitments, she serves on Bridgewater State College’s School of Business Advisory Council, is the founding Director of the Boston-based Downtown Women’s Club’s South Shore Chapter. And yet she still has the time and energy too not only make her own cheese but to teach others how to do it as well.
Cheese-making wasn’t something that Paula had a life-long interest in, although she says she has always been a fan of good cheese. “A few years ago, I was involved in [successfully] protecting the O’Neil Dairy Farm from being developed. As I became more involved in the project, I realized that the future of profitable dairy farming comes from making products with milk versus selling raw milk. I have always loved good cheese, so I decided it would be fun to find out how to make it.”
Focusing her attentions on finding a credible instructor in the cheese-making process, Paula turned to the Internet, where she caught a lucky break. “I found [out] that there was a very well-known teacher—Ricki Carroll—based right here in Massachusetts.” Signing up for a weekend class, Paula was then challenged to teach a course by the woman who organized the local adult-education programs. Rising to the challenge, Paula agreed to teach the course before she’d even learned the first thing about cheese-making.
Falling in love with this art, Paula has turned this interest into a full-blown passion, sharing her knowledge with others who are interested in learning how to make their own cheese. She teaches a few courses each year, in addition to private demonstration parties, and doing a yearly demonstration on Farm Days at the Historic O’Neil farm.
Read more