Sometimes you can find wisdom in unexpected places. What did I see on this morning’s walk? A sign reminding me that “Hill Blocks View”. This year has been quite a significant hill for me. I was blessed with SO many tremendously great opportunities and accomplishments. I gave two invited keynote talks - one of which was on a TREMENDOUS stage in Albania. I did the technical writing of two very large, technical, complicated, and very successful RFP responses.
Identity and Access Management might sound like technical jargon, but in reality, it plays a crucial role in everyone’s life. It encompasses how you present yourself online, how you protect yourself from online threats such as hacking and phishing, and how much control you have over your personal information. This post is the first of a series where I’ll delve into the complexities of identity and access management, and discuss its relevance to everyone.
The Long and Winding Road: Sometimes the best path from point A to point B is not a straight line. Follow the twists and turns of one alumna’s career through 8 very different industries and 7 unique functional roles into the position she feels she was always meant to play. At the 2021 LeadHERship Conference at Stevens Institute of Technology in Hoboken, NJ, USA, I presented an interactive talk about how to make career transitions when you are pursuing a non-linear career.
Either Google Fi doesn’t trust its customers or it doesn’t trust its support team (or maybe both!) I recently switched over to Google Fi after a long (20+) year loyalty-fest with Sprint, my first cellular home. With Sprint transitioning into T-Mobile, it seemed like the right time to shop around. Switching to Google Fi was seemingly easy - the plans were simple, and it was seemingly easy to trade in my husband’s and my old phones and upgrade to new ones.
Over the past few days I again was reviewing start-up pitches in my role as one of the judges of 2021 Ansary Entrepreneurship Competition at Stevens Institute of Technology. Each year undergraduate students turn their undergraduate engineering and business Senior Design Projects into business plans, and prepare elevator pitches to compete for prizes that total $17,500. Similar to last year I have been spending my evenings reading executive summaries and listening to the (video recorded) pitches while providing feedback and asking questions about their business ideas and product approaches.
Ack! I missed my favorite meeting of the week, the Amazing Women Writing Hour! I was recently reminded that breaks are necessary. I mean a full break where you forget for a moment all of the responsibilities that you need to manage, deadlines you need to meet, and obligations that you have to juggle. I took such a break for just three days last week (spoiler alert - two of those days were the weekend)!
Collaboration is hard in the best of times. Throw in incompatible goals and objectives, and it is downright impossible. Significantly improving how research and innovation get done requires many adjustments to its complicated and interconnected system. One part of this system can rarely make a change independently; to make an effective change, many organizations, processes, organizations, and people must also accommodate and adapt to this change. When all of these actors have clear and complementary incentives to adopt and add to a change, the result can be magical.
Who do we include in the planning of how we use genomic data to improve human health? Last week I participated in and gave a keynote address at the 8th plenary meetings for the Global Alliance for Genomics & Health (GA4GH). GA4GH plays a critical role in enabling responsible genomic data sharing within a human rights framework. This work includes framing policy and setting standards that meet the real-world needs of the international genomics community.
“People don’t feel connected to your community because they joined a big crowd in an arena. They feel connected because of the individual conversations, private moments, and vulnerability that they experience with other participants.” - Charles Vogl Unconferences build community through specific characteristics: its collaborative conference agenda creation, “vote with your feet” model of participation, and dynamic pace. These components are difficult to recreate in a virtual setting.
When you have a hammer, every problem looks like a nail… until you get a paintbrush. Every so often you get the gift of being able to see the world through a new lens. In my adult life, there are several distinct times when I was acutely aware of picking up a new tool, shifting to a new lens. Engineering: The object lens The first was when I was an undergraduate studying engineering.