Jam Sessions

In this Jam Session, Shannon Duff, founder of Collegiate Compass LLC ([collegiatecompass.com]), a college advising firm, will help parents to understand the realities of today’s college admissions landscape, and to learn how they can support their teenagers during this all-important process.

As she shares critical elements of her advising methodology, Shannon reminds students and parents that applying to college should be exciting, and emphasizes the importance of several key steps in ensuring that your student’s college admissions plan is long on strategy, and short on stress. Her positive approach produces results: in the past five years, over 80% of Collegiate Compass clients have been accepted to their first choice college, and over 95% have been accepted to one of their top three college choices.

Shannon holds a BA and an MBA from Yale, and gained firsthand perspective on the admissions process while working as a reader for Yale’s Office of Undergraduate Admissions.

Click on the video icon in the upper right corner of your screen during the recording to watch a video of Shannon speaking.

Here’s something you may not know about today’s Internet. Simply by designing your product the right way, you can build a flourishing business from scratch.

Many of the most successful Web 2.0 companies, including MySpace, You Tube, eBay, and rising stars like Twitter and Flickr, are prime examples of what journalist and NYU professor Adam L. Penenberg calls a “viral loop”—to use it, you have to spread it!

All sorts of businesses—from the smallest start-ups to nonprofit organizations to the biggest multinational corporations—can deploy the paradigm-busting power of viral loops. Never before has it been possible for entrepreneurs to create this much wealth, this fast, and starting with so little.

This Jam Session is a must for any entrepreneur or business interested in unleashing the power of viral loops to benefit their bottom line! Adam will explore strategies for creating a Viral Loop for your business, drawing on some of the greatest examples in history.

85 Broads Member Ida Liu, Managing Director and Senior Private Banker at Citi Private Bank, shares her experience transitioning from M&A to working for Vivienne Tam to now working in Citi’s Private Bank. She now focuses on providing strategic advice and tailored solutions to ultra high net worth individuals.

To view the video of Ida Liu speaking during this session, click on the video icon in the upper right corner of your screen once the playback starts.

Have you ever asked yourself the question, “Is This It?” Maybe you feel trapped in a role that you are afraid to leave. Or maybe you already have a good job—one that gives you room to grow and exercise your talents—but you don’t really feel like you’re doing your best work. You just don’t know how to make the leap.

Most of us live with significant levels of untapped potential, and it is ultimately up to us to take control of the direction and outcome of our lives.

In the first Session Rick spoke about his powerful three-step approach which highlights how you can achieve breakthrough performance, tapping unprecedented personal growth and productivity.

For this session Rick is interested in “What’s holding you back?”. This is an interactive discussion that will include Kelly Hoey and Laura Garnett from 85 Broads in NYC.

In 2005, when Gayle first set out to report about women-owned start-ups in Afghanistan, she was not sure what she would find: most people she talked to were skeptical that she would find any female entrepreneurs to write about. How likely was it, they asked, that women who had been banned from work and school would now be leading their own businesses only four years later? So it was with some trepidation that she made her first trip to Kabul to interview women entrepreneurs for the Financial Times and Harvard Business School.

What Gayle found was an extraordinary new generation of Afghan businesswomen, some of whom got their start under the Taliban. From everything from roads building to business consulting and furniture making, a small but growing network of female entrepreneurs has started to support their families and create jobs in their communities. Every day, they confront a blizzard of obstacles intimidating enough to make most CEOs shrink: rising insecurity, limited electricity, broken infrastructure, a lack of capital and almost no access to markets. Yet these businesswomen continue to push forward in the face of these problems and are now fighting to keep their ventures afloat, even as their foreign customers pack up and the increasingly emboldened insurgency thrives.

Join Gayle as she talks about Afghanistan, the role of women after war and the power of business to change women’s lives.

By looking at everything from culture to biology, in Marry Him Gottlieb frankly explores the dilemma that so many women today seem to face – how to reconcile the strong desire for a husband and family with a list of must-haves so long and complicated that many great guys get rejected out of the gate. Here Gottlieb shares her own journey in the quest for romantic fulfillment, and in the process gets wise guidance and surprising insights from marital researchers, matchmakers, dating coaches, behavioral economists, neuropsychologists, sociologists, couples therapists, divorce lawyers, and clergy – as well as single and married men and women, ranging in age from their twenties to their sixties.

Marry Him is an eye-opening, often funny, sometimes painful, and always truthful in-depth examination of the modern dating landscape, and ultimately, a provocative wake-up call about getting real about Mr. Right. Marry Him has been optioned for film by Tobey Maguire for Warner Brothers.

Join Elizabeth Vale (Executive Director of the White House Business Council), Elizabeth Warren (Harvard Law Professor and Chair of the TARP Congressional Oversight Panel) and Diana Farrell (former Director of the McKinsey Global Institute and currently Deputy Director of the National Economic Council) as they discuss what’s happening in Washington re: much needed financial regulatory reform (and its impact on consumers) currently being proposed by the Obama administration.

The discussion was moderated by 85 Broads members Deborah Buresh Jackson and Jennifer Hill.

Professor Elizabeth Warren is a Professor of Law at Harvard University and the Chair of the TARP Congressional Oversight Panel. She has written eight books and more than a hundred scholarly articles dealing with credit and economic stress. Her latest two books, The Two-Income Trap and All Your Worth, were both on national best seller lists. The National Law Journal has repeatedly named Professor Warren as one of the Fifty Most Influential Women Attorneys in America, Time named her one of the 100 Most Influential People in the World in May 2009, and the Boston Globe named her the Bostonian of the Year in December 2009. As a law professor, she first developed the idea for a Consumer Financial Protection Agency and has been one of its leading advocates.

Elizabeth Vale is Senior Advisor to the Secretary of Commerce and Executive Director of the White House Business Council. Previously, Vale was a Managing Director at Morgan Stanley. She has 22 years of investment experience. Prior to joining Morgan Stanley, she was a Vice President and portfolio manager at Philadelphia National Bank, now a part of Wachovia. Prior to that, Elizabeth was a Legislative Assistant in economic policy for Senator John Heinz in his work on the Senate Banking and Finance Committees. Elizabeth received an A.B. cum laude in government from Harvard University and studied at the London School of Economics. She holds the Chartered Financial Analyst designation.

Diana Farrell (tentative) is Deputy Director of the National Economic Council. She most recently served as the Director of the McKinsey Global Institute (MGI), McKinsey & Company’s economics research arm. Farrell’s work has appeared in academic journals, books, and on the op–ed pages of leading international publications, and she is a frequent speaker at major U.S. and global conferences. Prior to joining McKinsey, she worked for Goldman, Sachs & Company in New York. Farrell has a B.A. fromWesleyan University in Economics and in the College of Social Studies. She also holds an M.B.A. from Harvard Business School. Farrell is a member of Council on Foreign Relations, the Bretton Woods Committee, and the Pacific Council on International Policy.

Read the Letter to the Senate.

Read more about this issue in Obama Financial Regulatory Plan Fights for Women:

Have you ever asked yourself the question, “Is This It?” Maybe you feel trapped in a role that you are afraid to leave. Or maybe you already have a good job—one that gives you room to grow and exercise your talents—but you don’t really feel like you’re doing your best work. You just don’t know how to make the leap.

Most of us live with significant levels of untapped potential, and it is ultimately up to us to take control of the direction and outcome of our lives.

In the first of three global jam sessions to be conducted by Rick Smith – based on his bestselling new book The Leap – he shows that guiding yourself toward roles that fully leverage your strengths and passions – not fixing your weaknesses – will increase engagement and performance and accelerate individual development. Rick reveals how anyone can be true to themselves and lead authentically, while leveraging the powerful leadership platform utilized by the most successful iconic leaders of the last several centuries. Finally, he shows how you can open numerous new doors in your life while simultaneously mitigating risk, not increasing it.

This powerful three-step approach highlights how you can achieve breakthrough performance, tapping unprecedented personal growth and productivity:

Discover Your Primary Color: Align your strengths and passions with your daily activities to unlock potential and accelerate development.

Leverage the Big, Selfless and Simple Leadership Platform: Anyone can lead authentically, while leveraging this powerful leadership approach that inspires and enlists others, and encourages delegation with alignment to the overall objective.

Let the Spark Sequence Begin: Successfully exploring and exploiting new opportunities requires risk mitigation, not risk aggravation. The spark sequence reveals how anyone can broaden his or her horizons, increasing creativity and innovation, while simultaneously decreasing risk.

85 Broads, in partnership with Barclays Capital, is delighted to present Tim Bond’s live Jam Session on “Uncertain Markets, Uncertain Economies.” Tim came highly recommended by Boston Economic Club President (and Power Circle member) Karen Parker Feld who recently heard Tim speak!

Tim shared with our audience that he believes that payrolls in the US will modestly improve in Q1 to the 100k-150k level… that there have been significant outflows from money market funds which means people/institutions are starting to free up cash to invest in bonds/equities.. bank loans are still declining.. productivity is unsustainably high… companies will become increasingly convinced that they need to start hiring again.. M&A will pick up… the central banks will likely make policy errors but not sure in which direction — will they keep rates too low too long? will they raise them too quickly? and most of all.. that future generations will be saddled with debt as the Boomers retire.. Tim is looking for 7% returns on equities over the next decade — the days of double digit returns are most likely over for now… and lastly, that global growth only needs to rise by 2% to drive global commodity prices higher due to surging Chinese demand…

In the last year, it’s not unusual for non-profits to feel they’ve definitely lost donor “share of mind” and “share of wallet!” How can the best non-profits get the attention of their donors in a way that is both smart and cost effective?

Social media technologies have enabled people to coalesce into countless communities defined by shared interests instead of common geography. The people populating these communities aren’t passive media consumers. They are actively participating in a myriad of conversations globally and given the right strategy of engagement, they’ll welcome a conversation with you. While social media isn’t without cost, it’s dramatically less expensive to implement than traditional marketing and has increasingly become more effective.

This Jam Session explores:

• Using social media to increase awareness, expand an organization’s supporter base, and drive donations
• Evaluating and choosing social media channels
• The importance of tightly integrating social media initiatives into your offline strategy and operations

The recording file is available for downloading.

Note: The WebEx ARF player is required to playback the recording. You will be prompted to download the ARF player.

We invite you to join us for our inaugural Jam Session! This Jam Session would be of greatest interest to our members with moderate to advanced knowledge of the PE industry.

Learn how the landscape for alternative investing has been dramatically restructured since 2008.
Fine-tune your knowledge of the stages of capital-raising from angel groups to growth stage VC, middle market as well as mega LBO funds.
Be able to tell the difference between a technology long-short hedge fund and a hedge fund in the convergence space.

Using practical examples of deals closed over first quarter of 2009, Dorothy will describe which companies as well as funds within the key growth areas of the economy have experienced fast raises and those which have faltered, and why.

In this session, you will develop your toolkit of investment process stages, including deal criteria, as well as key components of placement agent agreements and uses of capital. Finally, learn how women- and/or minority-owned business owners, fund managers and placement agents within broker-dealers are seizing new opportunities within Federal, State and local programs.

The recording file is available for downloading.

Note: The WebEx ARF player is required to playback the recording. You will be prompted to download the ARF player.