Hello and a warm welcome to the inaugural edition of the 2130 Partners' Women's Forum! Please allow me to introduce myself. My name is Donna Frindt and I am the Director of Strategic Development for 2130 Partners, and now the moderator for our blog.
This new section of our web site is inspired by a very exciting invitation received by one of our Principals and Co-founders, Suzanne Frindt. She has been asked to perform several key roles at the upcoming Business Women's Summit for the Middle East and North Africa. This summit is being conducted by The Beyster Institute at the Rady School of Business at UC San Diego, in conjunction with the United States - Middle East Partnership Initiative being conducted by The State Department. This initiative supports democracy, economics and education for women in the Middle East. Amazing stuff!
We are very excited and honored to be part of this initiative. We have a strong commitment to the empowerment and leadership of women in business and in the world, (particularly through our commitment to The Hunger Project). All of this started us thinking we would really like to have a means for women to connect and share their thoughts about being women in business. So this women's forum was born!
Each month we will post a new topic specifically for women to respond to, comment on, and consider and we invite all the women in our extended 2130 Partners community to check in and post their thoughts. This month, it seems fitting to launch with women's role in international business as the topic.
Personally, in my advertising agency past, I worked on an account that had offices in Canada and Mexico. For awhile, I was the Account Manager assigned to those international offices. Working on those businesses was very educational. A business trip to Mexico provided literally, the most shocking business meeting experience of my life. The team I worked on was presenting an advertising campaign focusing on the authenticity of the product and reminding consumers to look for, and buy the genuine article because the business was facing a lot of challenges from the black market and others who were "knocking off the product." I will never forget when the President of the client company looked at the entire room with her first reaction to the campaign which was, "I need a risk assessment. I need to understand if we will get bomb threats, death threats - how dangerous is this going to be?" If anyone had ever told me I would be in a meeting where it was truly a concern that an advertising campaign might put people in jeopardy, or get someone killed I would never have believed it before that moment. It was truly an eye opening experience to life outside of the US.
As business continues to globalize and become more interdependent, and the world "shrinks" the opportunity and challenge of international business is more likely to become available to more professional women. I would love to hear your personal stories, experiences, and thoughts on women in international business. If you are already active internationally, have you attended any meetings, or had interactions that surprised you? Do you have a story or anecdote about an experience that gave you a new perspective? If you are not currently involved internationally, have you ever considered having a role in international business? Is it something that interests you? Something you avoid? Post your thoughts!
This new section of our web site is inspired by a very exciting invitation received by one of our Principals and Co-founders, Suzanne Frindt. She has been asked to perform several key roles at the upcoming Business Women's Summit for the Middle East and North Africa. This summit is being conducted by The Beyster Institute at the Rady School of Business at UC San Diego, in conjunction with the United States - Middle East Partnership Initiative being conducted by The State Department. This initiative supports democracy, economics and education for women in the Middle East. Amazing stuff!
We are very excited and honored to be part of this initiative. We have a strong commitment to the empowerment and leadership of women in business and in the world, (particularly through our commitment to The Hunger Project). All of this started us thinking we would really like to have a means for women to connect and share their thoughts about being women in business. So this women's forum was born!
Each month we will post a new topic specifically for women to respond to, comment on, and consider and we invite all the women in our extended 2130 Partners community to check in and post their thoughts. This month, it seems fitting to launch with women's role in international business as the topic.
Personally, in my advertising agency past, I worked on an account that had offices in Canada and Mexico. For awhile, I was the Account Manager assigned to those international offices. Working on those businesses was very educational. A business trip to Mexico provided literally, the most shocking business meeting experience of my life. The team I worked on was presenting an advertising campaign focusing on the authenticity of the product and reminding consumers to look for, and buy the genuine article because the business was facing a lot of challenges from the black market and others who were "knocking off the product." I will never forget when the President of the client company looked at the entire room with her first reaction to the campaign which was, "I need a risk assessment. I need to understand if we will get bomb threats, death threats - how dangerous is this going to be?" If anyone had ever told me I would be in a meeting where it was truly a concern that an advertising campaign might put people in jeopardy, or get someone killed I would never have believed it before that moment. It was truly an eye opening experience to life outside of the US.
As business continues to globalize and become more interdependent, and the world "shrinks" the opportunity and challenge of international business is more likely to become available to more professional women. I would love to hear your personal stories, experiences, and thoughts on women in international business. If you are already active internationally, have you attended any meetings, or had interactions that surprised you? Do you have a story or anecdote about an experience that gave you a new perspective? If you are not currently involved internationally, have you ever considered having a role in international business? Is it something that interests you? Something you avoid? Post your thoughts!
1 Comments:
Hi Donna. You were referred to me by my friend Karen Caplan (Frida's Foods).
I spent 22 months in Iraq working on a women's development initiatives -- jobs, careen development programs and expanding and building new businesses - a program that I developed based on years of experience working to empower women in the political world.
I would love to meet you - perhaps when you return from the Middle East.
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