“I've been a Toastmaster for roughly two years now and up until March, I never had to worry about what the picture window in front of my desk did to my round, cherubic cheeks. In the last eight months, however, I've added pro at lighting, make-up, and background-interior-design to my ever-growing public speaker toolbox.”

“[Taking that leadership role] really was the most important moment in my career because I was able to prove to other people, to myself and to other women that you don’t have to know everything or have grown up in a certain function to take a new job. If you surround yourself with experts and establish yourself as credible professional, you can move forward and lead.”   That quote comes from Joyl Silva of Pfizer—she is a 2020 honoree in Putman Media’s wonderful Influential Women in Manufacturing (IWIM) program, now in its third year of honorees—in a blog post on the IWIM site.   IWIM is run by Erin Hallstrom, digital and content strategy director for Putman Media. She will be speaking about this successful program and all of the other roles she takes on at Putman—including their Food for Thought podcast that she created and did the whole s ...

In a conversation I had with Putman Media’s Erin Hallstrom a couple weeks ago, she talked about the Influential Women in Manufacturing program she runs, a business podcast she puts together and hosts (Food for Thought), a personal podcast, a book she’s writing, plus all her daily SEO and digital duties, etc.   How can you do all these things, I asked?   “I’m training to be a lockdown Olympian, doing all these things,” she said, both proudly and with a bit of incredulousness. When her sister got married in July, she was maid of honor, and for the two days she was taking off, her boss made her promise not to check in. “I wrote a blogpost about how anxious I was for being off for two days,” she said.   Erin, you’re not alone. A new Harvard Business School study says that we are working longer hours with more emails and meetings than ever before. Not surprised, I take it. Okay, let’s de ...

"It is time to re-imagine what the workplace is for," writes Sue Unerman, chief transformation officer at MediaCom, on Haymarket Media’s Campaign site. “If you took someone who might have known Charles Dickens and, through the power of time-travel, transported them to an office in 2019, undoubtedly they would be shocked and surprised by mobile phones, computers and the number of women around. They would be less shocked by the overall look of the place: lots of people with their heads down at desks working away, with some managers walking around occasionally to see what they were up to.”   Up until now, most of what we have read takes the form of, “when offices reopen…,” “people going back to normal…,” etc. But as spring turns to summer turns to fall, new conversations are taking place, more focused on the realities of the new normal—where people are not returning to offices until at least next ...

In a recent podcast for Putman Media's International Women in Manufacturing series, Christine LaFave Grace spoke with Nandita Gupta, process controls engineer at Georgia-Pacific and a 2019 IWIM honoree. They talk about Gupta's experience entering the workforce with a mentor, and “how she hopes to provide new engineers with a similar or better experience through a formal mentoring program at Georgia Pacific.”   An article on the Media Voices Podcast site last week gave eight ways publishers are bringing in revenue from podcasts. Number eight was promoting other revenue streams. “Whether it’s mentioning an upcoming event or referring to other products across a portfolio, a bit of self-promotion can help make podcast audiences—who are often a little different to online or print ones—aware of what else you offer. A podcast audience is a particularly strongly engaged user base, and is likely to be extra responsive to m ...

"Start communicating to replace the information flow. You could take some of the seminars that were going to be presented at the show, the educational tracks, get them videotaped and release them drop by drop throughout the course of the year, and have people who would have been buying booths sponsor them through your media."   That quote comes from an article last week by media consultants John French and Jim Elliott titled A World Without Trade Shows. There have been a lot of suggestions the last couple weeks on how best to replace revenue from events in the upcoming months, and we will be focusing on many of those here.   Here are three ideas—two directly bring in revenue and one brings in leads that lead to revenue (pitching a Writers Guidebook and, commendably in 2018, a book on crisis management):   Recognition initiative. Putman Media puts on an annual Influential Women in Manufacturing Program. The 2018 version won a ...

"In 2016, when Nandita Gupta began her professional career, she was mistakenly assumed by some of her new colleagues to be 'the new HR girl' rather than the new process controls engineer. It was a less-than-inspiring welcome into life as a professional woman in engineering, but Gupta was undeterred, committed to earning the trust of her direct co-workers as well as operators on the plant floor. Now, at 26, she is leading the effort at Georgia-Pacific to develop a mentor network that will connect young and rising engineers with experienced employees who can provide professional guidance and support."