The Glass Hammer
The Glass Hammer is an online community designed for women executives in financial services, law and business. Visit us daily to discover issues that matter, share experiences, and plan networking, your career and your life. Get a new job right here!
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Dual Career Couples – Tips for Making It Work
By Gigi DeVault (Munich) Have you seen Up in the Air? The camera cuts to the interior of a hotel bar. We see two women sitting over drinks. Worldly, successful, confident, Alex Goran has scooped up the pieces of the broken young Turk-ette, Natalie Keener, who has just received a “Dear Jane” text message from her boyfriend. Keener ticks off the desirable attributes of her dream husband. In turn, Goran advises the young woman: “You know, honestly by the time you’re 34, all the physical requirements... |
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Voice of Experience: Annica Lindegren, Partner, White & Case
By Melissa J. Anderson (New York City) For Annica Lindegren, partner at White & Case and head of the firm’s bank finance practice in Germany, a keen focus on providing top service for her clients has been one key to her success – the other is finding a unique balance between her work life and family life. Working in Frankfurt during the week, Lindegren heads home to her family in Spain on the weekend. She says, “In a sense I have found my work/life balance. When I’m home my... |
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In Case You Missed It: Business News Round-Up
Contributed by Beth Collinge of CTG – a division of ILX Group plc. In the US, President Barack Obama signed into law the nation’s Dodd-Frank Financial Reform Bill: the most comprehensive overhaul of banking regulation since the 1930s. In Europe, the results of stress tests on Europe’s leading financial institutions showed that only seven of 91 banks failed to meet capital requirements. Chevron, ConocoPhillips, ExxonMobil and Royal Dutch Shell have pledged $1bn (£659m) for a rapid response... |
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Brand Preservation: Five Critical Steps for Effective Crisis Communications
Contributed by Susan Stern, President, Stern + Associates Few companies or organizations will never face a serious and immediate challenge at some point during their history. How effectively and quickly the organization deals with the threat and communicates with the media, customers, employees and other key publics often determines how its products, services and corporate leaders are viewed – positively or negatively – for many years to come. What essential steps should executives and managers... |
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Movers and Shakers: Rachel S. L. Minard, Partner and Managing Director, Optima Fund Management, LLC
By Gigi DeVault (Munich) When the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library in Simi Valley opened in 1991, it marked the first time that five United States presidents had gathered in one place. This prestigious gathering of ribbon-cutters—Nixon, Ford, Carter, Reagan, and Bush Sr. and their respective First Ladies—at the largest Presidential library in the nation, could be attributed to a number variables. Three factors come immediately to mind: Longer lives due to improved health care, Presidential... |
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Why Communicating CSR Efforts to Women Can Really Pay Off
By Andrea Newell (Grand Rapids, MI) Currently women make up about half the U.S. workforce, so more than ever before, retaining women in the workplace is an important issue. Many businesses offer work/life balance, flex time, and other family-friendly incentives to attract, inspire and keep female employees, but a recent survey shows another surprising way to make women happy: do good, and tell the world about it. A survey conducted by the Simmons School of Management and Hewlett-Packard during... |
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Due Diligence: Critical for Investment Management (and Building Your Career, Too)
By Melissa J. Anderson (New York City) “The difference between a million dollar account and a hundred million dollar account is a couple of zeros – and a lot of time,” said Holly Miller, Partner at Stone House Consulting, LLC. Miller has a passion for due diligence. Benchmarking and record-keeping, she says, are going to be critical for the success of investment management firms moving forward. “Due diligence is a big, hot topic, particularly since we all found out about Bernie [Madoff].”... |
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Reframing Flexwork for the New Economy
By Melissa J. Anderson (New York City) Having weathered a recession that revealed inefficiencies, carelessness, and just plain antiquated business practices, companies are facing new demands from shareholders, employees, and customers alike: increased productivity, accountability, and sustainability. And the solution to these demands may be an idea that has, for years, been relegated to the HR department or affinity groups, marked a “woman’s issue” and not taken seriously in the boardroom. Judith... |
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Changing the Game: Ending the War on Moms
By Tina Vasquez (Los Angeles) In her book The War on Moms: On Life in a Family-Unfriendly Nation, author Sharon Lerner is spot-on when she writes, “To say there is a sinister plot against American women is both overblown and exactly right.” She was also right in her astute observation that giving birth is the new financial turning point for many women. Lerner details the plight of American professional women; working mothers exhausted from their countless obligations at work and home, their... |
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Voice of Experience: Michelle Clayman, CFA, Founder, Managing Partner & Chief Investment Officer, New Amsterdam Partners LLC
By Melissa J. Anderson (New York City) “I was born and raised in England, and did my undergraduate degree at Oxford,” began Michelle Clayman, CFA, Founder, Managing Partner, and Chief Investment Officer of New Amsterdam Partners. After graduating, Clayman took a job in commercial banking with Bank of America in London for two years, before heading to California to attend Stanford Business School. “After business school,” she said, “I took a job at Salomon Brothers in sales and trading,... |
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In Case You Missed It: Business News Round-Up
Contributed by Beth Collinge of CTG – a division of ILX Group plc. The US this week passed a sweeping overhaul of bank regulation, while the EU is in the process of finalising similar legislation. Goldman Sachs settled its lawsuit with the SEC, paying the largest-ever penalty by a Wall Street firm to the Commission. BP’s shares are up, after reporting that it has successfully capped the damaged Gulf well. Economic Backdrop Markets in the US weakened during last week, as a series of disappointing... |
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Giving Top Brass a Hard Time: A Brief History of Women in Corporate Governance
Contributed by Jilaine Hummel Bauer, Bauer Consulting If you read the news story run under the headline, “Woman of Steel Gives Top Brass a Hard Time,” about an activist shareholder who objected to executive compensation and introduced a “say on pay” proposal at an annual shareholders meeting of a large, prominent U.S. public company, you might think the story had run yesterday. Would you believe the story actually ran in Life Magazine back in March 1950? Wilma Soss, the story’s protagonist,... |
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Getting the Right People Around the Table
By Cleo Thompson (London), founder of The Gender Blog Last year, The Glass Hammer covered IDDAS’s report on the female perspective on board effectiveness, in which the London based provider of board level coaching and leadership development services interviewed some of the most senior women in British business (female board members of FTSE 350 companies) and took their views from the top. This year, in the wake of the 2009 Walker report which examines UK corporate governance and makes suggestions... |
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Is Sexual Harassment on the Decline in the Finance Industry?
By Tina Vasquez (Los Angeles) The easy answer is yes and no. According to recent statistics compiled by the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) for FINS, a Wall Street Journal offshoot, sexual harassment charges in finance, insurance, and real estate have decreased by roughly half from 287 to 119 over a four year span beginning in 2005. Over the same period, sexual harassment charges across all industries remained relatively flat, hovering around 13,000 nationwide. This sounds... |
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Ask-A-Career-Coach: How Do You Manage Your Job and Your Career?
Contributed by Caroline Ceniza-Levine of SixFigureStart™ Your day-to-day job is not the same as your career. Your job is but a subset, and your career is made up of each successive job, as well as your accomplishments, publications, keynotes, branding and networks. Therefore, doing well, even spectacularly well, in your current role, is helpful to your career but not sufficient. With roles becoming more broadly defined and communication (and accountability) running 24/7, how do you carve... |
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Incentivizing the Return to the Office after Childbirth
By Kate McClaskey (New York City) Being family friendly means more than just offering services to new parents. It means taking investment steps towards providing financial incentives for new parents to return to work – and stay there. According to the May 2004 Current Population Survey, 27.5 percent of wage and salary workers had flexible work schedules. Too many companies do not realize the benefits of having such an option. A recent study from the Cranfield School of Management in the United... |
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Women in IT: Staying Technical and Getting to the Top
By Melissa J. Anderson (New York City) Thursday evening The Glass Hammer hosted Women in IT: Staying Technical and Getting to the Top. Held at Goldman Sachs‘ West Street headquarters, the panel featured Dr. Caroline Simard, Vice President of Research and Executive Programs at the Anita Borg Institute for Women and Technology; Wendy Stops, Global Managing Director of Quality and Client Satisfaction, Technology at Accenture, Inna Pomeranz, Technology Fellow and chair of the WIT Technical Pillar... |
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Voice of Experience: Vivian Tsoi, Partner, White & Case
By Melissa J. Anderson (New York City) Vivian Tsoi, Partner at global law firm White & Case, sees opportunity just about everywhere, a trait which, no doubt, plays into her success working in mergers and acquisitions at the firm. Working out of White & Case’s Beijing office, Tsoi says she is amazed at the attitude of possibility that she sees in her clients in China. She said, “You can really see the growth and see how much they have learned. The level of sophistication they... |
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In Case You Missed It: Business News Round-Up
Contributed by Beth Collinge of CTG – a division of ILX Group plc. The IMF has raised its forecast for global growth this year. Details of the EU’s stress test plan were released Wednesday and European lawmakers gave their backing to an overhaul of Europe’s system for supervising financial institutions and markets. Ernst & Young is to appoint non-executive directors to its global advisory board as it comes under regulatory scrutiny. Overview Global equity markets rebounded this... |
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Leverage Your Relationship DNA in the Workplace
Contributed by Lerzan Aksoy, Ph.D. What are your relationship strengths and weaknesses? The answer is not what you think; in fact, it comes down to exploring how one interacts with one’s co-workers. That is what I and my co-authors, Timothy Keiningham and Luke Williams of Ipsos Loyalty, discovered when we embarked on our study about relationship styles. The Ipsos Loyalty study, the most comprehensive study of loyalty ever conducted, comprised thousands of responses for a nationally representative... |