Thinking More About Collaboration

I saw an amazing movie this past weekend directed by Tom Shadyac, the director of Ace Ventura: Pet Detective, The Nutty Professor, Bruce Almighty, among others, called “I Am”. It is a documentary about his search for the purpose of life after a near fatal bicycle accident. He interviews a group of amazing intellectuals: Desmond Tutu, Noam Chomsky, Lynne McTaggart, Elisabet Sahtouris, Howard Zinn, and Thom Hartmann to get their views. He talked a great deal about one of my favorite words in the world: Collaboration. It showed many instances where we now understand how the animal kingdom make democratic decisions (i.e. collaborative decisions) by majority votes such as the changing direction of a flock of birds or a herd of gazelles. Most of us had presumed that it was a “follow the dominant leader or alpha-male” type thing.  The movie suggests that because we humans are a social species and are more suited towards collaboration like other social animals exhibit, rather than ruling by domination (which our human history reflects). Some people suggest that women are more inclined to be more collaborative than men. That is exactly what this blog by Jean Brittingham suggests – “Why the World Needs A More Feminine Version of Success”. However, I disagree that this is only a feminine trait; I know a great deal of men, including my brother, and lucky-for-me several of my male bosses, who are extremely collaborative and open in the work environment. While others, think that we will see more of a collaborative environment from different generations in our society: A Forbes article by Bill Patterson from MicrosoftDynamics wrote “Gen Y and the collaborative workplace”. He basically argues that due to modern day technology after the Dot.com era, young people growing up with all of today’s social technology are typically more collaborative than the generation that grew up with only personal computers. I can see a lot of truth to this as I watch my two daughters grow up in this environment.

Although, I have switched careers from a research scientist to an entrepreneur, I found that my favorite thing about both careers is the collaboration with others. As a scientific researcher, my experience shows that I basically collaborated on nearly everything I worked on, including proposal writing, research projects, publishing papers, publishing books, presentation writing, product design, forums, etc. Not only does collaborating with a group of people make it way more fun, but more importantly very innovative! I truly believe that collaboration is a key source of innovation for the specific reason of capturing many different perspectives towards a single goal.

Designing and producing handbags has not changed my level of collaboration. I continue to collaborate with my local partners, business mentors, national celebrities, and more.  I am extremely excited about our latest collaboration with our regional Dress For Success Charity; we will be holding a design-party next week on the design of this new handbag, bringing together several ideas and requirements from our target customer base of professional women. I will update the blog to reflect the outcome of this exciting and innovative evening.

xo, Gigi

Balancing Act as a Professional Woman and Mom of Two Girls

I have worked all my life from the second I graduated from College as an Engineer. My career has shifted a few times: from a Design Engineer in the telecom industry to an academic researcher on optical communications to now, an entrepreneur in the fashion world, designing handbags for professional women. I have always worked a 40-hours-per-week job. So for all of my daughter's lives I have been a working mom (16 years for my oldest daughter (Kamila)  and 12 years for my youngest daughter (Layah)). I am hoping to teach them as my mother thought me (she was a professor in textile chemistry before she retired), that we women should always follow our passion in life! However, we always wonder if our job as a mom is really to spend as much time as humanely possible with our kids and not work during the critical years. I do have some friends that did that and some that stayed at work like me.  I honestly do not know the right answer, I do not think there is a right answer. I know this is a much talked about subject and there are many blogs about this topic as well. Here is a blog on the top "working mom blogs"! Here is another excellent article on the subject from  the working mother website titled "What Moms Choose".

Both of my girls are in sports such as soccer, tennis and for a while swimming, so that means even less time together. I do want them to always value a healthy lifestyle so I figured if sports was a way of life for them, they can not go wrong. I am only questioning all of this today because I went to a very thought-provoking movie last Thursday night with some friends called "The Race to No where" by Vicki Abeles. I highly recommend this movie to anyone with kids (K-12) or in education. I wish my girls (pictured above) went with me. It showed that we in the US are putting way too much emphasis on wanting our kids to do everything possible to get into the very best universities from a very early age (like starting at kindergarten). OK, I am guilty to some extent, asking Kamila to work more  on "standing out" for her college applications,  besides her good grades, participation in sports, and her community service... - I know, I have stopped talking like that! We end up putting way too much pressure on them and do not give them a chance to play and grow up like kids... I think my girls are doing ok, but I am definitely starting to put  more emphasis on fun and play and less on perfect grades lately since I saw that movie. Basically, life is a bunch of balancing acts, and as a professional woman, I am always balancing what lessons my girls are learning from me working vs. time we spend together. Bottom line we all try to do our best to show our kids unconditional love and support, and hopefully our kids grow up strong, healthy, and most importantly very happy!

xo, Gigi

Speaking of Duke Grads - my chance meeting with JJ Ramberg and a broken foot

In my most recent blog I referenced the talk I gave at Duke University two weeks ago on my journey going "From Science to Fashion" and then I elaborated a little on the number of women receiving  MBAs. One Duke graduate with an MBA that I follow quite a bit is JJ Ramberg from MSNBC's Sunday morning show "Your Business"! JJ earned her undergraduate degree from Duke but then went on to Stanford for her MBA (last blog I talked about MBA schools,  Stanford's MBA program was one of the top in the country!). When I first became an entrepreneur I devoured any kind of knowledge on "small business", books, blogs, seminars, even shows. As I had mentioned, I am an early riser even on the weekends, so one day I happened across this incredible show called "Your Business" with JJ Ramberg and thought that it was being produced just for me (only because it was providing me with key information about my small business when I actually needed it!!! ). It was so full of very useful information that from that day on, I started to record it every Sunday morning at 7:30 on MSNBC. Every week there are examples of funding pitches, social media strategies, marketing and sales etc. JJ recently came out with a fantastic book for all small business owners called "It's Your Business - 183 Essential Tips that will transform your small business". I got the book and love it. Most of the tips are very relevant to my handbag business. One of my favorite tips was  written by a good friend of mine Dana Hughens from Clairemont Communications about how to welcome new employees (page 88, tip #59).

So how did I meet JJ? Well, this past April, I was in NYC to serve on a panel of executive women in technology (my previous career before starting my handbag business) for a unique women's organization called Papilio founded by Nadine Rubin whose mission is to build a community of women executives in technology seeking guidance, council and support for the purpose of elevating and accelerating their career objectives. Well, on my way to the event wearing my new black and white wedges while catching a cab in Manhattan, I fell flat on my face! Yes, you heard me correctly, fell down on the ground and broke my foot!! Went to an urgent care in a rickshaw (we could not catch a cab during rush hour! - what a funny sight!) and ended up with a temp cast on my left foot. Needless to say, I did not make it to the panel discussion and was on "life is a dreamcake" PAIN medication! The next day I was flying back from NYC to RDU with my cast and crutches and, I am embarrassed to say my pajama pants on (my regular clothes would not fit over the cast!). Perfect time to run into JJ Ramberg at the airport on her way to RDU (looking quite polished and professional - ha ... so embarrassing...  ). So I recognized her across the way at the RDU gate, even though she had her hair up in a cute ponytail and some cool artsy type clothes on. I told her that I am a big fan and watched her show every Sunday morning. She seemed a little surprised to hear that someone waits for it every Sunday morning at 7:30. Anyway, she asked me about my business and I told her that I started a company called Uvo Luxury, to design and manufacture handbags for professional women. She said she loved the bag I was carrying (white and fuchsia tablet bag) and that it would be better for her to carry that then her current small gray backpack she was carrying ( she might have been just trying to be nice, I really see her more with the Black and cream version of our tablet bag!). I told her that I have only been an entrepreneur for 2 and a half years and that I used to be a research scientist, but I am now using my engineering and research skills to design unique functionality into fashion handbags. My heart jumped when she said "you should be our show!” When she asked why I started my handbag company, I told her that I had discovered a gap in the market when I spent three years searching for the ideal handbag that I could use while traveling around the world giving talks to carry my computer and work documents and then have the same handbag look elegant enough to carry out to a nice dinner. She then told me what I needed to do to get on her show as a guest!!!! She said for me to write her a note stating that we met and talked and that she thinks I should be on the show! I followed her directions immediately and am still waiting for the phone call, but very very hopeful!   I never give up....

xo, Gigi

My Talk at Duke University

 A couple of weeks ago I gave a talk on my personal journey in going from a Research Scientist/Engineer to a fashion handbag Designer at Duke University. Although I got my engineering degrees from NCSU ( I love our campus of course!), I have always really LOVED the Duke campus. As you can see from the picture, it has such a nostalgic look to it.  I truly loved the interaction with the students. It is my favorite part of giving talks.

 It was interesting to see the ratio of females vs. males in the audience. I believe the stats for  Duke's Pratt Masters of Business program is 30% female although females make up approximately 50% of Duke's enrollment. Why don't more women get their MBAs?  A recent article by Stacy Blackman from US News reports that the number of females going for an MBA is actually on the rise. It seems that even in the two top business schools in the US Harvard (up to 39%) and Wharton (up to 45%), they are finding increases in the number of females to enroll. This is great news for all of us. I look forward to a day where there are equal numbers of females in MBA programs.  Actually, us women need to dominate in MBA programs ... right?

 xo, Gigi