Tag Archives: women’s transition

Barriers: Real or Imagined? (Take 2…)

Posted on February 9, 2012 | Leave a comment

“There was no money,” said my mother in response to a question I’d asked her last week about my grandfather. “He was pre-med at St. Bonaventure‘s,” she said.   My grandfather was a 1st generation American whose Italian immigrant family had settled in upstate New York close to the turn of the 20th century.    His father died when he was very young leaving a family of 6 children.  His mother remarried.  Tony – as my grandfather was lovingly known – never went on to med school. Continue reading →

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Conversations: A critical transition tool

Posted on February 2, 2012 | 3 comments

I was reading the New Yorker this week and was struck by an article by Jonah Lehrer called, Groupthink: the brainstorming myth (The New Yorker, January 30, 2012 pg 22+).   The article was interesting in that it completely upended the notion of brainstorming as a productive tool for creative problem solving.   Brainstorming?  My kids, 1st and 2nd graders, even know the approach.  Continue reading →

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Little known transition attributes: courage & silence

Posted on January 26, 2012 | 3 comments

“I loved it. And much of what I stumbled into by following my curiosity and intuition turned out to be priceless later on,” said Steve Jobs in his much-quoted commencement address to Stanford University in June 2005.   He was speaking about dropping out of college and then hanging around campus to explore courses that appeared interesting to him but Continue reading →

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Trials, experiments and transition

Posted on January 19, 2012 | 4 comments

This week a conversation from almost a decade ago popped into my mind.  In it I was speaking with a brainy friend of mine who was a coder at Microsoft.  He and I were talking about how small teams of coders were independent but highly linked.  For example, one team might be given the challenge to build the “slide show” function for Powerpoint; another might be given the “inserting pictures” function.  Each group would work on their own piece.  Every night they would run a routine to integrate all of the code written that day by the various teams.   Sound groundbreaking?

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Leading with gratitude….

Posted on December 22, 2011 | 7 comments

“I lead with gratitude,” said Roland “Boot” Boutwell, an effervescent spirit who last Monday evening led a thought-provoking program on the Winter Solstice for The Friends of the Fells.   The group is a not-for-profit association that supports a 2,500 acre nature reserve that was established in 1894 about 8 miles north of Boston.   I’d venture to call him a naturalist.  Although I’d really be selling him short with such a description. Continue reading →

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Is there a choice you need to make?

Posted on December 15, 2011 | 1 comment

“Make the right choices now.  Don’t choose out of negativity,” said Marion Jones, former five-time Olympic medalist and the morning’s keynote speaker at the Massachusetts Conference for Women on December 8, 2011. Continue reading →

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Posted in Events, Observations on Transition

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Her Place at the Table and Thanksgiving Treats

Posted on November 17, 2011 | 2 comments

I’ve had Deborah Kolb on the brain since last spring.  I registered to attend a day long event last June that she was hosting at Simmons College.  It fell during one of the those  weeks when I got three days notice for an end-of-year event from my children’s school.  It still amazes me that such short notice exists.  The summary is that I missed the Kolb event… and missed her book on my summer book tour.  Not sure I can cite the school alone for being disorganized!

Kolb is a noted lecturer and educator on the topic of negotiating – particularly women & negotiation.   This week – I jumped on a pre-Thanksgiving TABLE twist and finally read her 2004 missive,  “Her Place at the Table.”  Continue reading →

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Transitions & Negative People…..

Posted on October 13, 2011 | 2 comments

“She is living her dream,” said my daughter in summary of a friend we visited over Columbus Day Weekend 2010.   If I had tried I couldn’t have figured out how to get that message across so simply and completely to my children.  Continue reading →

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Summer Book Review #13: A Gift from the Sea

Posted on September 1, 2011 | 4 comments

I happened upon a cool website yesterday: the Marine Biology Lab in Woods Hole, Massachusetts.  The piece that caught my eye was a story about a professor from UCSF who has started a web series called iBio; a series of free video lectures and vignettes by the world’s best biologists.   There was one story that spoke to my Novofemina side.  Continue reading →

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Summer Book Review #8: Necessary Dreams

Posted on July 28, 2011 | 13 comments

A dear friend from business school stopped by to see me one day at the office.  I knew something was up because she was in town from Colorado and REALLY wanted to get together.  It was one of those weeks where I had kid’s events, work commitments, or other stuff every night.   So, the only time we could pull off was lunch in my not-so-lovely office cafeteria.

Looking back – I am so happy that she stopped by.  At lunch she shared with me an experience that had deeply affected her.  Just days before she had attended a HBS event, a healthcare symposium, during which students and alumni get together to discuss emerging trends and career issues.   At the event’s luncheon she sat  with two soon-to-be graduating students who happened to be incredibly gifted ladies.  Prior to attending HBS one had been an industrial engineer, the other a NASA scientist.   Despite these credentials their conversation with my friend was astonishing. Continue reading →

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