MSc Climate Change, Management & Finance online information session | Imperial College Business School
Did our conference last week leave you feeling inspired? Join us online for one hour and find out how you could help tackle current and future issues around climate change and sustainability with our new MSc Climate Change, Management & Finance programme: http://imprl.biz/1NDhfxG
Business School - Imperial College - London …
Are you looking to join the Executive MBA in February 2017? Join us in London on Wednesday 11 May to find out more about the programme and have any questions answered. You'll also have chance to network with staff, current students and other prospective students on the night. Register for your place today: http://imprl.biz/1r22D5Z
Business School - Imperial College - London …
Unique management insights from RSM’s world-class researchers are available to executives free of charge courtesy of the latest edition of RSM Discovery magazine. Read more:
The latest issue of the magazine that ensures forward-looking executives are one step ahead of their competitors examines the force and rapidity of...
The cover of Brave Becca Leans In by Ching-Ching Chen & Preeya Sud
Long before Ching-Ching Chen and Preeya Sud knew that they would be going to Harvard Business School as first-year MBA students, they shared a common passion even though they were worlds apart. Both women had read and devoured Sheryl Sandberg’s bestselling manifesto of female empowerment, Lean In: Women, Work and the Will to Lead.
To these young professionals in investment banking and consumer products marketing, the book’s title, encouraging women to step up and achieve their ambitions, was more than a catchphrase for them. Though already accomplished, they recognized themselves in the book as professionals who struggled to overcome self-doubt.
When Sandberg came to Morgan Stanley’s headquarters in New York in early March of 2013 for her book launch tour, Chen rushed downstairs to the company’s auditorium to hear the chief operating officer of Facebook. Chen, then an analyst in Morgan Stanley’s global capital markets business, recalls telling her boss she was going to meet Sandberg. “He jokingly said, ‘Of course you are. Just make sure when you come back to lean in.’ It was a phenomenal speech. I was really touched by the message.”
‘FOR ME, CONFIDENCE AT WORK WAS SOMETHING I HAD ALWAYS STRUGGLED WITH’
Harvard MBA student and co-author Preeya Sud
Sud, across the pond in London working for Procter & Gamble as a senior assistant brand manager, bought Lean In soon after its publication. “There was a buzz at work about the book and I read it and a lot of it just resonated with me,” she recalls. “For me, confidence at work was something I had always struggled with.”
Fast forward two and one-half years later and the two women met each other as new MBA students at Harvard Business School. This past fall, both were assigned to Section C and ultimately the same team on an applied learning project to create a micro-business this past year. Their shared interest in Sandberg’s tome quickly became front and center between the two of them and four male classmates on the FIELD3 (Field Immersion Experiences for Leadership Development) team.
For all of them, the issues that Sandberg addressed in her book had become very real at HBS, especially because Harvard’s infamous case method style of teaching required all students to actively participate in class discussions. “I came in thinking I was pretty confident,” says Chen, 26, who graduated from Duke University with a B.S. in economics and had been in senior recital in violin, piano and voice performance. “I survived a job on Wall Street and yet I was terrified to speak up during my entire first semester. Old habits die very slowly. One of my professors summed it up perfectly. As I was struggling to find the confidence to speak in class, she told me you cannot wait for the perfect comment. You have to put your hand in the air and say what you are thinking.”
A page from Brave Becca Leans In
‘CAVEATING’ AT HARVARD BUSINESS SCHOOL
Sud, 28, who did her undergraduate studies at the London School of Economics, felt similar pressures as a woman in a classroom of 90 students, about 60% of which were male. She found a lot of the female students at Harvard doing what she calls “caveating,” qualifying their expressed opinions in the class. “We would preface comments with, ‘I may be wrong but this is just my opinion,'” she says. “A bunch of the women were having a dinner and I said to some peope that we have to stop doing this because it is undermining what we are saying. It really shocked me as well because we all come from demanding industries and jobs and yet we were still facing this issue.”
Informed by an article in Glamour which suggested that girls begin losing their confidence as early as kindergarten, the group decided to form a micro-business that would create and market books to young girls to build their self-confidence. “We started talking about how to address this confidence gap, and from there it was a case of how do we execute,” says Sud.
The result: A children’s book inspired by Sandberg’s manifesto, specifically chapter two of Lean In that advises women to ‘Sit at the Table.’ Authored by the two women and aimed at girls aged five to eight, the book is called Brave Becca Leans In. The 32-page paperback chronicles Becca’s first week of wizardry school and focuses on three core Sandberg principles: 1) Speak up, 2) Act with confidence, and 3) Attribute good results to hard work, not luck.
‘WE FELT WE WERE DOING SOMETHING THAT COULD POTENTIALLY CHANGE LIVES’
Harvard MBA student & co-author Ching-Ching Chen
“We wanted to teach young girls those three things,” says Chen. To do it, they decided to create a young witch—Becca—through which Sandberg’s advice would come alive. “We sat down and started hashing out the story and came up with the original prototype in three hours,” explains Sud. The team–which includes male students from Japan, Singapore, Bolivia and Panama–hired illustrator Alfredo Montane from Upwork, the online marketplace for freelancers, and used HBS seed funding of under $1,000 to support the launch.
It took dozens of iterations and public readings over three months to get it right. At one reading at the children’s section of the Cambridge Public Library, they found that their book clearly touched on a nerve. One girl conceded she didn’t sit at the front of the table because the character in the book was like her–fearful of taking a place at the table. Another young girl attributed the character’s success to luck–not hard work–though her brother disagreed, saying Becca was “awesome.” “We were getting a huge divergence of responses at the reading,” says Sud. “That is when we felt we were doing something that could potentialLy change lives.”
The Brave Becca business model is to take classics, such as Katty Kay’s The Confidence Code or Amy Cuddy’s Presence, and adapt them for a younger audience. The books are published on demand by Amazon for $9.89 and also available on Kindle for $8.99.
When Chen told her Chinese parents that she had co-authored a book, they quizzically asked, “‘You wrote a book? At Harvard Business School?,’” laughs Chen. “Everyone wants their daughters to grow up as confident and as happy as they can be. My parents were very supportive of this because of that,” she adds. “We don’t want girls in 20 years coming to HBS not wanting to speak up in class or undermining their opinions before they express them.”
The FIELD3 team behind Brave Becca
The post Translating Sheryl Sandberg’s ‘Lean In’ Manifesto For Young Girls appeared first on Poets and Quants.
Would you have the courage to keep your CEO waiting three weeks for an answer on a big promotion? Daniela did: http://bit.ly/1VIfuY1
She studied on the Proteus programme. Take a look: http://bit.ly/1X6oTrU
Daniela was offered the role of Vice President of Marketing and Sales for the Latin and Canada region. “It was an honor and a huge promotion and I wanted to give it proper thought before accepting”.
Last Saturday, HEC Paris led the inaugural Retail & Luxury MBA Career Forum, connecting employers with talented students in partnership with six other leading European business schools.
Vana Koutsomitis and Joris Magenti, both Oxford MBA 2014/15 alumni, co-hosted an event at Bounce in London on Friday 12 February to launch VinobyVana, a fruit-flavoured wine drink which is popular in France.
VinobyVana was developed by both Vana and Joris to go hand-in-hand with DatePlay, the dating app she developed and showcased on BBC’s The Apprentice.
Take your leadership to the global level. The AMP Barcelona empowers you to see the big picture, take the hard decisions, drive the buy-in. Find out how on May 6, Barcelona. http://ow.ly/4mT0qU
Many people believe creativity and criticism are incompatible in the workplace. Here’s why they’re wrong. http://stanford.io/1VbzOk1
Profit as a by-product? Sustainability is so much more than just culture.
The modern corporate responsibility movement is maturing. Evidence continues to build showing that sustainable business practices can help to mitigate ri...
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