The Gender Agenda

An evening with Generation Y

Hello again.  Last week, my travels saw me spending time in the PwC offices in both New York and Chicago.  It was my first time in the latter city and, although I didn’t get to see much of it,  I have to say that I liked what I saw and I was sorry to not see more of the famed buildings.  Apparently, there’s a river based architecture tour that you can do and I’m definitely going to try and add that to my itinerary on any subsequent visit.

On Wednesday evening, together with my colleagues from the Global Human Capital team, we went along to the US firm’s PwC “Leadership Adventure” (LA) dinner.  The LA experience is a three day event run as part of the campus recruitment programme, in which around 200 university students participate in a series of activities designed to showcase both their attributes to PwC as their potential future employers and to highlight to them what a great firm we are. The students were all aged around 20 and were in their second / sophomore year at some of America’s top universities, where they are studying accounting.

They had all applied on-line for the chance to participate in the programme and had been selected from c. 2,500 applicants – so we were in the room with some of the smartest and most motivated college students in the country. The event has a strong emphasis on corporate and social responsibility and the students had spent most of the day working in teams at various schools and YMCAs, where they redecorated, repaired and generally improved the facilities for the benefit of the community.  My colleagues and I were each allocated a table and so I arrived at table nine, somewhat wishing that I could have a glass of wine before I introduced myself to eleven curious students – but that was not an option, given the drinking laws in Illinois.  So, armed only with a glass of water, I sat down at the table and announced that I was their “foreign exchange” guest for the evening.

Over dinner, I learned more about the students, their backgrounds, why they had applied to the programme and what their views were so far about the experience. It’s been a while since I’ve spent that much time with a group of students (I think the last time was when I represented the PwC Women UK network at a college event in London) and it was fascinating to hear the views of Generation Y, so often written about in tones of wonder, made real over crab cakes and steak.  My table had eight women and three men (the group as a whole was made up of 60% female students) and they were all genuinely curious about the work of the Gender Advisory Council, the firm’s overseas experience programmes which are run by my colleagues in the Global Mobility team, and our other work to support such initiatives as the “Power of Ten” and the refugee children of Darfur.  I was left in no doubt that these future members of the workforce are passionate, committed and really care about the wider world, and that they regard their working lives as being intrinsically bound up with that of the broader social environment.

I’d just finished asking them to guess how much money the PwC “Power of Ten” initiative had raised in ten short days (answer: US$4 million), when outgoing Global Human Capital leader Rich Baird took to the stage and proceeded to ask the whole room the same question … proving at the very least that we are consistent in our approach!  When the US Sourcing Leader asked the students to stand up and describe how they had spent their day, I was interested to note that six of the eight speakers were women, who all spoke in a very confident and articulate way about what they had done in the schools and the YMCAs, but also, compellingly, about what they had gained.

As I always do, I mentioned the website and this blog and I hope that perhaps some of them are checking in and reading this and future Gender Agenda entries. Hello, Sarah, Sara, Jenna, Madeleine and the rest of table nine.  That section of the evening concluded with the showing of a very moving PwC US video filmed on a recent visit to Belize, when a team of interns and Partners spent time in a school, again helping with the infrastructure - which leads me somewhat clumsily to mention a new GAC project: the production of a thought leadership video on gender and the future skills gap.

This is something that we’ve been wanting to do for a while and it’s now underway. PwC has previously published research into the world in 2050, which identifies a number of issues.  We are now taking the research to another level and working with leading business people, academics and politicians around the world to create a thought provoking filmed view of our future and how it will be impacted by the gender gap.  Filming begins next week and we hope to feature clips of the film, as we work on it, here on the blog.

We’ll be shooting footage in South Africa at the Working Mother conference, and my next blog entry will be posted from either Johannesburg or Cape Town – so, until then –

Cleo

“There’s a special place in hell …”

“… for women who don’t help other women”, said Julia Cleverdon at last week’s First Women Awards,  quoting former US Secretary of State Madeleine Albright and being applauded loudly for doing so.  In a room full of women and oh yes, some men too, including actor Bill Nighy, we saw Julia collect her award for her contribution to the Public Sector through her work with Business in the Community. 

PwC’s own Moira Elms was pipped at the post in the Business Services category, a disappointment which was matched by nobody at the PwC table winning the lucky raffle ticket which gave a £4,000 spending spree at Selfridges.  Ah well.  At least at this event, the ladies’ toilets were open and available. PwC UK’s Sarah Churchman had a wonderful moment in the spotlight when she joined Bill Nighy on stage to present the PwC sponsored Lifetime Achievement Award to fashion designer Nicole Farhi.  And I was introduced to the inimitable Baroness Betty Boothroyd, the first female Speaker in the British House of Commons, who informed us that she was “no good at public speaking” but threw in a few mentions of “Order, ORDER!” for old times’ sake, as she used to shout at unruly MPs in Parliament.

I’ve recently joined the Advisory Board of International Women of Excellence and I attended my first board meeting a few weeks ago.  What appealed to me about IWE was both the blend of organisations who participate in their events (IBM, Volvo, BAE Systems, ING, to name but a few), the diversity of the activities (workshops, dinners, meetings, all with great speakers), and also the fact that they hold their events in both mainland Europe and the UK. Last week saw Volvo hosting a workshop in Sweden, there have previously been events in Germany and Switzerland and we’ll be in London, Glasgow and Amsterdam later this year.  Send me an email with “IWE” in the subject line if you’d like to be added to their mailing list, and receive a copy of the newsletter (featuring articles by writers such as Alison Maitland and details of future activities.  Connecting back to the FW Awards, it was good to see IWE members recognised; IBM won the Corporate Award, and Rosalind Murray of BAE Systems Submarine Solutions won the Manufacturing category.

Last week’s social whirl continued with a fascinating PwCWomen UK event on sustainability.  I’m a member of the UK firm’s PwCWomen steering group and I try to go to all of the quarterly events if I can, travel schedule permitting.  Sustainability is also one of the themes of this year’s Women’s Forum in France, and so I was particularly interested to hear more about this topic, given that Gender Advisory Council sponsor Sam DiPiazza is the 2008/09 Chair of the World Business Council for Sustainable Development and the UK firm, together with many other PwC territories, is developing a lot of expertise in this area. 

Andrew Smith, who co-leads the UK firm’s sustainability practice, started with the very telling words that: “… if you look into the eyes of a climate scientist, there’s a hint of panic …” and then went on to share the details of what both PwC UK is doing as a firm to be more environmentally aware and also how the sustainability practice works with clients.  I’ll be able to provide an update very soon as to how PwC’s knowledge of sustainability is connected to the Women’s Forum in France but, until then, here’s a photo showing both sides of the cotton bags which we were given as gifts at the PwCWomen event (click image to enlarge):

 

I really love this bag and have been using it constantly over the last week.  It’s small,  light and folds up into a small bundle in the bottom of my handbag, meaning that I can always have it to hand and can thus avoid taking a plastic carrier bag (which can, apparently, take anything between twenty and a thousand YEARS to decompose) when I’m out shopping.

I have THREE of these bags to give away and will send them to the senders of the best emails which contain your ideas of what you would like to change to improve your work place environment, or with stories of what you are currently doing to improve the sustainability of our planet.  I look forward to receiving your emails…

Finally, PricewaterhouseCoopers is ten years old next month – that’s when we celebrate the merging in 1998 of Price Waterhouse and Coopers & Lybrand.  To mark this event, we are running a charity campaign, in conjunction with the United Nations Refugee Agency, to build schools, train teachers, and provide educational supplies for more than 20,000 Darfur refugee children.  This project is called the PwC Power of 10 - please visit the website to learn more about this vital project and, if you can, to make a donation.  The campaign runs until June 27th 2008.

Thank you.

Until next time,

Cleo

A week of updates – and the chance to be on British TV!

Hello again

Another interesting week in Gender Advisory Council land.  Over the last few days, I’ve been very involved in planning the PwC contribution to both the Working Mother conference in South Africa on 8th August and for the Women’s Forum in Deauville, France, this October, at which we will again be a sponsor.

As part of our sponsorship, we always provide a piece of research or some other input to the event.  Last year, a team from PwC’s global leadership development programme, Genesis Park including blog contributor Sandra Deltell Diaz researched and authored a very interesting report on “Women’s Economic Participation: Barriers, Enablers, Responses”, which we presented during one of the Forum’s workshops.  This year, we are considering a number of options to link in with the Forum’s theme of “Progress to Share, Future to dare” and I’ll write some more about that project once we agree the scope of it with the Forum team.  There are currently two really exciting and innovative ideas on the table – watch this space.  I had coffee yesterday with Avivah Wittenberg-Cox, co-author of “Why Women Mean Business” and she told me that she will again be in Deauville, running a series of what she has dubbed “The Men’s Corner” – break-out areas for the Forum’s male participants to discuss this issue.  And WWMB is due to be published in Korean later this year!

Anne Loveridge of PwC Australia’s web profile has now gone live.  I spoke to Anne last week to brief her on the work of the GAC and she told me that the Australian firm is sponsoring one of the highly prestigious 2008 Telstra Businesswoman of the Year awards – that of Young Businesswoman of the Year.  She and a couple of colleagues from the Australian team also updated me about their two hugely successful leadership summits for women, which took place in Sydney and Melbourne earlier this month.  A total of 175 female Partners and Directors came together to engage, network and empower and were treated to after dinner speeches from leading businesswomen Margaret Jackson and Meredith Hellicar.

Still on the subject of updates … my blog-master Matt and I have added some updates to the Gender Agenda this week, too.  Under “Recommended Reading” you’ll find the details of some new book titles and, to the right, under “Other Links”, you will see a few new websites which have interesting ideas and materials on the topic of women in business.  I’m particularly keen on “The Thin Pink line”, not only because it’s the website of Lois P Frankel, author of “Nice Girls Don’t Get the Corner Office” but also because it provides free daily coaching tips.  Check it out – and many thanks to Nicki of www.theglasshammer.com for sharing the details with me.

Finally, if you’re in the UK, a working mother and would like to be on TV, you may wish to consider this opportunity from the BBC:

“BBC Television is making a major three-part series called WOMEN about contemporary women's lives. The series will look at the impact of feminism on contemporary family life.

The first episode will provide the background and will map the ideology of women's liberation in the 1960s and 1970s, and evoke the urgency and passion of the early days of the movement.

The second and third episodes will be an audit of the impact of feminism on contemporary family life, and document the professional and domestic lives of women in Britain today. They will aim to assess how the reality of women’s lives compares with the hopes and predictions of forty years ago, and what the consequences of feminism have been for women, as well as for men.

Although at the moment the series is in the early stages of research, Assistant Producer Becky Lomax is looking for full-time working mothers to contribute to the series.

Within her research Becky is aiming to discover:

• How do you juggle the competing demands of work and home?
• How big a burden of responsibility do you shoulder at work and at home?
• Who does the childcare in your house?
• How involved is your husband or partner with the children?
• Are there conflicts or frustrations in your household around who takes domestic responsibility?

If you would be interested in participating in the series or to find out more information please contact Becky Lomax by email at becky.lomax@bbc.co.uk"

Until next time – by when I hope to have some news about a couple of these events and who will be speaking …

Cleo

A virtual traveller

Have you ever Googled your own name?  Either to find yourself on the web or to discover who else is out there with your name?  I will confess that I have done this (come on, who hasn’t?) and it’s perhaps just as well, as otherwise I would have been a little thrown to discover that one of the Google search phrases which led someone to this blog last month were the words: “Is Cleo Thompson male or female?”  Luckily, previous Googling showed me that there’s a MALE oil baron who shares my name, resident somewhere in Texas – or else I might have feared for the type of visitor that we’re attracting.

Anyhow, it’s been another interesting week in the world of the GAC and the Gender Agenda.  Although I have been in London in a physical sense, in a mental and intellectual sense, I’ve been all over the world.

Firstly, my colleague Judi in Toronto sent me this link to an interview with Avivah and Alison, authors of “Why Women Mean Business”, which was recorded on the evening of the PwC Canada sponsored book launch event on 3rd April. It takes a while for the page to load and for the podcast to kick in, but have a listen if you have some spare time.

We also finished adding some new role model profiles to the main website at www.pwc.com/women, so we now have women from ten countries featured.  The most recently added stories have a Swiss theme – read about Wanda Eriksen, who is American born and is now a Partner in the Swiss firm and Amity Millhiser, who has achieved the great accolade of becoming a Partner in both the Swiss and the US firms.  I really enjoy interviewing these amazing women, learning their stories and then sharing them via the website. 

And we’ve also added on the details of PwC US’s innovative Mentor Moms programme, which launched in the New York and Los Angeles offices earlier this year.   We read so much about mentoring programmes of different types, but this one struck me as being fantastically simple and logical in every respect: let’s support someone who’s coming back into the workplace after one of life’s most amazing and life changing events, to adapt and adjust and fit back in again. Oh, and although we didn’t mention it on the site’s profile, here’s a pre-paid gift card from Starbucks with which the mentor can buy her mentee a coffee while they talk things over.  Such a great idea, isn’t it?  Hats off to Maris Friedman for thinking it up!

From Canada, to Switzerland, to America … to Sweden.  This week, we agreed a partnership with an organisation called International Women of Excellence (IWE) whereby five women from PwC Sweden can attend an IWE event at Volvo in Gothenburg next month. The event will take as its theme the concept of the labyrinth of leadership (check out the Harvard Business Review article of the same name for more details on this interesting idea) and the agenda looks fascinating. One of Volvo’s senior women is a participant in PwC Sweden’s mentoring scheme so it’s great that the IWE event can add in some further connectivity.

My husband works in the motor trade (but not for Volvo!) and sometimes references what he calls “Blue Car Syndrome”, as in: you buy a particular make and model of a car, in blue, and suddenly – that very car is everywhere on the roads, wherever you drive.  I had a Blue Car moment of my own yesterday, when, just as I was working on the details of the Volvo event prior to sending them to my colleagues in Sweden, Matt, who runs the blog for me and is a member of the 'Unofficial Eagle Eye Club' who send me articles, forwarded me this story about how road traffic signs in Sweden have changed to show a woman crossing the road rather than a man. I did check the calendar to see if it was April 1st rather than May 1st, but no – it’s a true story, apparently.

Pedestrian man becomes woman in sign of times
The Swedish government has ordered its department for roads to design a female alternative to the walking-man signs at pedestrian crossings. The new sign will show a woman instead of a man crossing the street, giving more gender balance. The government was inspired by a campaign in the city of Mariestad to put up a walking woman sign created by a local artist. The government refused to change national standards and decided to introduce female signs nationwide. It will be up to local authorities to decide whether to use the new symbol or the traditional walking man sign.
Associated Press in Stockholm

Back in the UK, PwC UK were short-listed for an Opportunity Now award and we were delighted to learn that GAC Chair Moira Elms has been shortlisted for the highly prestigious First Women awards.  Moira is one of five women in the Business Services category and we’ll find out how she’s done on June 11th.

Finally, I’ve also been working on our involvement in Working Mother’s forthcoming Town Hall event in South Africa and liaising across the Atlantic with PwC US’s Joanne McDonough, with whom I am writing a toolkit which will help anyone who wants to set up a women’s network. It’s shaping up quite well and I’m so grateful for everyone who’s taken the time and trouble to share stories from their own networks, to send me photos and to be so frank and honest about what has worked as well as what hasn’t.  If you’d like to see a copy once we’re ready to launch, please send me a blank email with the words “Toolkit, please!” in the subject line and we’ll add you to the distribution list.  I must also thank Blanka from PwC Prague, for indirectly giving me the idea for the toolkit when we were exchanging emails about this a few months ago.

Until next time,

Cleo

Pitching in, helping out: lessons from Toronto and New York

Hello again.  I’ve been back from my long US/Canada trip for a few days now, and have been busy following up on the activities to which I committed while I was away, as well as working on new content for the main Women at PwC website.  Expect to see some interesting new role model profiles on there soon, as PwC women from Turkey, Switzerland and the US talk about their careers.  I’m also working with colleagues in the US, Canada and Australia to share the details of some of their programmes for our women; these will be posted in the section called “Global Initiatives” very soon, so do please keep visiting the site to read about “Mentor Moms” in the USA, amongst other interesting ideas, and how we’re using Starbucks cards and iPods to work with our people.

I’m also very excited about the fact that we have just signed up with “Working Mother” magazine to co-sponsor their Global Town Hall Conference for Women in Johannesburg, South Africa this August.  Although we’ve worked with “Working Mother” for many years in the USA, and have always appeared on their Best Companies list, this is the first time that WM and PwC have been partners in an event outside of the USA.  I’m sure I’ll be writing more about the conference between now and August. Several of PwC South Africa’s female Partners participated in the “Leaking Pipeline” research and South African Human Capital leader, Nitasha Manik is also profiled on the website. And of course, the Gender Advisory Council’s very own Anita Stemmet, although currently on maternity leave following the birth of her daughter last month, is based in Cape Town and I’m sure will be coming along to the WM event once she’s back in the office.  Anita has served as a wonderful role model for the women of the South African firm and I’m looking forward to working with the team as we plan this event, timed to celebrate National Women’s Day in South Africa.

Mentioning role models, I had the privilege of meeting many great PwC people on my trips to Toronto and New York earlier this month.  In Toronto, the Canadian launch event for “Why Women Mean Business” was a huge success.  The panel was introduced by Human Capital leader Hazel Claxton and was moderated by journalist Deirdre McMurdy, who wrote about the book in her column in the Financial Post a few days later.  My colleague Judi Bachmann, who runs the Canadian firm’s “Women in Leadership” initiative, did a great job in bringing together so many interesting and influential business leaders to learn more about the book.   The next day, one of the male PwC Partners at the event wrote to us to say how much he’d enjoyed the launch, commenting that …

“…there was a fabulous “buzz “in the room and a clear sense of interest in the subject matter well into the early evening.

I thought that Avivah and Alison [the authors] spoke wonderfully - they were thoughtful and constructive in their comments.  They possessed the facts, presented a compelling and positive picture of what the future holds and were most eloquent in their remarks.

I also liked the panel format and how the discussion unfolded under Deirdre's leadership. That component sped by far too quickly in my view - an indication that the questions, answers and overall dialogue possessed the content and flow that was most engaging for those of us in the audience.”

Alison Maitland later emailed me to say that “we've just heard that Cherie Booth (Blair) strongly recommended the book at the Women's Economic Empowerment Summit in London on Wednesday!”

With an endorsement from Britain’s former “First Lady”, who is also a top lawyer, renowned for her work on behalf of women and children, no wonder “Why Women Mean Business” has been such a success and is now being re-printed?

From Toronto, I travelled to New York and participated in the final one (for now!) of the PwC book launch events at Madison Avenue.  This was held in the very grand auditorium of our office building there (“it feels more like Madison Square Gardens to me”, quipped Alison) and was, again, very successful.  Global CEO and founder of the Gender Advisory Council, Sam DiPiazza, who has of course endorsed the book, came down to say hello and have a chat with the authors and the panellists, commenting later that “it’s a great book and a great opportunity for our people to engage.”

One of my current favourite websites is The Glass Hammer, and they sent along a journalist to cover the NYC launch – here’s their review, which gives a good flavour of the panel and the issues they discussed.
A few days later, I attended the 2008 Catalyst Awards (bumping once more into Alison!) where we witnessed Nissan and ING describing their winning initiatives.  The keynote speaker during lunch was Indra Nooyi of PepsiCo, who won the highly prestigious award, along with PwC US, in 2007 and, as I commented to my colleague Joanne over lunch, her speech alone was worth the price of admission.  Here’s a link to theglasshammer’s review of the speech; Nicki Gilmour, founder and CEO of the site, sat next to me during the lunch and hardly touched her food, as she was so assiduously scribbling away and taking down the details of Indra’s story and world view.  Those of you who are on my PwC mailing list will already have received a copy of the hand-out which we received at the lunch, in which Indra Nooyi shares her lessons on leadership.  If you haven’t received a copy but would like one, please send me a blank email with the word PepsiCo in the subject line and I’ll send you the attachment.

In the afternoon, I attended a very interesting session called “Including Men in Gender Equity: Techniques for Successfully Engaging Men as Diversity and Inclusion Champions”, the details of which you can read on the Catalyst link in this blog.  Professor Kimmel was particularly engaging when discussing men and housework, on which topic he posited that (most) men have two major modes of participation where domesticity is concerned: “they either “help out” or they “pitch in.”  Is this true?  My own husband is very involved and engaged in our own domestic lifestyle, but Prof. Kimmel’s statement received enough laughter and rueful nods to cause me to think that other men may not be so evolved. Or, indeed, involved.  I also have copies of the hand outs to share, so, as before, if you’d like to see copies of the two speakers’ work on this topic, please send me a blank email with the words White Men in the subject line (you’ll understand the title when you see the attachments!).

I returned to London with a lot more baggage than I took with me on the outbound flight, prompting the doorman at my New York hotel to ask if I’d “had a good shopping trip, Ms Thompson”, to which I could only reply “If only I’d had time!”.  No, my suitcase was full of books, either bought (“Why Women Should Rule the World” by Dee Dee Myers) or gifted by colleagues and contacts.  In Toronto, Judi gave me a copy of “Briefcase Moms” which is one of the Canadian firm’s programmes which I’ll be covering shortly on the website.  In New York, I acquired a signed copy of “You Go Girlfriend” by award winning business woman, author and coach, Maureen Frank, who has designed and delivered a great mentoring programme to our women in PwC Australia – which I’m also keen to cover on the website. I read Maureen’s book cover to cover on the plane ride home and it’s a great read; I now forgive her for dedicating my signed copy to “Chloe”.

Until next time

Chloe Cleo

American Dreams

Hello, and welcome to my first post-holiday blog entry.  I returned, refreshed and revitalised, a few days ago from a wonderfully relaxing two week holiday to Florida.  Amongst the emails awaiting my return were several emails from PwC women (thank you!), who have submitted some fantastic pieces for the future blog.  To date, I’ve received articles from women in the UK, the Czech Republic and Belgium, amongst others, and I hope you’ll enjoy reading their words and thoughts as much as I have.  Watch this space.  And keep ‘em coming. It’s great to read your stories and receive feedback.

The 2008 Academy Awards occurred whilst I was away and, for the first time ever, I watched some of the Oscar® coverage in real time.  Of course, I’ve known for a while that two of our PwC Partners are connected with the “…and the winner is…” side of things, but this was the first time that I’ve seen the footage which covers our involvement. And I have to say that the PwC LA office looks fabulous! 

I’m also a big fan of presenter Jon Stewart and “The Daily Show”, so I loved his witty Oscars commentary. In my last blog entry, I mentioned that I’d be following the details of the US Presidential race (specifically,  the runners for the Democratic nomination) whilst I was away and, of course, Jon Stewart is seemingly hard-wired to always reference politics, hence this remark at the Oscars:

“Normally, when you see a black man or a woman president, an asteroid is about to hit the Statue of Liberty.”

Here’s one of my holiday snaps – I spotted this in a car park, or rather, I should say, a parking lot:

Perhaps I didn’t hang out in enough or in the “right” parking lots, but I didn’t see any Hillary stickers for my photo album.

As regular blogees and those who know me in person can testify, I am a voracious reader (although I’m not sure that I’d go as far as to state that “Reading is Sexy” (per the bumper sticker above), and never more so than when on holiday.  On this trip, I read ten books (a mixture of fiction and non) and also quite a few magazines.  One of these was the Oprah “O” magazine, which, in the March issue, very much went to bat for the Hillary Clinton campaign, although I believe that Oprah herself has now endorsed Barack Obama.  The feature which caught my eye asked “some opinionated women – who’ve seen plenty of firsts” to imagine the first 100 days with a woman president. I particularly liked the imagination shown by Pat Schroeder, a congresswoman from Colorado, who posited that:

“You remember the Miss America pageants, where all the contestants would say that they wished for world peace? It will be fabulous when Hillary delivers world peace without posing in a bathing suit.”

O magazine is also running a competition (only open to Americans, I think, but worth checking if you’re interested) which offers as the prize a three day leadership training weekend hosted by O and The White House Project.  The White House Project is a national non-profit group dedicated to getting women into positions of power and it has created a three day course aimed at women who, with their competition entry, show leadership potential and have a vision for what to do with it. It will be held in the New York City area in June 08, and you can enter on line at www.thewhitehouseproject.org/womenrule between now and 11 April.  To date, over 5,000 women have completed the course in the past ten years, including recently elected state senator for Minnesota, Patricia Torres Ray, who successfully ran for election in 2006 after she’d completed the WHP’s coaching programme. The course includes lots of coaching and is aimed at women in business and politics.  So check it out if it appeals – good luck.

Both O magazine and More magazine featured a new book by former Clinton administration press secretary, Dee Dee Myers – “Why Women Should Rule the World.” She believes that the polarised state of the world is largely attributable to a lack of women at the top, and argues that we need more women in both public and corporate life in order to redress this balance.  I’m hoping to pick up a copy of the book either on my next trip to the USA or on my next on-line book shopping order, but here’s a flavour:

“… When women are in charge, we don’t always do things the way men do. We have different lives and, often, different priorities. We bring a different range of experiences, skills and strengths. And we make different choices.”

Until next time.

Cleo