Finding value out of the Women's Conference

Seattle, Wa - The launch of the Women in NAAAP! Regional Conference is fast approaching and it's less than 3 weeks away. We're very excited both locally as well as nationally as this is a national program delivered by a local chapter. It's also a unique program being delivered on the West Coast this year. While the event is being touted as a Women's Conference, we want you to know that it's an event for everyone and this blog post aims to answer your questions in finding value in the conference. So if you're undecided at whether or not you want to go, here are a few points (or unmarketed opportunities) you want to consider before you say it's not for you.

Stakeholder(s)

• Men - Do you work with women? Do you have women employees? If you're a male manager, would you like to understand what issues women deal with and how to create an all inclusive work environment? The WIN! conference provides panel discussions on what women really want in their careers. Most importantly, workshops like time management and financial planning are gender agnostic training and are being led by both male and female speakers.
• Women - Whether you're entering a career, mid-career or at an executive level, learning from other women and connecting through networking will enhance your career.
• Mothers - Child care is available for a nominal fee.
• Manager/Business owner - Re-emphasizing that a trained employee is generally a happy employee and allows for better productivity, then send them to the WIN! Conference. Also, if  you would you like to understand what issues women deal with and how to create an all inclusive work environment, then our panels that are filled with senior women will  generate new ideas from their experiences and bring you solutions.
• Non-Asian - NAAAP values diversity and inclusion as it brings partnership and connection. All are welcome.
• Scholarships - NAAAP-Seattle and JPMorgan Chase is proud to sponsor Scholarships for Women in NAAAP! (WIN!) Conference registration fees for up to 20 students (undergraduate and graduate) and recent graduates. Click here to apply.
• NAAAP Member - As a NAAAP member we value your investment in yourself and we want to honor this by being transparent on how we allocate and spend your money. Your membership fees help us to provide training and development opportunities like this WIN! conference. More importantly, thanks to our sponsors, we are able to keep costs low. The cost is nominal as compared to other conferences. You get to pick from 4 tracks and connect and network with others with similar goals. Speakers include Crishna Bose-Bansal, Dr. Jeudi Boulom, Melanie Caoilie, Leah Carrido, Christine Chen, Stacey Derk, Vanessa Diego, Aimee Do, Theresa Ip Forelich, J.D. Hokoyama, Claudia Kauffman, Hyeok Kim, Nirmala, Krishnan, Olivia Lippens, Christine Mueller, Assunta Ng, Isabell Sheang, Kim Tran, Lillian Tsai, and Kendee Yamaguchi.

Register to WIN! (Seats are limited) http://win.naaapseattle.org

Check out a preview and meet the Women in NAAAP! at a preview event this Thursday, May 19th at Bellevue City Hall, Bellevue, WA Room 1E-120. Starts at 7pm and last through 8:30pm.

Regards,

Gil Gido                                         Hang Chen
NAAAP Seattle President                  WIN! Conference Chair - Seattle

Judi Rhee Alloway                           Brad Baldia
National WIN! Program Director        NAAAP President


Press Coverage

http://www.nwasianweekly.com/2011/05/upcoming-conference-for-women-focuses-on-investing-in-one%e2%80%99s-self/

http://www.nvnorthwest.com/h%e1%bb%99i-chuyen-gia-m%e1%bb%b9-g%e1%bb%91c-a-va-bu%e1%bb%95i-thuy%e1%ba%bft-trinh-d%e1%bb%81-tai-%e2%80%9cd%e1%ba%a7u-t%c6%b0-cho-chinh-minh%e2%80%9d/

http://www.seattlechinesetimes.com/english/local-news/5755-invest-in-yourself-at-the-west-coast-debut-of-the-win-leadership-conference-this-june

http://pinoyreporter.com/images/PinoyReporterMay2011.pdf (Page 2)

What would you do if you couldn't fail?

House of Hong Restaurant, Seattle -  This was the question I asked at a recently held Women of Power Luncheon hosted by Assunta Ng, Publisher of the NW Asian Weekly and Seattle Chinese Post newspapers.  Before I get to the answer of that question, though, let me first tell you that this luncheon, now in its third year, benefits one of NAAAP Seattle's partners, the Executive Development Institute (EDI). Twelve lucky auction winners from EDI's Inclusion Fusion held earlier this year got to lunch with some very powerful women. In fact, I had the privilege and pleasure of being seated at one of the tables. I'll introduce them one by one as I go through their stories.

Women of Power Luncheon (l to r) Martha Choe, Donna Giordano, Grace Chien, and Amelia Ransom Letcher (Not pictured: Sandra Madrid)

As the food arrived, Donna Giordano, President of the Quality Food Centers (QFC), shared what she thought were her keys to success(es); that was:

• to listen and learn from others;
• to take any job offered as it would lead people to know that you're the obvious choice when opportunities arose;
• to know you are in the driver's seat of your career;
• to know and articulate your value; and most of all,
• to have a positive attitude as this will assist you in achieving results, both at home and at work. 

Next, the top Girl Scout or CEO, Grace Chien, made a point to stand firm with your commitments and define successes and failures in relation to these.

Martha Choe, Chief Administrative Officer for the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and also a 2010 NAAAP100 recipient, talked not only about change, but about having it be sustained and lasting. She talked about how important it is to building lasting and effective relationships and used the term, "total leadership", when addressing one's well-being: mind, body and soul. Said another way, "When you're health isn't well, neither is your leadership."

When addressing work life-balance, "there is no perfect balance and it's a matter of balancing daily or weekly based on what is important to you. Put another way, if you are on your death bed, would you regret having gone to one more meeting?"

(l to r) Sandra Madrid, Carol Butterfield and Sandi Heddington

Now, Amelia Ransom Letcher, VP Corp Diversity Affairs at Nordstrom, rallied around people first and effective communication. Can you imagine the power in having people believe flowers grow in concrete? Getting to this level of effectiveness can help you become very influential.

Sandra Madrid, Sr. Advisor to the Dean, UW, shared a story about her own career transition. She was let go from the UW after 20 years of service. Her main point was to be part of a community because no one can do it by themselves. It was with the community's support that she got her job back at the UW.

As by now, I'm guessing you want to know what they said when asked, "what would you do if you couldn't fail?" I asked this question because throughout our careers we face fear and indecision and having gone through this themselves, they would give really good insight. Well, in short, the answer was not surprising. To paraphrase what each one of them said, "I would do anything".

Given that we're already on the topic of powerful women, I would like now to take a moment to let you know about the Women in NAAAP! program, which is our own program created and developed to build competent and confident women leaders within NAAAP and within the Asian Pacific community. If you don't already know about it, you can visit our website.

Special thanks to Char Grinolds of EDI and Assunta Ng, Publisher of NW Asian Weekly and the Chinese Seattle Post newspapers for creating a great meeting.

Regards,
Gil Gido
NAAAP Seattle

President

Women in NAAAP (WIN)! at the 2010 Convention

WIN! IBC on the Macy's Reception Red Carpet. (l to r) Natalie Fong-Yee (Toronto), Natalie Victoria (Atlanta),  Diane Nguyen (Orange County), Sarah Hawk (Atlanta), Judi Rhee Alloway (New York), Sheila Sun (New York) and Gil Gido (Seattle) (Not pictured: Parita Patel (Chicago) and Eric Kalinka (Seattle))

The International Board Committee (IBC) of Women in NAAAP makes due on its promise with a new framework at the 2010 NAAAP Convention and Diversity Career Fair presented by Macy's.  For the first time appearing at the Convention, a WIN! track was delivered. It was a full day track aimed at serving and educating attendees on women's issues in the workplace: work/life balance (integration), enhanced communication, and business strategies.

Session                  Speaker
09:00 - 10:20 am    The Power of the Word - Part 1 with Mable Yee
                              (Engage Her, Inc)
10:30 - 12:00 pm    Public Speaking: The Power of the Word -Part 2
                              with Angela Oh
12:00 - 01:30 pm   Saturday Lunch & Keynote - Highlighting Women
                              In NAAAP! with Betty Lo (Coca-cola Company)
01:40 - 03:00 pm    Work/Life Balance Panel (Sponsored by Macy's)
03:10 - 04:30 pm    Luminaries in Business and Journalism (Sponsored
                               by Wells Fargo)

Women in NAAAP (aka WIN!) is a special program created and developed to build competent and confident women leaders within NAAAP and within the Asian Pacific community.

WIN!’s overall objectives include:

1. Equip Asian women with skills, confidence, and resources to effectively lead in a multicultural environment.
2. Connect Asian leaders to role models and create a mentoring network.
3. Empower Asian women and educate about challenging perceptions.
4. Engage with the community at large and represent Asian women across the world.
5. Inspire Asian women to a make meaningful difference in government, education, business, and society.

Stay connected with the IBC and other followers at:

• Facebook - Group http://bit.ly/WINFBGroup1
• Facebook - Fan http://bit.ly/WINFBFan1
• LinkedIn http://bit.ly/WINLinkedIn 
• Twitter http://www.twitter.com/WomeninNAAAP
• NING http://social.womeninnaaap.org/
• Website http://www.naaap.org/Programs/WomenInNAAAP.aspx

Please send your questions or ideas to ibc@womeninnaaap.org. We'd love to hear from you.

Mable Yee (CEO, Engage Her) with the WIN! IBC kicking off the WIN! Convention Track.

Angela Oh receiving her speaking gift from WIN! Social Media Director and NAAAP Seattle President, Gil Gido

NAAAP Natl Webinar Series: NING

If you missed my webinar on social media, yesterday, I presented a walkthrough of NING, a new-age social networking tool, and showed how it helps businesses and associations set up a community for collaboration and to nurture relationships. I illustrated two examples, one of my clients (Vibrant Teams) and another for our own Women in NAAAP (WIN) program.

It was very exciting.  In preparing for the webinar, I had the opportunity of working with great people: Seattle Chapter members as well as the International Board Committee for the Women In NAAAP Program, most importantly with Judi Rhee Alloway, the National Chairwoman of WIN. Their support and their creative ideas led us to creating a NING network for the program as what’s evident to make the WIN program successful was to create a supportive network and moreso, using social media.

This network is in BETA though so we can gather feedback to make improvements to the network. Throughout this year, Women In NAAAP will continue to build this network for local and National participants in WIN to discuss topics related to women in the workforce, re-entering the workforce, community and family matters and much, much more.

To sum up, I'm super energized about the NING platform and the Women In NAAAP Program.  If you would like to help us test and grow this network, you're invited to sign up on NING and check it out.

Regards,

Gil Gido

NAAAP Seattle

President

Links:

 Join these social networks to join the conversation.

• Women In NAAAP on NING: http://winaaap.ning.com/
• Vibrant Teams on NING: http://vibrantteams.ning.com/

What makes a chop salad evil?

While NAAAP-Seattle volunteers were winding down from cleaning the streets of ID, another NAAAP event was winding up across the lake with the Seattle chapter's launch of Women in NAAAP (WIN). WIN debuted as a Women's luncheon at Joey's in Bellevue.

Laughter and conversation emanated from the group of ten NAAAP-Seattle women with diverse professional backgrounds, ranging from software programming to the non-profit work.

At Joey's, the WIN-ners were particularly intrigued by the large salads with a funny name: evil chop. After lunch, the women enjoyed more evil by going to watch 'Alice in Wonderland' in 3D.

One participant shared, "I had a good time and can't wait to do this again."

You can ask NAAAP-Seattle Social Chair Jenny Xu and the other original WIN-ners in Seattle for yourself what makes that chop salad evil and just how evil was the Red Queen by meeting them at NAAAP-Seattle's upcoming monthly mixer in Bellevue at 2AM (yes, that's the name of the bar) in Bellevue on April 2. For more information, visit: http://seattle.naaap.org/Events.do?id=8091