Archive Page 2
Lauren Mack
Thanks to winning a NYWICI scholarship, the past three years have been beyond my wildest dreams. From interviewing Chinese athletes to interviewing the man who is bringing hypnotism to China to eating at some of the hottest restaurants in Beijing, I’ve been busy enjoying the best job in the world.
As a journalist in Beijing, China, I’ve had the chance to go places and see things I never thought would be possible before winning my scholarship. My work has appeared in Newsweek International, Time Out Beijing, City Weekend and tbj Home (the latter two are English language magazines in China). I’ve also worked on several tour books including Explorer Beijing, Time Out Beijing and Zagat Beijing. In addition to work experience, I have been privileged to witness history in the making as China prepares for the 2008 Olympic Games.
In February, I moved to Taipei, Taiwan, where I continue to freelance. I am working on several projects including a web site for Taipei that will be launched in the early summer. I am also taking Chinese classes to improve my Mandarin. Living abroad is a wonderful gift and I have NYWICI to thank for it. Every day I get to discover new things. My job allows me to talk to people I would not normally get a chance to meet.
Not a day goes by when I don’t think about NYWICI and the impact it has made on my professional and personal life. Winning the scholarship gave me more confidence, afforded me the opportunity to pursue internships (which later helped me get jobs), and introduced me to a family of talented, confident, friendly and beautiful women who are all at the top (or on the way to the top) of their fields.
Winning the money was great (it helped lower the amount of loans I now have), but being awarded a NYWICI scholarship is not just about the money. You become a part of a sisterhood of women who nurture and encourage you every step of the way. By winning the award, I felt gratified to know women whom I admired and who believed in me and my goals. Winning reminded me to never give up on my dreams and goals no matter how big or small.
I owe my success to the scholarship committee and all those who support NYWICI and make these scholarships possible. Without you, my full potential and dreams would not have been realized. My hope is to do work that makes NYWICI proud and inspires others.
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Kara Smith
I launched Karasma Media Public Relations and Publicity, Harlem’s first new media PR firm, in December of last year because I knew I wanted to make a difference in the world. As part of the area’s renaissance, I realized that by being a catalyst for how my clients see themselves, I would shift the perception of how others see them. I also saw that I was my own client.
Two weeks ago with 15 proposals, more than 30 prospect meetings, and countless networking events under my belt, I only had enough funds remaining for one more month worth of bill payments. The adage stating, “necessity is the mother of invention,” definitely came into play, as did an overwhelming feeling of disappointment. But I was fortunate that my boyfriend wouldn’t let me feel sorry for myself for more than a day.
As I brushed off the pity-party dust, I said to myself, “Hello? Girl, you live in one of the greatest cities on the planet.” So, I shifted the focus of my introspection and got busy on the telephone and Internet. As of the writing of this blog, I am scheduled to start work as a consultant at a mid-town firm next week.
I also realized that in the midst of the challenges of my small business start-up, I hadn’t started to work on my college teaching career, which was also part of my personal “re-branding” program. Last week, I met with an institution administrator who may be interested in my teaching a class in public relations this summer. Now, I’m writing my own curriculum to present to several other area institutions in the coming weeks. The creation of my class as part of “Phase II” of my game plan has given birth to several blogs, including this one, as well as a dialogue with numerous media leaders.
Interestingly, the same day I met with the administrator, a prospective client called to say he wanted to move forward with the second phase of his project. There’s no way to be sure of the exact path I’ll travel to my future; however, one thing is for certain. It is incredibly energizing to address the challenges that arise as part of my doing business, and doing so is wonderfully fulfilling.
Among the aspects that will allow Karasma Media to be successful are self-sufficiency, education, and promotion. The most rewarding part of running my own business is that I get to choose the actions I take and the services I provide that will fulfill those attributes.
Are you running your own business, thinking about starting one or in the midst of career re-invention? I’d love to hear from you.
Please see the link for Karasma Media’s Launch announcement below:
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Tammy Tibbetts
As the Web editor of two Hearst teen web sites, MisQuinceMag.com and MyPromStyle.com, I work in a world of tiaras and taffeta, roses and lace, and prom queens. But for my Christmas vacation, I decided to travel somewhere totally out of this realm — to Liberia, an African nation recovering from civil war and inhabited by descendants of freed American slaves.
If you were to look up Liberia on Wikitravel, you will find a red WARNING box that says “the US State Department strongly urges American citizens to consider the risks of traveling to Liberia.” Before you depart, you need seven shots — for yellow fever, typhoid, Hep A, polio, meningitis, tetanus, and influenza. More than once, I thought I was nuts for signing myself up for this trip.
But the moment I knew for sure that this was an adventure I’d never regret happened on the day and time when, on any other year, I’d be opening presents from under the Christmas tree with my mom, dad, and younger sister: December 25, 8 a.m. New York time, 1 p.m. Liberian time. I was in Liberia’s capital city, Monrovia, and a bus had just pulled up the driveway of a wealthy Liberian man’s home. He had offered up his yard for the MacDella Cooper Foundation’s Third Annual Christmas Party. I had been waiting at his house since 10 a.m. that morning to greet these special guests, and they were finally here: More than 100 orphans, waving their hands enthusiastically and singing a Christmas hymn in unison as they entered. Within the next half hour, at least another 200 orphans arrived by foot. It was 80 degrees and there wasn’t a Santa in sight, but the spirit of Christmas was off the charts.
So how did I end up in Liberia, teaching these kids how to sing “Jingle Bells,” while they taught me the (ever-so-clichéd but oh-so-true) meaning of Christmas?
I met MacDella Cooper through my college professor — like me, MacDella had attended The College of New Jersey, and surprisingly, the alumni association hadn’t uncovered her special story. That became my mission for my senior journalism project last spring. I discovered how MacDella, now a 30-year-old New Yorker, had escaped Liberia at age 13, just after the country’s civil war had broken out (quick Wikipedia history lesson here). Following their stepfather’s disappearance, MacDella and her brothers trekked countless miles to a refugee camp in the neighboring Ivory Coast. There, an American woman eventually helped get them to the US to reunite them with their mother, who had been on vacation when the war broke out and wasn’t allowed to return to Liberia. MacDella then attended high school in Newark, New Jersey, got a full ride to college, and worked her way up the New York City social ladder, interning for the New York Film Festival and then landing her first job at Ralph Lauren.
If MacDella looks familiar to you, you probably attended NYWICI’s 2007 Annual Meeting. She was the striking, exotically dressed African woman who may have told you about her efforts to help children in Africa — not to be confused with the keynote speaker, Iman. Barbara Brennan, a NYWICI Foundation board member, and I had invited MacDella to the event, knowing how much she and Iman resembled one another in style and substance.
In 2004, the year after Liberia’s civil war ended, MacDella started a namesake foundation to send supplies to Liberians. From there, she decided to set up a 501(c)(3) charity to renovate orphanages and sponsor children’s school tuition, since education is not free in Liberia. Through her foundation, one can sponsor a Liberian child’s education for $500 a year, receive copies of his or her report card, and send the student encouraging notes. MacDella raises money here in New York and then travels to Liberia to put the funds to work. She has an apartment in Monrovia, which is protected by guards, and she has taken in three foster children — 3-year-old Belle, 7-year-old Leila, and 12-year-old Hajal — as well as a college student, Marcie.
When MacDella invited me to join her for her annual Christmas party for the orphanage, staying with her in her apartment, I hardly thought twice. What made the trip even more exciting was that she had also invited my friend and classmate, Genevieve Faust, who would be filming a documentary of the entire trip. Genevieve and I were both so enamored with New York City, the city of lights, that we were curious to visit Monrovia, which is literally struggling out of darkness. Electricity runs on generators, which turn on at about 7 p.m. and shut off at 7:30 a.m. along with the running water in the home.
While it wasn’t easy spending Christmas away from my family and breaking special traditions, I have many memories of that Christmas party that I’ll retell at every Christmas dinner for the rest of my life. The massive buckets of fried chicken, macaroni salad, and rice, scooped out on the kids’ paper plates; teaching the kids “Duck, Duck, Goose” and learning their hand clapping games; dropping Starburst candies into dozens of little palms; the dance-off competition that pitted orphanage against orphanage in good fun.
But what sticks with me more than anything else is this photo, which I’ve saved to my computer desktop. It is little Mapu, a quiet but always sweet orphan from the Children’s Rescue Mission. Her expression isn’t necessarily sad, but it seems to beckon our help. To her right is Belle, the happy-go-lucky 3-year-old MacDella rescued and took into her own home, where she receives endless affection, clean clothes to wear, and warm food to eat. She’s wearing a headband I found in the Seventeen beauty closet. I love how I snapped the photo prematurely, capturing the moment that she smiled at Mapu before looking directly at the camera. In that stolen moment, it’s as if she senses hope for Mapu’s future.
And at the end of the day, no matter how hard we work, volunteer, and communicate, hope is all we really have.
Tammy Tibbetts is a 2005 and 2006 NYWICI Foundation Scholarship Winner, a 2007 graduate of The College of New Jersey, and a NYWICI Student Affairs Committee member. She is now a Web editor for Hearst Digital Media.
Links
· My Liberia Travel Blog: http://newyorktoliberia.wordpress.com
· MacDella Cooper Foundation: http://www.macdellacooper.org
· Liberia’s Angel: The Life of MacDella Cooper (my senior project): http://www.liberiasangel.com
· My Travelogue for MarieClaire.com:
http://www.marieclaire.com/world/travel/liberia-macdella-cooper-1
http://www.marieclaire.com/world/travel/liberia-macdella-cooper-2
http://www.marieclaire.com/world/travel/liberia-macdella-cooper-3
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Tasha Bovain
Love, dating, work and fashion—these issues occupy mine and other New York single women’s lives. Since launching my media/lifestyle company Singleandfab.com in June 2007, my way of life has now become my career.
I have always been interested in female empowerment, and I felt there was a lack of social support for single women. Too many fabulous, successful intelligent women find themselves stuck in unhealthy relationships, or settle for far less than they deserve because they fear being alone. So I decided to do something about it.
One of the first steps I took in starting my business was developing a vision. What did Singleandfab.com look like? What did I want it to represent and ultimately become? After bouncing the idea off family, friends, and women I came into contact with, I decided to create a business that would show single women how to make their days their best, and inspire them to launch a more exciting and fun life—minus the Y chromosome. Having a purpose has helped me get through the rocky early days of starting a business when I’m tempted in the morning to pull the covers back over my head and confine myself to bed.
As a young entrepreneur, I’m constantly seeking the support of mentors. While my friends and family were supportive, only other business owners can truly understand living in a world of working 100-hour weeks, filling out endless forms, maintaining records, and keeping track of financials. While there’s no face time, online networking presents ample mentorship opportunities for time-starved entrepreneurs like myself.
I contacted several business owners whom I read about in business articles and in Ladies Who Launch for advice and guidance in running my business. Not only did I receive great feedback, but I’ve also gotten strong emotional support and encouragement. Running a business requires knowledge in several different areas—public relations, marketing, financing, technology, etc.—and you can’t possibly be an expert in everything. Therefore, supportive relationships and a network of allies are the keys to having a successful venture.
Entrepreneurship can sometimes be a gift and a curse. Sure, it’s nice setting your own schedule and not having to answer to anyone, but it’s tempting to become consumed by your business—wreaking havoc on your personal life. It became second nature to work 16-hour days with little to no downtime because I loved it! But after becoming increasingly drained and burned out, the importance of balance became painfully clear to me. So I began to set limitations—no working on Sundays, no checking email at 2:00 in the morning, and getting out for dinner with friends at least twice a week. Creating and maintaining boundaries not only gave me more energy, but it also strengthened my focus and creativity.
After going through the process of starting a business and watching it grow, I’ve learned more in these past few months than I have in my seven-year professional career. It has taught me things about business and myself that no amount of education could supply. Launching a business is full of risks and challenges, and oftentimes can feel like a demanding child who constantly needs attention. But like any parent-child relationship, you love your “child” no matter what, and will do anything to make sure it succeeds!
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Briget Ganske
In January 2008, I will sell my furniture, pack up my books and belongings, move out of my Brooklyn brownstone, and fly on a one-way ticket to South Africa—drawn there by the words Nelson Mandela said upon its soil, “When you educate a woman, you educate a nation.”
In light of these words, Amazwi, a nonprofit arts organization, is educating women in rural northern South Africa, and I will be a part of that education. Amazwi works in a province where only 40 percent of adults are educated and 80 percent of people live below the poverty line. A Zulu word, Amazwi means “voices,” a word that ties together the organization’s missions of education, empowerment, and preservation—ways of ensuring local voices are told, heard, and recorded.
Amazwi educates women in journalism and creative nonfiction. It empowers them by creating opportunities specifically for rural black women, a demographic in South Africa that has been insufficiently represented in business, academics, and the media. In addition to developing writing and reporting skills, the women contribute to The Amazwi Villager newspaper, on which I will work as managing editor. Together, the women and I will report on local social issues and indigenous cultures, and we will learn how to be journalists in a region where stories, so far, have gone untold in the media.
I became interested in women’s empowerment and international humanitarian issues during the summer before my senior year at Northwestern University. I was awarded a summer grant to volunteer at a home for abandoned girls in Cusco, Peru, and to use the experience for my narrative nonfiction senior honors piece for my Creative Writing Major. The Peruvian girls I came to know were strong and intelligent but lacked many opportunities after grammar school. They had stories to tell and my ears to listen, and from them, I learned how powerful narrative nonfiction can be to create intimate portraits and to educate the rest of the world.
After graduating from college in 2006, I moved to New York City to pursue book publishing, an easy answer when I questioned myself during those post-graduation months about how to make a living from my love of literature. I have since learned that easy answers are not always the best solutions, for they rarely get us what we really want, what we are afraid of taking responsibility to get. For me, that was being a writer.
In the office, I yearned to be in the field and to write about issues that deserved more immediate public attention. To take responsibility for this desire, I initiated and organized a mentoring program that pairs Harlem ninth graders with New York writers and photographers who aid the students in creative projects that portray their lives. I loved providing the chance for students and young adults to connect through art and for young people to engage in their communities. Students told me that just holding a camera “opened their eyes to things they had never noticed.”
My experience with the Harlem students prompted a search to look for full-time opportunities that combined arts education and social service. Through an irretraceable path of online job boards, I found out about Amazwi. I had been interested in South Africa since a handful of college friends returned from study abroad programs in Johannesburg, Cape Town, and Durban. I saw album upon album of photos showing everything beautiful: coasts and mountains, villages and cities, deserts and woodlands. In addition to these physical extremities, I also learned about race relations, gender roles, the 50 years of apartheid, and the past decade of democracy. South Africa’s rich and complex history, along with Amazwi’s mission of educating and empowering, made the opportunity to live and work there beckoning and befitting.
Next came the long application process, the waiting, the phone interviews, the waiting, and finally the acceptance. Elated, I could hardly sit still in my cubical, and I still had more than seven months until January.
Soon, though, came an offer that took me out of the cubical and out of book publishing. A friend planned to travel to Serbia to teach a summer English language pilot program that needed additional teachers for the more than 50 students who had enrolled. I enthusiastically agreed to go and also volunteered to lead a creative writing and photography workshop. In Serbia, I realized the inspiring potential of a cultural exchange and a common language. The other two teachers and I previously knew little about Serbia and the high school students had never before met Americans, yet because of the students’ fairly comprehensive English, we were able to connect and learn much about each other and each other’s culture, and in the creative workshop, they were able to show me (and the world through the website we created) the people and places that most strongly influenced them.
So here I am back in New York, only a few months from my departure, spending my time reading about South Africa, working as a photographer (including working for Maryanne Russell at NYWICI events!), freelance writing for magazines, and teaching the Harlem photography and writing workshop—a program that I intend to replicate in South Africa, in addition to my managing editor role, with children in the local villages.
And I have been fundraising. The organization has just enough funding to pay the staff of local women and cover the costs of printing the newspaper, so my work will be on a volunteer basis. I have applied for grants to cover my personal costs of airfare, housing, food, and health insurance, and to finance my plans for a photography workshop, but these grants are competitive and nothing has been promised. I’ve never felt entirely comfortable asking for money, yet I ask out of my commitment—and the commitment I know others share—for all women to have ability and choice to express themselves. I ask because I know money can be a flow, like water, a conduit for social improvement, a currency of love, a force for educating a nation.
To find out more about Amazwi, go to www.amazwi.org. If you’d like to support Briget Ganske, you can make a secure donation at www.amazwi.org/donate.html, including her name and email in the gift information box.
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Nancy Megan
In our long lives together, my husband, Tom, and I have traveled widely, but sub-Saharan Africa had always escaped us. Both in our 70s but still relatively healthy and strong, we decided that this was the year for the trip, which would become an experience that I’ll never forget.
We visited five national parks in Kenya and Tanzania this past May, always with our own driver/guide, and stayed in comfortable tented camps. The national parks ardently protect the wildlife in their own environments, and poachers, if caught, are in very deep trouble! We avoided game parks, which allow occasional hunting for those unspeakable people (mostly Americans, unfortunately) who still love the trophy hunt. Game parks are very controlled and, since they are extremely expensive, they do bring in valuable revenue – but they are exceedingly disturbing to most people in Africa and around the world.
The African land is glorious – varying between lush and arid, mountains and plains. The African people are absolutely lovely – handsome, happy, very knowledgeable and generous.
But for us, it was all about the animals. We both love animals, but until now our experience had been family pets and occasional visits to the zoo. So this was indeed magical, leaving us with unforgettable images from our early morning and late afternoon game drives, rocking along in four-wheeled trucks – our heads sticking out of the pop-up tops, so we were often eye to eye with the most amazing creatures.
From our pop-ups, I talked to the giraffes and elephants, and I hoped they would respond. I wanted to make emotional contact with all the animals (like those silly people in the zoo!). But this is their land and their world. We are the interlopers. They are aware of us, and seem to accept the strange noisy four-wheeled “animals” that cruise through their land. Since they have never been threatened or harmed by humans, they do not fear us.
We reveled in the beauty of all the wildlife we encountered, the herd of elephants splashing in the river, the magnificence of each individual animal – yes, even a warthog can be beautiful!
Two memorable images from the start of our trip:
We came upon a lion and lioness languidly reclining together in a field, and certainly oblivious to us. Within a minute or so, they began (quite consensually, it seemed to me) to mate – a very positive, non-violent and really quite beautiful process. And so in about three months’ time, three to four cubs will have been born.
Not an hour later, we came upon a pride of satiated lions. Nearby were three hyenas waiting respectfully, and, to be sure, under a tree in the middle was one more lion working on the carcass of a wildebeest (to you, perhaps, a gnu!). The kill had been about two hours earlier (glad we didn’t see that!), and when the hyenas were through, nothing would be left but four hoofs.
This is life and this is death in the wild. We later saw similar scenes, but the juxtaposition of these two events early on made a tremendous impact on me.
A few days later, we saw another memorable sight, a wildebeest mom watch her little baby fall into a small swamp. Wildebeest can’t swim, so the agitated mom waited helplessly for a few moments, but then trotted off. We drove on in sad silence, then the road happened to take us to the other side of the swamp where we happily saw the little one straining, pulling itself gradually out onto dry land. It was covered with mud, exhausted and bewildered and looking for its mom, who was down the road. Our guide said that, since they have an excellent sense of smell, as soon as the mud dried and fell off the baby, they would find each other.
I wanted to get out and help the little creature, pat its fanny towards its mom. But of course I couldn’t. We weren’t allowed even to leave the truck! As we had to leave, I was consoled by the thought the two would likely reunite, and I like to think that is what happened.
But of all of our experiences, we were lucky to witness a glorious sight that few ever see: the annual migration of the wildebeest north from the Serengeti National Park in Tanzania to the Masai Mara National Reserve in Kenya. Early one morning after hearing the constant mooing of the wildebeest the night before, we emerged from our tent to the land black to the horizon with millions of wildebeest, the road filled with the animals moving grudgingly away as we made our way on the road. Heading slowly north to water, the massive movement was one of an annual rite that occurs throughout Africa for different groups of animals and at different times. It was an unbelievable sight and we were right in the middle of it.
There were so many memories like these, but what we ended up with was the overriding awareness that we humans are so very young compared to the animals and their ancestors that lay such an important claim to this part of the world, and to the world of nature. And we want very much for it to remain this way. Just like the little wildebeest who survived, they deserve it!!!
So, if you haven’t gone to Africa, please GO. Do not wait until you’re in your 70s, because once you go, you’ll want to go again, as so many people do, and as we hope to. It’s an emotional experience that will remain in your mind and heart like no other.
One more thing: We are proud to announce that we are the adoptive parents of Shimba, a now year-old orphaned elephant found in the wild and nursed back to health by the Sheldrick Animal Adoption Center in Nairobi. We were so impressed by the work they do, since there are so many baby elephants that are orphaned or abandoned in the wild, or caught and wounded by the illegal snares. So we will be kept informed of Shimba’s progress until he is deemed able to join a herd as an adult – at which time we will sadly but proudly let him go!
Nancy Megan is a retired magazine promotion manager, long-time board member, and Financial VP, of NYWICI and its Foundation. She lives in Manhattan with husband, Tom.
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Reedu Taha
In 2002, I graduated from Baruch College with a bachelor’s degree in corporate communications. It was the summer after 9/11, the economy was stagnant, and so were my employment prospects. After a fruitless job search, I did what any young, passionate, unemployed student would do… I packed my bags and trekked through Europe and Morocco.
When I returned from my travels, I found work as a bartender and applied to the graduate business journalism program at Baruch, into which I was accepted. I had no practical business experience, but, ironically enough, it was through my bartending job in Brooklyn that I got my first break in the business world. I was a month into graduate school then, and the idea of having a desk job, in an office with professional people, was a very attractive one.
I was offered a well-paid internship at the New York Stock Exchange. During my three years there, I published an investigative article, was promoted to “financial consultant,” and graduated from Baruch with my master’s. With three years of financial services under my belt, I had no idea that I had begun to dig my way into a “career corner.” However, as I began to apply for other jobs, I realized that the only interviews I could get with a comparable salary were with other financial service companies like Refco, UBS, and finally, in 2005, Goldman Sachs.
I knew from Day 1 that the buttoned-down, corporate-culture at Goldman Sachs did not suit me. I found the environment to be stifling and impersonal, and worst of all, the very business writing skills that I had invested great time, energy, and money in learning were not being applied. In fact, I found myself writing little more than emails.
My career exploration needed to take another turn. I had inadvertently attained a successful career in financial services and wanted to find a way out. I went to networking events, and set up coffee, dinner and drink dates with contacts in the communications industry for nearly a year. Among the many conversations I had, I clearly recall one with a woman who was the managing director of a PR firm in NY. She put it into perspective for me: I had pigeonholed myself in an industry by blindly going after my paycheck and not my passion.
Change finally came this past January. I was hired for a financial news writing position that I had interviewed for exactly one year earlier. After my initial interview with the company, I had followed up by sending emails and attending other media events that they held. At the time, it seemed as though all my networking was for naught. However, the position was part of a web show that was being developed, and as it turned out, it took my current boss a full year to move forward in hiring. A steady combination of patience, perseverance, and networking had paid off.
Today, I am an in-house writer for a stock loan company. I write financial news scripts for an online web show that combines stock news with humor and entertainment. At long last, I have finally found the job that is a perfect fit. It may sound silly, but I would not have found my way if I had not at first been lost.
As for the corporate world that I left behind, let’s just say I like referring to it in the past tense. And as for my career, I’m often surprised to hear myself use the words “love” and “job” in the same sentence… but I’m beginning to get used to it.
Reedu Taha is a writer and also teaches business courses at Baruch College. She lives in Brooklyn Heights.
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Denise Hassman
9/11 happened.
Our thriving 20-year-old IT recruiting and consulting firm, World Data Processing, Inc. (a certified women-owned business), was a block and a half from the Twin Towers. My business partner and I saw the towers come down and we were in shock. For a week, we couldn’t return to our office because engineers were checking the foundations of the buildings in the area. So, we had to connect to our staff remotely and run the business from our homes.
We came back to a war zone, where we had to wear masks because the office was covered with this ominous grey dust, which had to be removed by a special crew. Our clients, mostly financial firms, were understanding but quite shaken up themselves. Business abruptly came to a halt.
Initially, I felt very resentful and anxious but, compared with all the tragedy around us, I also felt grateful that we were all safe and that was what was most important. Our lack of business was very disconcerting, and being able to regain control of it in a realistic way became our first order of priority.
My business partner and I kept our staff of 12 for three months, but with no new business coming in and a bleak prospect, we had to cut back and retained only a skeleton crew. A year and a half earlier, we had acquired 4,000 square feet of space to expand our business, but now we had more space than we needed and the rent was eating up our cash reserve. Eventually, we reached an agreement with the landlord to give up half of the space.
We managed to stay afloat until the IT industry started picking up again in 2004, thanks to a few consultants that we still had on billing, a FEMA grant, some placements and a cash reserve that we had accumulated during the bubble years. It must also be said that we had no debt and didn’t create new ones — one of the principles of our business — which made it much easier to survive.
Though our business is growing again, rebuilding it has been a painstaking task, as there have been a lot of changes in the industry since 2001. But, even with a reduced staff, we have been diligent in reaching out to our former clients and in securing new accounts. And as we are getting more business, we are also slowly hiring more staff. Our women-owned business certification has been a big factor in helping us recover as we have been able to take advantage of it to gain access to the vendors lists of major companies, but this has required sustained marketing efforts and hard work.
There have been some bonuses, too. To maintain our productivity with a reduced staff, we developed two software recruiting tools, which we have been using successfully for two years. Now, we have a couple of sophisticated software products that are applicable to the entire job industry, not just to information technology, and which we are now getting ready to offer to the HR and recruiting industry at large.
9/11 certainly set us back in terms of our growth, and there is no doubt that if the catastrophe had not happened, World Data Processing would be in a much better place financially. Today, there is still much to be done to take advantage of our company’s potential and the opportunities existing in the industry, but our profits are growing steadily.
We look forward with great optimism to the entrepreneurial challenge of making our business even stronger than it was before 2001. The main lesson my business partner and I have learned from this experience is that we discovered strengths and a creativity that we previously had taken for granted and that have bolstered our confidence in moving forward.
_________________________________
Denise Hassam is the President of World Data Processing, Inc.
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Marci Alboher
Having just published a book about people who define themselves with slashes, like lawyer/chefs and CEO/moms, you’d think I’d have been prepared for all the identity shifts in moving from journalist to journalist/author.
I was not. If it were just about changing the wrappers the words are delivered in and the volume of those words, the evolution would be natural.
The bigger adjustment was the move from member of the media to one hoping to get noticed by the likes of us. Overnight I became a possible story, a news hook, an explainer, a profile subject – the very things I look for when working on my own articles or chapters on deadline. Which meant, really, that I had to learn how to be my own publicist (this is true regardless of the level of publicity support an author brings to the project.) Because I am familiar with the media, I tend to do a lot of outreach on my own. Figuring out how to write pitches and who to get them to came easily. But getting the media’s attention – even when I know just what they are looking for – is anything but easy. Sometimes an editor or producer bites quickly, when I imagine I’ll need to persuade. In other cases, a sure thing goes nowhere.
Then there is the delicate dance we journalist/authors must play in approaching our professional contacts in the media. The very people who we consider colleagues are the ones who could be covering us now as a subject. I still can’t claim to have mastered the steps, except to say that it must be done carefully. Suggesting a story or asking for a contact seems okay. Persistent follow-up (a good trait in a publicist) seems out of line.
I now understand the frustration of publicists who see the relevance of their subject to a story in progress, only to be ignored by the media they are trying to reach. And I certainly understand the helplessness that sources feel when being interviewed.
With each interview, I itch to take the control, suggest the angle, ask the reporter where the story was going, or recommend more sources. Once the interview is over, I’m restless to see if the reporter got it right, and of course, how I sounded or looked. I now know what it’s like to read a story only to notice how one quote fit in (my own) without wondering too much if the reporter did a good job on the subject as a whole. Still, I force myself to take another look, as a journalist, to make sure I’m being objective.
Occasionally, I am surprised that a reporter seems to understand my book – or how it fit into a story – in a way that I hadn’t even thought of.
Standing in the shoes of the many sources I have interviewed over the years should leave me with some good lessons for when I’m back on the other side of the media game.
I’m still a work in progress, as most people are when they inhabit new identities.
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Marci Alboher is the author of ONE PERSON/MULTIPLE CAREERS: A New Model for Work/Life Success (Warner Business: 2007). Learn more at www.heymarci.com.
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Bridgett Gayle
I realized recently that I have a bad attitude. I’m not talking about an attitude that could get handcuffs slapped on me. My attitude is worse than that… much worse!
Back in 2003, I churned out error-free reports as a business writer for Standard and Poor’s. After years of complacency, I craved an environment that promoted outside-the-box thinking. So when S&P announced it was downsizing, I volunteered to be laid off. God answered my prayers and included a fat severance package to boot. I vowed to find that perfect job where I could use my creative writing skills and start thriving instead of just surviving, but after nearly three years of job hunting, I’m still unemployed.
Severance package depleted. Work history impressive. So what the heck happened?
I have a bad attitude—that’s what happened. I fell into that abyss of self-pity and worse—self-doubt; the one-two punch from meaningless job hunting. I couldn’t land an interview. I slept more and watched more TV than any person should. I was KO’d.
Since I’m a “get up off your ass and do something” kind of person, I joined NYWICI and hurriedly registered for just about every C&C and round table event. I showed up early, pinned my name tag to my jacket and stepped right on in to that room. I was physically present, but my positive attitude was sorely absent.
I sized myself up to just about everybody: the person who is the president of her own company; the person who is excited about her work; the person doing what she’s passionate about, and every single time I came up short. I’m struggling. They’re successful. My bad attitude was taking form.
To complete the downward spiral, I started to downplay my accomplishments, viewing them as things anyone else could’ve done. Not true. After listening to wise and successful people, I learned that I didn’t believe in myself. I wasn’t projecting success.
I read job ads looking for requirements I lacked instead of where I would succeed. When people advised me to find my uniqueness, I drew a blank. My actions and my attitude weren’t aligned, and as a result I was misfiring every time. I was preventing my own success. Right actions…wrong mindset.
In order for success to bloom, you have to feel it. Feel successful. Successful people are only attracted to other successful people. There’s no getting around that. It doesn’t mean you both have the same level of experience, but just the same feel of success.
Feeling it is simply an outward representation of truly believing in something. In this case, believing I’m a success story already. Now I project that in all of my decision-making, job searching. So combine mental/feel power with reinforcing action and you’ll become a noticeable force, even in a room full of leaders. It isn’t easy to do, I know, but well worth it.
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