Sloan Women In Management
Sloan Women in Management (SWIM) works to increase opportunities for all women at MIT Sloan through networking events, speaker series, professional development workshops, mentorship programs, and community-building events. In addition to its year-long programming, SWIM hosts an annual conference where students can dialogue with today's leading women. The organization’s primary goals are to:
- Create an inviting and supportive community for all Sloan women;
- Advance the careers of current MIT Sloan women through relevant programming and connections with MIT and MIT Sloan alumni;
- Work with faculty, administrators, and the greater business community to increase opportunities for women in business; and
- Attract top-talent female students to MIT Sloan.
Spotlight on Meg McCarthy, Aetna
Meg McCarthy is Executive Vice President of Innovation, Technology and Service Operations. She is responsible for clinical innovation, technology and service operations. Meg also has responsibility for process and performance improvement, procurement and real estate services for Aetna, Inc.
Ms. McCarthy served as Vice President and Head of Business Solutions Delivery at Aetna, which brought together all IT project management, development, quality engineering and IT-related business-process reengineering functions, necessary to create, develop and deliver end-to-end business solutions. She was named Aetna CIO in 2005.
Shifting Our Cultural Mindset about Women and Girls through Social Media
I love social media. Leading up to the Sloan Women in Management Conference: Innovating Through Adversity, I have had the pleasure of using that love of social to find inspiring, thought-provoking, and sometimes maddening content that relates to our conference themes. I look for interesting articles and blog posts about women in entrepreneurship for our Spotlight: Why Don’t More Women Go Big? I find tweets with frightening statistics about the miniscule percentage of women running top companies for Who Is Keeping Women From The Board Room, our other Spotlight. And I get to follow news and updates about our fantastic and growing list of speakers, including the creator of the film “MissRepresentation,” Jennifer Siebel Newsom. Continue reading
Reflection on Annual SWIM Negotiations Workshop
Women and men really are different in the way they negotiate, how often they initiate negotiations, and the way they are perceived when they ask for what they want. MIT Sloan Organizational Studies professor Denise Lewin Loyd broke it down for a group of SWIM women and gave us a few tips to help us be more successful in our future salary discussions. Continue reading
Using Work-Family Programs Successfully
Forrest Briscoe, Associate Professor at Penn State Smeal College of Business
Katherine C. Kellogg, Associate Professor at MIT Sloan School of Management
How can employees who use work-family programs be successful in their careers? Across many professions, employees are skeptical about work-family programs because they suspect that using them will actually hinder rather than advance their careers. And they are right to be concerned. Although work-family programs do sometimes help employees succeed, employees who use the programs are at risk of fewer promotions and lower wages than those who do not.
Announcing Miss Representation’s Jennifer Siebel Newson
Jennifer Siebel Newsom– writer, director, and producer of Miss Representation—knows about the challenges facing women in positions of power. Whether it is commenting on Condoleezza Rice’s “dominatrix boots” or Hillary Clinton’s tear shedding, the media focuses increasingly on women’s appearance as opposed to their policies or positions. The negative representation of women in the media inspired Newsom’s recent documentary, the smash hit Miss Representation.
Miss Representation draws attention to startling facts and statistics: the United States is still 90th in the world for women in national legislatures, women hold only 3% of clout positions in mainstream media, and 65% of women and girls have disordered eating behaviors.
“The media is killing our daughters’ ambition and destroying empathy and emotion in our sons”
– Jennifer Siebel Newsom
We are excited to announce that Jennifer Siebel Newsom will share her insights about creating the film and how women can combat media stereotypes at the MIT Sloan Women in Management Conference on February 10!
Come see a special screening of the film on February 7, 2012 and hear Newsom’s insider perspective during the conference. We look forward to seeing you there!
Date: February 7, 2012
Time: Doors open at 6:30 PM and screening begins at 7:00 PM
Location: Wong Auditorium at 70 Memorial Drive, Cambridge MA 02142
By Julie Lein
Co-Director SWIM Conference
MIT Sloan School of Management
MBA Class of 2012
Spotlight on Tina Laforteza, GM
Sloan MBA Class of 2004
Manager of Business Initiatives, GM Corporate Strategy & Business Development
Tina Laforteza has a corporate development role at GM with a focus on emerging technologies and business models in the energy space. She previously spent 3 years in Zurich, Switzerland as a business planner for GM Europe, which followed her first post-MBA assignment as an internal management consultant. As a member of GM’s MIT University Relations Team, Tina has organized case competitions and recruiting events at Sloan. She was part of a winning team at the MIT $100K and co-founded a non-profit that organized business case competitions in the Philippines, where she is from. Besides her MBA degree Tina holds a Bachelor’s Degree in Mechanical Engineering.
Want to hear something really inspiring?
Laura Sen was a senior executive at BJ’s Wholesale Club, based in Massachusetts. But, as she notes in a New York Times article, “In 2002 I was passed over for CEO of BJ’s. I tried working with the new CEO but my impression was that our management styles were very different. After six months I was asked to leave.” So she left, and worked as a consultant for three years until BJ’s then-CEO resigned. Around that time, a colleague suggested she try returning to the company. Understandably, the idea made her nervous. But she called BJ’s Chairman, and he brought her back as an Executive Vice President. And, in 2009, she was made CEO of the company — making her one of only 12 women on the entire Fortune 500 list!
We are so honored to announce that Laura Sen will deliver the afternoon keynote address for the MIT Sloan Women in Management Conference.
By Clara Brenner
Co-Director SWIM Conference
MIT Sloan School of Management
MBA Class of 2012
Sustainability at Cummins Event
On November 17th, Cummins’ EVP of Sustainability and CEO of Cummins Foundation, Jean Blackwell, spoke to a group of 1st and 2nd year students. This was Ms. Blackwell’s second consecutive year speaking at MIT Sloan, a testament to MIT Sloan’s steadily growing interest in sustainability and in Cummins’ progressive position on the issue.
Spotlight on Amanda Brophy, Microsoft
Amanda Brophy is a MIT Sloan graduate from the Class of 2010. She is currently working at Microsoft, focusing on marketing for SharePoint, a business collaboration platform for their US mid-markets. Prior to Sloan, she worked at PricewaterhouseCoopers in international consulting in the Bay Area. She also has a BA in Economics from Stanford.
