Innovating Women

May 20, 2013 By Leave a Comment

Innovating Women is an new campaign to crowd-create a book about women in tech. The crowdsourcing is done via the GroupTie collaborative platform and I enjoy logging in to read the online discussions about topics like leadership styles and gender discrimination.

I’ll be contributing a story about Silvija Seres who studied with me at INSEAD. Silvija started out at the Norwegian search company Fast (acquired by Microsoft in 2008). Today she sits on several corporate boards in Oslo, including Statkraft and the Norwegian Lottery. Norway was the first country to set a 40% quota for women on boards. Silvija says a quota in of itself isn’t enough and explains what women need to do in order to be on a board:

“A lot of women, when quotas were introduced, they expected these board positions to rain on them. They don’t if you’re not good at presenting your value. There are quotas, but on the other hand there are lots of other things that need to add up. I grounded myself as a technology specialist who knows how to be commercial.”

Innovating Women is led by Farai Chideya, Neesha Bapat and Vivek Wadhwa. The project’s fundraising is via an Indiegogo campaign with matching corporate funds for every dollar raised.

Filed Under: Government Legislation, USA, Women on Boards Tagged With: , , , , ,

Podcast: The Power of Image

May 14, 2013 By Leave a Comment

Another great episode from Ashley Milne-Tyte, this time about the impact your image has on your career. I happened to spend many shekels today on two pairs of shoes so her timing is perfect for me to feel like that was a legitimate expense.

This episode includes insights from the fabulous Heather McGregor. I wish I could be in Edinburgh this summer to see her live performance at the fringe festival.

Filed Under: Prominent Career Women, UK Tagged With: , , ,

Richard Branson & Quotas

May 11, 2013 By Leave a Comment
Branson at the UQ Business School

Branson at UQ Business School

 

Richard Branson spoke at the University of Queensland Business School this week, where he voiced his opinion about women on boards. A couple of months ago I was disappointed to realize that while his extremely supportive rhetoric about career women generates some great media for him, in reality Virgin Trains does not have any women on its board of directors. Branson owns 51% of the company.

Here’s what Branson said in Queensland: ”It’s incredible that most boardrooms have a maximum of one or two women in them… I haven’t managed to get that in our own companies, I think it’s something that needs to be forced through by law.”

 

 

At least now he’s not misleading anymore. While I do find it somewhat disingenuous to imagine Branson requires government backing in order to fix the problem in his own companies, it’s good to see him being more transparent about the gap between his statements and actual women’s leadership roles at Virgin.

Clear here for some local coverage of the event by Katherine Feeney of the Brisbane Times.

Filed Under: Government Legislation, Jokes and Quotes, UK, Women on Boards Tagged With:

Sara Blakely

April 12, 2013 By Leave a Comment

The founder of Spanx spoke this week in New York at the Women in the World Summit. Sara Blakely is the first self-made female billionaire. She said:

“I didn’t have a business plan when I started Spanx but what I did was I stood in department stores all day, every day for two years. And I lifted my pant leg for every woman who walked into a department store and shook my butt for them and held a picture of my own rear, before and after, laminated… and they saw the picture and said ‘ok, I get it.’ It makes a huge difference and I got all my ideas from women in the departments for my next ideas. I mean, they were the ones that said ‘I wish you had a shaper that stopped on the thigh without the leg band,’ and ‘can you make a bra.’ Everywhere I go I get flashed: in restaurants, in airports, women are like ‘whoo! oh the Spanx girl!’ They immediately start showing me things on their bodies.”

I can’t embed the Summit’s videos on this blog but they’re all here. I also enjoyed watching Tom Hanks talking about filmmaker Nora Ephron who passed away last year. There’s a lot of great stuff there, depending on your interests.

Sara Blakely

Needless to say I wear Spanx all the time…

Filed Under: Business, Jokes and Quotes, Prominent Career Women, USA Tagged With: , , ,

Remaking a European Video about Equal Pay

April 10, 2013 By Leave a Comment

Yesterday was Equal Pay Day, raising global awareness for the pay gap. The Levo League produced a fun video about it as part of their excellent campaign to inform women about negotiation and the untapped option to “ask for more.” It’s clearly inspired by the same concept the European Commission showcased last year, basically taking a chunk out of various consumer goods to humorously illustrate the negative impact on a woman’s income:

Americans often remake European films and television shows. Recent well known examples are The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, which was originally produced in Sweden as Män som hatar kvinnor and The Office sitcom, which has excellent British and American versions.

Here’s the European Commission’s original (I love the cashier!):

My favorite American remake is Three Men and a Baby from back in the late 80′s, originally known as the French Trois hommes et un couffin… I could go on and on but this isn’t a blog about movies, so here are some regional links with information about the pay gap in Europe and the United States.

Filed Under: Pay Gap aka Wage Gap Tagged With: ,

Antonin Scalia Quote

April 9, 2013 By Leave a Comment

“Every cloud has a silver lining, and one of the benefits of the exclusion of women from most professions was that we had wonderful teachers, especially the women who today would probably be CEOs.”

Scalia is a US Supreme Court Justice. This quote is from a New York Magazine article. He may have meant well, but Jezebel’s Laura Beck points out otherwise.

Filed Under: Jokes and Quotes Tagged With:

Xerox CEO Ursula Burns at Catalyst

April 6, 2013 By Leave a Comment

Ursula Burns spoke at Catalyst‘s annual NYC conference earlier in the week. Catalyst put it all on their YouTube channel but unfortunately split it up into eight separate clips, each about a different topic. It’s worth watching all eight to see this amazingly impressive leader. Burns discusses leadership; impatience (my favorite); transformation; storytelling; work/life balance; advice (good stuff); Lean In; and sponsors and mentors.

Burns has a refreshing sense of humor (“if you’re a woman you know… that the temperature in the room is not necessarily, has nothing to do with the temperature in the room”). The interviewer is Catalyst CEO Ilene Lang.

Filed Under: Business, Prominent Career Women, USA Tagged With: ,
« Older Posts
Follow

Get every new post delivered to your Inbox.