<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" ?>	
            <rss version="2.0" xmlns:media="http://search.yahoo.com/mrss/">
               	<channel>
                  	<title><![CDATA[Recent Videos tagged 'Mentoring' on MIT Video]]></title>
                  	<link>http://video.mit.edu/tagged/mentoring/</link>
                  	<description></description>
                  	<language>en-us</language>
                  	<pubDate>Wed, 30 Nov 2011 23:11:50 GMT</pubDate>
                  	<lastBuildDate>Fri, 24 May 2013 19:20:52 EDT</lastBuildDate>					
					                    	
                        <item>
                         	<title><![CDATA[MIT's Mentor Advocate Partnership (MAP) Program]]></title>                         
                         	<link>http://video.mit.edu/watch/mits-mentor-advocate-partnership-map-program-9744/</link>
                         	<description><![CDATA[The Mentor Advocate Partnership (MAP) is a volunteer mentoring program for MIT students seeking to foster their holistic development along both academic and nonacademic dimensions. Run by the Office of Minority Education, the MAP program is designed to help first-year students by building their relationships with staff and faculty, monitoring their academic performance and personal well-being, and offering encouragement and a proactive support network.]]></description>                         
                         	<media:thumbnail url="http://video.mit.edu/assets/img/videos/165/20120128154604-8-gNXJmlCCOZ8.jpg" height="100" width="165" />                         
                        	<pubDate>Wed, 30 Nov 2011 23:11:50 GMT</pubDate>
                        	<guid>http://video.mit.edu/watch/mits-mentor-advocate-partnership-map-program-9744/</guid>
                      	</item>
                                          	
                        <item>
                         	<title><![CDATA[Bridging the gap from lab-to-market at the Deshpande Center]]></title>                         
                         	<link>http://video.mit.edu/watch/bridging-the-gap-from-lab-to-market-at-the-deshpande-center-7460/</link>
                         	<description><![CDATA[
        Movie ideas from the lab to the market place at the MIT Deshpande Center for Technological Innovation
      ]]></description>                         
                         	<media:thumbnail url="http://video.mit.edu/assets/img/videos/165/20120125135710-9-1_a7b36jd2.jpg" height="100" width="165" />                         
                        	<pubDate>Thu, 21 Apr 2011 21:20:19 GMT</pubDate>
                        	<guid>http://video.mit.edu/watch/bridging-the-gap-from-lab-to-market-at-the-deshpande-center-7460/</guid>
                      	</item>
                                          	
                        <item>
                         	<title><![CDATA[Effective Practices for Recruitment, Mentoring, and Retention]]></title>                         
                         	<link>http://video.mit.edu/watch/effective-practices-for-recruitment-mentoring-and-retention-9678/</link>
                         	<description><![CDATA[
        03/29/2011 8:30 AM KresgeBarbara Liskov, Institute Professor and Associate Provost for Faculty Equity, MIT;  ;  Lotte Bailyn, T. Wilson (1953) Professor of Management Emerita, MIT Sloan School of Management;  Millie Dresselhaus, HM , Institute Professor, and Professor of Physics and Electrical Engineering;  Abigail Stewart, Sandra Schwartz Tangri Distinguished University Professor of Psychology and Women's Studies, University of Michigan;  Cherry Murray, '73 PhD '78, John A. and Elizabeth S. Armstrong Professor of Engineering and Applied Sciences and Professor of Physics, Harvard UniversityDescription: With many years of academic and corporate workplace experience among them, these panelists share expertise and best practices for recruiting and retaining women to science and engineering careers.

Mildred Dresselhaus came to MIT to teach physics to engineering students. Although she received a scholarship funding women in science, she always believed &quot;it was important for men to take you seriously, and not to worry about your sex.&quot; Dresselhaus feels she &quot;works for her students, and they work for her,&quot; and says she learned a lot about teaching and providing for students' careers from her years as a mother to four children.  She believes mentoring serves an important function on campus, for men and women, and that it can prove particularly helpful to women, who may lack self&quot;confidence. Her mentoring, which includes weekly meetings with some young women faculty, emphasizes some basic ideas, such as curiosity, creativity, being skeptical and thinking innovatively. She also wants her prot_g_es to learn how to &quot;handle disappointment,&quot; since work &quot;at the cutting edge doesn't work most of the time.&quot;  She is particularly sympathetic to the challenges of combining work and family life, which still falls most heavily on women, and the continuing requirement that women demand equal treatment &quot;and stick up for themselves.&quot;

Women leave their university positions, says Lotte Bailyn, for two primary reasons: their sense of a hostile climate, such as lack of department head support, leading to loss of confidence and productivity; and the difficulties of managing child care, elder care and dual careers. Universities can achieve greater success with retention by systematically undertaking climate surveys that demand administrative follow&quot;up; sensitizing faculty and administrators to gender bias; including women proportionately in committee work and decision&quot;making; and offering family policies, including help with dual career couples.  Bailyn hopes that universities will come to collaborate and coordinate on issues of retention, perhaps with recruitment consortia.

Cherry Murray brings decades of experience at one of the nation's premier research labs to her administrative position at Harvard.  She derides the &quot;Darwinian leadership model&quot; that holds sway in academia, which &quot;leaves academic scientists and engineers to their own devices to kind of stumble into management and leadership positions.  Murray sees this as &quot;wrongheaded,&quot; and that leadership is a learned trait, which can be fostered by &quot;actually training people.&quot; She recommends the kind of leadership development employed by Bell Labs, where managers select &quot;a few stars&quot; to develop as leaders for top positions; mentoring these individuals and middle&quot;level managers; offering challenging assignments internally, and educational opportunities externally; regular, constructive reviews; networking opportunities with others at the same level; and succession planning exercises. Sensitivity training to offset potential &quot;undervaluing of women or minorities&quot; is extremely important, says Murray, and &quot;the upper level management is completely key.&quot; She believes this model could and should &quot;be morphed and used effectively in academia.&quot;
About the Speaker(s): Barbara Liskov has served at MIT since 1972. Previously, she worked at Mitre Corporation in computer science research and development.  Liskov received her B.A. in mathematics from Stanford University, and her M.S. and Ph.D. from Stanford in computer science.
Liskov was named one of the 50 most important women in science by Discover Magazine. She is a member of the National Academy of Engineering, and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. She won the 2008 Turing Award, and the IEEE 2004 John von Neumann Medal.Host(s): Office of the President, MIT150 Inventional Wisdom
      ]]></description>                         
                         	<media:thumbnail url="http://video.mit.edu/assets/img/videos/165/20120127222237-9-1_powfkvc7.jpg" height="100" width="165" />                         
                        	<pubDate>Tue, 29 Mar 2011 04:00:00 GMT</pubDate>
                        	<guid>http://video.mit.edu/watch/effective-practices-for-recruitment-mentoring-and-retention-9678/</guid>
                      	</item>
                                          	
                        <item>
                         	<title><![CDATA[Academic Leaders: Perspectives and Current Challenges]]></title>                         
                         	<link>http://video.mit.edu/watch/academic-leaders-perspectives-and-current-challenges-9675/</link>
                         	<description><![CDATA[
        03/28/2011 10:30 AM KresgeDr. Ian A. Waitz, Jerome C. Hunsaker Professor and Department Head, Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics, MIT ;  Shirley Ann Jackson, '68, PhD '73, President, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute;  Charles M. Vest, HM, MIT President Emeritus and President, National Academy of EngineeringDescription: Two influential academic leaders, both holding a significant place in MIT's history, reflect on efforts to achieve gender equity in science and engineering at MIT and other institutions of higher learning. 

&quot;In spite of steps to promote diversity, underrepresentation of women at all faculty levels persists,&quot; says Shirley Ann Jackson.  She admires MIT's decade&quot;plus work on these issues, which spurred much broader self&quot; scrutiny and policy changes among research universities, yet notes that &quot;we're still a long way from gender equity in science and engineering.&quot;  Jackson says, &quot;Not knowing, not understanding and not intending do not get us off the hook. We're still responsible for bias that puts obstacles in front of talented, capable people.&quot; This is not merely a moral problem, Jackson says, but a practical one, too, because society cannot afford to deny itself the expertise of so many competent people &quot;when we face immense global challenges.&quot;

At every step of the way, from entering college as a science or engineering major, sticking with a course of studies through graduate school,  and then attaining tenure, women need &quot;bridges&quot; to help them get to the next level, whether through mentors, flexible tenure clocks or childcare. Jackson notes that the &quot;unequal burden of family turns gaps in the road into chasms.&quot;  She detects new hurdles on the horizon as well: family and gender issues are still viewed as &quot;women's issues,&quot; at least beyond MIT; and economic pressures may create resistance to gender bias measures. Jackson also points to the phenomenon of &quot;pink collar discrimination,&quot; where salary levels drop in some fields such as biomedical engineering as women's numbers approach men's, suggesting that women may be undervalued, or lack tough salary negotiating skills. Jackson believes social networks may be key to introducing the next generation to science and engineering, and helping women establish and maintain careers.

Speaking &quot;as a white male,&quot; Charles Vest says men of his generation in academia assumed that &quot;if you filled the undergraduate pipeline,&quot; you'd solve the problem of underrepresentation of women in science and engineering professions. The reality was different, admits Vest, because even if 50% of the undergraduates in these fields were women, many fewer ended up with careers in science and engineering. Vest describes the data&quot;driven studies conducted at MIT, and the groundbreaking policies that followed, which led to advances in bolstering and retaining numbers of women graduates and faculty. He points to similar ventures at other universities.

But for all the work to address gender issues in academia, major leaks persist in the pipeline. He displays national data showing how the number of women Ph.D.'s has grown enormously in life sciences in the past decade, but lags greatly in physical sciences and especially in engineering. A recent study showed that only 1.6% of all female university graduates are engineers, which greatly disturbs Vest: &quot;This is not a number that can sustain our society going into the future.&quot;  Ultimately, he says, &quot;Numbers really do matter,&quot; because &quot;we have to achieve critical mass before the culture starts to change.&quot;
About the Speaker(s): Ian A. Waitz was named Dean of Engineering in February 2011. He also serves as the Director of the Partnership for AiR Transportation Noise and Emissions Reduction (PARTNER), an FAA/NASA/Transport Canada&quot;sponsored Center of Excellence. His principal areas of interest are the modeling and evaluation of climate, local air quality and noise impacts of aviation.
Waitz has written approximately 75 technical publications, including a report to the U.S. Congress on aviation and the environment. He holds three patents and has consulted for many organizations. During 2002&quot;2005 he was Deputy Head of the Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics. He has also served as an associate editor of the AIAA Journal of Propulsion and Power. In 2003, Waitz received a NASA Turning Goals Into Reality Award for Noise Reduction. He was awarded the FAA 2007 Excellence in Aviation Research Award. He is a Fellow of the AIAA, and an ASME and ASEE member. He was honored with the 2002 MIT Class of 1960 Innovation in Education Award and appointment as an MIT MacVicar Faculty Fellow in 2003.
Waitz received his B.S. in 1986 from the Pennsylvania State University; his M.S. in 1988, from George Washington University; and his Ph.D.in 1991, from the California Institute of Technology.Host(s): Office of the President, MIT150 Inventional Wisdom
      ]]></description>                         
                         	<media:thumbnail url="http://video.mit.edu/assets/img/videos/165/20120127222236-9-1_evx26dy4.jpg" height="100" width="165" />                         
                        	<pubDate>Mon, 28 Mar 2011 04:00:00 GMT</pubDate>
                        	<guid>http://video.mit.edu/watch/academic-leaders-perspectives-and-current-challenges-9675/</guid>
                      	</item>
                                          	
                        <item>
                         	<title><![CDATA[The Status of Women in Science and Engineering at MIT ]]></title>                         
                         	<link>http://video.mit.edu/watch/the-status-of-women-in-science-and-engineering-at-mit-9674/</link>
                         	<description><![CDATA[
        03/28/2011 9:00 AM KresgeNancy Hopkins, Amgen, Inc. Professor of BiologyDescription: It's difficult to imagine that at one point in her career, National Academy of Science member Nancy Hopkins thought to quit. In her talk, she relates the historical challenges facing women in science and engineering at MIT, the university's responses to these problems, and how in the end Hopkins avoided becoming a poster child of the 'leaky pipeline' -- a term of art for the high rate of attrition among talented women in engineering and science academia.

Hopkins weaves together a personal tale with the larger story of gender discrimination in U.S. academia. She first captures a century of women at MIT, from the handful of female admissions starting in the late 19th century, to the current numbers: 45% of all undergraduates, 29% of graduate students and 17% of the faculty.  However, there were no women science or engineering faculty in the first 100 years. During this period, the exclusion of top&quot;notch women researchers from major academic posts was common, says Hopkins, a reflection of the fact that &quot;societal beliefs can overpower merit.&quot;  A major turning point arrived in the 1960s and 1970s, when the civil rights and women's movements flung open workplace doors to women. 

But Hopkins notes that even after passage of laws against overt job discrimination, obstacles emerged to the advancement of women scientists and engineers, &quot;unanticipated and largely invisiblealmost as effective at excluding women as the fact they couldn't get a job at all.&quot;  There was sexual harassment, which &quot;made it impossible for women to be equal in the workplace.&quot; Hopkins recalls in her undergraduate days grossly inappropriate behavior toward her by a Nobel Prize&quot;winning biologist in a Harvard lab, but &quot;didn't grasp until years later that a man who treats a student that way may not be genuinely interested in her lab notes.&quot;  Mentors who could smooth the way to the next career step were few and far between for women students and young faculty. And unlike men, women have to choose between children or career. Hopkins says &quot;women in my generation instinctively never talked about pregnancy or children at workYou wanted to make sure people knew you wanted to be a nun of science, and in fact personally, I was.&quot;  Hopkins cites as well &quot;unconscious gender bias,&quot; where women's research appeared to colleagues of both genders less valuable than identical research by a man, and accompanying marginalization in university departments. Up against these problems, who could blame women for departing their professions, asks Hopkins.


At MIT, serious relief arrived in 1994, after Hopkins, demoralized after trying in vain to obtain more lab space for her zebrafish experiments, found similarly unhappy women colleagues who banded together to press for institutional solutions.  Hopkins literally went about measuring lab space and provided hard data about gender bias to then MIT President Charles Vest, as evidence that women had less space available to conduct their research.  (This &quot;tape measure&quot; turning point has earned Hopkins an unintended place in MIT history, while the tape measure itself is on display at the MIT Museum.) 

In stages, over the subsequent years, MIT began intensively recruiting women scientists and engineers for its faculty; creating new family leave policies; and placing women in top administrative roles, among a number of remedies.  19% of science faculty are now women, and surveys show a much higher level of satisfaction among this group. But Hopkins says the job is not yet finished: Women at MIT, from students to faculty, report &quot;the perception that when women advance, it is due to the lowering of standards.&quot;  The leaky pipeline won't be fixed until &quot;this insidious belief that women are less good than men&quot; vanishes within MIT and society at large.

http://museum.mit.edu/150/71

About the Speaker(s): Nancy Hopkins earned widespread recognition for cloning vertebrate developmental genes. Using a technique called insertional mutagenesis -- designed for such invertebrate animals as the fruit fly -- Hopkins's laboratory has cloned hundreds of genes that play a role in creating a viable fish embryo. 
Hopkins' research earned her 1998 election to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, 1999 election to the Institute of Medicine and 2004 election to the National Academy of Sciences. She speaks frequently about gender equity issues in science.
Hopkins obtained a B.A. from Radcliffe College in 1964 and a Ph.D. from the department of Molecular Biology and Biochemistry at Harvard University in 1971. Host(s): Office of the President, MIT150 Inventional Wisdom
      ]]></description>                         
                         	<media:thumbnail url="http://video.mit.edu/assets/img/videos/165/20120127222236-9-1_vuf2zv7u.jpg" height="100" width="165" />                         
                        	<pubDate>Mon, 28 Mar 2011 04:00:00 GMT</pubDate>
                        	<guid>http://video.mit.edu/watch/the-status-of-women-in-science-and-engineering-at-mit-9674/</guid>
                      	</item>
                                          	
                        <item>
                         	<title><![CDATA[How to Make a Great Mistake]]></title>                         
                         	<link>http://video.mit.edu/watch/how-to-make-a-great-mistake-9706/</link>
                         	<description><![CDATA[
        02/24/2011 12:00 PM Wong AuditoriumEllyn McColgan, Director, Primerica, Inc. and Executive Advisor, Aquiline&quot;LCCDescription: Take it from Ellyn McColgan: Colossal, cringe&quot;inducing screw&quot;ups can make rather than break a career. In a self&quot;deprecating talk aimed at educating an audience training for corporate leadership, McColgan, who rose to run businesses managing trillions in assets, reveals how she learned from even the most devastating mistakes.

&quot;The single greatest weakness most people share,&quot; says McColgan is the &quot;unwillingness to take a risk that might lead to make a mistake.&quot; But the problem is &quot;you cannot lead from the middle, only from the front.&quot;  This might sound intuitive, she acknowledges, but people avoid putting out &quot;big ideas&quot; because of the possibility of failure or hostility from colleagues. The fact is, McColgan states, we must learn to make and recover from mistakes in order to advance.

McColgan identifies several key categories of mistakes, and describes them using episodes from her own work life. The &quot;execution&quot; mistake often results &quot;from messing up something like time, resources, quality or the deliverable itself.&quot; At Fidelity, McColgan was tasked with reorganizing a client services division that was losing money. She developed a 15&quot;month plan, with 2,000 action steps, millions in new technology, that when launched, &quot;didn't work: We couldn't get a check to a participant in an envelope on time.&quot;  Her boss stopped talking to her and she wanted to run away. 

Instead, McColgan came up with a fix, apologized to clients and her boss, and learned that &quot;a good idea poorly executed doesn't count, no matter how great the plan was on paper.&quot; She also realized she had to share more and control less, and never shrink away from or conceal errors. While this episode was &quot;terrifying&quot; at the time, McColgan gained confidence from it.

Other typical mistakes involve politics -- knowing who has the power in an organization to help you get things done, and how to read the work environment strategically; and personal weaknesses.  McColgan shares missteps she made in these critical areas. In one case, she initially declined an invitation to become the assistant to a CEO in her firm because it seemed too large a leap. After a glass of wine, she reconsidered, and rather than serving as an MBA trainee, became instrumental in a giant brokerage firm merger.  In another case addressing issues of personal style,  she indulged her tendency for directness, and was told off by a colleague, learning that &quot;people do not always want to know what I think of them.&quot;  Ultimately, says McColgan, &quot;making mistakes helps you to learn your own limits and the limits of an organization, so you will not be afraid to lead.&quot;
About the Speaker(s): Ellyn McColgan has been a senior executive in the financial services industry for over 25 years. She began her career in the industry with Shearson American Express after graduating from Harvard Business School in 1983. She joined Fidelity Investments in 1990 where she worked for 17 years developing an expertise in growing the retail and institutional distribution businesses. Between the years 2002 and 2007, Ellyn built the Fidelity Brokerage Company to be the largest brokerage company in the United States as measured by client assets and client accounts, growing the business to $1.9 trillion in assets. She left the firm in 2007 as the President of Distribution and Operations. After leaving Fidelity, Ellyn served as President and Chief Operating Officer of Morgan Stanley Global Wealth Management Group where she led an organization of 17,000 people and $6.5 billion in revenues. She left Morgan Stanley in 2009 and is now an executive advisor to Aquiline Capital Partners in New York City. 
McColgan is a trustee of the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston and a member of the President's Council for the Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston. She is the former co&quot;chair of the Securities Industry and Financial Markets Association. Host(s): Sloan School of Management, MIT Sloan School of Management
      ]]></description>                         
                         	<media:thumbnail url="http://video.mit.edu/assets/img/videos/165/20120127222239-9-1_phrm6axa.jpg" height="100" width="165" />                         
                        	<pubDate>Thu, 24 Feb 2011 05:00:00 GMT</pubDate>
                        	<guid>http://video.mit.edu/watch/how-to-make-a-great-mistake-9706/</guid>
                      	</item>
                                          	
                        <item>
                         	<title><![CDATA[Deploying Our Gifts for the Betterment of Humankind: What Would Dr. King Say about Us?]]></title>                         
                         	<link>http://video.mit.edu/watch/deploying-our-gifts-for-the-betterment-of-humankind-what-would-dr-king-say-about-us-9547/</link>
                         	<description><![CDATA[
        02/04/2010 7:30 AM Walker Morss HallGerry Hudson, Executive Vice President of SEIU &quot;Service Employees International Union;  Dr. Susan Hockfield, President, MITDescription: Woven into the fabric of MIT life, says Susan Hockfield, is the &quot;perpetual striving to be ever better.&quot;  To this end, Hockfield has been laboring to create a &quot;true culture of inclusion.&quot;  Hockfield now has a tool to aid her efforts: a report on MIT faculty race and diversity -- the result of 2 _ years of study.  It documents the sometimes painful experience of MIT faculty members of underrepresented groups, but also provides practical steps for ameliorating the situation.  Strong mentoring of junior faculty  is a starting place, so new hires don't immediately begin struggling in &quot;a sink or swim environment,&quot; which is &quot;terribly wasteful and harmful to morale.&quot;   Hockfield hopes the report will spur a more open discussion of race at MIT.  Ultimately, she'd like to reinforce the idea that strengthening MIT's diversity is &quot;pivotal to helping us magnify and deploy our shared gifts for mankind.&quot;

Gerry Hudson has long dedicated himself to the cause of organized labor, such as nursing home employees like his own mother.  His vision was shaped in large part by what he calls &quot;the real King message,&quot; exemplified in a speech given to the AFL&quot;CIO in 1961. In this address, entitled &quot;When the Negro Wins, Labor Wins,&quot; King made clear his battle was not merely against white supremacy and racism in America, but against poverty as well.  &quot;The achievement of civil rights,&quot; says Hudson, &quot;was merely a means to building the right kind of movement,&quot; aimed at securing a &quot;just society free of war and poverty.&quot;

While King implored the AFL&quot;CIO to join with him &quot;in creating a coalition of conscience,&quot; labor leaders of the day turned a cold shoulder.  So &quot;the Negro was asked to go off and fight Jim Crow&quot; without labor's support, says Hudson. This marked a momentous failure for progressive politics, he believes -- an abortive attempt to ally the civil rights movement to the cause of labor and economic justice. This failure was soon followed by the rise of the Dixiecrats and George Wallace, the loss of Democrats in northern states, and ultimately &quot;the long nightmare of American politics  that has swept the country for more than 40 years.&quot;

The labor movement has also gone into decline, and &quot;if trends continue, there will be no labor unions in 20 years in this country.&quot;  Not coincidentally, wealth has become increasingly concentrated, and there is an &quot;outrageous inequality&quot; in society now.  Hudson found solace in Barack Obama's election, and his embrace of King's message of a broad politics of hope.  It was &quot;a remarkable passing of the baton.&quot;  Yet, a year after that election, Hudson still looks for the promised changes in health care, labor reform, and green jobs.  He finally believes that the creation of a more just America, &quot;in which wealth is more equitably distributed, in which every child, no matter who or where they are in this country, can flourish,&quot; will not happen unless all his listeners put their &quot;gifts on the table.&quot;
About the Speaker(s): Gerry Hudson leads the SEIU's long&quot;term care work division, focusing on building a voice for the union's 580,000 long term care members.  He is also concerned with issues of environmental justice, particularly the disproportionate impacts of environmental degradation on low&quot;income and minority communities. He led the first&quot;ever U.S. labor delegation to the United Nations' climate change meeting in Bali in 2007.
Before Hudson came to SEIU in 1978, he worked at the Hebrew Home for the Aged in Riverdale, NY.  He was elected executive vice president for District 1199 New York, and coordinated this group's incorporation into SEIU.  Hudson has also served as political director of the New York State Democratic Party, and led the union's campaigns in support of Jesse Jackson's presidential efforts in New York.Host(s): Office of the President, MIT Annual Breakfast Celebrating the Life and Legacy of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
      ]]></description>                         
                         	<media:thumbnail url="http://video.mit.edu/assets/img/videos/165/20120127222225-9-1_uns6lycg.jpg" height="100" width="165" />                         
                        	<pubDate>Thu, 04 Feb 2010 05:00:00 GMT</pubDate>
                        	<guid>http://video.mit.edu/watch/deploying-our-gifts-for-the-betterment-of-humankind-what-would-dr-king-say-about-us-9547/</guid>
                      	</item>
                                          	
                        <item>
                         	<title><![CDATA[Leadership and Entrepreneurship]]></title>                         
                         	<link>http://video.mit.edu/watch/leadership-and-entrepreneurship-9505/</link>
                         	<description><![CDATA[
        10/20/2009 4:00 PM e51&quot;335David Fialkow, Managing Director, General Catalyst Partners;  Ben Fischman, President and Chief Executive Officer,  Retail Convergence, Inc.;  Alex Laats, 89, President,  BBN Technologies' Delta DivisionDescription: While their ventures couldn't be more dissimilar -- engineering high tech defense gear for soldiers, and running an exclusive online boutique -- this panel's entrepreneurs share some common experiences and lessons. 

Moderator David Fialkowwould &quot;love to tell you I'm wicked brilliant, analytical, clairvoyant, but I'm not.&quot;  As he sees it, a large part of business success depends on &quot;the people you meet, and understanding how relationships lead to other things.&quot;  One member of Fialkow's extensive yet intimate business network is Ben Fischman, who affirms this emphasis on relationships as he recounts his own journey through several enterprises. 

As a Boston University junior, Fischman hungered to channel his energy into business, and with some friends, seized on the idea of a store selling truly comfortable baseball caps.  The scheme earned venture capital funding, and rolled out over several years, five LIDS  stores to hundreds of kiosks countrywide.  During these initial years, Fischman gained the &quot;most important wisdom: to surround myself with people who know a lot of stuff I don't know.&quot;  Another lesson arrived with the hire of a CEO &quot;who within six months, single&quot;handedly destroyed the company's culture&quot; and led it to Chapter 11. Fischman now takes a more leisurely pace vetting candidates before hiring them.  

New opportunities arose, leading to e&quot;commerce ventures and his current company, Rue La La, a &quot;viral&quot; online business that &quot;creates incredible addiction&quot; in its customers.&quot;  Fischman modestly describes himself as &quot;a one&quot;trick pony,&quot; capable of pulling together a team of great people &quot;with thick skin, creativity and guts,&quot; who can adjust when the business plan doesn't unfold as written.

Another Fialkow colleague, Alex Laats, found his way into business in a roundabout way.  An MIT math and physics major with a Harvard law degree, Laats ended up in MIT's Technology Licensing Office, where he seized opportunities &quot;to get close to technology and entrepreneurs.&quot;  By 1996, he was &quot;getting antsy to start his own business.&quot;   He found venture capital for a business phone product that was ultimately acquired by 3Com.  His next enterprise was &quot;not a disaster but not a success,&quot; raising $42 million in a single round of  money&quot;raising, in 1999. But the company &quot;hadn't solved its major problems yet,&quot; and it was a time when the &quot;business world ran into telecom breakdown.&quot; Still, Laats gained from this experience: &quot;It's about not being successful. It's important to know those lessons are often times more valuable than victory lessons.&quot; 

His most recent work involves a new division at famed R&amp;D services company BBN, creating products for the government, among others.  It wasn't the easiest fit at first, admits Laats: &quot;I started with nothing, just me and two guys. They didn't know what to do with me.&quot; But he's already got some major successes under his belt. There's Boomerang, a counter sniper product used by American soldiers in Afghanistan, and another venture that brought in $75 million in revenue last year, profits that prove the viability of his business concept.
About the Speaker(s): David Fialkow is the co&quot;founder and managing director of General Catalyst Partners, a venture capital firm specializing in technology&quot;based companies. Fialkow and General Catalyst co&quot;founded Upromise, a rewards program designed to help parents save for college.

At MIT, Fialkow teaches a Sloan Innovation Period course called Leadership and Entrepreneurship, which explores a range of entrepreneurship issues, from how to attract venture capital to developing the skills needed to lead. . He is also a member of the MIT Leadership Center Advisory Council.

Fialkow previously co&quot;founded and operated numerous businesses focused on building applied technology&quot;based platforms and tools. These include National Leisure Group, Alliance Development Group, Retail Growth ATM Systems and Starboard Cruise Services.

He serves on the boards of several nonprofit organizations, including the Pan&quot;Mass Challenge and the Boys and Girls Club of Boston. He is a graduate of Colgate University and Boston College Law School.Host(s): Sloan School of Management, MIT Leadership Center
      ]]></description>                         
                         	<media:thumbnail url="http://video.mit.edu/assets/img/videos/165/20120127222221-9-1_5tflipuo.jpg" height="100" width="165" />                         
                        	<pubDate>Tue, 20 Oct 2009 04:00:00 GMT</pubDate>
                        	<guid>http://video.mit.edu/watch/leadership-and-entrepreneurship-9505/</guid>
                      	</item>
                                          	
                        <item>
                         	<title><![CDATA[Sundiata Jangha]]></title>                         
                         	<link>http://video.mit.edu/watch/sundiata-jangha-4300/</link>
                         	<description><![CDATA[
        &quot;Has AAA Got You Covered? - Building Effective Mentoring Relationships from the Bottom Up&quot; Recorded on 7/28/2009
      ]]></description>                         
                         	<media:thumbnail url="http://video.mit.edu/assets/img/videos/165/20120125135323-9-1_5nhh7qjo.jpg" height="100" width="165" />                         
                        	<pubDate>Thu, 30 Jul 2009 02:44:16 GMT</pubDate>
                        	<guid>http://video.mit.edu/watch/sundiata-jangha-4300/</guid>
                      	</item>
                                          	
                        <item>
                         	<title><![CDATA[MIT ZigZag Episode #16]]></title>                         
                         	<link>http://video.mit.edu/watch/mit-zigzag-episode-16-2665/</link>
                         	<description><![CDATA[
        
Learn how entrepreneurship is at the core of the MIT culture. From the 100K Competition, Deshpande Center, Enterprise Forum, Venture Mentoring Service and more, see how students, faculty, and alumni are part of the ecosystem.

      ]]></description>                         
                         	<media:thumbnail url="http://video.mit.edu/assets/img/videos/165/20120125135109-9-1_0zsajptw.jpg" height="100" width="165" />                         
                        	<pubDate>Wed, 06 Jun 2007 20:50:42 GMT</pubDate>
                        	<guid>http://video.mit.edu/watch/mit-zigzag-episode-16-2665/</guid>
                      	</item>
                                          	
                        <item>
                         	<title><![CDATA[Is There a Black Architect in the House?]]></title>                         
                         	<link>http://video.mit.edu/watch/is-there-a-black-architect-in-the-house-9239/</link>
                         	<description><![CDATA[
        03/16/2007 5:30 PM 34-101Ted Landsmark, President and CEO of the Boston Architectural College;  Mark Jarzombek, PhD '86;  Ted LandsmarkDescription: -If there is any kind of profession that's gotten away with a kind of benign neglect of diversifying itself over the course of last 30 years, it's architecture,&quot; says Ted Landsmark. With one chart after another, he plots the dismal record of design schools, firms and professional associations in modifying their singularly white profiles.  

Of the 100 thousand licensed architects in the U.S. today, 1,571 are African American and 186 of these are African American women.  In 2003, a mere 40 Masters students graduated. And more than 1/3rd of these graduates obtained their degrees from an historically black college or university.  The rest of the schools offering architecture educations have graduated a few score of African Americans, compared to thousands of white students.   -If we were to triple the number of African Americans who graduated from programs over the next decade,&quot; says Landsmark, -we would still only be up to 10%.&quot;  

Why are law and business much more diversified professions than architecture?, queries Landsmark.  He cites one argument that -smart black guys won't choose to become architects because they can't make as much money as lawyers.&quot;  But compensation levels are just fine, he notes, and -if people of color are too smart to go into the field, what's wrong with all the white men who do?&quot;  The economic side is bogus. Instead, Landsmark notes that most black architecture graduates of historically black colleges opt to avoid the abuse of working for a firm and taking a licensing exam when they can go directly to work for HUD, or the Army Corps of Engineers.  Landsmark also cites the patronage and class system involved in obtaining private work, which -determines who can survive in a field.&quot;  White social networks deprive African Americans of start-up opportunities and access to markets. There's also a noticeable absence of black role models, and African Americans' own orientation toward -community based work that is not celebrated by publications, schools or awards.&quot;

At a time when there is a greater global need for designers, and when architectural firms are eager to tap into new markets, the nation can't continue to ignore the African-American talent pool.  Among other solutions, Landsmark suggests increasing public awareness of architecture, targeting young people.  This might mean scholarships, or putting card tables out in front of Home Depots in communities of color.  Architecture firms should invest in their black associates -- growing their careers and increasing their visibility, and establish mentoring programs. Radical steps must be taken, he says, -or someone else will stand here and use the same slides&quot; 10 years from now.
About the Speaker(s): Prior to his work at the Boston Architectural College, Ted Landsmark was Dean of Graduate and Continuing Education at the Massachusetts College of Art.  He also served as the Director of Boston's Office of Community Partnerships. 
Landsmark has received fellowships from the Museum of Early Southern Decorative Arts and the National Science Foundation, and he serves on the editorial board for Architecture Boston. Landsmark also serves as a trustee to numerous arts-related foundations including Boston's Institute of Contemporary Art and the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston. Landsmark is widely recognized as an important advocate of diversity and of the African American cause in schools of architecture.
Landsmark earned a B.A. and J.D. from Yale University and a Ph.D. from Boston University. Host(s): School of Architecture and Planning, Department of Architecture
      ]]></description>                         
                         	<media:thumbnail url="http://video.mit.edu/assets/img/videos/165/20120127222156-9-1_r44llpt7.jpg" height="100" width="165" />                         
                        	<pubDate>Fri, 16 Mar 2007 04:00:00 GMT</pubDate>
                        	<guid>http://video.mit.edu/watch/is-there-a-black-architect-in-the-house-9239/</guid>
                      	</item>
                      				</channel>
			</rss>
	