Anna Zavaritt, the blogger of “La revolution en rose – Perché una rinuncia è una perdita. Per tutti”, a blog that focuses on women and career and what we could/should do to make things change, has interviewed Mirella Visser as President of EuropeanPWN on the impact of the recession on women and her view on quotas.
Read the interview “3 domande a…Mirella Visser” (interview in English)
All professional women welcome whether members or guests
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Wednesday, 20 May, 2009, 7-9.30 p.m.
Angie Katselianos, CEO of Platinum Performance International and PWA Member presents
“Successful Networking Strategies: Reaping What You Sow”
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Networking is more like farming than hunting. It’s about cultivating relationships with other business professionals: you start by planting seeds; you nurture them over time and reap the rewards after devoting time and energy. Just as you wouldn’t expect to harvest crop promptly after sowing, would you nurture the belief that attending a single networking event will produce immediate results?
Now you have the opportunity to learn the secrets to an abundant networking harvest. Successful networking is a skill, and like any other, it can be learned and competently applied. In this interactive session, Angie will present skills and strategies for effective networking and offer you an immediate opportunity to experience its valuable benefits. She will show you how to develop a plan to transform every networking event into personal success.
Topics will include:
Who do I know?
What do I do?
How do I connect?
How do I keep the connection?
Network etiquette – Do’s & Don’ts
About Angie
Angie Katselianos is a widely-acclaimed consultant to growth- and success-oriented professionals in business and corporate environments. She has dedicated the past 30 years to researching the secrets that unlock the human motivation, personal power, and effectiveness that lead to performance excellence and innovation.
Today, Head of Platinum Performance International, Angie assists clients in galvanizing human productivity to achieve breakthrough results in record time. She has developed proprietary strategic tools for clients including Motivational DNA®, Platinum Performance Track®, and the Platinum Synergies ModelTM which enable individuals to unlock, mine, and harness their inner driving force and to transform potential into results.
Her Milan-based firm has successfully competed against leading global firms to work with prestigious clients such as Hewlett-Packard, Electrolux, Travelport, Alitalia, Italian Ministry of Defence, Fiat and others around the world. Establishing and delivering measurable value and outcomes is a hallmark of her business.
Prior to venturing out on her own, she worked her way up the corporate ladder in the American and European marketplaces excelling in key roles for prestigious multinationals such as Price Waterhouse, British Airways, Johnson & Johnson, and The Thomas Cook Group.
Originally from New York, she has spent more than half her life living and working overseas, traveling to 50 countries and speaking three languages.
Cocktails 7-8 p.m. / Presentation 8-9.30 p.m.
Jolly Hotel Macchiavelli Via Lazzaretto 5, Milano (MM Porta Venezia, Repubblica, various trams)
Free for members – please register at www.EuropeanPWN.net - €20 for guests, payable by cash at the event
For guest reservations, or additional information, please contact speakers@pwa-milan.org
By Kristina Tool, PWA Speaker Director
Mirella Visser, founder of the Netherlands-based Centre for Inclusive Leadership, board room advisor, former senior executive for ING and KPMG, and president of the European Professional Women’s Network, presented Women in Leadership – From Crisis, Opportunity to a group of members and guests on April 22, 2009.
Mirella’s presentation shared insights she has gained as president of EPWN and as a female who left her gender-balanced university studies to enter a career in male-dominated multinational corporations.
The higher she climbed in her career, the more she noticed the absence of women and began to wonder what the problem was. She realized that while women work at least as hard as their male counterparts do, they had different views than men on how to advance their careers, as well as the benefits that higher level positions could provide. She noted that hard work alone does not allow you to rise to the top and that more strategic behaviour is required.
Mirella acknowledged the challenges to women advancing to higher levels in general, and in particular during the current economic crisis. Women are losing jobs at twice the rate of men, as female workers often tend to be employed in departments which are considered non-essential and therefore more susceptible to layoffs. In addition, the pay gap between the sexes is growing.
The situation is far from hopeless, though, and opportunities remain for those who can adapt to the changing work environment. While evidence demonstrates that smart companies benefit from women in leadership roles, women need to do more to put themselves in line for these positions.
Understanding some of the differences in how men and women work may help us to advance. Women tend to be more introspective and self-reflective and may blame themselves first for problems, yet not take credit first for successes. Modifying this behaviour to take more credit for your contributions will help in job security and advancement.
Mirella left the group with some strategies women can use to advance their careers including:
She reminded us that we can all reap the benefits from changing our career advancement strategies from working harder to working smarter.
All professional women welcome whether members or guests
Wednesday, 22 April, 2009, 7-9.30 p.m.
Mirella Visser, President of European Professional Women’s Network and CEO and founder of the Centre for Inclusive Leadership presents
“Women in Leadership – From Crisis, Opportunity”
The evening’s discussion topics will include:
“Many companies are unaware of the economic potential hidden away in their workforce. Underutilization of female talent and undesired losses are key issues in talent development these days.” – Mirella Visser
Please join us to hear this dynamic speaker provide key insights and interact with the group on how we can make the most of the opportunities available to us now and in the future.
About Mirella Visser
Mirella is an international manager and founder of the Netherlands-based Centre for Inclusive Leadership. She frequently speaks at universities and events across Europe and Asia on the topics of “Women and Leadership” and “Leadership in Asia”.
Her previous work experience includes several international senior executive positions at ING and KPMG, including regional director of ING in Hong Kong, responsible for South-East Asia. She currently holds on positions on various advisory and supervisory boards and co-authored the book “Women on Boards – Moving Mountains” in December 2007.
In 2007 she was nominated as ‘European of the Year’ as one of the 50 most influential Europeans by the Economist for her work in promoting women’s leadership issues in the Netherlands and Europe.
Cocktails 7-8 p.m. / Presentation 8-9.30 p.m.
NH Hotel Macchiavelli Via Lazzaretto 5, Milano (MM Porta Venezia, Repubblica, various trams)
Free for members, €20 for guests, payable by cash at the event
For guest reservations, or additional information, please contact speakers@pwa-milan.org
“Donne in carriera”, article on Annalisa Gigante published on the Bocconi online magazine.
Check Claudia Filsi’s blog from abroad.
“Study says female directors bring added value”, an article from Financial Times.
“Women’s share of UK board seats stalls”, an article from Financial Times.
“Nordic women cut gender gap”, an article from Financial Times.
“Nordic Companies begin to fill gender gap”, an article from Financial Times.
First of all, we would like to thank SDA Bocconi for supporting this initiative and hosting this event.The first day was devoted to analysing the past year’s results: membership evolution, new networks, website features and updates, think tank groups’ news, corporate sponsors and financial results.
We would like to welcome our three new networks launched in Germany in 2008: Berlin, Frankfurt and Dusseldorf. This brings EuropeanPWN to 17 networks all over Europe and more are expected in 2008. The enlargement of our network gives us the opportunity to get directly in touch with more countries and hence more professionals, providing us all with the possibility to network on a European level. Despite different cultures, we all realized that the challenges we are facing are very much the same: from increasing membership so that members have a powerful network and can compare experiences; to the need to have more members actively involved in our activities. The only way to make concrete change is to act.
With Margaret Milan cited as one of the top 10 “women driving change” in Europe; Mirella Visser nominated for European Campaigner of the Year 2007 for her work on promoting women’s growth; our BoardMonitor on FT; our membership of over 3.500 across Europe; and the 500+ events we organise every year, EuropeanPWN is recognized as a visible, powerful and influential International network in Europe. Our internationalism is one of our shared values and differentiates us from all the others in Europe. Now that we are becoming a point of reference, the time has come to lead change in business and politics.
The EuropeanPWN online platform has been updated with new features, such as the Business Xchange tool, that enables every member to promote her activity and competencies and provide members with special offers. Online participation, through the forum in particular, is growing and usage of the internal directory that enables you to search within the 17 networks categorically (name, industry, company name, local network, etc), has incredibly increased. This gives me the opportunity to underline once again the importance of creating, feeding and updating your online profile, in order to exploit completely the benefits of this powerful tool.
Think Tank Groups, after their launch 18 months ago, have been effective at surveys, knowledge sharing and tools creation. A new TTG on networking was launched at the beginning of the year and the first outcome expected is a book on how women network, that should be published this autumn. The MATRIX, as this self-coaching tool on “Your first 100 days in your job”, is online now for you all to test it.
We have had an evolution within corporate sponsors, with Deloitte still our platinum sponsor, now together with Orange. We are proud to announce that Sodexò and Coca Cola are now EuropeanPWN corporate sponsors too, together with IBM, Mercer, Mexx, Aon, Alcatel-Lucent and Cisco.
We also had the official presentation of the BoardMonitor 2008 data during a press conference kindly hosted by Egon Zehnder in their wonderful location, who have partnered with EuropeanPWN on this research project since the very beginning in 2004.
As it is a tradition to offer a small gift to the visiting Presidents, we reflected a lot on what we would have liked to have given as a gift and in the end our decision was to offer them a present to people in need. We donated the sum devoted to our Presidents’ gift to Siticibo to support their useful initiative.
The Saturday morning meeting was devoted to sharing best practices. From how to attract corporate sponsors to how to motivate network volunteers, from creating events and activities that appeal to our corporate partners to how to plan and implement a mentoring program. These 4 hours offered all the Presidents a concrete opportunity to learn from other networks experiences, and to share ideas and create new projects and initiatives and, most important of all, create awareness that we are all sharing the same ambitious goals and facing the same challenges.
As PWA Milan the success story I presented was the Coaching Program, that has attracted 48 women up to now, with each single workshop sold out within a couple of days from the launch with long waiting lists, that have convinced us that we should keep offering such opportunities to our members and enlarge the scope of workshops offering some new ones on topics different from coaching.
In conclusion, the EuropeanPWN Annual General Meeting has been a great opportunity to share experiences and best practices with other networks, making us all aware that, despite differences in names, history, network origin and roots, membership size and of course country, we are willing to grow together and to reach great achievements.
Monica Pesce
Women are good at ethical behavior, creativity/innovation, and mediation.
They should improve negotiation skills for themselves and develop their own personal leadership style. Warning: you have to be able to take decisions.
Develop self confidence
Learn to ask for things that are important for your development (challenging assignments, training, promotion, etc)
Women should care more about
Ideas and projects to be developed
Viviana Cavalli
On the 21st of May 2008, PWA hosted what I would call the event of the year if not one of the landmark events in the history of PWA Milan. There were over 150 registered participants. The event was attended by men and women alike from multinationals to government institutions, from CEO’s to HR directors bringing with them a rich network to serve a common purpose – to raise the visibility of women in the professional environment. The event was a presentation of key findings on women on boards in Europe with a specific focus on Italy. Interventions on this theme were made by Italian female board members Rosanna D’Antona, Maria Pierdicchi, Stefania Celsi who shared their ideas and best practices. The debate was monitored by our very own PWA Milan president, Monica Pesce of Valdani Vicari & Associati.
What are the main factors to reach a CEO position?
VISIBILITY:
NETWORKING: Very important but tends to be male dominated so women associations are essential. Focus also on relationships with ex-colleagues, external partners and clients – these tend to recommend!
COMPETENCES: Without competencies you don’t go anywhere. You must maintain and increase them. This includes managerial skills (executive courses specific for women) and Negotiation.
Food for thought: Men communicate and then do; Women do and maybe they communicate
How can we improve the “Pipeline” to get women in managerial positions in order to be better placed for CEO positions?
Food for thought: Be aware of your potential and know what you want
Is the problem that women are just not ambitious in Italy?
Unfortunately in Italy women are not taught to be ambitious. In a matriarchal society, we are trained at an early age to look good and not talk back. It is up to us to change that.
We shouldn’t give up after having children.
Our leadership style does not have to be like that of men.
Should Quotas be introduced?
The general answer is no although in a country like Italy, maybe it’s the only way. Given that there are insufficient women in the pipeline who could then go onto CEO positions, introducing quotas would be counter productive. An increase therefore should be done through targets – increasing board members by 2 for example.
A regulation could be introduced to limit appointments to the board so that more posts are opened up.
Women profiles should be promoted through executive search and media, to public institutions and Confindustria.
We have received several thanks and emails of appreciation for the above event. We will do our best to work on the main factors that arose from the discussion and we believe it will be possible with your support.
Hema Mali
Women mean business. We are delighted to announce the launch of a new functionality on our fantastic online platform : BusinessXchange.BusinessXchange is designed to help members network for business. Whether you are the founder of a start-up in search of investors, an international tax advisor in Madrid, a manager of an Italian shoe manufacturer looking for distributors in the UK, or a coach who wants to advertise her next workshop in Paris, BusinessXchange will allow you to introduce your business in a short and crisp way, and to specify the type of contacts you are looking for: customers, suppliers, partners, distributors or investors.
This searchable directory is a resource for all members — those offering their services and those looking for providers. Just imagine that all 3,500 EuropeanPWN members’ businesses are listed – it will be our first resource when we urgently need to find a PR agency in a foreign city!
As a directory directly linked to the members who represent the business listed, BusinessXchange is unique in a community network. It was designed according to your specifications and to meet your needs for efficient and non-intrusive business promotion and business exchange.
For great business deals, we invite you to check BusinessXchange. You will find it on the menu of the members-only platform, together with greater detail on how it works. Your comments and suggestions are very welcome. Please send these to websteering@europeanpwn.net.
First things first...
When people think about creating an online profile, they groan. “It takes too long”, “I don’t have time”, “I don’t know how to do it”. This month we want to blast those excuses away and get your online profile set up quickly. It doesn’t only benefit you, it also helps people you don’t know in the network.
At a minimum, we recommend that you complete the following sections:
To get started, have your CV to hand and this month we’ll cover the ‘quick and dirty’ approach to getting the sections above done and dusted!
Getting started
Before we can really get started, you need to login. Go to the EPWN login page and enter your username and password. If you are already logged in, you’ll see the welcome page. If you get stuck, go back and read the January newsletter article, breathe deep and take your time.
To access your profile, click on the Profile link in the left hand column (below Directory and above Support) – it uses a little business card icon . When you click on it, you’ll be taken through to a page entitled ‘Review and edit your Account & Password information”. We’ll ignore this for the moment but this is where you can change your password – useful stuff!
Creating a basic profile
To access each of the sections we describe below you’ll need to click the appropriate bit of text in the right hand column. The little pencil icon next to an item in the right hand column shows you where you are. In the descriptions below, the text in square brackets is what you have to click eg [Personal].
Congratulations
Well done! If you’ve followed the steps above you now have an online profile that other EPWN and PWA Milan members can access. You have just made it easier for others to find you and increased your visibility in the network – good job!
Rebecca Loades
