Blogs

The Wall Street Journal reported Monday on a recent gathering of business leaders who comprised the Women in the Economy Executive Task Force. The group produced some excellent directives for C-suite executives on increasing the numbers of women in companies’ senior ranks. Female and male business leaders delivered guidelines for...

My neighbor, Kathy, ran Human Resources for a large fragrance company. When I first got to know Kathy, I would leave our conversation thinking how much fun she was. But it soon dawned on me that I was enjoying myself because we talked entirely about ME the entire time. No wonder I had fun.

 Kathy would become involved in my...

  Women comprise nearly half the U.S. workforce and start businesses at 1.5x the national average. However, females are underrepresented on corporate Boards and male founded companies receive 95% of venture capital funding. The University of North Carolina’s online business program, MBA@UNC, highlights these and other business-related gender inequities in its Infographic . One particular fact that caught my eye:...

Yesterday I spoke to a group of students at George Washington University about professionalism. GWU’s Career Development office selected the topic because recently-employed alumni were having difficulties adjusting to their new environments. They weren’t having trouble coping with the work expected of them, but with the nuances of workplace behavior. After my talk, one of the questions a student asked reflected...

I’m half way through Steve Jobs by Walter Isaacson. My take away at this point is that despite being considered arrogant, rude, disrespectful and at times smelly… Jobs’ manic belief in his product overrode his negative attributes and inspired a severely beaten up workforce. How does that happen? When you’re repeatedly told that everything you produce is crap (not the...

Last Friday, an enterprising 2008 Smith College alumna, Regina Chien, organized a group of 28 college students to visit  a few technology companies in New York City, including Google’s NYC headquarters, and her office at Silicon Valley Bank. Regina hoped to give these students a peak at different career options as well as to educate them on creating strategies now to...

You probably realized soon after you arrived at college that by the time you are a senior you better have a resume that grabs recruiters’ attention. The easiest way to do that is to win an Olympic medal in alpine skiing. Or…get a good summer internship.

Even if you need to earn money over the summer, try to squeeze...

Harvard Business Review recently published an article, Four Ways Women Stunt their Careers Unintentionally. The evils include avoiding self-promotion, neglecting to ask for what you want, shunning attention, and keeping silent. Illustrating some of these female vices, the article describes Sharon Allen, former CEO of Deloitte Touche, who was passed over...

Last week I wrote a post entitled:  Have Connections? Use Them! One of my readers wrote in “Yeah, well, that doesn’t apply to me; I don’t know anyone.”  I told her it doesn’t matter whether she’s 22 and just out of college, or 32 and changing careers. She has connections. The same goes for...

If you’ve been to business meetings, you know they can be dry, lengthy and confusing, but you’re probably still glad you were invited. Attending a meeting is a reward, or at least an acknowledgement that you’re not a rank amateur anymore. So what do you do when you get there?

Make sure you say something. It doesn’t...