Tagged Elizabeth Burke:

Fall in Love with Your Life: The Levo League speaks with Sara Caswell, Jazz Violinist Extraordinaire.

Just under a year ago, the Bieber-sphere experienced a massive upset: the Grammy for Best New Artist in 2011 was passed to a female bassist and jazz singer, Esperanza Spalding. Completely contrary to the digital-era trends of ‘more auto-tune, less subtlety’ that have been compounded by the downfall of the music industry and the upswing of the Great Recession, Esperanza is unabashedly conscientious, educated, and perfectly apprised of her jazz lineage. There’s no “I should probably perform this set without my pants on”-type thought in Esperanza’s head that so many of our female musical role models embody today.

Spalding’s unexpected victory at the time made me wonder: was the Golden Age of the plastic pop star coming to a close? Was this as “whoa, that came out of left field” as it felt to me, or was there an undercurrent of musical change in the air? Just after the ceremony, NPR published a story called “Wait, Who is this Esperanza Spalding?” I noticed a woman featured in the article whose role in Esperanza’s group was interesting: she was a violinist in the background playing with technique that was clearly bridging the space between classical and jazz violin. That woman, I soon learned, was Sara.

Violinist, Strategist, Optimist

Sara Caswell, whose technical facility on the violin intertwined with her gift for lyricism have been heard around the world (and not just on everyone’s favorite radio program, NPR’s Morning Edition) toured internationally with Esperanza in support of her Chamber Music Society (Heads Up International, 2010) from 2010 to 2011. As a solo artist she also has received acclaim: albums she has made have been featured in Coda Magazine, Jazz Education Journal, and Strings Magazine. She straddles the worlds of jazz, classical, and folk music; in recent years she has also toured with violinist Mark O’Connor’s American String Celebration and violinist Darol Anger’s Four Generations of Jazz Violin, and performed or recorded with such artists as Charlie Byrd, Gene Bertoncini, Skitch Henderson, Bucky Pizzarelli, Lynne Arriale, and John Clayton.

Why did I find Sara interesting? Partially because she was not center stage in her work with Esperanza. While Esperanza is in many ways a very interested phenomenon in the music industry—her headstrong nature and independence represent a musician who is not tethered to the Katy Perry model of existence—the industry that springs up to support a woman so heavily differentiated from the Justin Biebers of the world is notable. Sara has also recently been on tour with first-time Grammy nominee Roseanna Vitro, whose album The Music of Randy Newman (Motema Music, 2011) features Sara on violin.  While Roseanna did not take the Grammy this year, the album that did— “The Mosaic Project,” features vocalist Terri Lyne Carrington, with whom Sara also performed alongside Esperanza Spalding last year. 

In the jazz world, Sara is everywhere. And she is a supporting character in many of her musical endeavors—though not all, by a long shot. A successful climb to the top for many of us in the cubicle-friendly world looks shockingly similar to Sara’s ascent: she is taking opportunities where they arise, seeing potential and going for it, and she maintains a compassionate and friendly demeanor throughout that evinces the passion she feels for her career. I asked Sara how much ramp-up time she gave herself from the time she moved from the Midwest to New York City to gauge her actual success level. “I was told by friends, ‘you should take about five years in the city. And if works out, great. But if it doesn’t, there are other cities where incredible jazz is being made.’ So I gave myself five years.” Sara told me. How long did it take before she started getting real traction in the city for her professional accomplishments? “Four and a half years!” she laughed.

Supporting roles, supporting development, supporting success

While many of us as female professionals are supporting characters in the same way—whether we’re assisting our superiors, adding insight and depth to our work output, or pounding the pavement and cold calling sales leads—it’s not always as easy in cubicle-land as it is in music-land to enjoy the ride up. I spoke with Sara at length about her involvement with Ms. Spalding and how it works into her view of herself and her career trajectory.

“You wear a lot of different hats as a musician—“ Sarah said in a tone that can only be described as effervescent during our conversation, just before Sunday’s Grammy Awards, “bandleader, teacher, orchestrator—but they’re all hats I love to wear.” Sara’s been wearing the hat of both teacher and performer well enough to have made a name for herself in both worlds, with teaching experience under her belt like the Manhattan School of Music, Mark O’Connor String Camps, the Jamey Aebersold Summer Jazz Workshops, the Indiana University String Academy, and her own private studio. Not a light commitment. In many musical communities teaching is a necessary part of existence—not for financial reasons, but because there just aren’t as many opportunities to learn from great performers as there are people who want to learn to play like those performers. This is a fairly unique dynamic to be true of an entire industry: that mentorship and sponsorship isn’t just a new trend—it’s a fundamental necessity to keeping a musical world alive and evolving (there are complexities here, but I’m glossing over them).

What can businesswomen take from the life of a successful violinist?

In many ways, Sara’s life work has been humble: teacher, bandleader, arranger. But in all of the ways that translate to the life of a businesswoman, her professional development has been extremely strategic and pointedly efficient. She’s allowed for investment in her own development in her five-year ramp-up plan, plowback into her community of fellow musicians in her teaching life, and has opened her social network in ways possible only with true talent and passion. And those features of her development have translated into notoriety in the jazz world and an amassed bank of talent and knowledge that’s truly rare in in the world.

So has the effort been worth it? Sara’s response inspired me:

“It’s a dream. That’s not always the case for jazz musicians – it’s not a profession you go into for the money. It’s a hard life. Oftentimes, you are living month to month and you just hope the schedule fills in, and that things will come through, and that everything will be fine. If anything, the music demands that you always be on your toes. But the nature of jazz itself is so much about spontaneity and creativity and communicating with the musicians with whom you’re performing. One of the most beautiful things about jazz is that you have ultimate freedom with your voice and what you want to say. You don’t need to sit into a framework in order to succeed. You decide. That kind of freedom of expression is certainly not something all musicians have the joy of experiencing.”
Feb 13
Fall in Love with Your Life: The Levo League speaks with Sara Caswell, Jazz Violinist Extraordinaire. Just under a year ago, the Bieber-sphere experienced a massive upset: the Grammy for Best New Artist in 2011 was passed to a female bassist and jazz singer, Esperanza Spalding. Completely contrary to the digital-era trends of ‘more auto-tune, less subtlety’ that have been compounded by the downfall of the music industry and the upswing of the Great Recession, Esperanza is unabashedly conscientious, educated, and perfectly apprised of her jazz lineage. There’s no “I should probably perform this set without my pants on”-type thought in Esperanza’s head that so many of our female musical role models embody today. Spalding’s unexpected victory at the time made me wonder: was the Golden Age of the plastic pop star coming to a close? Was this as “whoa, that came out of left field” as it felt to me, or was there an undercurrent of musical change in the air? Just after the ceremony, NPR published a story called “Wait, Who is this Esperanza Spalding?” I noticed a woman featured in the article whose role in Esperanza’s group was interesting: she was a violinist in the background playing with technique that was clearly bridging the space between classical and jazz violin. That woman, I soon learned, was Sara. Violinist, Strategist, Optimist Sara Caswell, whose technical facility on the violin intertwined with her gift for lyricism have been heard around the world (and not just on everyone’s favorite radio program, NPR’s Morning Edition) toured internationally with Esperanza in support of her Chamber Music Society (Heads Up International, 2010) from 2010 to 2011. As a solo artist she also has received acclaim: albums she has made have been featured in Coda Magazine, Jazz Education Journal, and Strings Magazine. She straddles the worlds of jazz, classical, and folk music; in recent years she has also toured with violinist Mark O’Connor’s American String Celebration and violinist Darol Anger’s Four Generations of Jazz Violin, and performed or recorded with such artists as Charlie Byrd, Gene Bertoncini, Skitch Henderson, Bucky Pizzarelli, Lynne Arriale, and John Clayton. Why did I find Sara interesting? Partially because she was not center stage in her work with Esperanza. While Esperanza is in many ways a very interested phenomenon in the music industry—her headstrong nature and independence represent a musician who is not tethered to the Katy Perry model of existence—the industry that springs up to support a woman so heavily differentiated from the Justin Biebers of the world is notable. Sara has also recently been on tour with first-time Grammy nominee Roseanna Vitro, whose album The Music of Randy Newman (Motema Music, 2011) features Sara on violin.  While Roseanna did not take the Grammy this year, the album that did— “The Mosaic Project,” features vocalist Terri Lyne Carrington, with whom Sara also performed alongside Esperanza Spalding last year.  In the jazz world, Sara is everywhere. And she is a supporting character in many of her musical endeavors—though not all, by a long shot. A successful climb to the top for many of us in the cubicle-friendly world looks shockingly similar to Sara’s ascent: she is taking opportunities where they arise, seeing potential and going for it, and she maintains a compassionate and friendly demeanor throughout that evinces the passion she feels for her career. I asked Sara how much ramp-up time she gave herself from the time she moved from the Midwest to New York City to gauge her actual success level. “I was told by friends, ‘you should take about five years in the city. And if works out, great. But if it doesn’t, there are other cities where incredible jazz is being made.’ So I gave myself five years.” Sara told me. How long did it take before she started getting real traction in the city for her professional accomplishments? “Four and a half years!” she laughed. Supporting roles, supporting development, supporting success While many of us as female professionals are supporting characters in the same way—whether we’re assisting our superiors, adding insight and depth to our work output, or pounding the pavement and cold calling sales leads—it’s not always as easy in cubicle-land as it is in music-land to enjoy the ride up. I spoke with Sara at length about her involvement with Ms. Spalding and how it works into her view of herself and her career trajectory. “You wear a lot of different hats as a musician—“ Sarah said in a tone that can only be described as effervescent during our conversation, just before Sunday’s Grammy Awards, “bandleader, teacher, orchestrator—but they’re all hats I love to wear.” Sara’s been wearing the hat of both teacher and performer well enough to have made a name for herself in both worlds, with teaching experience under her belt like the Manhattan School of Music, Mark O’Connor String Camps, the Jamey Aebersold Summer Jazz Workshops, the Indiana University String Academy, and her own private studio. Not a light commitment. In many musical communities teaching is a necessary part of existence—not for financial reasons, but because there just aren’t as many opportunities to learn from great performers as there are people who want to learn to play like those performers. This is a fairly unique dynamic to be true of an entire industry: that mentorship and sponsorship isn’t just a new trend—it’s a fundamental necessity to keeping a musical world alive and evolving (there are complexities here, but I’m glossing over them). What can businesswomen take from the life of a successful violinist? In many ways, Sara’s life work has been humble: teacher, bandleader, arranger. But in all of the ways that translate to the life of a businesswoman, her professional development has been extremely strategic and pointedly efficient. She’s allowed for investment in her own development in her five-year ramp-up plan, plowback into her community of fellow musicians in her teaching life, and has opened her social network in ways possible only with true talent and passion. And those features of her development have translated into notoriety in the jazz world and an amassed bank of talent and knowledge that’s truly rare in in the world. So has the effort been worth it? Sara’s response inspired me: “It’s a dream. That’s not always the case for jazz musicians – it’s not a profession you go into for the money. It’s a hard life. Oftentimes, you are living month to month and you just hope the schedule fills in, and that things will come through, and that everything will be fine. If anything, the music demands that you always be on your toes. But the nature of jazz itself is so much about spontaneity and creativity and communicating with the musicians with whom you’re performing. One of the most beautiful things about jazz is that you have ultimate freedom with your voice and what you want to say. You don’t need to sit into a framework in order to succeed. You decide. That kind of freedom of expression is certainly not something all musicians have the joy of experiencing.”

What’s the Management End Game? How the Fate of First World Women Matters to Third World Women Entrepreneurs. 

The Third Billion Campaign, an initiative of La Pietra Coalition, is uniting the corporate engagement arms of OECD strongarms— Accenture, Booz & Company, Ernst & Young, and the World Bank, to name a few— to educate and empower female entrepreneurs in undeveloped companies. And it’s clear from research and news that parity is an absolute necessity in most of The Third Billion’s target communities. But do we have a clear idea of the paradise we lead these women toward? 

The globalization of recent decades has shown the world just how crucial massive population segments can be when they are integrated into the global economy. China and India are the two most obvious examples. But the third less obvious demographic that’s gotten lost in the wash of economic analysis is a very simple one: uneducated and unempowered women. These women exist all over the world—even in the United States.

In the United States, it’s become clear that to some degree—whether because of the Recession or because of normal growth phenomena—that the parity of women has hit a plateau. This year’s World Economic Forum, despite its outreach efforts to include more diversity, consisted of only 16% women.  Less than 20 of the Fortune 500’s CEOs are female. But there are bright spots: for instance, the majority of the World Bank’s directors are female. And while the worldwide average is around 15%, Rwanda, a country whose genocidal history has put its civil rights in jeopardy in the last three decades, has a Parliament that’s more than 50% female.

Amidst the plateauing progress and its ensuing ennui, women like Sandra Taylor the director of La Pietra Coalition are upholding a spark of hope that has ignited a global fire. “The evidence is clear,” she says. “women are the emerging market with the greatest potential for accelerating global economic growth over the next decade. Investing in women will transform their lives and lead to prosperity for their families, their communities, and for business globally.”

Several amazing women stood alongside Sandra last week to announce the launch of the Third Billion Campaign. Dina Powell, President of the Goldman Sachs Foundation and head of GS Corporate Engagement, as well as Beth Brooke, Global Vice Chair of Ernst & Young, and Pierella Paci, the Manager of the World Bank’s Gender & Development group, were among them. Dina spoke passionately about the United Nation’s 8 Millennium Goals, saying that “the answer to all of these goals have to do with women.” She spoke of Goldman Sach’s 10,000 Women initiative, which to date has trained 6,000 women and given them the resources to begin their own economic enterprises. But her goals are bigger than giving 10,000 women a microloan and sending them on their way.

Screen Shot 2012-02-08 at 7.32.03 PM

 

“How do you take women from the platform where they’re running small businesses to the point where they’re creating 10, 20, 50—or 1,000—jobs?” Dina asked the small group assembled to celebrate the launch of The Third Billion. Dr. Victoria Kisyombe, a 10,000 Women trainee and the founder of Sero Lease & Financial Corporation in Tanzania, gave a moving reply: “Women may have all the same rights as men in many countries, but because of customs and traditions, women and girls find it difficult to establish ownership of tangible assets. This limits them. When women help women, it unleashes the 50% that isn’t vocal.”

Women Helping Women 

The world of female beauty is a competitive one—we’ve seen that even just this week in Gisele Bundchen’s instinctual response to Tom Brady naysayers.The transition for women from solo players in the marriage marketplace to team players in a business environment hasn’t always been an easy one.

But the perspective shift—from one where women instinctually compete with one another across all parameters even where there’s no tangible goal to one where women advocate for one another and sponsor one another’s successes—has been invaluable. According to the World Bank’s recent Women, Business & the Law report, gender disparity decreases significantly in workplaces where a top manager is female:

Screen Shot 2012-02-08 at 5.31.54 PM

(Women Business & the Law, 2012)

 

This effect is clearly related to goodwill between females within a business. But goodwill is hard to track in a database. Formal structures are what we have the power to monitor, and the World Bank report took a close look at the rights of women in economies worldwide by referencing these formal structures, both legal and economic, and the ways in which they affect their success.

To analyze the legal rights of women worldwide, the World Bank carved out 21 different actions that lend depth to an analysis of female parity—and whether women can legally perform these 21 things in the same way that men can is the basis of their study:  

- applying for a passport - traveling outside the country - traveling outside the home- getting a job or pursuing a trade or profession without permission - signing a contract - registering a business - being “head of household” or “head of family” - conferring citizenship on their children - opening a bank account - choosing where to live - having ownership rights over moveable property - having ownership rights over immoveable property - having inheritance rights over moveable property - having inheritance rights over immoveable property - working the same night hours - working in the same industries - enjoying the same statutory retirement age - enjoying the same pensionable age - enjoying the same tax deductions or credits - having their testimony carry the same evidentiary weight in court - being able to initiate legal proceedings without permission 

 

To give you an idea of the scope of the problem of female parity in the world: 

Of the 45 legal differentiations described by the World Bank report to denote the legal rights of women across economies, no economy imposed all equally for both married and unmarried women. None of the 24 economies that impose ten or more legal differentiations is in high-income OECD, or Eastern Europe and Central Asia or Latin America and the Caribbean. 38 economies in total have no legal differentiations of the type measured by the study.

High-income economies have on average fewer differentiations than middle- and low-income economies, indicating that as an economy matures, it affords its females more civil and legal rights. However, these differentiations do not disappear as income levels rise. In fact, 17 of the 39 high-income economies covered have at least one legal differentiation.

In 121 economies studied in the World Bank report, unmarried women have the same rights as unmarried men regarding the first 10 differentiators listed above. But only in 97 economies do married women have the same rights as married men. In seven economies, married women do not have the same property rights as married men.

How does microcredit help lessen the disparity? 

Three-quarters of microfinance borrowers are women. It is, therefore, women who are more likely to benefit when credit bureaus and registries make known information on available microfinance loans. A record of successful repayment enables women to build up credit histories—and these loans pave the way to more conventional financing and access to more capital.

This is what The Third Billion Campaign, along with programs like 10,000 Women, strives to achieve. They launched their decade-long effort last Wednesday, and are committed to opening the eyes of corporations and NGOs worldwide to the massive potential of women in these underdeveloped countries. They are unifying what has been to date a series of very disparate efforts to show commitment to female education and entrepreneurialism.

What do these strides mean for us back home?

Back in the developed world, women have made tremendous strides in the past century towards achieving workplace parity. But the fact remains that women participate in the labor force in a different way than men—and it’s clear from research that that’s partially determined by stereotypes of workplace attachment.

To a certain degree, a stereotype of this nature is not baseless: women are likely to be relatively less attached to their respective employers and jobs compared to their male counterparts, especially during the early part of their careers. Parts of female life just occur relatively early: marriage, childbirth, and family care responsibilities make it more likely that women will experience employment interruptions and gaps (Mincer and Ofek, 1982). It’s not crazy to expect that a woman’s job duration will be shorter than a man’s. This affects both on-the-job training investments and job selection. The gaps and interruptions mean that women are likely to invest less in firm-specific skills and more in general labor market skills that are portable across employers—especially given the inflexibility of many employers across the life events young women experience. The lack of firm-specific training makes women subject to relatively flatter wage-tenure profiles, but the focus on general skills means a higher wage-experience profile compared to men (Munasinghe, 2004).

So it’s really up to us in the next century—the suffragettes have finished their suffrage, but we as a community have not come to a consensus on what rights to demand and what expectations to set with our employers. We learn. We lead. We reproduce. All of these things make us better potential leaders—not worse ones. And now that we’re making the push into the third world to lift women out of poverty using the same techniques our mothers and grandmothers used not so long ago, it’s up to us to set an example of what success truly looks like for female leaders.
Feb 09
What’s the Management End Game? How the Fate of First World Women Matters to Third World Women Entrepreneurs.  The Third Billion Campaign, an initiative of La Pietra Coalition, is uniting the corporate engagement arms of OECD strongarms— Accenture, Booz & Company, Ernst & Young, and the World Bank, to name a few— to educate and empower female entrepreneurs in undeveloped companies. And it’s clear from research and news that parity is an absolute necessity in most of The Third Billion’s target communities. But do we have a clear idea of the paradise we lead these women toward?  The globalization of recent decades has shown the world just how crucial massive population segments can be when they are integrated into the global economy. China and India are the two most obvious examples. But the third less obvious demographic that’s gotten lost in the wash of economic analysis is a very simple one: uneducated and unempowered women. These women exist all over the world—even in the United States. In the United States, it’s become clear that to some degree—whether because of the Recession or because of normal growth phenomena—that the parity of women has hit a plateau. This year’s World Economic Forum, despite its outreach efforts to include more diversity, consisted of only 16% women.  Less than 20 of the Fortune 500’s CEOs are female. But there are bright spots: for instance, the majority of the World Bank’s directors are female. And while the worldwide average is around 15%, Rwanda, a country whose genocidal history has put its civil rights in jeopardy in the last three decades, has a Parliament that’s more than 50% female. Amidst the plateauing progress and its ensuing ennui, women like Sandra Taylor the director of La Pietra Coalition are upholding a spark of hope that has ignited a global fire. “The evidence is clear,” she says. “women are the emerging market with the greatest potential for accelerating global economic growth over the next decade. Investing in women will transform their lives and lead to prosperity for their families, their communities, and for business globally.” Several amazing women stood alongside Sandra last week to announce the launch of the Third Billion Campaign. Dina Powell, President of the Goldman Sachs Foundation and head of GS Corporate Engagement, as well as Beth Brooke, Global Vice Chair of Ernst & Young, and Pierella Paci, the Manager of the World Bank’s Gender & Development group, were among them. Dina spoke passionately about the United Nation’s 8 Millennium Goals, saying that “the answer to all of these goals have to do with women.” She spoke of Goldman Sach’s 10,000 Women initiative, which to date has trained 6,000 women and given them the resources to begin their own economic enterprises. But her goals are bigger than giving 10,000 women a microloan and sending them on their way.   “How do you take women from the platform where they’re running small businesses to the point where they’re creating 10, 20, 50—or 1,000—jobs?” Dina asked the small group assembled to celebrate the launch of The Third Billion. Dr. Victoria Kisyombe, a 10,000 Women trainee and the founder of Sero Lease & Financial Corporation in Tanzania, gave a moving reply: “Women may have all the same rights as men in many countries, but because of customs and traditions, women and girls find it difficult to establish ownership of tangible assets. This limits them. When women help women, it unleashes the 50% that isn’t vocal.” Women Helping Women  The world of female beauty is a competitive one—we’ve seen that even just this week in Gisele Bundchen’s instinctual response to Tom Brady naysayers.The transition for women from solo players in the marriage marketplace to team players in a business environment hasn’t always been an easy one. But the perspective shift—from one where women instinctually compete with one another across all parameters even where there’s no tangible goal to one where women advocate for one another and sponsor one another’s successes—has been invaluable. According to the World Bank’s recent Women, Business & the Law report, gender disparity decreases significantly in workplaces where a top manager is female: (Women Business & the Law, 2012)   This effect is clearly related to goodwill between females within a business. But goodwill is hard to track in a database. Formal structures are what we have the power to monitor, and the World Bank report took a close look at the rights of women in economies worldwide by referencing these formal structures, both legal and economic, and the ways in which they affect their success. To analyze the legal rights of women worldwide, the World Bank carved out 21 different actions that lend depth to an analysis of female parity—and whether women can legally perform these 21 things in the same way that men can is the basis of their study:   - applying for a passport - traveling outside the country - traveling outside the home- getting a job or pursuing a trade or profession without permission - signing a contract - registering a business - being “head of household” or “head of family” - conferring citizenship on their children - opening a bank account - choosing where to live - having ownership rights over moveable property - having ownership rights over immoveable property - having inheritance rights over moveable property - having inheritance rights over immoveable property - working the same night hours - working in the same industries - enjoying the same statutory retirement age - enjoying the same pensionable age - enjoying the same tax deductions or credits - having their testimony carry the same evidentiary weight in court - being able to initiate legal proceedings without permission    To give you an idea of the scope of the problem of female parity in the world:  Of the 45 legal differentiations described by the World Bank report to denote the legal rights of women across economies, no economy imposed all equally for both married and unmarried women. None of the 24 economies that impose ten or more legal differentiations is in high-income OECD, or Eastern Europe and Central Asia or Latin America and the Caribbean. 38 economies in total have no legal differentiations of the type measured by the study. High-income economies have on average fewer differentiations than middle- and low-income economies, indicating that as an economy matures, it affords its females more civil and legal rights. However, these differentiations do not disappear as income levels rise. In fact, 17 of the 39 high-income economies covered have at least one legal differentiation. In 121 economies studied in the World Bank report, unmarried women have the same rights as unmarried men regarding the first 10 differentiators listed above. But only in 97 economies do married women have the same rights as married men. In seven economies, married women do not have the same property rights as married men. How does microcredit help lessen the disparity?  Three-quarters of microfinance borrowers are women. It is, therefore, women who are more likely to benefit when credit bureaus and registries make known information on available microfinance loans. A record of successful repayment enables women to build up credit histories—and these loans pave the way to more conventional financing and access to more capital. This is what The Third Billion Campaign, along with programs like 10,000 Women, strives to achieve. They launched their decade-long effort last Wednesday, and are committed to opening the eyes of corporations and NGOs worldwide to the massive potential of women in these underdeveloped countries. They are unifying what has been to date a series of very disparate efforts to show commitment to female education and entrepreneurialism. What do these strides mean for us back home? Back in the developed world, women have made tremendous strides in the past century towards achieving workplace parity. But the fact remains that women participate in the labor force in a different way than men—and it’s clear from research that that’s partially determined by stereotypes of workplace attachment. To a certain degree, a stereotype of this nature is not baseless: women are likely to be relatively less attached to their respective employers and jobs compared to their male counterparts, especially during the early part of their careers. Parts of female life just occur relatively early: marriage, childbirth, and family care responsibilities make it more likely that women will experience employment interruptions and gaps (Mincer and Ofek, 1982). It’s not crazy to expect that a woman’s job duration will be shorter than a man’s. This affects both on-the-job training investments and job selection. The gaps and interruptions mean that women are likely to invest less in firm-specific skills and more in general labor market skills that are portable across employers—especially given the inflexibility of many employers across the life events young women experience. The lack of firm-specific training makes women subject to relatively flatter wage-tenure profiles, but the focus on general skills means a higher wage-experience profile compared to men (Munasinghe, 2004). So it’s really up to us in the next century—the suffragettes have finished their suffrage, but we as a community have not come to a consensus on what rights to demand and what expectations to set with our employers. We learn. We lead. We reproduce. All of these things make us better potential leaders—not worse ones. And now that we’re making the push into the third world to lift women out of poverty using the same techniques our mothers and grandmothers used not so long ago, it’s up to us to set an example of what success truly looks like for female leaders.

The Friday FYI: NYTimes Loses its Female Leader; Nurses Move to Strike; Cookie Dough, Rape Still Dangerous

Janet Robinson is Stepping Down from the NYTimes, and Arthur Sulzberger will be stepping in during the search for a replacement.

Nursing Strike!

It’s looking as if nurses in New York will be striking in an effort to combat what the New York Times reports to be “[disrespect] by a corporate hospital culture that demands sacrifices from patients and those who provide their care, but pays executives millions of dollars.” San Francisco saw a larger-scale strike in September, organized by the California Nurses Association and its 23,000 nurses. A 24-hour walkout is set for Dec. 22 at eight hospitals in the San Francisco Bay Area and one in Long Beach, and there is word of potential strikes in New Jersey and Minnesota. The New York Times says that Columbia Presbyterian has come to an agreement with its nursing stuff, but that Mount Sinai, Montefiore Medical Center and St. Luke’s-Roosevelt Hospital Center are all still on the hook.

Cookie Doughn’t

If you’re looking of ways to stay out of the ER after reading that news, take heed: just because it’s the holidays doesn’t mean it’s suddenly safe to eat raw cookie dough— ready-to-bake storebought raw chocolate chip cookie dough caused an outbreak of food poisoning caused by the Shiga toxin-producing E. coli between March and July 2009. It hospitalized 35 people, and reports came in that at least 80 people were affected nationally.

And on a less festive note, some startling news from NYT:  nearly 1 in 5 women in a widespread national survey reported that they had been raped or had experienced an attempted rape, and one in four reported having been beaten by an intimate partner. One in six women have been stalked, according to the report.

Some people will react to this by insinuating that our definition of rape is too stringent. I’d say our definition of “respect” is too lax.
Dec 16
The Friday FYI: NYTimes Loses its Female Leader; Nurses Move to Strike; Cookie Dough, Rape Still Dangerous Janet Robinson is Stepping Down from the NYTimes, and Arthur Sulzberger will be stepping in during the search for a replacement. Nursing Strike! It’s looking as if nurses in New York will be striking in an effort to combat what the New York Times reports to be “[disrespect] by a corporate hospital culture that demands sacrifices from patients and those who provide their care, but pays executives millions of dollars.” San Francisco saw a larger-scale strike in September, organized by the California Nurses Association and its 23,000 nurses. A 24-hour walkout is set for Dec. 22 at eight hospitals in the San Francisco Bay Area and one in Long Beach, and there is word of potential strikes in New Jersey and Minnesota. The New York Times says that Columbia Presbyterian has come to an agreement with its nursing stuff, but that Mount Sinai, Montefiore Medical Center and St. Luke’s-Roosevelt Hospital Center are all still on the hook. Cookie Doughn’t If you’re looking of ways to stay out of the ER after reading that news, take heed: just because it’s the holidays doesn’t mean it’s suddenly safe to eat raw cookie dough— ready-to-bake storebought raw chocolate chip cookie dough caused an outbreak of food poisoning caused by the Shiga toxin-producing E. coli between March and July 2009. It hospitalized 35 people, and reports came in that at least 80 people were affected nationally. And on a less festive note, some startling news from NYT:  nearly 1 in 5 women in a widespread national survey reported that they had been raped or had experienced an attempted rape, and one in four reported having been beaten by an intimate partner. One in six women have been stalked, according to the report. Some people will react to this by insinuating that our definition of rape is too stringent. I’d say our definition of “respect” is too lax.

Women in the News: Where are the women in Silicon Valley?

Women & Technology: the 2011 UC Davis Study of California Women Business Leaders released findings last week indicating that “the proportion of women who lead California’s largest companies is growing at such a slow pace that it will take more than a century for women business leaders to achieve parity with men.”As the New York Times reports, the software and semiconductor sectors have the lowest percentages of women among the five highest-paid executives in a company, with 4.4 percent and 2.7 percent, according to the study. On average, fewer than one in 28of the highest-paid tech executives is a woman.The report goes on to say that only 5.2 percent of directors in the semiconductor sector are women, and just 7.7 percent have more than one woman director, compared with 40 percent of companies in all other industries. Just over 9 percent of directors in the software sector are women.Women & Health: The BBC reported last week that there’s a disturbing trend in breast cancer: the side effects of therapeutic medications are so strong that many women stop taking them.

On a lighter note…

Ever seen a female garbage collector? We haven’t either. But they’re apparently an awesome minority in New York City.

In case you want every single issue of Vogue ever printed, in digital format, you can now get it: Conde is offering a single-person, annual subscription price of $1,575 for digital access to every page of every issue in Vogue’s long and illustriously fabulous history. Just in time for Christmas!

And finally: Cosmopolitan is starting a Latina-geared version of the magazine, descriptively titled Cosmopolitan Latina. Hearst is distributing 545,000 copies that across states like Texas, California, Florida and New York, which have large Latino populations. [via NYT]
Dec 12
Women in the News: Where are the women in Silicon Valley? Women & Technology: the 2011 UC Davis Study of California Women Business Leaders released findings last week indicating that “the proportion of women who lead California’s largest companies is growing at such a slow pace that it will take more than a century for women business leaders to achieve parity with men.”As the New York Times reports, the software and semiconductor sectors have the lowest percentages of women among the five highest-paid executives in a company, with 4.4 percent and 2.7 percent, according to the study. On average, fewer than one in 28of the highest-paid tech executives is a woman.The report goes on to say that only 5.2 percent of directors in the semiconductor sector are women, and just 7.7 percent have more than one woman director, compared with 40 percent of companies in all other industries. Just over 9 percent of directors in the software sector are women.Women & Health: The BBC reported last week that there’s a disturbing trend in breast cancer: the side effects of therapeutic medications are so strong that many women stop taking them. On a lighter note… Ever seen a female garbage collector? We haven’t either. But they’re apparently an awesome minority in New York City. In case you want every single issue of Vogue ever printed, in digital format, you can now get it: Conde is offering a single-person, annual subscription price of $1,575 for digital access to every page of every issue in Vogue’s long and illustriously fabulous history. Just in time for Christmas! And finally: Cosmopolitan is starting a Latina-geared version of the magazine, descriptively titled Cosmopolitan Latina. Hearst is distributing 545,000 copies that across states like Texas, California, Florida and New York, which have large Latino populations. [via NYT]

The Friday FYI: One Giant Step for Breast Cancer

By Elizabeth Burke

There’s good news out there for women with HER2-positive breast cancer and postmenopausal hormone-receptor–positive advanced breast cancer. The New England Journal of Medicine has published studies affirming that two drugs, pertuzumab from Genentech andeverolimus from Novartis, showed signs in clinical trials that they could prolong lives. Per the New York Times, it’s too early to know whether those findings will hold up.  [via NYT]

Elizabeth Burke is Levo’s managing editor.
Dec 09
The Friday FYI: One Giant Step for Breast Cancer By Elizabeth Burke There’s good news out there for women with HER2-positive breast cancer and postmenopausal hormone-receptor–positive advanced breast cancer. The New England Journal of Medicine has published studies affirming that two drugs, pertuzumab from Genentech andeverolimus from Novartis, showed signs in clinical trials that they could prolong lives. Per the New York Times, it’s too early to know whether those findings will hold up.  [via NYT] Elizabeth Burke is Levo’s managing editor.

Saying Thanks: Demonstrating Gratitude on the Holidays

By Elizabeth Burke

It’s the end of the year, and chances are that there are people in your life for whom you have no idea how to express your gratitude for the little things they do every day to make your life easier. I’ve got Sam and William at my concierge every single morning without fail holding the door open, smiling, and telling me they hope I have a nice day. And guess what? I do. I’ve been brainstorming ways to show them how much I appreciate the things they do— emailing me about packages I’ve received, taking my dry cleaning for pickup, sending electricians or plumbers or insecticide sprayers to my apartment at any time of day or night… The list goes on. They’re busy guys.We at Levo pooled together some of the things we’re doing to show our appreciation to our doormen, our concierge, our newspaper delivery-folk, and those people with whom we have a small but significant daily relationship. Some of our ideas:
  • Flower delivery (something like flowers.com, H.Bloom if you want to go upscale)
  • Wine: You can’t go wrong here.
  • Make their life easier: buy them a TaskRabbit task for something they wouldn’t have time to do otherwise
  • Sportaneous membership: Think indoor sports.
  • Magazine subscription: Yes, these still exist. And they’re still fun.
  • Gilt City: You know you love their “experience packages.” Buy them a spa day!
  • If someone on your list has pets or children, think of gifts that are child- or pet-related.
  • FOOD. Always a solid option. I baked a pie for my concierge on Thanksgiving, because there’s nothing more thankless than working on Thanksgiving. (e.g., Edible Arrangements, which is what we sent the journalist who wrote our article)
That’s all from Levo. But if you’re at a loss, check out LearnVest’s Guerilla Guide to the Holidays!
Dec 08
Saying Thanks: Demonstrating Gratitude on the Holidays By Elizabeth Burke It’s the end of the year, and chances are that there are people in your life for whom you have no idea how to express your gratitude for the little things they do every day to make your life easier. I’ve got Sam and William at my concierge every single morning without fail holding the door open, smiling, and telling me they hope I have a nice day. And guess what? I do. I’ve been brainstorming ways to show them how much I appreciate the things they do— emailing me about packages I’ve received, taking my dry cleaning for pickup, sending electricians or plumbers or insecticide sprayers to my apartment at any time of day or night… The list goes on. They’re busy guys.We at Levo pooled together some of the things we’re doing to show our appreciation to our doormen, our concierge, our newspaper delivery-folk, and those people with whom we have a small but significant daily relationship. Some of our ideas: Flower delivery (something like flowers.com, H.Bloom if you want to go upscale) Wine: You can’t go wrong here. Make their life easier: buy them a TaskRabbit task for something they wouldn’t have time to do otherwise Sportaneous membership: Think indoor sports. Magazine subscription: Yes, these still exist. And they’re still fun. Gilt City: You know you love their “experience packages.” Buy them a spa day! If someone on your list has pets or children, think of gifts that are child- or pet-related. FOOD. Always a solid option. I baked a pie for my concierge on Thanksgiving, because there’s nothing more thankless than working on Thanksgiving. (e.g., Edible Arrangements, which is what we sent the journalist who wrote our article) That’s all from Levo. But if you’re at a loss, check out LearnVest’s Guerilla Guide to the Holidays!

Women in Fashion: Jessica C. Lee of STYLE/STALK.

Jessica Lee is an entrepreneur and fashion blogger whose passions revolve around digital media and all things stylish.  A 2008 alumna of Stanford University, her background includes roles in marketing, product, and strategy at companies like VOGUE, Saatchi & Saatchi, and Gap Inc.  She is currently the Co-Founder & CMO of STYLE/STALK, a platform that allows users to create their own real-time, personal style magazine.

Levo sat with Jessica to celebrate the launch of STYLE/STALK and to talk shop on her passions, perspectives, and insights.


Where did your interest in fashion develop?

When I was growing up, fashion really only existed for me through magazines – they were what initially sparked my interest in it and became my entire lifeline into that world.  As I was going into college, I started to notice that my friends and I began to consume almost all of our style-related content online.  Speed of information was one factor, but also because exciting new voices had begun to crop up – whether it was digital magazines or personal style bloggers who made fashion feel more democratic by showcasing mass market in a way that still felt aspirational.  Retailers have obviously caught onto the trend too, as you see products now at every tier that don’t require the consumer to trade great design for price.

For me, building STYLE/STALK has been about empowering people with technology that helps them keep up with and discover the beautiful things and people that inspire them.  It’s about connecting a consumer with the perfect something that they were already looking for, or introducing them to their new favorite style influencer who they might not have discovered otherwise.  The intersection of social, content, and commerce has been a really fun space to explore, but ultimately, I think it’s so exciting because style has the power to be incredibly transformative.  On a daily basis, our personal style expresses who we are – and that affects not only how others perceive us, but also how we feel about ourselves.

What is one piece of advice you would give your younger self?

Echoing what Sheryl Sandberg recently said about owning your success, I’d tell my younger self to believe that everything I want to achieve can happen as a result of my gumption and hard work – that my success is not and won’t be accidental.

Who are your role models and mentors?  How have those relationships help shaped your career? What advice would you give our readers about finding and building a relationship with a mentor?

Levo’s emphasis on the importance of young women having female role models to emulate resonates so strongly with me.  My own mentors have always been the exemplary female figures in my life, from my mother to my managers and investors to even my own peers.  These relationships have been absolutely critical in helping to shape my professional life.  They’ve been my resources for guidance in developing my interests and skills into a tangible career path, and even more importantly, in creating a community of support that allowed me to dream big and nurture my self-confidence.

Finding a mentor begins with identifying the person or people who have navigated paths you’re interested in exploring.  Building a relationship requires you to actively communicate your interest and define what you’re hoping to achieve (and how those mentors specifically can help you get there).  In my own experience, the biggest challenge I faced was learning not to shy away from establishing relationships due to my own uncertainty or inhibitions.  Looking back, I recognized that I missed out on a lot in those moments – and that’s served as a great reminder not to let those opportunities pass me by again.

What was it like in the beginning of your career? Was there ever a time when you wanted to give up?

The beginning of my career was a time where I wrestled with a lot of doubt.  Arguably the beginning of any young professional’s career is, to a certain extent, influenced by a degree of anxiety about making the right choices.  While I think most people want to find a way for their life’s work and personal passions to somehow intersect, there’s a lot of ambiguity around how that really manifests into a job or career that’s defensible in the face of your family, peers, and even the pressure we often put on ourselves to “succeed” in a traditional sense.  When I was deciding what my first job would be coming out of college, a lot of the choices I had to make – most notably, saying no to more stable and lucrative offers to chase a creative pursuit like fashion – initially felt incredibly scary.  My lack of experience had me afraid that I was being naïve, and it was in those moments I often wondered about giving up and going back to what felt safer to me at the time (or rather, where the path to success was more well defined).

Ultimately, I decided I’d already spent too much of my life being motivated by the simple desire to succeed.  It’s when I actively decided that it was okay to give myself the freedom to build my career path around my particular areas of interest.  In hindsight, I think that commitment to my personal passions has served me well.  It’s allowed me to focus all of my energy on realizing my ambitions and dreams – and left little room (or really, time) for self-doubt.

What’s the single best piece of advice you can give L(L)ers on maintaining healthy “work-life integration” (we hate the term “work-life balance”)?

If I could sum it up in a word, it’s forgiveness.  Forgive yourself for letting both your work and personal matters be fully equal and important in your life.  I agree with Levo that the term balance inherently implies that one has to give in the face of the other, and I simply don’t believe that’s the case.

If you were giving career advice to a mentee, how would you compare your experiences working for an iconic fashion magazine versus a major advertising agency? How do those two compare to GAP?

These experiences were all eye opening and different, but thankfully very complementary.  Collectively, they gave me a crash course into a multitude of industries (namely media, marketing, and retail) and helped me understand the nuances of each and how they work together in an ecosystem.  I draw on these experiences constantly as an entrepreneur navigating the intersection between content, commerce, and technology.

Thanks again, Jessica!

To register for STYLE/STALK, visit www.stylestalk.com !
Dec 07
Women in Fashion: Jessica C. Lee of STYLE/STALK. Jessica Lee is an entrepreneur and fashion blogger whose passions revolve around digital media and all things stylish.  A 2008 alumna of Stanford University, her background includes roles in marketing, product, and strategy at companies like VOGUE, Saatchi & Saatchi, and Gap Inc.  She is currently the Co-Founder & CMO of STYLE/STALK, a platform that allows users to create their own real-time, personal style magazine. Levo sat with Jessica to celebrate the launch of STYLE/STALK and to talk shop on her passions, perspectives, and insights. Where did your interest in fashion develop? When I was growing up, fashion really only existed for me through magazines – they were what initially sparked my interest in it and became my entire lifeline into that world.  As I was going into college, I started to notice that my friends and I began to consume almost all of our style-related content online.  Speed of information was one factor, but also because exciting new voices had begun to crop up – whether it was digital magazines or personal style bloggers who made fashion feel more democratic by showcasing mass market in a way that still felt aspirational.  Retailers have obviously caught onto the trend too, as you see products now at every tier that don’t require the consumer to trade great design for price. For me, building STYLE/STALK has been about empowering people with technology that helps them keep up with and discover the beautiful things and people that inspire them.  It’s about connecting a consumer with the perfect something that they were already looking for, or introducing them to their new favorite style influencer who they might not have discovered otherwise.  The intersection of social, content, and commerce has been a really fun space to explore, but ultimately, I think it’s so exciting because style has the power to be incredibly transformative.  On a daily basis, our personal style expresses who we are – and that affects not only how others perceive us, but also how we feel about ourselves. What is one piece of advice you would give your younger self? Echoing what Sheryl Sandberg recently said about owning your success, I’d tell my younger self to believe that everything I want to achieve can happen as a result of my gumption and hard work – that my success is not and won’t be accidental. Who are your role models and mentors?  How have those relationships help shaped your career? What advice would you give our readers about finding and building a relationship with a mentor? Levo’s emphasis on the importance of young women having female role models to emulate resonates so strongly with me.  My own mentors have always been the exemplary female figures in my life, from my mother to my managers and investors to even my own peers.  These relationships have been absolutely critical in helping to shape my professional life.  They’ve been my resources for guidance in developing my interests and skills into a tangible career path, and even more importantly, in creating a community of support that allowed me to dream big and nurture my self-confidence. Finding a mentor begins with identifying the person or people who have navigated paths you’re interested in exploring.  Building a relationship requires you to actively communicate your interest and define what you’re hoping to achieve (and how those mentors specifically can help you get there).  In my own experience, the biggest challenge I faced was learning not to shy away from establishing relationships due to my own uncertainty or inhibitions.  Looking back, I recognized that I missed out on a lot in those moments – and that’s served as a great reminder not to let those opportunities pass me by again. What was it like in the beginning of your career? Was there ever a time when you wanted to give up? The beginning of my career was a time where I wrestled with a lot of doubt.  Arguably the beginning of any young professional’s career is, to a certain extent, influenced by a degree of anxiety about making the right choices.  While I think most people want to find a way for their life’s work and personal passions to somehow intersect, there’s a lot of ambiguity around how that really manifests into a job or career that’s defensible in the face of your family, peers, and even the pressure we often put on ourselves to “succeed” in a traditional sense.  When I was deciding what my first job would be coming out of college, a lot of the choices I had to make – most notably, saying no to more stable and lucrative offers to chase a creative pursuit like fashion – initially felt incredibly scary.  My lack of experience had me afraid that I was being naïve, and it was in those moments I often wondered about giving up and going back to what felt safer to me at the time (or rather, where the path to success was more well defined). Ultimately, I decided I’d already spent too much of my life being motivated by the simple desire to succeed.  It’s when I actively decided that it was okay to give myself the freedom to build my career path around my particular areas of interest.  In hindsight, I think that commitment to my personal passions has served me well.  It’s allowed me to focus all of my energy on realizing my ambitions and dreams – and left little room (or really, time) for self-doubt. What’s the single best piece of advice you can give L(L)ers on maintaining healthy “work-life integration” (we hate the term “work-life balance”)? If I could sum it up in a word, it’s forgiveness.  Forgive yourself for letting both your work and personal matters be fully equal and important in your life.  I agree with Levo that the term balance inherently implies that one has to give in the face of the other, and I simply don’t believe that’s the case. If you were giving career advice to a mentee, how would you compare your experiences working for an iconic fashion magazine versus a major advertising agency? How do those two compare to GAP? These experiences were all eye opening and different, but thankfully very complementary.  Collectively, they gave me a crash course into a multitude of industries (namely media, marketing, and retail) and helped me understand the nuances of each and how they work together in an ecosystem.  I draw on these experiences constantly as an entrepreneur navigating the intersection between content, commerce, and technology. Thanks again, Jessica! To register for STYLE/STALK, visit www.stylestalk.com !

Women in Media: Camilla Webster

Camilla Webster is the co-author with finance expert Carol Pepper of the upcoming book The Seven Pearls of Financial Wisdom: A Woman’s Guide to Enjoying Wealth and Power (Amazon). She is a Forbes and Forbes Woman contributor and a top international journalist who covers Wall Street, the global economy, technology, billionaires, art and women’s wealth. She has appeared multiple times on MSNBC, CNBC, and Fox News and has been a regular guest on The John Batchelor Show on WABC Radio.  As a producer for Fox News, CBS News and a broadcast news editor for The Wall Street Journal she has covered business and world affairs from Baghdad to Washington DC. Her articles have been published in The Wall Street Journal, the New York Post and MarketWatch.com. She twice represented Forbes at the World Economic Forum’s annual meeting in Davos, Switzerland and is a respected moderator for conferences on investment and economic development. Camilla is also the co-founder of the new popular website nynatives.com. 

Levo had the opportunity to speak with Camilla about her career path and her insights into what it takes to be a successful journalist.

What is one piece of advice you would give your younger self?

I would tell my younger self to create and maintain a healthy balance in the key aspects of your life. Keep investing your energy across your work, your financial life, your family, your private life, your passions, your fitness and your wellbeing.

If you continue to invest in all these areas and pay attention to them, you will meet every success in your optimum state of being.

Who are your role models and mentors?  How have those relationships helped shape your career? What advice would you give our readers about finding and building a relationship with a mentor?

I tend not to have fixed role models and mentors. Even today, I observe many different people and when I want to develop a skill or need advice I ask for their help.

I’ve admired the careers of Oprah Winfrey, Maria Bartiromo, Sheila Nevins, Arianna Huffington, Christiane Amanpour and Maria Shriver. As they’re not available at a moment’s notice I study their approach to particular projects and their method.

If you notice a senior person you admire casually offering advice or showing concern for your wellbeing, ask for a private meeting and find out if they’d like to mentor you. If they’ve naturally taken an interest in you already, they’re likely to be a good mentor for you.

Keep the expectations of what a mentor can do for you in a realistic place. Mentors are not infallible and don’t focus on only pursuing female mentors.

I think it’s wonderful if a good mentor enters your life, but it’s important to have faith that you will do very well even if you don’t find one.

What was it like in the beginning of your career? Was there ever a time early on when you wanted to give up?

The early years were a real challenge. It’s very difficult to work the overnight shift in media on a small salary and keep the faith but my sacrifices also made me more resolute.

How did print journalism compare to broadcast journalism? 

Print journalism and broadcast journalism meet in the importance of a good story and good story telling. Some stories lend themselves to pictures and some don’t. The newsroom cultures are very different in America. In my experience, the business newspaper and business magazine newsroom are quieter and filled with multiple university degrees, a demand for excellence and a history of doing things in a certain way. The TV networks tend to be loud, fast paced, boisterous and full of drive. I had to adjust myself to these different environments. Now these two different cultures are merging as the media industry delivers news in multiple platforms to audiences ready to experience text, TV, video, audio and data in one place.

Can you share with us a favorite interview story?

It was 2003, the U.S. had invaded Iraq three weeks earlier and marines were still trying to secure Baghdad. I entered one of the university buildings in the city. It was badly damaged and in a hunt for business stories I came across a minister of economics called Dr. Al-Shumaa Hunam. This very rumpled academic stood before me splattered with dust and fatigue. Holding a tattered economics textbook that was singed at its edges, he was not the picture of the interview I was looking for, but not all things are what they seem. We spoke in French. It was safer for both of us not to appear American in the open air and unfortified space of the university.

The professor told me he was a former economic minister who had pressed Saddam Hussein not to devalue the currency.

He gave me a tour of the classrooms and a library, which was still smoking. I asked if the Americans had bombed the library and he told me men who were not locals had come in and set fire to the books and he tried to save what he could.

As we entered a courtyard of tufty grass and  rubble, he proclaimed, “This is my classroom!”

I perused the area that now looked like a wreckage heap or an ancient ruin. “But this is just an open space, there’s nothing here,” I said. “This is my classroom, because this is the only classroom we have. My students should be getting their degree soon. I will give them that chance.”

As we talked, ammunitions exploded in the distance, tanks could be heard rumbling through the streets nearby. I thought of the checkpoints, the curfews and the risk for his students traveling to school.
Thousands of people had died last month and hundreds of people were still killing each other just a few feet away each week.

“Do they come?” I asked.

“Some of them come.”

We looked at each other with a deep understanding.  We walked back to the jeep, stared about the broken place and continued to contemplate the economic future of Iraq. In the coming year he would be interviewed for multiple business stories and was featured in the documentary I co-wrote called Inside Baghdad for The History Channel.

What’s the single best piece of advice you can give L(L)ers on maintaining healthywork-life balance/integration?

I highly recommend you schedule self-care time - your bedtime, your workouts, your family time, your meditation practice, your time away from electronic devices and your time off.

It sounds like an extreme measure but the busiest successful people including Arianna Huffington and Ryan Seacrest have emphasized that scheduling self- care in its various forms works for them. Scheduling your free time when you’re on major deadlines gives you the freedom to enjoy what you’re doing in that moment and get the rest you need with less internal conflict.

What skills have enabled you to progress to your position that set you apart from your competition?

I was born determined and a natural conversationalist with good instincts. I’ve usually been willing to work longer and harder than the competition.

I believe it’s not enough to be the best at what you do, you have to deliver your best self alongside your skill sets. This means you walk in with a great attitude every day, you don’t believe in the word can’t, you think outside the box, you understand your vision, you find a way to communicate your ideas clearly to others and execute them effectively.

When I interview someone I hope they walk away feeling they had a unique experience, that we’ve taken a journey together. This approach has served me well.

Do you consider your industry male- or female- dominated? What are the challenges and the opportunities?

There are a lot of senior female executives in media, but many of the top jobs are still held by men. I don’t look at opportunities or challenges in terms of being a woman or a man. It’s good to work in a corporate culture that supports female empowerment at every level. I do believe we also make our opportunities regardless of our sex.

Thank you for your contribution, Camilla! And Levo Ladies, be sure to pick up a copy of Camilla’s new book on Amazon!
Dec 06
Women in Media: Camilla Webster Camilla Webster is the co-author with finance expert Carol Pepper of the upcoming book The Seven Pearls of Financial Wisdom: A Woman’s Guide to Enjoying Wealth and Power (Amazon). She is a Forbes and Forbes Woman contributor and a top international journalist who covers Wall Street, the global economy, technology, billionaires, art and women’s wealth. She has appeared multiple times on MSNBC, CNBC, and Fox News and has been a regular guest on The John Batchelor Show on WABC Radio.  As a producer for Fox News, CBS News and a broadcast news editor for The Wall Street Journal she has covered business and world affairs from Baghdad to Washington DC. Her articles have been published in The Wall Street Journal, the New York Post and MarketWatch.com. She twice represented Forbes at the World Economic Forum’s annual meeting in Davos, Switzerland and is a respected moderator for conferences on investment and economic development. Camilla is also the co-founder of the new popular website nynatives.com.  Levo had the opportunity to speak with Camilla about her career path and her insights into what it takes to be a successful journalist. What is one piece of advice you would give your younger self? I would tell my younger self to create and maintain a healthy balance in the key aspects of your life. Keep investing your energy across your work, your financial life, your family, your private life, your passions, your fitness and your wellbeing. If you continue to invest in all these areas and pay attention to them, you will meet every success in your optimum state of being. Who are your role models and mentors?  How have those relationships helped shape your career? What advice would you give our readers about finding and building a relationship with a mentor? I tend not to have fixed role models and mentors. Even today, I observe many different people and when I want to develop a skill or need advice I ask for their help. I’ve admired the careers of Oprah Winfrey, Maria Bartiromo, Sheila Nevins, Arianna Huffington, Christiane Amanpour and Maria Shriver. As they’re not available at a moment’s notice I study their approach to particular projects and their method. If you notice a senior person you admire casually offering advice or showing concern for your wellbeing, ask for a private meeting and find out if they’d like to mentor you. If they’ve naturally taken an interest in you already, they’re likely to be a good mentor for you. Keep the expectations of what a mentor can do for you in a realistic place. Mentors are not infallible and don’t focus on only pursuing female mentors. I think it’s wonderful if a good mentor enters your life, but it’s important to have faith that you will do very well even if you don’t find one. What was it like in the beginning of your career? Was there ever a time early on when you wanted to give up? The early years were a real challenge. It’s very difficult to work the overnight shift in media on a small salary and keep the faith but my sacrifices also made me more resolute. How did print journalism compare to broadcast journalism?  Print journalism and broadcast journalism meet in the importance of a good story and good story telling. Some stories lend themselves to pictures and some don’t. The newsroom cultures are very different in America. In my experience, the business newspaper and business magazine newsroom are quieter and filled with multiple university degrees, a demand for excellence and a history of doing things in a certain way. The TV networks tend to be loud, fast paced, boisterous and full of drive. I had to adjust myself to these different environments. Now these two different cultures are merging as the media industry delivers news in multiple platforms to audiences ready to experience text, TV, video, audio and data in one place. Can you share with us a favorite interview story? It was 2003, the U.S. had invaded Iraq three weeks earlier and marines were still trying to secure Baghdad. I entered one of the university buildings in the city. It was badly damaged and in a hunt for business stories I came across a minister of economics called Dr. Al-Shumaa Hunam. This very rumpled academic stood before me splattered with dust and fatigue. Holding a tattered economics textbook that was singed at its edges, he was not the picture of the interview I was looking for, but not all things are what they seem. We spoke in French. It was safer for both of us not to appear American in the open air and unfortified space of the university. The professor told me he was a former economic minister who had pressed Saddam Hussein not to devalue the currency. He gave me a tour of the classrooms and a library, which was still smoking. I asked if the Americans had bombed the library and he told me men who were not locals had come in and set fire to the books and he tried to save what he could. As we entered a courtyard of tufty grass and  rubble, he proclaimed, “This is my classroom!” I perused the area that now looked like a wreckage heap or an ancient ruin. “But this is just an open space, there’s nothing here,” I said. “This is my classroom, because this is the only classroom we have. My students should be getting their degree soon. I will give them that chance.” As we talked, ammunitions exploded in the distance, tanks could be heard rumbling through the streets nearby. I thought of the checkpoints, the curfews and the risk for his students traveling to school.Thousands of people had died last month and hundreds of people were still killing each other just a few feet away each week. “Do they come?” I asked. “Some of them come.” We looked at each other with a deep understanding.  We walked back to the jeep, stared about the broken place and continued to contemplate the economic future of Iraq. In the coming year he would be interviewed for multiple business stories and was featured in the documentary I co-wrote called Inside Baghdad for The History Channel. What’s the single best piece of advice you can give L(L)ers on maintaining healthywork-life balance/integration? I highly recommend you schedule self-care time - your bedtime, your workouts, your family time, your meditation practice, your time away from electronic devices and your time off. It sounds like an extreme measure but the busiest successful people including Arianna Huffington and Ryan Seacrest have emphasized that scheduling self- care in its various forms works for them. Scheduling your free time when you’re on major deadlines gives you the freedom to enjoy what you’re doing in that moment and get the rest you need with less internal conflict. What skills have enabled you to progress to your position that set you apart from your competition? I was born determined and a natural conversationalist with good instincts. I’ve usually been willing to work longer and harder than the competition. I believe it’s not enough to be the best at what you do, you have to deliver your best self alongside your skill sets. This means you walk in with a great attitude every day, you don’t believe in the word can’t, you think outside the box, you understand your vision, you find a way to communicate your ideas clearly to others and execute them effectively. When I interview someone I hope they walk away feeling they had a unique experience, that we’ve taken a journey together. This approach has served me well. Do you consider your industry male- or female- dominated? What are the challenges and the opportunities? There are a lot of senior female executives in media, but many of the top jobs are still held by men. I don’t look at opportunities or challenges in terms of being a woman or a man. It’s good to work in a corporate culture that supports female empowerment at every level. I do believe we also make our opportunities regardless of our sex. Thank you for your contribution, Camilla! And Levo Ladies, be sure to pick up a copy of Camilla’s new book on Amazon!

Women in the News: Puppies & Pavlov, Biglaw Partner Designations Dwindling, Women in Afghanistan, and Women & Labor

By Elizabeth Burke

In cute puppy news, we dug up a Molson  dual advertising campaign that ran parallel in women’s & men’s magazines featuring (1) in the women’s magazine, a photo of an attractive man drinking Molson whilst holding two adorable puppies and (2) in the men’s magazine, explaining the favor Molson is doing to male readers everywhere by slowly conditioning women to associate Molson with men who love adorable puppies and look attractive. It’s good to know that puppies, at least, are benefiting from an otherwise totally vapid advertising campaign.

What do you think about the dual demographic marketing approach Molson took?

Vivia Chen of the Careerist is coming at us with some more bad news: Last year’s partner appointment rounds looked good for women in Biglaw, but this year is looking pretty vile. Her figures:
Cravath Swaine & Moore: No women out of four new partners.
Gibson Dunn & Crutcher: Four women out of 11.
Simpson Thacher & Bartlett: Two women out of 12.
Sullivan & Cromwell: One out of five.
Weil Gotshal & Manges: Two out of 11.

Afghanistan: Amid Karzai’s warning that the Taliban may rise again if a peace deal is brokered at the upcoming Bonn conference on the future of Afghanistan, the BBC reports that there’s another major concern in danger of being sidelined or even backtracking:the progress that the women of Afghanistan have made in the past decade.

Women in Music: Women in Music is a pre-Grammy warmup to bring attention to women in the music world who have made strides in the past year. Predictably, Billboard hosted what turned out to be a Taylor & Nikki-festival. Kind of a boring lineup for the magazine that’s supposed to be at the cutting edge of new music, but both women are such strong speakers and have such amazing resumes that it was still a completely inspiring event.

The New York Times published a piece last week on women in labor unions, and the tremendous impact their voices have had in the past few years. Of the development, NYT says “Unions, of course, have been in retreat for years. But Ms. Pope and several other women, notably Rose Ann DeMoro, of National Nurses United, and Mary Kay Henry, of the Service Employees International Union, are pushing back. Their ascendance has rekindled hope that organized labor maybe, just maybe, could stage a comeback. They have also helped inspire the likes of Occupy Wall Street.”
Dec 05
Women in the News: Puppies & Pavlov, Biglaw Partner Designations Dwindling, Women in Afghanistan, and Women & Labor By Elizabeth Burke In cute puppy news, we dug up a Molson  dual advertising campaign that ran parallel in women’s & men’s magazines featuring (1) in the women’s magazine, a photo of an attractive man drinking Molson whilst holding two adorable puppies and (2) in the men’s magazine, explaining the favor Molson is doing to male readers everywhere by slowly conditioning women to associate Molson with men who love adorable puppies and look attractive. It’s good to know that puppies, at least, are benefiting from an otherwise totally vapid advertising campaign. What do you think about the dual demographic marketing approach Molson took? Vivia Chen of the Careerist is coming at us with some more bad news: Last year’s partner appointment rounds looked good for women in Biglaw, but this year is looking pretty vile. Her figures:Cravath Swaine & Moore: No women out of four new partners.Gibson Dunn & Crutcher: Four women out of 11.Simpson Thacher & Bartlett: Two women out of 12.Sullivan & Cromwell: One out of five.Weil Gotshal & Manges: Two out of 11. Afghanistan: Amid Karzai’s warning that the Taliban may rise again if a peace deal is brokered at the upcoming Bonn conference on the future of Afghanistan, the BBC reports that there’s another major concern in danger of being sidelined or even backtracking:the progress that the women of Afghanistan have made in the past decade. Women in Music: Women in Music is a pre-Grammy warmup to bring attention to women in the music world who have made strides in the past year. Predictably, Billboard hosted what turned out to be a Taylor & Nikki-festival. Kind of a boring lineup for the magazine that’s supposed to be at the cutting edge of new music, but both women are such strong speakers and have such amazing resumes that it was still a completely inspiring event. The New York Times published a piece last week on women in labor unions, and the tremendous impact their voices have had in the past few years. Of the development, NYT says “Unions, of course, have been in retreat for years. But Ms. Pope and several other women, notably Rose Ann DeMoro, of National Nurses United, and Mary Kay Henry, of the Service Employees International Union, are pushing back. Their ascendance has rekindled hope that organized labor maybe, just maybe, could stage a comeback. They have also helped inspire the likes of Occupy Wall Street.”


We’re presenting this without comment, and the facts are your own to verify, but the message is something we believe in: that all that makeup you buy, you probably don’t really need. From onlinemba.com.
Nov 30
We’re presenting this without comment, and the facts are your own to verify, but the message is something we believe in: that all that makeup you buy, you probably don’t really need. From onlinemba.com.

The Levo League

Posted on Monday February 13th 2012 at 12:51pm. Its tags are listed below.

Fall in Love with Your Life: The Levo League speaks with Sara Caswell, Jazz Violinist Extraordinaire. Just under a year ago, the Bieber-sphere experienced a massive upset: the Grammy for Best New Artist in 2011 was passed to a female bassist and jazz singer, Esperanza Spalding. Completely contrary to the digital-era trends of ‘more auto-tune, less subtlety’ that have been compounded by the downfall of the music industry and the upswing of the Great Recession, Esperanza is unabashedly conscientious, educated, and perfectly apprised of her jazz lineage. There’s no “I should probably perform this set without my pants on”-type thought in Esperanza’s head that so many of our female musical role models embody today. Spalding’s unexpected victory at the time made me wonder: was the Golden Age of the plastic pop star coming to a close? Was this as “whoa, that came out of left field” as it felt to me, or was there an undercurrent of musical change in the air? Just after the ceremony, NPR published a story called “Wait, Who is this Esperanza Spalding?” I noticed a woman featured in the article whose role in Esperanza’s group was interesting: she was a violinist in the background playing with technique that was clearly bridging the space between classical and jazz violin. That woman, I soon learned, was Sara. Violinist, Strategist, Optimist Sara Caswell, whose technical facility on the violin intertwined with her gift for lyricism have been heard around the world (and not just on everyone’s favorite radio program, NPR’s Morning Edition) toured internationally with Esperanza in support of her Chamber Music Society (Heads Up International, 2010) from 2010 to 2011. As a solo artist she also has received acclaim: albums she has made have been featured in Coda Magazine, Jazz Education Journal, and Strings Magazine. She straddles the worlds of jazz, classical, and folk music; in recent years she has also toured with violinist Mark O’Connor’s American String Celebration and violinist Darol Anger’s Four Generations of Jazz Violin, and performed or recorded with such artists as Charlie Byrd, Gene Bertoncini, Skitch Henderson, Bucky Pizzarelli, Lynne Arriale, and John Clayton. Why did I find Sara interesting? Partially because she was not center stage in her work with Esperanza. While Esperanza is in many ways a very interested phenomenon in the music industry—her headstrong nature and independence represent a musician who is not tethered to the Katy Perry model of existence—the industry that springs up to support a woman so heavily differentiated from the Justin Biebers of the world is notable. Sara has also recently been on tour with first-time Grammy nominee Roseanna Vitro, whose album The Music of Randy Newman (Motema Music, 2011) features Sara on violin.  While Roseanna did not take the Grammy this year, the album that did— “The Mosaic Project,” features vocalist Terri Lyne Carrington, with whom Sara also performed alongside Esperanza Spalding last year.  In the jazz world, Sara is everywhere. And she is a supporting character in many of her musical endeavors—though not all, by a long shot. A successful climb to the top for many of us in the cubicle-friendly world looks shockingly similar to Sara’s ascent: she is taking opportunities where they arise, seeing potential and going for it, and she maintains a compassionate and friendly demeanor throughout that evinces the passion she feels for her career. I asked Sara how much ramp-up time she gave herself from the time she moved from the Midwest to New York City to gauge her actual success level. “I was told by friends, ‘you should take about five years in the city. And if works out, great. But if it doesn’t, there are other cities where incredible jazz is being made.’ So I gave myself five years.” Sara told me. How long did it take before she started getting real traction in the city for her professional accomplishments? “Four and a half years!” she laughed. Supporting roles, supporting development, supporting success While many of us as female professionals are supporting characters in the same way—whether we’re assisting our superiors, adding insight and depth to our work output, or pounding the pavement and cold calling sales leads—it’s not always as easy in cubicle-land as it is in music-land to enjoy the ride up. I spoke with Sara at length about her involvement with Ms. Spalding and how it works into her view of herself and her career trajectory. “You wear a lot of different hats as a musician—“ Sarah said in a tone that can only be described as effervescent during our conversation, just before Sunday’s Grammy Awards, “bandleader, teacher, orchestrator—but they’re all hats I love to wear.” Sara’s been wearing the hat of both teacher and performer well enough to have made a name for herself in both worlds, with teaching experience under her belt like the Manhattan School of Music, Mark O’Connor String Camps, the Jamey Aebersold Summer Jazz Workshops, the Indiana University String Academy, and her own private studio. Not a light commitment. In many musical communities teaching is a necessary part of existence—not for financial reasons, but because there just aren’t as many opportunities to learn from great performers as there are people who want to learn to play like those performers. This is a fairly unique dynamic to be true of an entire industry: that mentorship and sponsorship isn’t just a new trend—it’s a fundamental necessity to keeping a musical world alive and evolving (there are complexities here, but I’m glossing over them). What can businesswomen take from the life of a successful violinist? In many ways, Sara’s life work has been humble: teacher, bandleader, arranger. But in all of the ways that translate to the life of a businesswoman, her professional development has been extremely strategic and pointedly efficient. She’s allowed for investment in her own development in her five-year ramp-up plan, plowback into her community of fellow musicians in her teaching life, and has opened her social network in ways possible only with true talent and passion. And those features of her development have translated into notoriety in the jazz world and an amassed bank of talent and knowledge that’s truly rare in in the world. So has the effort been worth it? Sara’s response inspired me: “It’s a dream. That’s not always the case for jazz musicians – it’s not a profession you go into for the money. It’s a hard life. Oftentimes, you are living month to month and you just hope the schedule fills in, and that things will come through, and that everything will be fine. If anything, the music demands that you always be on your toes. But the nature of jazz itself is so much about spontaneity and creativity and communicating with the musicians with whom you’re performing. One of the most beautiful things about jazz is that you have ultimate freedom with your voice and what you want to say. You don’t need to sit into a framework in order to succeed. You decide. That kind of freedom of expression is certainly not something all musicians have the joy of experiencing.”
Fall in Love with Your Life: The Levo League speaks with Sara Caswell, Jazz Violinist Extraordinaire. Just under a year ago, the Bieber-sphere experienced a massive upset: the Grammy for Best New Artist in 2011 was passed to a female bassist and jazz singer, Esperanza Spalding. Completely contrary to the digital-era trends of ‘more auto-tune, less subtlety’ that have been compounded by the downfall of the music industry and the upswing of the Great Recession, Esperanza is unabashedly conscientious, educated, and perfectly apprised of her jazz lineage. There’s no “I should probably perform this set without my pants on”-type thought in Esperanza’s head that so many of our female musical role models embody today. Spalding’s unexpected victory at the time made me wonder: was the Golden Age of the plastic pop star coming to a close? Was this as “whoa, that came out of left field” as it felt to me, or was there an undercurrent of musical change in the air? Just after the ceremony, NPR published a story called “Wait, Who is this Esperanza Spalding?” I noticed a woman featured in the article whose role in Esperanza’s group was interesting: she was a violinist in the background playing with technique that was clearly bridging the space between classical and jazz violin. That woman, I soon learned, was Sara. Violinist, Strategist, Optimist Sara Caswell, whose technical facility on the violin intertwined with her gift for lyricism have been heard around the world (and not just on everyone’s favorite radio program, NPR’s Morning Edition) toured internationally with Esperanza in support of her Chamber Music Society (Heads Up International, 2010) from 2010 to 2011. As a solo artist she also has received acclaim: albums she has made have been featured in Coda Magazine, Jazz Education Journal, and Strings Magazine. She straddles the worlds of jazz, classical, and folk music; in recent years she has also toured with violinist Mark O’Connor’s American String Celebration and violinist Darol Anger’s Four Generations of Jazz Violin, and performed or recorded with such artists as Charlie Byrd, Gene Bertoncini, Skitch Henderson, Bucky Pizzarelli, Lynne Arriale, and John Clayton. Why did I find Sara interesting? Partially because she was not center stage in her work with Esperanza. While Esperanza is in many ways a very interested phenomenon in the music industry—her headstrong nature and independence represent a musician who is not tethered to the Katy Perry model of existence—the industry that springs up to support a woman so heavily differentiated from the Justin Biebers of the world is notable. Sara has also recently been on tour with first-time Grammy nominee Roseanna Vitro, whose album The Music of Randy Newman (Motema Music, 2011) features Sara on violin.  While Roseanna did not take the Grammy this year, the album that did— “The Mosaic Project,” features vocalist Terri Lyne Carrington, with whom Sara also performed alongside Esperanza Spalding last year.  In the jazz world, Sara is everywhere. And she is a supporting character in many of her musical endeavors—though not all, by a long shot. A successful climb to the top for many of us in the cubicle-friendly world looks shockingly similar to Sara’s ascent: she is taking opportunities where they arise, seeing potential and going for it, and she maintains a compassionate and friendly demeanor throughout that evinces the passion she feels for her career. I asked Sara how much ramp-up time she gave herself from the time she moved from the Midwest to New York City to gauge her actual success level. “I was told by friends, ‘you should take about five years in the city. And if works out, great. But if it doesn’t, there are other cities where incredible jazz is being made.’ So I gave myself five years.” Sara told me. How long did it take before she started getting real traction in the city for her professional accomplishments? “Four and a half years!” she laughed. Supporting roles, supporting development, supporting success While many of us as female professionals are supporting characters in the same way—whether we’re assisting our superiors, adding insight and depth to our work output, or pounding the pavement and cold calling sales leads—it’s not always as easy in cubicle-land as it is in music-land to enjoy the ride up. I spoke with Sara at length about her involvement with Ms. Spalding and how it works into her view of herself and her career trajectory. “You wear a lot of different hats as a musician—“ Sarah said in a tone that can only be described as effervescent during our conversation, just before Sunday’s Grammy Awards, “bandleader, teacher, orchestrator—but they’re all hats I love to wear.” Sara’s been wearing the hat of both teacher and performer well enough to have made a name for herself in both worlds, with teaching experience under her belt like the Manhattan School of Music, Mark O’Connor String Camps, the Jamey Aebersold Summer Jazz Workshops, the Indiana University String Academy, and her own private studio. Not a light commitment. In many musical communities teaching is a necessary part of existence—not for financial reasons, but because there just aren’t as many opportunities to learn from great performers as there are people who want to learn to play like those performers. This is a fairly unique dynamic to be true of an entire industry: that mentorship and sponsorship isn’t just a new trend—it’s a fundamental necessity to keeping a musical world alive and evolving (there are complexities here, but I’m glossing over them). What can businesswomen take from the life of a successful violinist? In many ways, Sara’s life work has been humble: teacher, bandleader, arranger. But in all of the ways that translate to the life of a businesswoman, her professional development has been extremely strategic and pointedly efficient. She’s allowed for investment in her own development in her five-year ramp-up plan, plowback into her community of fellow musicians in her teaching life, and has opened her social network in ways possible only with true talent and passion. And those features of her development have translated into notoriety in the jazz world and an amassed bank of talent and knowledge that’s truly rare in in the world. So has the effort been worth it? Sara’s response inspired me: “It’s a dream. That’s not always the case for jazz musicians – it’s not a profession you go into for the money. It’s a hard life. Oftentimes, you are living month to month and you just hope the schedule fills in, and that things will come through, and that everything will be fine. If anything, the music demands that you always be on your toes. But the nature of jazz itself is so much about spontaneity and creativity and communicating with the musicians with whom you’re performing. One of the most beautiful things about jazz is that you have ultimate freedom with your voice and what you want to say. You don’t need to sit into a framework in order to succeed. You decide. That kind of freedom of expression is certainly not something all musicians have the joy of experiencing.”

Fall in Love with Your Life: The Levo League speaks with Sara Caswell, Jazz Violinist Extraordinaire.

Just under a year ago, the Bieber-sphere experienced a massive upset: the Grammy for Best New Artist in 2011 was passed to a female bassist and jazz singer, Esperanza Spalding. Completely contrary to the digital-era trends of ‘more auto-tune, less subtlety’ that have been compounded by the downfall of the music industry and the upswing of the Great Recession, Esperanza is unabashedly conscientious, educated, and perfectly apprised of her jazz lineage. There’s no “I should probably perform this set without my pants on”-type thought in Esperanza’s head that so many of our female musical role models embody today.

Spalding’s unexpected victory at the time made me wonder: was the Golden Age of the plastic pop star coming to a close? Was this as “whoa, that came out of left field” as it felt to me, or was there an undercurrent of musical change in the air? Just after the ceremony, NPR published a story called “Wait, Who is this Esperanza Spalding?” I noticed a woman featured in the article whose role in Esperanza’s group was interesting: she was a violinist in the background playing with technique that was clearly bridging the space between classical and jazz violin. That woman, I soon learned, was Sara.

Violinist, Strategist, Optimist

Sara Caswell, whose technical facility on the violin intertwined with her gift for lyricism have been heard around the world (and not just on everyone’s favorite radio program, NPR’s Morning Edition) toured internationally with Esperanza in support of her Chamber Music Society (Heads Up International, 2010) from 2010 to 2011. As a solo artist she also has received acclaim: albums she has made have been featured in Coda Magazine, Jazz Education Journal, and Strings Magazine. She straddles the worlds of jazz, classical, and folk music; in recent years she has also toured with violinist Mark O’Connor’s American String Celebration and violinist Darol Anger’s Four Generations of Jazz Violin, and performed or recorded with such artists as Charlie Byrd, Gene Bertoncini, Skitch Henderson, Bucky Pizzarelli, Lynne Arriale, and John Clayton.

Why did I find Sara interesting? Partially because she was not center stage in her work with Esperanza. While Esperanza is in many ways a very interested phenomenon in the music industry—her headstrong nature and independence represent a musician who is not tethered to the Katy Perry model of existence—the industry that springs up to support a woman so heavily differentiated from the Justin Biebers of the world is notable. Sara has also recently been on tour with first-time Grammy nominee Roseanna Vitro, whose album The Music of Randy Newman (Motema Music, 2011) features Sara on violin.  While Roseanna did not take the Grammy this year, the album that did— “The Mosaic Project,” features vocalist Terri Lyne Carrington, with whom Sara also performed alongside Esperanza Spalding last year. 

In the jazz world, Sara is everywhere. And she is a supporting character in many of her musical endeavors—though not all, by a long shot. A successful climb to the top for many of us in the cubicle-friendly world looks shockingly similar to Sara’s ascent: she is taking opportunities where they arise, seeing potential and going for it, and she maintains a compassionate and friendly demeanor throughout that evinces the passion she feels for her career. I asked Sara how much ramp-up time she gave herself from the time she moved from the Midwest to New York City to gauge her actual success level. “I was told by friends, ‘you should take about five years in the city. And if works out, great. But if it doesn’t, there are other cities where incredible jazz is being made.’ So I gave myself five years.” Sara told me. How long did it take before she started getting real traction in the city for her professional accomplishments? “Four and a half years!” she laughed.

Supporting roles, supporting development, supporting success

While many of us as female professionals are supporting characters in the same way—whether we’re assisting our superiors, adding insight and depth to our work output, or pounding the pavement and cold calling sales leads—it’s not always as easy in cubicle-land as it is in music-land to enjoy the ride up. I spoke with Sara at length about her involvement with Ms. Spalding and how it works into her view of herself and her career trajectory.

“You wear a lot of different hats as a musician—“ Sarah said in a tone that can only be described as effervescent during our conversation, just before Sunday’s Grammy Awards, “bandleader, teacher, orchestrator—but they’re all hats I love to wear.” Sara’s been wearing the hat of both teacher and performer well enough to have made a name for herself in both worlds, with teaching experience under her belt like the Manhattan School of Music, Mark O’Connor String Camps, the Jamey Aebersold Summer Jazz Workshops, the Indiana University String Academy, and her own private studio. Not a light commitment. In many musical communities teaching is a necessary part of existence—not for financial reasons, but because there just aren’t as many opportunities to learn from great performers as there are people who want to learn to play like those performers. This is a fairly unique dynamic to be true of an entire industry: that mentorship and sponsorship isn’t just a new trend—it’s a fundamental necessity to keeping a musical world alive and evolving (there are complexities here, but I’m glossing over them).

What can businesswomen take from the life of a successful violinist?

In many ways, Sara’s life work has been humble: teacher, bandleader, arranger. But in all of the ways that translate to the life of a businesswoman, her professional development has been extremely strategic and pointedly efficient. She’s allowed for investment in her own development in her five-year ramp-up plan, plowback into her community of fellow musicians in her teaching life, and has opened her social network in ways possible only with true talent and passion. And those features of her development have translated into notoriety in the jazz world and an amassed bank of talent and knowledge that’s truly rare in in the world.

So has the effort been worth it? Sara’s response inspired me:

“It’s a dream. That’s not always the case for jazz musicians – it’s not a profession you go into for the money. It’s a hard life. Oftentimes, you are living month to month and you just hope the schedule fills in, and that things will come through, and that everything will be fine. If anything, the music demands that you always be on your toes. But the nature of jazz itself is so much about spontaneity and creativity and communicating with the musicians with whom you’re performing. One of the most beautiful things about jazz is that you have ultimate freedom with your voice and what you want to say. You don’t need to sit into a framework in order to succeed. You decide. That kind of freedom of expression is certainly not something all musicians have the joy of experiencing.”

The Levo League

Posted on Thursday February 9th 2012 at 11:56am. Its tags are listed below.

What’s the Management End Game? How the Fate of First World Women Matters to Third World Women Entrepreneurs.  The Third Billion Campaign, an initiative of La Pietra Coalition, is uniting the corporate engagement arms of OECD strongarms— Accenture, Booz & Company, Ernst & Young, and the World Bank, to name a few— to educate and empower female entrepreneurs in undeveloped companies. And it’s clear from research and news that parity is an absolute necessity in most of The Third Billion’s target communities. But do we have a clear idea of the paradise we lead these women toward?  The globalization of recent decades has shown the world just how crucial massive population segments can be when they are integrated into the global economy. China and India are the two most obvious examples. But the third less obvious demographic that’s gotten lost in the wash of economic analysis is a very simple one: uneducated and unempowered women. These women exist all over the world—even in the United States. In the United States, it’s become clear that to some degree—whether because of the Recession or because of normal growth phenomena—that the parity of women has hit a plateau. This year’s World Economic Forum, despite its outreach efforts to include more diversity, consisted of only 16% women.  Less than 20 of the Fortune 500’s CEOs are female. But there are bright spots: for instance, the majority of the World Bank’s directors are female. And while the worldwide average is around 15%, Rwanda, a country whose genocidal history has put its civil rights in jeopardy in the last three decades, has a Parliament that’s more than 50% female. Amidst the plateauing progress and its ensuing ennui, women like Sandra Taylor the director of La Pietra Coalition are upholding a spark of hope that has ignited a global fire. “The evidence is clear,” she says. “women are the emerging market with the greatest potential for accelerating global economic growth over the next decade. Investing in women will transform their lives and lead to prosperity for their families, their communities, and for business globally.” Several amazing women stood alongside Sandra last week to announce the launch of the Third Billion Campaign. Dina Powell, President of the Goldman Sachs Foundation and head of GS Corporate Engagement, as well as Beth Brooke, Global Vice Chair of Ernst & Young, and Pierella Paci, the Manager of the World Bank’s Gender & Development group, were among them. Dina spoke passionately about the United Nation’s 8 Millennium Goals, saying that “the answer to all of these goals have to do with women.” She spoke of Goldman Sach’s 10,000 Women initiative, which to date has trained 6,000 women and given them the resources to begin their own economic enterprises. But her goals are bigger than giving 10,000 women a microloan and sending them on their way.   “How do you take women from the platform where they’re running small businesses to the point where they’re creating 10, 20, 50—or 1,000—jobs?” Dina asked the small group assembled to celebrate the launch of The Third Billion. Dr. Victoria Kisyombe, a 10,000 Women trainee and the founder of Sero Lease & Financial Corporation in Tanzania, gave a moving reply: “Women may have all the same rights as men in many countries, but because of customs and traditions, women and girls find it difficult to establish ownership of tangible assets. This limits them. When women help women, it unleashes the 50% that isn’t vocal.” Women Helping Women  The world of female beauty is a competitive one—we’ve seen that even just this week in Gisele Bundchen’s instinctual response to Tom Brady naysayers.The transition for women from solo players in the marriage marketplace to team players in a business environment hasn’t always been an easy one. But the perspective shift—from one where women instinctually compete with one another across all parameters even where there’s no tangible goal to one where women advocate for one another and sponsor one another’s successes—has been invaluable. According to the World Bank’s recent Women, Business & the Law report, gender disparity decreases significantly in workplaces where a top manager is female: (Women Business & the Law, 2012)   This effect is clearly related to goodwill between females within a business. But goodwill is hard to track in a database. Formal structures are what we have the power to monitor, and the World Bank report took a close look at the rights of women in economies worldwide by referencing these formal structures, both legal and economic, and the ways in which they affect their success. To analyze the legal rights of women worldwide, the World Bank carved out 21 different actions that lend depth to an analysis of female parity—and whether women can legally perform these 21 things in the same way that men can is the basis of their study:   - applying for a passport - traveling outside the country - traveling outside the home- getting a job or pursuing a trade or profession without permission - signing a contract - registering a business - being “head of household” or “head of family” - conferring citizenship on their children - opening a bank account - choosing where to live - having ownership rights over moveable property - having ownership rights over immoveable property - having inheritance rights over moveable property - having inheritance rights over immoveable property - working the same night hours - working in the same industries - enjoying the same statutory retirement age - enjoying the same pensionable age - enjoying the same tax deductions or credits - having their testimony carry the same evidentiary weight in court - being able to initiate legal proceedings without permission    To give you an idea of the scope of the problem of female parity in the world:  Of the 45 legal differentiations described by the World Bank report to denote the legal rights of women across economies, no economy imposed all equally for both married and unmarried women. None of the 24 economies that impose ten or more legal differentiations is in high-income OECD, or Eastern Europe and Central Asia or Latin America and the Caribbean. 38 economies in total have no legal differentiations of the type measured by the study. High-income economies have on average fewer differentiations than middle- and low-income economies, indicating that as an economy matures, it affords its females more civil and legal rights. However, these differentiations do not disappear as income levels rise. In fact, 17 of the 39 high-income economies covered have at least one legal differentiation. In 121 economies studied in the World Bank report, unmarried women have the same rights as unmarried men regarding the first 10 differentiators listed above. But only in 97 economies do married women have the same rights as married men. In seven economies, married women do not have the same property rights as married men. How does microcredit help lessen the disparity?  Three-quarters of microfinance borrowers are women. It is, therefore, women who are more likely to benefit when credit bureaus and registries make known information on available microfinance loans. A record of successful repayment enables women to build up credit histories—and these loans pave the way to more conventional financing and access to more capital. This is what The Third Billion Campaign, along with programs like 10,000 Women, strives to achieve. They launched their decade-long effort last Wednesday, and are committed to opening the eyes of corporations and NGOs worldwide to the massive potential of women in these underdeveloped countries. They are unifying what has been to date a series of very disparate efforts to show commitment to female education and entrepreneurialism. What do these strides mean for us back home? Back in the developed world, women have made tremendous strides in the past century towards achieving workplace parity. But the fact remains that women participate in the labor force in a different way than men—and it’s clear from research that that’s partially determined by stereotypes of workplace attachment. To a certain degree, a stereotype of this nature is not baseless: women are likely to be relatively less attached to their respective employers and jobs compared to their male counterparts, especially during the early part of their careers. Parts of female life just occur relatively early: marriage, childbirth, and family care responsibilities make it more likely that women will experience employment interruptions and gaps (Mincer and Ofek, 1982). It’s not crazy to expect that a woman’s job duration will be shorter than a man’s. This affects both on-the-job training investments and job selection. The gaps and interruptions mean that women are likely to invest less in firm-specific skills and more in general labor market skills that are portable across employers—especially given the inflexibility of many employers across the life events young women experience. The lack of firm-specific training makes women subject to relatively flatter wage-tenure profiles, but the focus on general skills means a higher wage-experience profile compared to men (Munasinghe, 2004). So it’s really up to us in the next century—the suffragettes have finished their suffrage, but we as a community have not come to a consensus on what rights to demand and what expectations to set with our employers. We learn. We lead. We reproduce. All of these things make us better potential leaders—not worse ones. And now that we’re making the push into the third world to lift women out of poverty using the same techniques our mothers and grandmothers used not so long ago, it’s up to us to set an example of what success truly looks like for female leaders.

What’s the Management End Game? How the Fate of First World Women Matters to Third World Women Entrepreneurs. 

The Third Billion Campaign, an initiative of La Pietra Coalition, is uniting the corporate engagement arms of OECD strongarms— Accenture, Booz & Company, Ernst & Young, and the World Bank, to name a few— to educate and empower female entrepreneurs in undeveloped companies. And it’s clear from research and news that parity is an absolute necessity in most of The Third Billion’s target communities. But do we have a clear idea of the paradise we lead these women toward? 

The globalization of recent decades has shown the world just how crucial massive population segments can be when they are integrated into the global economy. China and India are the two most obvious examples. But the third less obvious demographic that’s gotten lost in the wash of economic analysis is a very simple one: uneducated and unempowered women. These women exist all over the world—even in the United States.

In the United States, it’s become clear that to some degree—whether because of the Recession or because of normal growth phenomena—that the parity of women has hit a plateau. This year’s World Economic Forum, despite its outreach efforts to include more diversity, consisted of only 16% women.  Less than 20 of the Fortune 500’s CEOs are female. But there are bright spots: for instance, the majority of the World Bank’s directors are female. And while the worldwide average is around 15%, Rwanda, a country whose genocidal history has put its civil rights in jeopardy in the last three decades, has a Parliament that’s more than 50% female.

Amidst the plateauing progress and its ensuing ennui, women like Sandra Taylor the director of La Pietra Coalition are upholding a spark of hope that has ignited a global fire. “The evidence is clear,” she says. “women are the emerging market with the greatest potential for accelerating global economic growth over the next decade. Investing in women will transform their lives and lead to prosperity for their families, their communities, and for business globally.”

Several amazing women stood alongside Sandra last week to announce the launch of the Third Billion Campaign. Dina Powell, President of the Goldman Sachs Foundation and head of GS Corporate Engagement, as well as Beth Brooke, Global Vice Chair of Ernst & Young, and Pierella Paci, the Manager of the World Bank’s Gender & Development group, were among them. Dina spoke passionately about the United Nation’s 8 Millennium Goals, saying that “the answer to all of these goals have to do with women.” She spoke of Goldman Sach’s 10,000 Women initiative, which to date has trained 6,000 women and given them the resources to begin their own economic enterprises. But her goals are bigger than giving 10,000 women a microloan and sending them on their way.

Screen Shot 2012-02-08 at 7.32.03 PM

 

“How do you take women from the platform where they’re running small businesses to the point where they’re creating 10, 20, 50—or 1,000—jobs?” Dina asked the small group assembled to celebrate the launch of The Third Billion. Dr. Victoria Kisyombe, a 10,000 Women trainee and the founder of Sero Lease & Financial Corporation in Tanzania, gave a moving reply: “Women may have all the same rights as men in many countries, but because of customs and traditions, women and girls find it difficult to establish ownership of tangible assets. This limits them. When women help women, it unleashes the 50% that isn’t vocal.”

Women Helping Women 

The world of female beauty is a competitive one—we’ve seen that even just this week in Gisele Bundchen’s instinctual response to Tom Brady naysayers.The transition for women from solo players in the marriage marketplace to team players in a business environment hasn’t always been an easy one.

But the perspective shift—from one where women instinctually compete with one another across all parameters even where there’s no tangible goal to one where women advocate for one another and sponsor one another’s successes—has been invaluable. According to the World Bank’s recent Women, Business & the Law report, gender disparity decreases significantly in workplaces where a top manager is female:

Screen Shot 2012-02-08 at 5.31.54 PM

(Women Business & the Law, 2012)

 

This effect is clearly related to goodwill between females within a business. But goodwill is hard to track in a database. Formal structures are what we have the power to monitor, and the World Bank report took a close look at the rights of women in economies worldwide by referencing these formal structures, both legal and economic, and the ways in which they affect their success.

To analyze the legal rights of women worldwide, the World Bank carved out 21 different actions that lend depth to an analysis of female parity—and whether women can legally perform these 21 things in the same way that men can is the basis of their study:  

- applying for a passport - traveling outside the country - traveling outside the home- getting a job or pursuing a trade or profession without permission - signing a contract - registering a business - being “head of household” or “head of family” - conferring citizenship on their children - opening a bank account - choosing where to live - having ownership rights over moveable property - having ownership rights over immoveable property - having inheritance rights over moveable property - having inheritance rights over immoveable property - working the same night hours - working in the same industries - enjoying the same statutory retirement age - enjoying the same pensionable age - enjoying the same tax deductions or credits - having their testimony carry the same evidentiary weight in court - being able to initiate legal proceedings without permission 

 

To give you an idea of the scope of the problem of female parity in the world: 

Of the 45 legal differentiations described by the World Bank report to denote the legal rights of women across economies, no economy imposed all equally for both married and unmarried women. None of the 24 economies that impose ten or more legal differentiations is in high-income OECD, or Eastern Europe and Central Asia or Latin America and the Caribbean. 38 economies in total have no legal differentiations of the type measured by the study.

High-income economies have on average fewer differentiations than middle- and low-income economies, indicating that as an economy matures, it affords its females more civil and legal rights. However, these differentiations do not disappear as income levels rise. In fact, 17 of the 39 high-income economies covered have at least one legal differentiation.

In 121 economies studied in the World Bank report, unmarried women have the same rights as unmarried men regarding the first 10 differentiators listed above. But only in 97 economies do married women have the same rights as married men. In seven economies, married women do not have the same property rights as married men.

How does microcredit help lessen the disparity? 

Three-quarters of microfinance borrowers are women. It is, therefore, women who are more likely to benefit when credit bureaus and registries make known information on available microfinance loans. A record of successful repayment enables women to build up credit histories—and these loans pave the way to more conventional financing and access to more capital.

This is what The Third Billion Campaign, along with programs like 10,000 Women, strives to achieve. They launched their decade-long effort last Wednesday, and are committed to opening the eyes of corporations and NGOs worldwide to the massive potential of women in these underdeveloped countries. They are unifying what has been to date a series of very disparate efforts to show commitment to female education and entrepreneurialism.

What do these strides mean for us back home?

Back in the developed world, women have made tremendous strides in the past century towards achieving workplace parity. But the fact remains that women participate in the labor force in a different way than men—and it’s clear from research that that’s partially determined by stereotypes of workplace attachment.

To a certain degree, a stereotype of this nature is not baseless: women are likely to be relatively less attached to their respective employers and jobs compared to their male counterparts, especially during the early part of their careers. Parts of female life just occur relatively early: marriage, childbirth, and family care responsibilities make it more likely that women will experience employment interruptions and gaps (Mincer and Ofek, 1982). It’s not crazy to expect that a woman’s job duration will be shorter than a man’s. This affects both on-the-job training investments and job selection. The gaps and interruptions mean that women are likely to invest less in firm-specific skills and more in general labor market skills that are portable across employers—especially given the inflexibility of many employers across the life events young women experience. The lack of firm-specific training makes women subject to relatively flatter wage-tenure profiles, but the focus on general skills means a higher wage-experience profile compared to men (Munasinghe, 2004).

So it’s really up to us in the next century—the suffragettes have finished their suffrage, but we as a community have not come to a consensus on what rights to demand and what expectations to set with our employers. We learn. We lead. We reproduce. All of these things make us better potential leaders—not worse ones. And now that we’re making the push into the third world to lift women out of poverty using the same techniques our mothers and grandmothers used not so long ago, it’s up to us to set an example of what success truly looks like for female leaders.

The Levo League

Posted on Friday December 16th 2011 at 12:00am. Its tags are listed below.

The Friday FYI: NYTimes Loses its Female Leader; Nurses Move to Strike; Cookie Dough, Rape Still Dangerous Janet Robinson is Stepping Down from the NYTimes, and Arthur Sulzberger will be stepping in during the search for a replacement. Nursing Strike! It’s looking as if nurses in New York will be striking in an effort to combat what the New York Times reports to be “[disrespect] by a corporate hospital culture that demands sacrifices from patients and those who provide their care, but pays executives millions of dollars.” San Francisco saw a larger-scale strike in September, organized by the California Nurses Association and its 23,000 nurses. A 24-hour walkout is set for Dec. 22 at eight hospitals in the San Francisco Bay Area and one in Long Beach, and there is word of potential strikes in New Jersey and Minnesota. The New York Times says that Columbia Presbyterian has come to an agreement with its nursing stuff, but that Mount Sinai, Montefiore Medical Center and St. Luke’s-Roosevelt Hospital Center are all still on the hook. Cookie Doughn’t If you’re looking of ways to stay out of the ER after reading that news, take heed: just because it’s the holidays doesn’t mean it’s suddenly safe to eat raw cookie dough— ready-to-bake storebought raw chocolate chip cookie dough caused an outbreak of food poisoning caused by the Shiga toxin-producing E. coli between March and July 2009. It hospitalized 35 people, and reports came in that at least 80 people were affected nationally. And on a less festive note, some startling news from NYT:  nearly 1 in 5 women in a widespread national survey reported that they had been raped or had experienced an attempted rape, and one in four reported having been beaten by an intimate partner. One in six women have been stalked, according to the report. Some people will react to this by insinuating that our definition of rape is too stringent. I’d say our definition of “respect” is too lax.

The Friday FYI: NYTimes Loses its Female Leader; Nurses Move to Strike; Cookie Dough, Rape Still Dangerous

Janet Robinson is Stepping Down from the NYTimes, and Arthur Sulzberger will be stepping in during the search for a replacement.

Nursing Strike!

It’s looking as if nurses in New York will be striking in an effort to combat what the New York Times reports to be “[disrespect] by a corporate hospital culture that demands sacrifices from patients and those who provide their care, but pays executives millions of dollars.” San Francisco saw a larger-scale strike in September, organized by the California Nurses Association and its 23,000 nurses. A 24-hour walkout is set for Dec. 22 at eight hospitals in the San Francisco Bay Area and one in Long Beach, and there is word of potential strikes in New Jersey and Minnesota. The New York Times says that Columbia Presbyterian has come to an agreement with its nursing stuff, but that Mount Sinai, Montefiore Medical Center and St. Luke’s-Roosevelt Hospital Center are all still on the hook.

Cookie Doughn’t

If you’re looking of ways to stay out of the ER after reading that news, take heed: just because it’s the holidays doesn’t mean it’s suddenly safe to eat raw cookie dough— ready-to-bake storebought raw chocolate chip cookie dough caused an outbreak of food poisoning caused by the Shiga toxin-producing E. coli between March and July 2009. It hospitalized 35 people, and reports came in that at least 80 people were affected nationally.

And on a less festive note, some startling news from NYT:  nearly 1 in 5 women in a widespread national survey reported that they had been raped or had experienced an attempted rape, and one in four reported having been beaten by an intimate partner. One in six women have been stalked, according to the report.

Some people will react to this by insinuating that our definition of rape is too stringent. I’d say our definition of “respect” is too lax.

The Levo League

Posted on Monday December 12th 2011 at 12:00am. Its tags are listed below.

Women in the News: Where are the women in Silicon Valley? Women & Technology: the 2011 UC Davis Study of California Women Business Leaders released findings last week indicating that “the proportion of women who lead California’s largest companies is growing at such a slow pace that it will take more than a century for women business leaders to achieve parity with men.”As the New York Times reports, the software and semiconductor sectors have the lowest percentages of women among the five highest-paid executives in a company, with 4.4 percent and 2.7 percent, according to the study. On average, fewer than one in 28of the highest-paid tech executives is a woman.The report goes on to say that only 5.2 percent of directors in the semiconductor sector are women, and just 7.7 percent have more than one woman director, compared with 40 percent of companies in all other industries. Just over 9 percent of directors in the software sector are women.Women & Health: The BBC reported last week that there’s a disturbing trend in breast cancer: the side effects of therapeutic medications are so strong that many women stop taking them. On a lighter note… Ever seen a female garbage collector? We haven’t either. But they’re apparently an awesome minority in New York City. In case you want every single issue of Vogue ever printed, in digital format, you can now get it: Conde is offering a single-person, annual subscription price of $1,575 for digital access to every page of every issue in Vogue’s long and illustriously fabulous history. Just in time for Christmas! And finally: Cosmopolitan is starting a Latina-geared version of the magazine, descriptively titled Cosmopolitan Latina. Hearst is distributing 545,000 copies that across states like Texas, California, Florida and New York, which have large Latino populations. [via NYT]

Women in the News: Where are the women in Silicon Valley?

Women & Technology: the 2011 UC Davis Study of California Women Business Leaders released findings last week indicating that “the proportion of women who lead California’s largest companies is growing at such a slow pace that it will take more than a century for women business leaders to achieve parity with men.”As the New York Times reports, the software and semiconductor sectors have the lowest percentages of women among the five highest-paid executives in a company, with 4.4 percent and 2.7 percent, according to the study. On average, fewer than one in 28of the highest-paid tech executives is a woman.The report goes on to say that only 5.2 percent of directors in the semiconductor sector are women, and just 7.7 percent have more than one woman director, compared with 40 percent of companies in all other industries. Just over 9 percent of directors in the software sector are women.Women & Health: The BBC reported last week that there’s a disturbing trend in breast cancer: the side effects of therapeutic medications are so strong that many women stop taking them.

On a lighter note…

Ever seen a female garbage collector? We haven’t either. But they’re apparently an awesome minority in New York City.

In case you want every single issue of Vogue ever printed, in digital format, you can now get it: Conde is offering a single-person, annual subscription price of $1,575 for digital access to every page of every issue in Vogue’s long and illustriously fabulous history. Just in time for Christmas!

And finally: Cosmopolitan is starting a Latina-geared version of the magazine, descriptively titled Cosmopolitan Latina. Hearst is distributing 545,000 copies that across states like Texas, California, Florida and New York, which have large Latino populations. [via NYT]

The Levo League

Posted on Friday December 9th 2011 at 12:00am. Its tags are listed below.

The Friday FYI: One Giant Step for Breast Cancer By Elizabeth Burke There’s good news out there for women with HER2-positive breast cancer and postmenopausal hormone-receptor–positive advanced breast cancer. The New England Journal of Medicine has published studies affirming that two drugs, pertuzumab from Genentech andeverolimus from Novartis, showed signs in clinical trials that they could prolong lives. Per the New York Times, it’s too early to know whether those findings will hold up.  [via NYT] Elizabeth Burke is Levo’s managing editor.

The Friday FYI: One Giant Step for Breast Cancer

By Elizabeth Burke

There’s good news out there for women with HER2-positive breast cancer and postmenopausal hormone-receptor–positive advanced breast cancer. The New England Journal of Medicine has published studies affirming that two drugs, pertuzumab from Genentech andeverolimus from Novartis, showed signs in clinical trials that they could prolong lives. Per the New York Times, it’s too early to know whether those findings will hold up.  [via NYT]

Elizabeth Burke is Levo’s managing editor.

The Levo League

Posted on Thursday December 8th 2011 at 12:00am. Its tags are listed below.

Saying Thanks: Demonstrating Gratitude on the Holidays By Elizabeth Burke It’s the end of the year, and chances are that there are people in your life for whom you have no idea how to express your gratitude for the little things they do every day to make your life easier. I’ve got Sam and William at my concierge every single morning without fail holding the door open, smiling, and telling me they hope I have a nice day. And guess what? I do. I’ve been brainstorming ways to show them how much I appreciate the things they do— emailing me about packages I’ve received, taking my dry cleaning for pickup, sending electricians or plumbers or insecticide sprayers to my apartment at any time of day or night… The list goes on. They’re busy guys.We at Levo pooled together some of the things we’re doing to show our appreciation to our doormen, our concierge, our newspaper delivery-folk, and those people with whom we have a small but significant daily relationship. Some of our ideas: Flower delivery (something like flowers.com, H.Bloom if you want to go upscale) Wine: You can’t go wrong here. Make their life easier: buy them a TaskRabbit task for something they wouldn’t have time to do otherwise Sportaneous membership: Think indoor sports. Magazine subscription: Yes, these still exist. And they’re still fun. Gilt City: You know you love their “experience packages.” Buy them a spa day! If someone on your list has pets or children, think of gifts that are child- or pet-related. FOOD. Always a solid option. I baked a pie for my concierge on Thanksgiving, because there’s nothing more thankless than working on Thanksgiving. (e.g., Edible Arrangements, which is what we sent the journalist who wrote our article) That’s all from Levo. But if you’re at a loss, check out LearnVest’s Guerilla Guide to the Holidays!

Saying Thanks: Demonstrating Gratitude on the Holidays

By Elizabeth Burke

It’s the end of the year, and chances are that there are people in your life for whom you have no idea how to express your gratitude for the little things they do every day to make your life easier. I’ve got Sam and William at my concierge every single morning without fail holding the door open, smiling, and telling me they hope I have a nice day. And guess what? I do. I’ve been brainstorming ways to show them how much I appreciate the things they do— emailing me about packages I’ve received, taking my dry cleaning for pickup, sending electricians or plumbers or insecticide sprayers to my apartment at any time of day or night… The list goes on. They’re busy guys.We at Levo pooled together some of the things we’re doing to show our appreciation to our doormen, our concierge, our newspaper delivery-folk, and those people with whom we have a small but significant daily relationship. Some of our ideas:
  • Flower delivery (something like flowers.com, H.Bloom if you want to go upscale)
  • Wine: You can’t go wrong here.
  • Make their life easier: buy them a TaskRabbit task for something they wouldn’t have time to do otherwise
  • Sportaneous membership: Think indoor sports.
  • Magazine subscription: Yes, these still exist. And they’re still fun.
  • Gilt City: You know you love their “experience packages.” Buy them a spa day!
  • If someone on your list has pets or children, think of gifts that are child- or pet-related.
  • FOOD. Always a solid option. I baked a pie for my concierge on Thanksgiving, because there’s nothing more thankless than working on Thanksgiving. (e.g., Edible Arrangements, which is what we sent the journalist who wrote our article)
That’s all from Levo. But if you’re at a loss, check out LearnVest’s Guerilla Guide to the Holidays!

The Levo League

Posted on Wednesday December 7th 2011 at 12:00am. Its tags are listed below.

Women in Fashion: Jessica C. Lee of STYLE/STALK. Jessica Lee is an entrepreneur and fashion blogger whose passions revolve around digital media and all things stylish.  A 2008 alumna of Stanford University, her background includes roles in marketing, product, and strategy at companies like VOGUE, Saatchi & Saatchi, and Gap Inc.  She is currently the Co-Founder & CMO of STYLE/STALK, a platform that allows users to create their own real-time, personal style magazine. Levo sat with Jessica to celebrate the launch of STYLE/STALK and to talk shop on her passions, perspectives, and insights. Where did your interest in fashion develop? When I was growing up, fashion really only existed for me through magazines – they were what initially sparked my interest in it and became my entire lifeline into that world.  As I was going into college, I started to notice that my friends and I began to consume almost all of our style-related content online.  Speed of information was one factor, but also because exciting new voices had begun to crop up – whether it was digital magazines or personal style bloggers who made fashion feel more democratic by showcasing mass market in a way that still felt aspirational.  Retailers have obviously caught onto the trend too, as you see products now at every tier that don’t require the consumer to trade great design for price. For me, building STYLE/STALK has been about empowering people with technology that helps them keep up with and discover the beautiful things and people that inspire them.  It’s about connecting a consumer with the perfect something that they were already looking for, or introducing them to their new favorite style influencer who they might not have discovered otherwise.  The intersection of social, content, and commerce has been a really fun space to explore, but ultimately, I think it’s so exciting because style has the power to be incredibly transformative.  On a daily basis, our personal style expresses who we are – and that affects not only how others perceive us, but also how we feel about ourselves. What is one piece of advice you would give your younger self? Echoing what Sheryl Sandberg recently said about owning your success, I’d tell my younger self to believe that everything I want to achieve can happen as a result of my gumption and hard work – that my success is not and won’t be accidental. Who are your role models and mentors?  How have those relationships help shaped your career? What advice would you give our readers about finding and building a relationship with a mentor? Levo’s emphasis on the importance of young women having female role models to emulate resonates so strongly with me.  My own mentors have always been the exemplary female figures in my life, from my mother to my managers and investors to even my own peers.  These relationships have been absolutely critical in helping to shape my professional life.  They’ve been my resources for guidance in developing my interests and skills into a tangible career path, and even more importantly, in creating a community of support that allowed me to dream big and nurture my self-confidence. Finding a mentor begins with identifying the person or people who have navigated paths you’re interested in exploring.  Building a relationship requires you to actively communicate your interest and define what you’re hoping to achieve (and how those mentors specifically can help you get there).  In my own experience, the biggest challenge I faced was learning not to shy away from establishing relationships due to my own uncertainty or inhibitions.  Looking back, I recognized that I missed out on a lot in those moments – and that’s served as a great reminder not to let those opportunities pass me by again. What was it like in the beginning of your career? Was there ever a time when you wanted to give up? The beginning of my career was a time where I wrestled with a lot of doubt.  Arguably the beginning of any young professional’s career is, to a certain extent, influenced by a degree of anxiety about making the right choices.  While I think most people want to find a way for their life’s work and personal passions to somehow intersect, there’s a lot of ambiguity around how that really manifests into a job or career that’s defensible in the face of your family, peers, and even the pressure we often put on ourselves to “succeed” in a traditional sense.  When I was deciding what my first job would be coming out of college, a lot of the choices I had to make – most notably, saying no to more stable and lucrative offers to chase a creative pursuit like fashion – initially felt incredibly scary.  My lack of experience had me afraid that I was being naïve, and it was in those moments I often wondered about giving up and going back to what felt safer to me at the time (or rather, where the path to success was more well defined). Ultimately, I decided I’d already spent too much of my life being motivated by the simple desire to succeed.  It’s when I actively decided that it was okay to give myself the freedom to build my career path around my particular areas of interest.  In hindsight, I think that commitment to my personal passions has served me well.  It’s allowed me to focus all of my energy on realizing my ambitions and dreams – and left little room (or really, time) for self-doubt. What’s the single best piece of advice you can give L(L)ers on maintaining healthy “work-life integration” (we hate the term “work-life balance”)? If I could sum it up in a word, it’s forgiveness.  Forgive yourself for letting both your work and personal matters be fully equal and important in your life.  I agree with Levo that the term balance inherently implies that one has to give in the face of the other, and I simply don’t believe that’s the case. If you were giving career advice to a mentee, how would you compare your experiences working for an iconic fashion magazine versus a major advertising agency? How do those two compare to GAP? These experiences were all eye opening and different, but thankfully very complementary.  Collectively, they gave me a crash course into a multitude of industries (namely media, marketing, and retail) and helped me understand the nuances of each and how they work together in an ecosystem.  I draw on these experiences constantly as an entrepreneur navigating the intersection between content, commerce, and technology. Thanks again, Jessica! To register for STYLE/STALK, visit www.stylestalk.com !
Women in Fashion: Jessica C. Lee of STYLE/STALK. Jessica Lee is an entrepreneur and fashion blogger whose passions revolve around digital media and all things stylish.  A 2008 alumna of Stanford University, her background includes roles in marketing, product, and strategy at companies like VOGUE, Saatchi & Saatchi, and Gap Inc.  She is currently the Co-Founder & CMO of STYLE/STALK, a platform that allows users to create their own real-time, personal style magazine. Levo sat with Jessica to celebrate the launch of STYLE/STALK and to talk shop on her passions, perspectives, and insights. Where did your interest in fashion develop? When I was growing up, fashion really only existed for me through magazines – they were what initially sparked my interest in it and became my entire lifeline into that world.  As I was going into college, I started to notice that my friends and I began to consume almost all of our style-related content online.  Speed of information was one factor, but also because exciting new voices had begun to crop up – whether it was digital magazines or personal style bloggers who made fashion feel more democratic by showcasing mass market in a way that still felt aspirational.  Retailers have obviously caught onto the trend too, as you see products now at every tier that don’t require the consumer to trade great design for price. For me, building STYLE/STALK has been about empowering people with technology that helps them keep up with and discover the beautiful things and people that inspire them.  It’s about connecting a consumer with the perfect something that they were already looking for, or introducing them to their new favorite style influencer who they might not have discovered otherwise.  The intersection of social, content, and commerce has been a really fun space to explore, but ultimately, I think it’s so exciting because style has the power to be incredibly transformative.  On a daily basis, our personal style expresses who we are – and that affects not only how others perceive us, but also how we feel about ourselves. What is one piece of advice you would give your younger self? Echoing what Sheryl Sandberg recently said about owning your success, I’d tell my younger self to believe that everything I want to achieve can happen as a result of my gumption and hard work – that my success is not and won’t be accidental. Who are your role models and mentors?  How have those relationships help shaped your career? What advice would you give our readers about finding and building a relationship with a mentor? Levo’s emphasis on the importance of young women having female role models to emulate resonates so strongly with me.  My own mentors have always been the exemplary female figures in my life, from my mother to my managers and investors to even my own peers.  These relationships have been absolutely critical in helping to shape my professional life.  They’ve been my resources for guidance in developing my interests and skills into a tangible career path, and even more importantly, in creating a community of support that allowed me to dream big and nurture my self-confidence. Finding a mentor begins with identifying the person or people who have navigated paths you’re interested in exploring.  Building a relationship requires you to actively communicate your interest and define what you’re hoping to achieve (and how those mentors specifically can help you get there).  In my own experience, the biggest challenge I faced was learning not to shy away from establishing relationships due to my own uncertainty or inhibitions.  Looking back, I recognized that I missed out on a lot in those moments – and that’s served as a great reminder not to let those opportunities pass me by again. What was it like in the beginning of your career? Was there ever a time when you wanted to give up? The beginning of my career was a time where I wrestled with a lot of doubt.  Arguably the beginning of any young professional’s career is, to a certain extent, influenced by a degree of anxiety about making the right choices.  While I think most people want to find a way for their life’s work and personal passions to somehow intersect, there’s a lot of ambiguity around how that really manifests into a job or career that’s defensible in the face of your family, peers, and even the pressure we often put on ourselves to “succeed” in a traditional sense.  When I was deciding what my first job would be coming out of college, a lot of the choices I had to make – most notably, saying no to more stable and lucrative offers to chase a creative pursuit like fashion – initially felt incredibly scary.  My lack of experience had me afraid that I was being naïve, and it was in those moments I often wondered about giving up and going back to what felt safer to me at the time (or rather, where the path to success was more well defined). Ultimately, I decided I’d already spent too much of my life being motivated by the simple desire to succeed.  It’s when I actively decided that it was okay to give myself the freedom to build my career path around my particular areas of interest.  In hindsight, I think that commitment to my personal passions has served me well.  It’s allowed me to focus all of my energy on realizing my ambitions and dreams – and left little room (or really, time) for self-doubt. What’s the single best piece of advice you can give L(L)ers on maintaining healthy “work-life integration” (we hate the term “work-life balance”)? If I could sum it up in a word, it’s forgiveness.  Forgive yourself for letting both your work and personal matters be fully equal and important in your life.  I agree with Levo that the term balance inherently implies that one has to give in the face of the other, and I simply don’t believe that’s the case. If you were giving career advice to a mentee, how would you compare your experiences working for an iconic fashion magazine versus a major advertising agency? How do those two compare to GAP? These experiences were all eye opening and different, but thankfully very complementary.  Collectively, they gave me a crash course into a multitude of industries (namely media, marketing, and retail) and helped me understand the nuances of each and how they work together in an ecosystem.  I draw on these experiences constantly as an entrepreneur navigating the intersection between content, commerce, and technology. Thanks again, Jessica! To register for STYLE/STALK, visit www.stylestalk.com !

Women in Fashion: Jessica C. Lee of STYLE/STALK.

Jessica Lee is an entrepreneur and fashion blogger whose passions revolve around digital media and all things stylish.  A 2008 alumna of Stanford University, her background includes roles in marketing, product, and strategy at companies like VOGUE, Saatchi & Saatchi, and Gap Inc.  She is currently the Co-Founder & CMO of STYLE/STALK, a platform that allows users to create their own real-time, personal style magazine.

Levo sat with Jessica to celebrate the launch of STYLE/STALK and to talk shop on her passions, perspectives, and insights.


Where did your interest in fashion develop?

When I was growing up, fashion really only existed for me through magazines – they were what initially sparked my interest in it and became my entire lifeline into that world.  As I was going into college, I started to notice that my friends and I began to consume almost all of our style-related content online.  Speed of information was one factor, but also because exciting new voices had begun to crop up – whether it was digital magazines or personal style bloggers who made fashion feel more democratic by showcasing mass market in a way that still felt aspirational.  Retailers have obviously caught onto the trend too, as you see products now at every tier that don’t require the consumer to trade great design for price.

For me, building STYLE/STALK has been about empowering people with technology that helps them keep up with and discover the beautiful things and people that inspire them.  It’s about connecting a consumer with the perfect something that they were already looking for, or introducing them to their new favorite style influencer who they might not have discovered otherwise.  The intersection of social, content, and commerce has been a really fun space to explore, but ultimately, I think it’s so exciting because style has the power to be incredibly transformative.  On a daily basis, our personal style expresses who we are – and that affects not only how others perceive us, but also how we feel about ourselves.

What is one piece of advice you would give your younger self?

Echoing what Sheryl Sandberg recently said about owning your success, I’d tell my younger self to believe that everything I want to achieve can happen as a result of my gumption and hard work – that my success is not and won’t be accidental.

Who are your role models and mentors?  How have those relationships help shaped your career? What advice would you give our readers about finding and building a relationship with a mentor?

Levo’s emphasis on the importance of young women having female role models to emulate resonates so strongly with me.  My own mentors have always been the exemplary female figures in my life, from my mother to my managers and investors to even my own peers.  These relationships have been absolutely critical in helping to shape my professional life.  They’ve been my resources for guidance in developing my interests and skills into a tangible career path, and even more importantly, in creating a community of support that allowed me to dream big and nurture my self-confidence.

Finding a mentor begins with identifying the person or people who have navigated paths you’re interested in exploring.  Building a relationship requires you to actively communicate your interest and define what you’re hoping to achieve (and how those mentors specifically can help you get there).  In my own experience, the biggest challenge I faced was learning not to shy away from establishing relationships due to my own uncertainty or inhibitions.  Looking back, I recognized that I missed out on a lot in those moments – and that’s served as a great reminder not to let those opportunities pass me by again.

What was it like in the beginning of your career? Was there ever a time when you wanted to give up?

The beginning of my career was a time where I wrestled with a lot of doubt.  Arguably the beginning of any young professional’s career is, to a certain extent, influenced by a degree of anxiety about making the right choices.  While I think most people want to find a way for their life’s work and personal passions to somehow intersect, there’s a lot of ambiguity around how that really manifests into a job or career that’s defensible in the face of your family, peers, and even the pressure we often put on ourselves to “succeed” in a traditional sense.  When I was deciding what my first job would be coming out of college, a lot of the choices I had to make – most notably, saying no to more stable and lucrative offers to chase a creative pursuit like fashion – initially felt incredibly scary.  My lack of experience had me afraid that I was being naïve, and it was in those moments I often wondered about giving up and going back to what felt safer to me at the time (or rather, where the path to success was more well defined).

Ultimately, I decided I’d already spent too much of my life being motivated by the simple desire to succeed.  It’s when I actively decided that it was okay to give myself the freedom to build my career path around my particular areas of interest.  In hindsight, I think that commitment to my personal passions has served me well.  It’s allowed me to focus all of my energy on realizing my ambitions and dreams – and left little room (or really, time) for self-doubt.

What’s the single best piece of advice you can give L(L)ers on maintaining healthy “work-life integration” (we hate the term “work-life balance”)?

If I could sum it up in a word, it’s forgiveness.  Forgive yourself for letting both your work and personal matters be fully equal and important in your life.  I agree with Levo that the term balance inherently implies that one has to give in the face of the other, and I simply don’t believe that’s the case.

If you were giving career advice to a mentee, how would you compare your experiences working for an iconic fashion magazine versus a major advertising agency? How do those two compare to GAP?

These experiences were all eye opening and different, but thankfully very complementary.  Collectively, they gave me a crash course into a multitude of industries (namely media, marketing, and retail) and helped me understand the nuances of each and how they work together in an ecosystem.  I draw on these experiences constantly as an entrepreneur navigating the intersection between content, commerce, and technology.

Thanks again, Jessica!

To register for STYLE/STALK, visit www.stylestalk.com !

The Levo League

Posted on Tuesday December 6th 2011 at 12:00am. Its tags are listed below.

Women in Media: Camilla Webster Camilla Webster is the co-author with finance expert Carol Pepper of the upcoming book The Seven Pearls of Financial Wisdom: A Woman’s Guide to Enjoying Wealth and Power (Amazon). She is a Forbes and Forbes Woman contributor and a top international journalist who covers Wall Street, the global economy, technology, billionaires, art and women’s wealth. She has appeared multiple times on MSNBC, CNBC, and Fox News and has been a regular guest on The John Batchelor Show on WABC Radio.  As a producer for Fox News, CBS News and a broadcast news editor for The Wall Street Journal she has covered business and world affairs from Baghdad to Washington DC. Her articles have been published in The Wall Street Journal, the New York Post and MarketWatch.com. She twice represented Forbes at the World Economic Forum’s annual meeting in Davos, Switzerland and is a respected moderator for conferences on investment and economic development. Camilla is also the co-founder of the new popular website nynatives.com.  Levo had the opportunity to speak with Camilla about her career path and her insights into what it takes to be a successful journalist. What is one piece of advice you would give your younger self? I would tell my younger self to create and maintain a healthy balance in the key aspects of your life. Keep investing your energy across your work, your financial life, your family, your private life, your passions, your fitness and your wellbeing. If you continue to invest in all these areas and pay attention to them, you will meet every success in your optimum state of being. Who are your role models and mentors?  How have those relationships helped shape your career? What advice would you give our readers about finding and building a relationship with a mentor? I tend not to have fixed role models and mentors. Even today, I observe many different people and when I want to develop a skill or need advice I ask for their help. I’ve admired the careers of Oprah Winfrey, Maria Bartiromo, Sheila Nevins, Arianna Huffington, Christiane Amanpour and Maria Shriver. As they’re not available at a moment’s notice I study their approach to particular projects and their method. If you notice a senior person you admire casually offering advice or showing concern for your wellbeing, ask for a private meeting and find out if they’d like to mentor you. If they’ve naturally taken an interest in you already, they’re likely to be a good mentor for you. Keep the expectations of what a mentor can do for you in a realistic place. Mentors are not infallible and don’t focus on only pursuing female mentors. I think it’s wonderful if a good mentor enters your life, but it’s important to have faith that you will do very well even if you don’t find one. What was it like in the beginning of your career? Was there ever a time early on when you wanted to give up? The early years were a real challenge. It’s very difficult to work the overnight shift in media on a small salary and keep the faith but my sacrifices also made me more resolute. How did print journalism compare to broadcast journalism?  Print journalism and broadcast journalism meet in the importance of a good story and good story telling. Some stories lend themselves to pictures and some don’t. The newsroom cultures are very different in America. In my experience, the business newspaper and business magazine newsroom are quieter and filled with multiple university degrees, a demand for excellence and a history of doing things in a certain way. The TV networks tend to be loud, fast paced, boisterous and full of drive. I had to adjust myself to these different environments. Now these two different cultures are merging as the media industry delivers news in multiple platforms to audiences ready to experience text, TV, video, audio and data in one place. Can you share with us a favorite interview story? It was 2003, the U.S. had invaded Iraq three weeks earlier and marines were still trying to secure Baghdad. I entered one of the university buildings in the city. It was badly damaged and in a hunt for business stories I came across a minister of economics called Dr. Al-Shumaa Hunam. This very rumpled academic stood before me splattered with dust and fatigue. Holding a tattered economics textbook that was singed at its edges, he was not the picture of the interview I was looking for, but not all things are what they seem. We spoke in French. It was safer for both of us not to appear American in the open air and unfortified space of the university. The professor told me he was a former economic minister who had pressed Saddam Hussein not to devalue the currency. He gave me a tour of the classrooms and a library, which was still smoking. I asked if the Americans had bombed the library and he told me men who were not locals had come in and set fire to the books and he tried to save what he could. As we entered a courtyard of tufty grass and  rubble, he proclaimed, “This is my classroom!” I perused the area that now looked like a wreckage heap or an ancient ruin. “But this is just an open space, there’s nothing here,” I said. “This is my classroom, because this is the only classroom we have. My students should be getting their degree soon. I will give them that chance.” As we talked, ammunitions exploded in the distance, tanks could be heard rumbling through the streets nearby. I thought of the checkpoints, the curfews and the risk for his students traveling to school.Thousands of people had died last month and hundreds of people were still killing each other just a few feet away each week. “Do they come?” I asked. “Some of them come.” We looked at each other with a deep understanding.  We walked back to the jeep, stared about the broken place and continued to contemplate the economic future of Iraq. In the coming year he would be interviewed for multiple business stories and was featured in the documentary I co-wrote called Inside Baghdad for The History Channel. What’s the single best piece of advice you can give L(L)ers on maintaining healthywork-life balance/integration? I highly recommend you schedule self-care time - your bedtime, your workouts, your family time, your meditation practice, your time away from electronic devices and your time off. It sounds like an extreme measure but the busiest successful people including Arianna Huffington and Ryan Seacrest have emphasized that scheduling self- care in its various forms works for them. Scheduling your free time when you’re on major deadlines gives you the freedom to enjoy what you’re doing in that moment and get the rest you need with less internal conflict. What skills have enabled you to progress to your position that set you apart from your competition? I was born determined and a natural conversationalist with good instincts. I’ve usually been willing to work longer and harder than the competition. I believe it’s not enough to be the best at what you do, you have to deliver your best self alongside your skill sets. This means you walk in with a great attitude every day, you don’t believe in the word can’t, you think outside the box, you understand your vision, you find a way to communicate your ideas clearly to others and execute them effectively. When I interview someone I hope they walk away feeling they had a unique experience, that we’ve taken a journey together. This approach has served me well. Do you consider your industry male- or female- dominated? What are the challenges and the opportunities? There are a lot of senior female executives in media, but many of the top jobs are still held by men. I don’t look at opportunities or challenges in terms of being a woman or a man. It’s good to work in a corporate culture that supports female empowerment at every level. I do believe we also make our opportunities regardless of our sex. Thank you for your contribution, Camilla! And Levo Ladies, be sure to pick up a copy of Camilla’s new book on Amazon!
Women in Media: Camilla Webster Camilla Webster is the co-author with finance expert Carol Pepper of the upcoming book The Seven Pearls of Financial Wisdom: A Woman’s Guide to Enjoying Wealth and Power (Amazon). She is a Forbes and Forbes Woman contributor and a top international journalist who covers Wall Street, the global economy, technology, billionaires, art and women’s wealth. She has appeared multiple times on MSNBC, CNBC, and Fox News and has been a regular guest on The John Batchelor Show on WABC Radio.  As a producer for Fox News, CBS News and a broadcast news editor for The Wall Street Journal she has covered business and world affairs from Baghdad to Washington DC. Her articles have been published in The Wall Street Journal, the New York Post and MarketWatch.com. She twice represented Forbes at the World Economic Forum’s annual meeting in Davos, Switzerland and is a respected moderator for conferences on investment and economic development. Camilla is also the co-founder of the new popular website nynatives.com.  Levo had the opportunity to speak with Camilla about her career path and her insights into what it takes to be a successful journalist. What is one piece of advice you would give your younger self? I would tell my younger self to create and maintain a healthy balance in the key aspects of your life. Keep investing your energy across your work, your financial life, your family, your private life, your passions, your fitness and your wellbeing. If you continue to invest in all these areas and pay attention to them, you will meet every success in your optimum state of being. Who are your role models and mentors?  How have those relationships helped shape your career? What advice would you give our readers about finding and building a relationship with a mentor? I tend not to have fixed role models and mentors. Even today, I observe many different people and when I want to develop a skill or need advice I ask for their help. I’ve admired the careers of Oprah Winfrey, Maria Bartiromo, Sheila Nevins, Arianna Huffington, Christiane Amanpour and Maria Shriver. As they’re not available at a moment’s notice I study their approach to particular projects and their method. If you notice a senior person you admire casually offering advice or showing concern for your wellbeing, ask for a private meeting and find out if they’d like to mentor you. If they’ve naturally taken an interest in you already, they’re likely to be a good mentor for you. Keep the expectations of what a mentor can do for you in a realistic place. Mentors are not infallible and don’t focus on only pursuing female mentors. I think it’s wonderful if a good mentor enters your life, but it’s important to have faith that you will do very well even if you don’t find one. What was it like in the beginning of your career? Was there ever a time early on when you wanted to give up? The early years were a real challenge. It’s very difficult to work the overnight shift in media on a small salary and keep the faith but my sacrifices also made me more resolute. How did print journalism compare to broadcast journalism?  Print journalism and broadcast journalism meet in the importance of a good story and good story telling. Some stories lend themselves to pictures and some don’t. The newsroom cultures are very different in America. In my experience, the business newspaper and business magazine newsroom are quieter and filled with multiple university degrees, a demand for excellence and a history of doing things in a certain way. The TV networks tend to be loud, fast paced, boisterous and full of drive. I had to adjust myself to these different environments. Now these two different cultures are merging as the media industry delivers news in multiple platforms to audiences ready to experience text, TV, video, audio and data in one place. Can you share with us a favorite interview story? It was 2003, the U.S. had invaded Iraq three weeks earlier and marines were still trying to secure Baghdad. I entered one of the university buildings in the city. It was badly damaged and in a hunt for business stories I came across a minister of economics called Dr. Al-Shumaa Hunam. This very rumpled academic stood before me splattered with dust and fatigue. Holding a tattered economics textbook that was singed at its edges, he was not the picture of the interview I was looking for, but not all things are what they seem. We spoke in French. It was safer for both of us not to appear American in the open air and unfortified space of the university. The professor told me he was a former economic minister who had pressed Saddam Hussein not to devalue the currency. He gave me a tour of the classrooms and a library, which was still smoking. I asked if the Americans had bombed the library and he told me men who were not locals had come in and set fire to the books and he tried to save what he could. As we entered a courtyard of tufty grass and  rubble, he proclaimed, “This is my classroom!” I perused the area that now looked like a wreckage heap or an ancient ruin. “But this is just an open space, there’s nothing here,” I said. “This is my classroom, because this is the only classroom we have. My students should be getting their degree soon. I will give them that chance.” As we talked, ammunitions exploded in the distance, tanks could be heard rumbling through the streets nearby. I thought of the checkpoints, the curfews and the risk for his students traveling to school.Thousands of people had died last month and hundreds of people were still killing each other just a few feet away each week. “Do they come?” I asked. “Some of them come.” We looked at each other with a deep understanding.  We walked back to the jeep, stared about the broken place and continued to contemplate the economic future of Iraq. In the coming year he would be interviewed for multiple business stories and was featured in the documentary I co-wrote called Inside Baghdad for The History Channel. What’s the single best piece of advice you can give L(L)ers on maintaining healthywork-life balance/integration? I highly recommend you schedule self-care time - your bedtime, your workouts, your family time, your meditation practice, your time away from electronic devices and your time off. It sounds like an extreme measure but the busiest successful people including Arianna Huffington and Ryan Seacrest have emphasized that scheduling self- care in its various forms works for them. Scheduling your free time when you’re on major deadlines gives you the freedom to enjoy what you’re doing in that moment and get the rest you need with less internal conflict. What skills have enabled you to progress to your position that set you apart from your competition? I was born determined and a natural conversationalist with good instincts. I’ve usually been willing to work longer and harder than the competition. I believe it’s not enough to be the best at what you do, you have to deliver your best self alongside your skill sets. This means you walk in with a great attitude every day, you don’t believe in the word can’t, you think outside the box, you understand your vision, you find a way to communicate your ideas clearly to others and execute them effectively. When I interview someone I hope they walk away feeling they had a unique experience, that we’ve taken a journey together. This approach has served me well. Do you consider your industry male- or female- dominated? What are the challenges and the opportunities? There are a lot of senior female executives in media, but many of the top jobs are still held by men. I don’t look at opportunities or challenges in terms of being a woman or a man. It’s good to work in a corporate culture that supports female empowerment at every level. I do believe we also make our opportunities regardless of our sex. Thank you for your contribution, Camilla! And Levo Ladies, be sure to pick up a copy of Camilla’s new book on Amazon!

Women in Media: Camilla Webster

Camilla Webster is the co-author with finance expert Carol Pepper of the upcoming book The Seven Pearls of Financial Wisdom: A Woman’s Guide to Enjoying Wealth and Power (Amazon). She is a Forbes and Forbes Woman contributor and a top international journalist who covers Wall Street, the global economy, technology, billionaires, art and women’s wealth. She has appeared multiple times on MSNBC, CNBC, and Fox News and has been a regular guest on The John Batchelor Show on WABC Radio.  As a producer for Fox News, CBS News and a broadcast news editor for The Wall Street Journal she has covered business and world affairs from Baghdad to Washington DC. Her articles have been published in The Wall Street Journal, the New York Post and MarketWatch.com. She twice represented Forbes at the World Economic Forum’s annual meeting in Davos, Switzerland and is a respected moderator for conferences on investment and economic development. Camilla is also the co-founder of the new popular website nynatives.com. 

Levo had the opportunity to speak with Camilla about her career path and her insights into what it takes to be a successful journalist.

What is one piece of advice you would give your younger self?

I would tell my younger self to create and maintain a healthy balance in the key aspects of your life. Keep investing your energy across your work, your financial life, your family, your private life, your passions, your fitness and your wellbeing.

If you continue to invest in all these areas and pay attention to them, you will meet every success in your optimum state of being.

Who are your role models and mentors?  How have those relationships helped shape your career? What advice would you give our readers about finding and building a relationship with a mentor?

I tend not to have fixed role models and mentors. Even today, I observe many different people and when I want to develop a skill or need advice I ask for their help.

I’ve admired the careers of Oprah Winfrey, Maria Bartiromo, Sheila Nevins, Arianna Huffington, Christiane Amanpour and Maria Shriver. As they’re not available at a moment’s notice I study their approach to particular projects and their method.

If you notice a senior person you admire casually offering advice or showing concern for your wellbeing, ask for a private meeting and find out if they’d like to mentor you. If they’ve naturally taken an interest in you already, they’re likely to be a good mentor for you.

Keep the expectations of what a mentor can do for you in a realistic place. Mentors are not infallible and don’t focus on only pursuing female mentors.

I think it’s wonderful if a good mentor enters your life, but it’s important to have faith that you will do very well even if you don’t find one.

What was it like in the beginning of your career? Was there ever a time early on when you wanted to give up?

The early years were a real challenge. It’s very difficult to work the overnight shift in media on a small salary and keep the faith but my sacrifices also made me more resolute.

How did print journalism compare to broadcast journalism? 

Print journalism and broadcast journalism meet in the importance of a good story and good story telling. Some stories lend themselves to pictures and some don’t. The newsroom cultures are very different in America. In my experience, the business newspaper and business magazine newsroom are quieter and filled with multiple university degrees, a demand for excellence and a history of doing things in a certain way. The TV networks tend to be loud, fast paced, boisterous and full of drive. I had to adjust myself to these different environments. Now these two different cultures are merging as the media industry delivers news in multiple platforms to audiences ready to experience text, TV, video, audio and data in one place.

Can you share with us a favorite interview story?

It was 2003, the U.S. had invaded Iraq three weeks earlier and marines were still trying to secure Baghdad. I entered one of the university buildings in the city. It was badly damaged and in a hunt for business stories I came across a minister of economics called Dr. Al-Shumaa Hunam. This very rumpled academic stood before me splattered with dust and fatigue. Holding a tattered economics textbook that was singed at its edges, he was not the picture of the interview I was looking for, but not all things are what they seem. We spoke in French. It was safer for both of us not to appear American in the open air and unfortified space of the university.

The professor told me he was a former economic minister who had pressed Saddam Hussein not to devalue the currency.

He gave me a tour of the classrooms and a library, which was still smoking. I asked if the Americans had bombed the library and he told me men who were not locals had come in and set fire to the books and he tried to save what he could.

As we entered a courtyard of tufty grass and  rubble, he proclaimed, “This is my classroom!”

I perused the area that now looked like a wreckage heap or an ancient ruin. “But this is just an open space, there’s nothing here,” I said. “This is my classroom, because this is the only classroom we have. My students should be getting their degree soon. I will give them that chance.”

As we talked, ammunitions exploded in the distance, tanks could be heard rumbling through the streets nearby. I thought of the checkpoints, the curfews and the risk for his students traveling to school.
Thousands of people had died last month and hundreds of people were still killing each other just a few feet away each week.

“Do they come?” I asked.

“Some of them come.”

We looked at each other with a deep understanding.  We walked back to the jeep, stared about the broken place and continued to contemplate the economic future of Iraq. In the coming year he would be interviewed for multiple business stories and was featured in the documentary I co-wrote called Inside Baghdad for The History Channel.

What’s the single best piece of advice you can give L(L)ers on maintaining healthywork-life balance/integration?

I highly recommend you schedule self-care time - your bedtime, your workouts, your family time, your meditation practice, your time away from electronic devices and your time off.

It sounds like an extreme measure but the busiest successful people including Arianna Huffington and Ryan Seacrest have emphasized that scheduling self- care in its various forms works for them. Scheduling your free time when you’re on major deadlines gives you the freedom to enjoy what you’re doing in that moment and get the rest you need with less internal conflict.

What skills have enabled you to progress to your position that set you apart from your competition?

I was born determined and a natural conversationalist with good instincts. I’ve usually been willing to work longer and harder than the competition.

I believe it’s not enough to be the best at what you do, you have to deliver your best self alongside your skill sets. This means you walk in with a great attitude every day, you don’t believe in the word can’t, you think outside the box, you understand your vision, you find a way to communicate your ideas clearly to others and execute them effectively.

When I interview someone I hope they walk away feeling they had a unique experience, that we’ve taken a journey together. This approach has served me well.

Do you consider your industry male- or female- dominated? What are the challenges and the opportunities?

There are a lot of senior female executives in media, but many of the top jobs are still held by men. I don’t look at opportunities or challenges in terms of being a woman or a man. It’s good to work in a corporate culture that supports female empowerment at every level. I do believe we also make our opportunities regardless of our sex.

Thank you for your contribution, Camilla! And Levo Ladies, be sure to pick up a copy of Camilla’s new book on Amazon!

The Levo League

Posted on Monday December 5th 2011 at 12:00am. Its tags are listed below.

Women in the News: Puppies & Pavlov, Biglaw Partner Designations Dwindling, Women in Afghanistan, and Women & Labor By Elizabeth Burke In cute puppy news, we dug up a Molson  dual advertising campaign that ran parallel in women’s & men’s magazines featuring (1) in the women’s magazine, a photo of an attractive man drinking Molson whilst holding two adorable puppies and (2) in the men’s magazine, explaining the favor Molson is doing to male readers everywhere by slowly conditioning women to associate Molson with men who love adorable puppies and look attractive. It’s good to know that puppies, at least, are benefiting from an otherwise totally vapid advertising campaign. What do you think about the dual demographic marketing approach Molson took? Vivia Chen of the Careerist is coming at us with some more bad news: Last year’s partner appointment rounds looked good for women in Biglaw, but this year is looking pretty vile. Her figures:Cravath Swaine & Moore: No women out of four new partners.Gibson Dunn & Crutcher: Four women out of 11.Simpson Thacher & Bartlett: Two women out of 12.Sullivan & Cromwell: One out of five.Weil Gotshal & Manges: Two out of 11. Afghanistan: Amid Karzai’s warning that the Taliban may rise again if a peace deal is brokered at the upcoming Bonn conference on the future of Afghanistan, the BBC reports that there’s another major concern in danger of being sidelined or even backtracking:the progress that the women of Afghanistan have made in the past decade. Women in Music: Women in Music is a pre-Grammy warmup to bring attention to women in the music world who have made strides in the past year. Predictably, Billboard hosted what turned out to be a Taylor & Nikki-festival. Kind of a boring lineup for the magazine that’s supposed to be at the cutting edge of new music, but both women are such strong speakers and have such amazing resumes that it was still a completely inspiring event. The New York Times published a piece last week on women in labor unions, and the tremendous impact their voices have had in the past few years. Of the development, NYT says “Unions, of course, have been in retreat for years. But Ms. Pope and several other women, notably Rose Ann DeMoro, of National Nurses United, and Mary Kay Henry, of the Service Employees International Union, are pushing back. Their ascendance has rekindled hope that organized labor maybe, just maybe, could stage a comeback. They have also helped inspire the likes of Occupy Wall Street.”

Women in the News: Puppies & Pavlov, Biglaw Partner Designations Dwindling, Women in Afghanistan, and Women & Labor

By Elizabeth Burke

In cute puppy news, we dug up a Molson  dual advertising campaign that ran parallel in women’s & men’s magazines featuring (1) in the women’s magazine, a photo of an attractive man drinking Molson whilst holding two adorable puppies and (2) in the men’s magazine, explaining the favor Molson is doing to male readers everywhere by slowly conditioning women to associate Molson with men who love adorable puppies and look attractive. It’s good to know that puppies, at least, are benefiting from an otherwise totally vapid advertising campaign.

What do you think about the dual demographic marketing approach Molson took?

Vivia Chen of the Careerist is coming at us with some more bad news: Last year’s partner appointment rounds looked good for women in Biglaw, but this year is looking pretty vile. Her figures:
Cravath Swaine & Moore: No women out of four new partners.
Gibson Dunn & Crutcher: Four women out of 11.
Simpson Thacher & Bartlett: Two women out of 12.
Sullivan & Cromwell: One out of five.
Weil Gotshal & Manges: Two out of 11.

Afghanistan: Amid Karzai’s warning that the Taliban may rise again if a peace deal is brokered at the upcoming Bonn conference on the future of Afghanistan, the BBC reports that there’s another major concern in danger of being sidelined or even backtracking:the progress that the women of Afghanistan have made in the past decade.

Women in Music: Women in Music is a pre-Grammy warmup to bring attention to women in the music world who have made strides in the past year. Predictably, Billboard hosted what turned out to be a Taylor & Nikki-festival. Kind of a boring lineup for the magazine that’s supposed to be at the cutting edge of new music, but both women are such strong speakers and have such amazing resumes that it was still a completely inspiring event.

The New York Times published a piece last week on women in labor unions, and the tremendous impact their voices have had in the past few years. Of the development, NYT says “Unions, of course, have been in retreat for years. But Ms. Pope and several other women, notably Rose Ann DeMoro, of National Nurses United, and Mary Kay Henry, of the Service Employees International Union, are pushing back. Their ascendance has rekindled hope that organized labor maybe, just maybe, could stage a comeback. They have also helped inspire the likes of Occupy Wall Street.”

The Levo League

Posted on Wednesday November 30th 2011 at 12:00am. Its tags are listed below.

We’re presenting this without comment, and the facts are your own to verify, but the message is something we believe in: that all that makeup you buy, you probably don’t really need. From onlinemba.com.


We’re presenting this without comment, and the facts are your own to verify, but the message is something we believe in: that all that makeup you buy, you probably don’t really need. From onlinemba.com.

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