Contributors - Building Gender Balanced Business

Nina Bondarook has more than 15 years experience in marketing, public relations, content publishing, executive communications, and other internal/external communications-related services for domestic and multinational companies, including Microsoft Corp. She is an award-winning former journalist, freelance writer and editor with print, broadcast, cable and online venues in Arizona, Colorado and Washington. Currently an independent consultant working for major international companies, Bondarook will comment on the latest news and ideas in relation to gender and business.

Claudia Flisi is a dual passport holder (US and Italian) who has lived in six countries speaking three languages and visited more than 70 others…so far. She worked in Atlanta, LA, and New York (for American Express and Burson-Marsteller) before transferring to Europe with J. Walter Thompson. She began freelancing full-time in Italy and later on the French Riviera, with clients ranging from Apple (computers) to Zegna (clothing), and from the International Herald Tribune to L’Internazionale. She is head of the Johns Hopkins Alumni Association in Italy, vice president of the Mount Holyoke Alumni Club of Italy, co-chair of Americans in Milan for Obama, and former chair of Democrats Abroad Milan. She has a BA with distinction from Mount Holyoke College and an MA from the Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies. Her website is www.flisi.net. Follow her blogs about Italy and Italy/France.

Dr Lois Frankel literally wrote the book on coaching women to succeed in businesses large and small around the globe. Nice Girls Don’t Get The Corner Office and Nice Girls Don’t Get Rich are international bestsellers translated into over twenty-five languages and featured on the TODAY Show, CNN and CNBC, in the New York Times, USA Today, and in People and Time. Business Week named Corner Office one of the top ten business books of the year when it was released. Based on early sales and press, See Jane Lead, a new book about why women make natural leaders for our time and how to harness your own leadership talent, is headed for similar popularity.

Combining her experience in human resources at a Fortune 10 oil company with a PhD in psychology from the University of Southern California, Dr Frankel is a pioneer in the field of business coaching. She is also the founder of MOSTE: Motivating Our Students Through Experience. MOSTE is a non-profit organization that for twenty years has provided mentors and scholarships to at-risk, inner-city middle school girls. She was honoured with Maybelline’s Women of Achievement award for her work empowering girls through education. Although she grew up in New York, she now calls Southern California home.

www.drloisfrankel.com

One of her Womenomics articles: Your workplace legacy

Josephine Green is Senior Director of Social Innovation at Philips Design. She is responsible for research into Society, Cultures and People and pioneered the Strategic Futures Program that helps companies and organizations think about and implement a human focused approach to innovation and growth.

She promotes new thinking and new knowledge in the specific field of Social Foresight for Strategy and Innovation. Her advocacy in this area is based on the belief that we need different ways of thinking, being and doing if we are to live well, prosper and safeguard the future. “We must not only re-invent our social industries such as health and education but also our lifestyles and even the very growth models on which they are based.” She promotes working in this emerging social space both as an opportunity and as a necessity and sees the new technologies as an important enabler towards more social and sustainable solutions for the 21st century.

ACTIVITIES

• Visiting Professor at The Glasgow School of Art and Design
• Advisory Board of the Glamorgan Business School, Cardiff.
• Senior Advisor to Launchpad, The Young Foundation, London
• Advisory Group of StraX, Helsinki
• Expert at a number of European Futures programs
• Member of the European Professional Women’s Network and The Women’s International Network
• Advisory Board of WOMENomics

Margaret Heffernan produced radio and television programmes for the BBC for 13 years. She then moved to the US where she spearheaded multimedia productions for Intuit, The Learning Company and Standard & Poor’s. She was Chief Executive of InfoMation Corporation, ZineZone Corporation and then iCast Corporation, was named one of the “Top 25” by Streaming Media magazine and was one of the “Top 100 Media Executives” listed in The Hollywood Reporter.

Margaret now lives in the UK and writes a regular column for Real Business magazine and for the American edition of Reader’s Digest. She is Visiting Professor in Entrepreneurship at the Simmons College School of Management and Executive in Residence at Babson College. She has published two books about women and business: The Naked Truth: A Working Woman’s Manifesto (Wiley, 2004) and How She Does It: How Women Entrepreneurs are Changing the Rules of Business Success (Viking 2007).

Margaret wrote and presented a documentary for Radio 4 on the rise of female entrepreneurship, Changing the Rules which won the Prowess Media Award in 2008. Her radio play, Eve Blinked, was broadcast on Radio 4 and selected for Pick of the Week. Margaret’s investigation of social entrepreneurship in the recent Channel 4 series, The Secret Millionaire was broadcast in December 2007.

Margaret advises many companies in the US and UK and was also an advisor to Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton’s campaign for President of the United States. She lives near Bath with her husband, two children, one dog and three cats.

Dr Elisabeth Kelan is a lecturer in work and organisation at King’s College London and senior research fellow in the Centre for Women in Business at London Business School. Prior to that, she worked at the London School of Economics and Political Science where she also received her PhD.

Elisabeth is a leading scholar on gender relations in organisations with a long-standing interest in gender and technology at work. Her specialism is in the use of qualitative and ethnographic method. She has presented her research internationally, published widely, and has received various awards for her research. She has provided advice to supranational and business organisations. She is the founder of Athena Associates, a company that specialises in providing organisations with advisory, consulting and speaking services on issues related to women, gender and diversity. She co-authors the Lady Geek Blog and is a qualified yoga teacher.

Michael Kimmel is perhaps the world’s leading expert on men and masculinity. Professor of Sociology at State University of New York at Stony Brook, he is the author or editor of more than 20 books on the topic, including: “Men’s Lives” (6th edition, 2003), “The Politics of Manhood”(1996), “The Gendered Society” (2000), and “The History of Men” (2005).

He consults corporations, NGOs and public sector organizations all over the world on gender equity issues, including work-family balance, reducing workplace discrimination, and promoting diversity. Professor Kimmel has found ways to bring men into discussions about gender equality in a way that is engaging and humorous, and enables everyone to feel included in such gender equity projects. He has consulted with all the Ministries for Gender Equality in the Nordic countries, and has delivered the International Women’s Day lecture at the European Parliament, the Council of Europe, the European Commission, and the European Space Agency.

www.michaelkimmel.com

Click here to read Professor Kimmel’s latest article for WOMENomics: What Women Need to Know About Men

Sara Laschever is a writer with a long-standing interest in the life and career obstacles faced by women in the workplace. Her work has been published by The New York Times, The Harvard Business Review, The Boston Globe, Vogue, Glamour, and many other publications.

Laschever’s new book, Ask For It: How Women Can Use the Power of Negotiation to Get What They Really Want, written with Linda Babcock, presents a four-phase program to guide women through the process of refining their goals, polishing their skills, and thoroughly preparing for every kind of negotiation — large or small.

Her first book, Women Don’t Ask: The High Cost of Avoiding Negotiation and Positive Strategies for Change, also co-authored with Linda Babcock, explored a newly recognized phenomenon: that women are much less likely than men to deploy negotiation to improve their circumstances. Women Don’t Ask looked at the causes of this reluctance on the part of women and examined the high price women pay in both lost wages and delayed career advancement.

Fortune, in its 75th anniversary issue, included Women Don’t Ask in a list of “The 75 Smartest Books We Know”, a list that included The Art of War by Sun Tzu, The Prince by Niccolò Machiavelli, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, and The Tipping Point by Malcolm Gladwell.

Laschever’s lively, eye-opening talks about women and negotiation have become popular draws for corporate leadership programs, college and university audiences, law firms, and women’s professional associations nationwide.

Laschever earned her BA (summa cum laude) from Princeton University and her MA from Boston University. She lives in Concord, Massachusetts with her husband and two sons.

Click here to read her latest article for WOMENomics: Women and Negotiation: The Leadership Dimension

Andrea Learned, co-author of Don’t Think Pink: What Really Makes Women Buy – and How to Increase Your Share of This Crucial Market (AMACOM, 2004), is a widely respected thought leader in marketplace gender insights.

Since 2000, she has studied the ways in which gender influences a consumer’s purchasing behaviour, and helped her clients and audiences apply her knowledge to best effect. Her independent and progressive take on the topic leads her to now emphasize the common ground rather than the polarizing differences in the buying behaviour of twenty-first century men and women.

As a consultant and speaker, Learned has worked within, among others, the consumer electronics, homebuilding, commercial development and retail industries. In addition to WOMEN-omics, she contributes to a wide range of publications/blogs, including the Huffington Post, Marketingprofs.com, and her own Learned on Women, where she presents her most current insights on next generation gender trends. She also regularly presents to global business audiences and is frequently quoted by publications such as Adweek, WSJ.com and the New York Times. She continues to bridge the women’s market conversation for men and male-dominated industries, especially, through her own writing projects and strategic partnerships.

Learned serves on the Advisory Board for The Vine Conference (new thinking on the meaning of community), the World Pulse Magazine Founder’s Advisory Council (advancing the world through the support of women globally) and the Brain Trust for the social cause-forwarding nonprofit, Carrotmob. She has a BA from the University of Michigan and is based in Burlington, Vermont.

Alison Maitland is a business writer, conference speaker and moderator, and co-author with Avivah Wittenberg-Cox of the critically acclaimed book, Why Women Mean Business: Understanding the Emergence of Our Next Economic Revolution (Wiley, 2008).

Having spent 20 years as a Financial Times journalist, including eight years as the newspaper’s management writer, Maitland now enjoys a portfolio career specialising in women in business, leadership and corporate sustainability.

She is director of The Conference Board’s European Council for Diversity in Business and a Senior Visiting Fellow in the Faculty of Management at Cass Business School, London. She served on the advisory group for the UK Equal Opportunities Commission’s investigation into The Transformation of Work, and directed The Conference Board’s 2008 conference in Budapest on “Doing Better Business with a Mobile, Multicultural Workforce”.

Alison Maitland contributes feature articles and columns to the Financial Times and other media.

www.alisonmaitland.com

Susan Schiffer Stautberg is President of PartnerCom Corporation, which assembles and manages Advisory Boards globally.

As a Westinghouse/Group W TV correspondent covering the White House and Capitol Hill, Susan Schiffer Stautberg was the first woman and one of the youngest to head a Washington TV bureau. She then became the first television journalist to be chosen as a White House Fellow (a highly prestigious US programme providing exceptional young men and women with the opportunity to work at the highest levels of federal government), where she worked for both Vice President Rockefeller and Secretary of State Henry Kissinger. After moving to New York, Stautberg became Director of Communications for Touche Ross (now Deloitte & Touche).

Deciding to become an entrepreneur, she founded MasterMedia Ltd., the only company to combine publishing with a speaker’s bureau.

Stautberg has received The Director’s Choice Award, and was a 2006 Purpose Prize Fellow. She has served on the following Presidential Commissions, Boards, and Foundations: The Commission on Presidential Scholars, US Japan Fellowship, The Institute for Educational Affairs, The Defense Advisory Council on Women in the Armed Services and the White House Fellows. She chaired both The Elms Centennial and 60th Anniversary Committees for The Preservation Society of Newport County and is the Secretary of the board of The Preservation Society.

She founded The Belizean Grove and TARA, constellations of diverse, influential women from five continents. She co-founded Women Corporate Directors, with over 300 members on over 500 Corporate Boards in New York, Washington DC, Chicago, Boston, Miami, Atlanta, London, and Dallas. She also co-founded On Board Bootcamp, which provides an insider’s guide on how to be selected to be a corporate, private company or advisory board director. Stautberg is a member of the International Women’s Forum, C200, WPO, the Executive Committee of the Women’s Middle East Summit, and the Encore Leadership Network.

Click here for Ms Stautberg’s latest article for WOMENomics: Why Boards Need Women

Joanne Thomas Yaccato, based in Toronto, is known as Corporate Canada’s Gender Lens™. She specializes in helping companies apply the unique concept of gender intelligence by casting a wide-angle gender lens over their practices and processes.

Audits ensure that sales training content, market research methodology, product development, advertising and marketing programmes include and meet women’s consumer needs. She also offers sales and marketing training and consulting services that create an authentic and long-term connection between companies and powerful female consumers.

Her innovative company has engaged in work for the Royal Bank Financial Group, Imperial Oil, Scotiabank, IKEA, Home Depot, The British Columbia Government and Toyota Canada. She is the author of The 80% Minority: Reaching the Real World of Women Consumers, a book that proves the connection between getting it right with women and getting it right with everyone else. She has been nominated for the Governor General’s award, and has received two nominations each for the Ernst & Young’s Entrepreneur of the Year Award and the YWCA’s National Women of Distinction Award.

Born in Argentina in 1972, Monique has studied art since she was 12 years old. She was mentored by the renowned Latin American artists Ary Brizzy and Kenneth Kemble.

In 1994 she obtained a degree from the National School of Fine Arts of Buenos Aires. Later on she attained a postgraduate degree at the University of Chile specializing in Visual Arts.

She has exhibited widely throughout The Netherlands, France, Chile, and Argentina since 1990.

Click here for her reflections on discovering countries through her artistic lens. Visit Monique Baques’ website to discover more about her work.