For those of you who don’t know me, I am a cat-like creature at heart. Happiest curled up by a warm fire, with a good book, a glass of decent red wine at my elbow, and some music playing. I don’t do wet, I don’t do cold, and I usually avoid energetic.
So it surprised even me when, a couple of years back, I volunteered for a nine-day hike through dripping rainforests and freezing valleys culminating in an ascent on the summit of Mt. Kilimanjaro in Tanzania.
The climax of the trek was a night climb from a camp high up the mountain, which required over seven hours of phenomenal effort to reach the top of Africa’s highest mountain, at 19,344 feet (a shade shy of 6,000m). This was achieved at temperatures below 0°F, in swirling mist and snow.
I signed up to climb Kili for charity, thinking Tanzania in December would top off my tan, and the exercise would help with pre-holiday weight loss. Even better, I could do a good deed and raise funds for my favorite charity at the same time. Win-win all around, really.
Ours was an eight-man team with the world of finance well represented: a trader from Morgan Stanley, a desk assistant from Deutsche, and an IT expert from Bank of New York. The others included a liver surgeon from Liverpool, an HR specialist from Switzerland, a financial adviser from Marlow and a guy who did something for GE but I didn’t ever quite understand what. And me.
Kili is a marvel – you encounter all kinds of weather and terrain, from rainforest to savannah to frozen slopes. All have their pros and cons – rainforests are, naturally, very wet, and you squish along through mud with wet gear and boots; the cold at the top bites into your very bones, and the high altitude makes many hikers ill.
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Six Steps To A New Job
NewsThis class is an overview of a proactive job search from start to
finish.
Law Firms Take on Work/Life Balance Issues
Next LevelA widely circulated article in the New York Times earlier this month, called “The Falling Down Professions,” documented the rising dissatisfaction and falling prestige of lawyers (and doctors), observing that more young people that ever aspired to the get-rich-quick ideals of jobs in finance, or the flexibility and creativity of entrepreneurship, without the years of arduous professional training and comparatively lower paychecks of “the professions.”
One step that big law firms in major markets have taken in recent years is to give associates raises: big ones. When the Class of 2006 was working as summer associates, they were looking forward to joining firms at the not-too-shabby salary of $120,000 per annum. After they got back to school for their 3L year, they got some good news: salaries had been increased to $135,000. By the time these lucky new lawyers started their first grown up jobs, starting salaries for first year associates had risen to $160,000. Said one Harvard Law grad upon hearing the news of yet another raise before he had logged a single billable hour, “I feel like I won the lottery!”
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Winter Markets Forum
NewsOffering market views from top fund management houses for investment professionals, the Investment Week Winter Markets Forum will feature a number of speakers offering their take on what to expect.
Competition: In Futures Markets and in Your Career
Next LevelI’ve been thinking about competition and how it acts as a force for change. In the bear markets we face today, I began with who the competitors in the field are, and how their roles and interactions shape the market. Recently, we have seen a trend towards consolidating the power of stock and futures exchanges and reducing competition in the market. For example, the big rivalry between futures exchanges in Chicago spawned the largest futures exchange in the world. The New York competitors, NYSE Euronext and the American Stock Exchange joined forces recently. In Canada, we see the Toronto Stock Exchange gaining control of its main competitor, the Montreal Exchange.
With all these mergers taking place in the markets, where is the competition going? The Chicago Mercantile Exchange (CME) Group admitted that the purpose of their collaboration was to compete with NYSE Euronext on that level of the playing field. In this sense, as the global markets develop so does the competition. But, as the former titans of exchange join forces to better compete on the global stage, they reduce competition within markets.
Then we have the smaller firms getting in on the action as well. To compete with the CME Group in the futures market, heavy hitting investment banks have started forming teams to compete with the future exchanges. While this strategy has had skeptics from the start, their large Chicago rival CME Group acknowledged the purpose of these in-house competitors when they upgraded their platforms to reduce the time to market for block trading as well as the time it takes to make a trade.
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FWA in NJ: Speed Networking and Planning Event for Jersey City ~ Weehawken ~ Hoboken region
NewsHelp plan the Financial Women’s Association New Jersey’s 2008 agenda, while meeting and networking with new people.
Rules of Engagement: How to Earn Respect, Take Control
NewsThe Committee On Women In Law is presenting a multi day event on helping women further their legal careers. Under New York’s MCLE rule, this program has been approved for a total of 4.5 credit hours, 3.0 in skills and 1.5 in Ethics for all attorneys including those newly admitted.
Voice of Experience: Linda Descano, COO of Citi’s Women & Co
Voices of ExperienceLinda Descano, CFA, is President and Chief Operating Officer of Women & Co., a division of Citi that provides women with educational resources for navigating life transitions and planning their financial future. Prior to joining Women & Co. in 2003, Linda was a Director and Portfolio Manager in Citi’s Private Portfolio Group, where she co-managed customized investment portfolios for individuals and institutions and oversaw the firm’s socially responsible investment program. Before that, she served as Senior Vice President and Director of Environmental Affairs for Salomon Inc., which she joined in 1994 Linda holds a B.A. from Temple University in geology.
Linda is also a sought-after public speaker. She has spoken on personal finance and investment topics at major conferences for the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), United Nations Development Program, Environmental Bankers Association, and Cambridge University, among others. For two years, Linda chaired the steering committee of the United Nations Financial Institutions Initiative on the Environment. She has received a Human Rights Leadership Award from Church Women United and an Environmental Leadership Award from the United Nations Environment Program, North America. She is a member of the New York Society of Security Analysts, Financial Communications Society, Corporate Advisory Council of the Center for Environmental Leadership in Business, and the Financial Literacy Committee of Dress for Success in New York.
In honor of her grandmothers, Nina Gaspari Pennachietti and Anna Fortunato Descano, Linda recently endowed the National Organization of Italian American Women with the Nina Anna Scholarship, a needs-based scholarship for an Italian-American woman pursuing higher education.
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Dynamic Women In Business Conference
NewsThe Dynamic Women in Business conference is a powerful forum for women to learn, share, and inspire one another.
Part 3: Passions — Ascent of Kilimanjaro
PassionsSo it surprised even me when, a couple of years back, I volunteered for a nine-day hike through dripping rainforests and freezing valleys culminating in an ascent on the summit of Mt. Kilimanjaro in Tanzania.
The climax of the trek was a night climb from a camp high up the mountain, which required over seven hours of phenomenal effort to reach the top of Africa’s highest mountain, at 19,344 feet (a shade shy of 6,000m). This was achieved at temperatures below 0°F, in swirling mist and snow.
I signed up to climb Kili for charity, thinking Tanzania in December would top off my tan, and the exercise would help with pre-holiday weight loss. Even better, I could do a good deed and raise funds for my favorite charity at the same time. Win-win all around, really.
Ours was an eight-man team with the world of finance well represented: a trader from Morgan Stanley, a desk assistant from Deutsche, and an IT expert from Bank of New York. The others included a liver surgeon from Liverpool, an HR specialist from Switzerland, a financial adviser from Marlow and a guy who did something for GE but I didn’t ever quite understand what. And me.
Kili is a marvel – you encounter all kinds of weather and terrain, from rainforest to savannah to frozen slopes. All have their pros and cons – rainforests are, naturally, very wet, and you squish along through mud with wet gear and boots; the cold at the top bites into your very bones, and the high altitude makes many hikers ill.
Read more
Top African American Women in Business …Other than Oprah
Movers and ShakersWhen you think of successful African American women, unless you have been living in a media-free cave for the last 20 years, Oprah springs to mind. While we acknowledge and admire the accomplishments of the talk show host, media mogul and self-made billionaire, it’s a shame that many of us are not equally familiar with other black women who have made a big impact on the world of business. Here we briefly profile ten fantastically accomplished African American women in finance and business. If you don’t know their names yet, you should!