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Weekly Dose Of Inspiration On The Web

August 17th, 2011, by Sloane Berrent. 1 Comment »

Photo courtesy of Greeblemonkey

I really enjoyed the feedback I received from my last series of Recommended Reading so I’m going to continue the series here. While that very often includes will be articles and posts I’ve read online, I also really would like and envision this space to be able to share videos, music and anything else I find interesting. I see these as my “gems” and for the purpose of this series of posts, I’m going to call it your “Weekly Dose Of Inspiration On The Web.”

The beginnings of each article are included (where it fits), but I definitely suggest that you click through to read the posts in their entirety, leave a commend and see what others are saying!

Google’s biggest CSR opportunity yet
In the hype over how Google has up-ended the tech world with its purchase of Motorola Mobility, one aspect of the deal hasn’t yet attracted attention – but is potentially the most important. Google entering the hardware business should lead to the one breakthrough the market truly needs: a smartphone free of conflict minerals.

How Cindy Gallop Broke Through the “Thick Layer of Men” and Became the Counterpoint to Porn
My inaugural post helped benchmark where we are. The majority of my posts from here on out will help tell the stories of where we are going, who is going to get us there and what lessons we can learn from one another to get there even faster. I also frame up the personal side of things to help give depth and context to each interviewee’s insights and advice. First up, one of the most accomplished and authentic women I know: Cindy Gallop. Not only was Cindy the first woman to have a seat on Bartle Bogle Hegarty (BBH) Global Group’s board, but she is also tackling the topic of sex education from an extremely refreshing and effective angle withMakeLoveNotPorn. More seats in the board room? Safer, happier, healthier sex? Yes to both, please. So: How do we get there? Cindy’s responses explore these topics and more (including “the bitch complex” and solutions, solutions, solutions).

10 Rules For Brilliant Women
I coach brilliant women, lots of them. Dedicated, talented, brilliant women. Most of the time, they don’t know their brilliance. They are certain they “aren’t ready” to take on that next bigger role. They are more attuned to the ways they aren’t qualified than to the ways that they are. They are waiting for someone to validate, promote or discover them. Sound familiar? It’s time to step up, brilliant women.

Finance Forward Issue 2 (May 2011)
We are happy to present the second edition of Finance Forward, an environmental scanning document which looks at forces shaping inclusive financial services in Africa (and beyond). The benefit of periodically scanning the business, economic, social, technological, physical, and political environments in the background of the “system” of financial inclusion is that we can continue to monitor and understand the implications of further developments in these trends and act upon our learning. We scanned a large number and variety of articles (academic and popular) that were published during the fourth quarter of 2010 and first quarter of 2011 to produce this issue of Finance Forward. In these edition we present six themes which are built upon those found in the first edition.

Recommended Reading For The Week Of August 2nd

August 3rd, 2011, by Sloane Berrent. 1 Comment »

There are so many ways we are all sharing content these days. A lot of it is through social media or social bookmarking, but I wanted to be able to share a few of my recent favorite and recommendations with you. Two of my favorite inspirational powerhouse women, Amy Sample Ward and Sarah Evans, do this too so I definitely recommend you check them out for great links to what’s hot on the web this week as well. The beginnings of each article in included, link through to read in its entirety and see what others are saying.

5 Tips for Running Successful Cause Marketing Campaigns
Businesses love cause marketing, and the belief is that supporting a good cause translates into stronger sales. The Cause Marketing Forum has some pretty convincing numbers: In 2009, 72% of American consumers said they avoided purchasing products from companies whose practices they disagreed with. Accordingly, two-thirds of brands started engaging in cause marketing in 2010, up from 58% in 2009, according to a study by PRWeek and Barkely PR. Consumers have taking a healthy shift towards doing good, with 86% of global buyers believing that businesses need to place at least equal weight on societal interests as on business interests, according to an Edelman survey. It’s not enough to make money — businesses also need to do good.

More Female Managers And Board Members Means More Corporate Philanthropy
According to new research it’s the companies with more female senior managers and women board members that give more money to charities. Harvard Business School’s Christopher Marquis and Matthew Lee looked into the world of corporate philanthropy that since the 1970′s has sparked an ongoing controversial debate. The thought being that if these large companies have so much extra money to give to charities, it should be reinvested in the company – the money does belong to shareholders after all. Another complaint from those who are against corporate philanthropy is that it’s an easy way for CEOs and other top executives to give to the charities that are close to their hearts, but without having to dip into their own wallets.

Defend Your Research: What Makes a Team Smarter? More Women
The finding: There’s little correlation between a group’s collective intelligence and the IQs of its individual members. But if a group includes more women, its collective intelligence rises. The research: Professors Woolley and Malone, along with Christopher Chabris, Sandy Pentland, and Nada Hashmi, gave subjects aged 18 to 60 standard intelligence tests and assigned them randomly to teams. Each team was asked to complete several tasks—including brainstorming, decision making, and visual puzzles—and to solve one complex problem. Teams were given intelligence scores based on their performance. Though the teams that had members with higher IQs didn’t earn much higher scores, those that had more women did.

Inside The All-Female Hamptons Hackathon For Humanity
Hackathons, the one- to three-day programming marathons where coders convene to create innovative web applications, tend to resemble 2 a.m. cram sessions at college dorms. Picture a group of hyper-focused twentysomething men craned over Macs, surrounded by empty 12 oz. cans of Red Bull, eventually passing out for a few hours on the floor. Women are not always eager to participate. The founders of Girl Develop It, a female-centric hacker non-profit, in league with the entrepreneurship startup Jump Thru, understand this. And so, this past weekend, they staged the inaugural Hamptons Hackathon for Humanity. The event — billed as an “anti-hackathon,” and aimed to show that computer programming can be an equally female-friendly endeavor — brought 16 female technologists, web developers, and venture capitalists together in a luxurious cedar-shingled mansion.

5 Best Practices for Beauty Brands on Facebook
Among luxury and personal care brands, beauty brands — a category that, for the purposes of this article encompasses cosmetics, fragrance, skin and hair care brands — have emerged as among the most digitally savvy. Although beauty brands continue to invest heavily in traditional advertising and their own websites — open any women’s magazine and you’ll see plenty of makeup ads and a fragrance sample or two — Facebook is playing an increasingly central role in their marketing, ecommerce and customer service strategies.

See more of my favorite articles by following me on Twitter , @sloane.

Tell the good said the Haitians. There is positive happening here.

March 2nd, 2011, by Sloane Berrent. 1 Comment »

“What is the one thing we can take back from Haiti with us to tell people?”

That was the question I asked people while in Haiti over the weekend. For there is a lot going on. A lot of sadness. A lot of frustration. A lot of violence. Struggles to reconstruct, rebuild, take a country that was already the poorest in the Western Hemisphere and have it come back better than before.

“Tell the good. There is positive happening here. The (traditional) media only tells the stories of hardship but there are a lot of positive stories coming out of Haiti too.”

And indeed there is. Smiles and laughter. People helping each other. Community leaders stepping up. International aid organizations committed to helping in the reconstructions. Houses are being built. Schools are in session. A presidential election is right around the corner.

So that’s what I want to do. I want to honor the wishes of the people I met in Haiti. I want to tell stories that haven’t been told 100 times. It’s important for us – us in the privileged developed country – to remember that in the aftermath of a natural disaster most other countries don’t have the option to cleanup like we do.

Sanitation is often argued to be the number one indicator of how developed a country is. Second is infrastructure in roads and the ability to get from point A to point B. Haiti is obviously behind the U.S., so is there trash in the streets and piles of rubble? Yes. But I expected that.

What was amazing was the bright colors! The creativity of the Haitians. The way they are embracing art as a means of expression. They are struggling of course, but there is hope in Haiti. There is hope for the future. That is humankind, that is what makes us resilient. Hope.

I hope you’ll remember that when you think of Haiti, if nothing else.

I’ll be sharing more of that perspective of Haiti in the coming days. In the meantime, I’ve just started using Cinch to record audio messages to share. Below is a message I recorded today about Haiti and storytelling.

If you have specific questions about Haiti, please let me know. If I don’t know, I’m happy to help find someone who would. And for more information on the Heart of Haiti campaign visit Fairwinds Trading or follow the hashtag #heartofhaiti on Twitter.

$100k Raised In 72 Hours for Autism

February 24th, 2011, by Sloane Berrent. 1 Comment »

This is the second post in a series about a recent campaign I worked on with Samsung Hope for Children, the national philanthropic initiative of Samsung, The Dan Marino Foundation and JESS3.

Together, we launched a new social action campaign, “Team Up for Autism,” in conjunction with the first annual WalkAbout for Autism that I wrote about in my last post here.

The initiative set about to help raise awareness and funding in support of medical research, services and treatment programs for children with autism. Samsung pledged to contribute up to $100,000 through this social action challenge, providing a donation of $5 to the Dan Marino Foundation each time someone pledged their support of autism awareness by checking into WalkAbout Autism on Foursquare, sharing an infographic with their Facebook friends or sending a tweet with the hashtag #teamautism. JESS3 created the infographic and I worked with them on the overall digital strategy.

In just 72 hours, we were able to reach our goal of $100,000! To see the infographic click over to TeamUpForAutism.com. It was amazing. We thought it might take a few weeks to reach our goal. What made this campaign special? I think there are a few factors.

First, 1 in 110 children are now said to be diagnosed with autism. That means that just about everywhere you turn people know someone or are related to someone with autism. That’s a powerful base.

Second, during this campaign all of the partners came on board to help spread the word. Many times in campaigns, one of the partners wants to be more involved but for a variety of reasons just isn’t. That affects every single social action. You never know where your most passionate supporters will come from. In this case, we all worked together, setting expectations before launch, and that made a huge difference.
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Introducing My New Web Project: Help A Woman Out

February 21st, 2011, by Sloane Berrent. 2 Comments »

I’m really excited to announce the launch of Help A Woman Out. It’s a new web project from me and The Causemopolitan Labs and something that has really taken off in the two weeks since it launched.

Help A Woman Out is your guide to finding organizations, events and nonprofits that support women and girls. Attend. Donate. Learn. Join. Jobs. Curated by your biggest cheerleader, me!

I released this site within 3 days of coming up with the idea. I found a domain name. Found a tumblr theme I liked and customized it. Started seeding content and then pushed publish to the world. Sometimes we need to create just to create. The power to press publish is powerful and freeing. I am of the school that (in regards to personal projects) you can fix just about anything after it launches. Start small, start anywhere, see what happens…and then iterate to match the feedback. It’s the entrepreneurial spirit in me that wanted to put this site out there to share, and then get feedback and figure out what needs to change or be upgraded.

I learned a lot about customizing tumblr themes for this site and also how to put the Facebook “like” and Twitter buttons into the HTML. I’m working on learning more of the development parts of websites this year and this was a great introduction towards that goal.

I know many women would like to get involved and help but don’t know how. Because they are too busy with their lives, careers and families. I wanted to create a place on the web that would seem magazine-like. A place to flip through women’s organizations, inspirations quotes by women, events listings and job opportunities that would focus specifically on girls and women. All of this content would create a portal to Help A Woman Out.

I really believe that woman are at a crucial point in history. Women are being recognized as the changemakers for society, an emphasis on girls education exists in some countries for the first time ever, the UN recently joined all of their programs and projects for girls and women together into one platform called UN Women. The third Millennium Development goal focuses on gender parity, and there are only 5 years left until those goals are set to be met.

I have three inspirations I’d like to thank that helped piece this project together first in my head and then in reality:

1. Help A Reporter Out, which if you know it, is a site founded by Peter Shankman to help reporters find sources and sources get stories placed in a quicker and more efficient fashion. There are lots of projects out there that play off of the name of another and I hope Peter (who is an amazing guy I had the privilege of working on My Mardi Gras Experience with in 2010) doesn’t mind this flattery! I didn’t have a name in mind at all for this project and was out walking one night in my neighborhood, where I usually get my best inspirations, and playing with words in my head. Something with the word “woman” and something that indicated “help” but maybe not exactly that word. It all literally happened in one hour. I thought of the name Help A Woman Out and came home to see if the domain was available (the real test) and was surprised that it was. I bought it on the spot…you never know when you’re going to want to use good domain names! I always believe in giving credit where credit is due, so thanks Peter.
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Recommended Reading For The Week Of August 2nd

Tell the good said the Haitians. There is positive happening here.

$100k Raised In 72 Hours for Autism

Search The Causemopolitan

Sloane Berrent

NOLAlicious

Cause It's My Birthday

Gulf Coast Benefit

Kiva