Smart Money Moves

Jeannie LaChapelle, Vice President & Branch Manager, Back Bay Fidelity Investments Investor Center
Patricia Annino, Partner, Prince, Lobel, Glovsky & Tye

Smart, talented women who appear to be moving ahead and achieving their career goals may not be making the same strides in establishing and achieving their financial goals.  Salary negotiations, investment and savings strategies, retirement planning, health and life insurance and disability coverage are all areas where even the most savvy women leaders often make poor or uninformed decisions.  Jeannie LaChapelle and Patricia Annino will walk you through the easy-to-follow smart money moves that can make all the difference in your life.

Collaborative Competition

Kathryn Mayer, President, KC Mayer Consulting Inc.

Being competitive in a healthy way is critical to career advancement.  The more you can understand about competition, be comfortable with it and, yes, even enjoy it, the more likely you are to achieve your career goals.  Kathryn Mayer’s session will help you explore women’s mindsets around competition. Using individual and small group exercises, she’ll show you how to make competition easy and playful in ways that will earn you respect in hostile work environments and reduce stress and burnout. And you’ll learn from the research on highly successful women how they practice---and you can incorporate--- this new approach to competition.

Redefining "Work": How Companies Can Win By Implementing Creative Work Structures

Shelley Murray & Cynthia Cunningham, Principals, Murray/Cunningham Associates

Jan Guifarro, Worldwide Director, Global Consumer Affairs, Colgate Palmolive
Amy Whitley, Vice President for Organizational Development, UPS

You’ve heard the terms:  Opting-out, off-ramping, re-potting.  You’ve read the data: More and more talented, senior level professionals are leaving the traditional workforce as they re-define their careers.  And now the best and brightest young candidates are turning down top job offers because the company’s values aren’t theirs.  But Cynthia Cunningham and Shelley Murray know this doesn’t have to be the case.  These two women, whose own very successful re-definition of “work” has been chronicled in Harvard Business Review, are joined by senior executives from UPS and Colgate Palmolive, two organizations that are exploring these challenges.  Together, the four women will help you understand and accommodate your employees’ goals and values, create work structures that attract and retain top talent and improve your company’s bottom line.

The Entrepreneur's Roadmap to a Multi-Million Dollar Business

Marsha Firestone PhD, President, Women Presidents' Organization
Gretchen Fox, President, FOX Relocation Management Corp.
Simone Spence, President, Child Support Solutions

The Women President’s Organization is an organization for women entrepreneurs that now has 50 chapters, nationwide. WPO’s President, Marsha Firestone, along with Gretchen Fox and Simone Spence, two WPO members, will lead this very interactive session. You have a chance to learn from Gretchen and Simone about the success strategies they feel are responsible for leading their companies to a multi-million dollar level. And you’ll also have an opportunity to learn from Marsha about the broad range of characteristics the WPO has found are most associated with success and ways you can build those characteristics into your own long-range planning.

The Business of Women's Health

Judy Norsigian, Co-founder, Boston Women's Health Initiative

Dr. Jan Cook, Regional Medical Director, Blue Cross Blue Shield Massachusetts

Linda Hall Whitman PhD, Founder & COO, MinuteClinic Inc.
Dr. Roseanna Means, Founder, Women of Means

As individuals, our health is vitally important. But health care for women extends beyond the individual. Today, Americans spend more than one trillion dollars on health care and it’s estimated that women account for roughly 85% of the health care decisions in this country. And health care services, products, advocacy---“women’s health”--- is an exploding business niche. Moreover, the definition and spectrum of health issues for women is increasingly a challenge and sometimes a “deal breaker” for  both employees and employers.  This  diverse panel of experts and practitioners will identify key issues, explore new trends and help you become more savvy about the business of women’s health, as a consumer and an organizational decision maker.

Women Leading Family Enterprises
Linda Baker Kanner, Founding Partner, The Orchard Group

Paola Abello M'01, President Ramos Mejia, Inc.
Betsy Alden M'82, CEO, Alden Products 

In recent years the number of woman-owned family enterprises has jumped by 37%. Many family firms have women at the helm who are transforming their family’s enterprise, while more and more family firms are looking to the talent of women in their families to lead them into the future. The fantastic women leaders on this panel will share their succession stories as well as the secrets of their business success and the challenges they face as family chief executives.

Leading with Talent: Science, Engineering, Technology

Annie Burriss, Program Manager, Advanced Life Support, Philips Medical

Tricia Horne & Janet Chien, Co-founders, Dyad Systems

Denise Svenconis, Director – Operational Business Systems, Verizon Information Systems
Maria Tapia, Workforce Diversity Program  & Manager Multicultural People in Technology and Multicultural Women's Initiatives, IBM  

Myth (courtesy of you-know-who):  Women do not “thrive” as leaders in science, engineering and technology.   Facts:  Meet a panel of women who are successfully leading (and thriving) in these fields. In this session you will get a chance to learn about how these women are leading  exciting ventures that are helping a wide array of organizations succeed.  Regardless of the business you’re in, you’ll come away with a better understanding of why  recruiting women from these fields remains an educational challenge and  a vital, cross-sector business issue.  

Women and Philanthropy

Karen Herman, Herman Family Foundation

Allison Salke M'93, CEO, Gordon & Co.

Siobhan O'Rioderan, Consultant & Former Director, Giving New England

In 1980 there were five foundations either created by and/or making significant contributions to women’s issues.  Today, there are more than 100.  From individual women leaders to family run ventures to corporate initiatives, there is an increasing understanding---and appreciation---that networking, coalition building and sharing resources is a highly effective way to leverage outcomes on critical issues. Led by a panel who are themselves philanthropists, this session will guide you through the why’s and the very pragmatic how’s of leveraging individual and organizational philanthropy.

Women and the New Media

Genevieve Bos, Founding publisher, PINK Magazine

Susan Solovic, President, SBTV

Victoria Colligan, Founder, Ladies Who Launch

Remember Mary Tyler Moore?  How about Murphy Browne? Once just characters in television shows, today women are the founders and leaders of  real-life media ventures. As leaders, they are changing how the media reach out to professional women, which of the myriad issues facing professional women gets what kind of  coverage and, even more importantly, how women professionals are portrayed in the media.  These panelists will give you the up-to-the minute, behind the scenes, inside scoop on women and the new media.

We're Back! Women Returning to the Workplace

Susan Lemke, Assistant Director, MBA Center for Career Development, Babson College

Jenny Noonan '81, Founder, J. Noonan Associates

Barbara Thornton, Founder, DesignerShoes.com
Deborah Simpson '74, M'75, P'09, President, Day Lumber Company

So. You’ve taken time away from the workforce and now you’re ready to step back in. What’s the best way to account for the time you were out?  Should you stay in the field you were in or change?  Go back full-time or part-time?  Or maybe you’re thinking about stepping out in the near future,  but feeling unsure about how to make this a planned, strategic career decision.  Or perhaps you’re an employer, grappling with creating a work environment that’s amenable to these life decisions.  The women who are leading this session have all been there and done that. But in lieu of the proverbial t-shirts they can offer you a wealth of experience and expertise  to help you take the next career step that’s right for you.

Remarkable Role Models

Renea Gray, co-founder and Executive Director, Boston Women’s Fund

Dr. Beverly Edgehill, Executive Director, The Partnership

Patti Quigley, Founder, “Beyond the 11^th”

There have undoubtedly been times in your life when you have suddenly recognized a real need or an opportunity in your organization, your community or in the larger world and wished you had the time, the talent or just the courage to step away from your comfortable life, step up, step in and make something happen. In this session you will meet some remarkable role models who have moved from wishing to leading. Their stories, their real-life, down-to-earth leadership, their courage will inspire each of us to find our own ways to make a difference.