Tomorrow for Thanksgiving I will stay off-line and focused on family though. Hopefully it will help me feel recharged to get through the end.
Wednesday, November 25, 2015
Happy Thanksgiving
It is funny how as an academic you really notice how late Thanksgiving is this year. After this, we only have like 2 weeks left of the semester! Frantic writing and preparing for the Chicago-trip continue. I am feeling spread really thin these days. I also started my networking memo.
Monday, November 16, 2015
Chicago, Biogen-hosted events & Financial forecasts
Planning continues and my flights are booked for our founding team's first face-to-face meeting at the end of November. Housing plans have fallen through though, so there has been a bit of scramble there. The feedback about having an agenda really rung true to me, so I got the ball rolling to work out what we wanted to have on the agenda before we get started. That way we can be in agreement about what we need to cover.
In other networking news, a professional contact posted about an event at Biogen on diversity in Life Sciences that I have RSVPed for and am looking forward to:
In other networking news, a professional contact posted about an event at Biogen on diversity in Life Sciences that I have RSVPed for and am looking forward to:
NEW BIODIVERSITY FORUM: ADVANCING UNDERREPRESENTED PROFESSIONALS IN LIFE SCIENCESFor the financials, I was able to incorporate some of the capital budgeting concepts and models. I am really pleased at the more robust picture this provided, although it doesn't show the cash flow concerns month-to-month. A combination of models provides a more complete picture as well as allowing for sensitivity analysis.
Hear from The Partnership, Inc. faculty member and career development expert Judy Shen-Filerman "How to Transform from a Technical to a Strategic Thinker”
When: November 20, 2015, 9:00 am - 11:00 am
Where: Biogen, 225 Binney Street, Cambridge, MA
RSVP to carcebowen@thepartnershipinc.org
Monday, November 9, 2015
Net Impact
This past week I was in Seattle for the Net Impact Conference. In general it was deeply inspiring to be around so many students and professionals all concerned with the impact that business can make on our world. There were tons of great sessions, but I thought I would share a few that were particularly applicable to this project.
I attended a workshop hosted by 3M on "What Does It Mean to Improve a Life?" In it, each group broke out and worked together to come up with a one sentence answer. One of the points raised by another group member was the sustainable idea of empowerment through giving someone the tools to improve their community. This really rang true for my vision of my project. Yes I want the business to be financially sustainable, but more than that I truly believe that the success of our mission comes down to empowering people in their own communities.
There was also a fantastic workshop called "Goals Matter: Intel's Roadmap to Accelerating Diversity in Tech." In January 2015, Intel's CEO announced the company's goal to reach full representation of women and underrepresented groups in the US workforce by 2020. My group explored the role of academia and pipeline to this process. The extremely diverse group shared first-hand stories of diversity already existing in organizations that is underutilized because of bias about what a candidate for higher roles should look like. Although I started this project thinking about hiring and retention, this has me wondering about what sort of value we could provide in helping organizations realize more value from the employees they have through inclusion as well. Afterwards I spoke to several who were happy to share contact information to continue the conversation.
Later there was a featured panel titled "Demand Diversity and Embrace Innovation," which could not have been more closely aligned with my project interests if I had written it myself. The panel members from Plum Creek, Toyota and Johnson & Johnson Healthcare were themselves representative of a fantastic diversity of visible and invisible identity groups. They also confirmed my intuition about a lack of general awareness in STEM corporations of the therms intersectionality and allyship. Two panel members explicitly responded that they had never heard those terms although the explanation of them fit well with their experience. Just more evidence that choosing the right terminology is essential for communicating to my market the value that we can provide them with.
Finally as part of the closing keynote, we got to hear the 2015 Hult Prize winners IMPCT give their 10 minute pitch that in the end won them $1M to start their business. Not only was it interesting to see how it aligned with the concepts from our class, but their personal journey reemphasized how much failure and being told no was part of their eventual success. Very inspiring!
I attended a workshop hosted by 3M on "What Does It Mean to Improve a Life?" In it, each group broke out and worked together to come up with a one sentence answer. One of the points raised by another group member was the sustainable idea of empowerment through giving someone the tools to improve their community. This really rang true for my vision of my project. Yes I want the business to be financially sustainable, but more than that I truly believe that the success of our mission comes down to empowering people in their own communities.
There was also a fantastic workshop called "Goals Matter: Intel's Roadmap to Accelerating Diversity in Tech." In January 2015, Intel's CEO announced the company's goal to reach full representation of women and underrepresented groups in the US workforce by 2020. My group explored the role of academia and pipeline to this process. The extremely diverse group shared first-hand stories of diversity already existing in organizations that is underutilized because of bias about what a candidate for higher roles should look like. Although I started this project thinking about hiring and retention, this has me wondering about what sort of value we could provide in helping organizations realize more value from the employees they have through inclusion as well. Afterwards I spoke to several who were happy to share contact information to continue the conversation.
Later there was a featured panel titled "Demand Diversity and Embrace Innovation," which could not have been more closely aligned with my project interests if I had written it myself. The panel members from Plum Creek, Toyota and Johnson & Johnson Healthcare were themselves representative of a fantastic diversity of visible and invisible identity groups. They also confirmed my intuition about a lack of general awareness in STEM corporations of the therms intersectionality and allyship. Two panel members explicitly responded that they had never heard those terms although the explanation of them fit well with their experience. Just more evidence that choosing the right terminology is essential for communicating to my market the value that we can provide them with.
Finally as part of the closing keynote, we got to hear the 2015 Hult Prize winners IMPCT give their 10 minute pitch that in the end won them $1M to start their business. Not only was it interesting to see how it aligned with the concepts from our class, but their personal journey reemphasized how much failure and being told no was part of their eventual success. Very inspiring!
Thursday, November 5, 2015
WEST mtg follow up
Way back on 9-28-15, Women in the Enterprise of Science and Technology hosted an event on Best Practices for Hiring, Developing, and Retaining Women Leaders in High Tech. I had mentioned that I had planned to attend, but I just realized that I never wrote about the meeting.
Originally my hope was to learn about best practices and resources available, which would provide material to incorporate into our products, network and identify potential competitors already in this market. I was really gratified by the fact that the first speaker opened with the fact that this was not just about women but about all sorts of diversity. In general, there wasn't anything brand new for me content-wise (yay awesome Simmons education), but it was still a great networking opportunity. In particular I was able to talk to several organizational consultants, including one SOM alum, and what it was like to be in that industry. Since then I have had several follow up conversations with contacts from that meeting, and I have nothing but good things to say about the community.
Originally my hope was to learn about best practices and resources available, which would provide material to incorporate into our products, network and identify potential competitors already in this market. I was really gratified by the fact that the first speaker opened with the fact that this was not just about women but about all sorts of diversity. In general, there wasn't anything brand new for me content-wise (yay awesome Simmons education), but it was still a great networking opportunity. In particular I was able to talk to several organizational consultants, including one SOM alum, and what it was like to be in that industry. Since then I have had several follow up conversations with contacts from that meeting, and I have nothing but good things to say about the community.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)