Work(s) in Progress

Enchanted

Back in November, Kyra painted in a new style. I have another one of her prints, Moonlit Crossing, which is image #24 of 24 in her main gallery. But with Kyra's new painting, I had one of those I must have this moments and sent her an email. Within a few hours we'd agreed on a price. It took weeks for the paint to dry. Finally she shipped it to me. The day it was to arrive I got this concerning message from UPS: THE PACKAGE IS DELAYED DUE TO A TRAIN DERAILMENT. I kid you not.  Finally it arrived. It then took me another week or two to get a suitable frame for it. At last, it is framed and hung.

The blurry BlackBerry photo does not do it justice. The frame is actually silver which is also hard to tell in this image. But you can get the idea.

You can see a higher quality image on Kyra's blog.

Thanks Kyra!

Image copyright to Kyra Wilson.

Coming up for air

This week had far too many days that started with 7 AM meetings and ended with me arriving home at about 10 PM. Even knowing that this is what my week would look like, I started Turbulence Training this week. It was simply time. I took my fine before pictures and posted them to the Turbulence Training members forum. I have done what I can with the workouts. I'm down about 3 pounds from my bloated start. Muscles that thought they were forgotten have been reawoken.

Today I came home to this surprise in the mail. Months ago I had seen this on Irene's blog and googled to find out how to get one. Someone, who I have long forgotten, had a link on their website to a Nike women's page. So much time had passed that I thought it was a long expired perk for registering.

Perfect timing.

I needed this.

Uncovering Bias

I came across an article the other day that I have been thinking about ever since.

Here is the start of the article.

The woman in question became a lawyer after some years as a community organizer, married a corporate lawyer and is the mother of two little girls, ages 9 and 6. Herself the daughter of a white American mother and a black African father - here in the United States, a race-conscious country, she is considered black - she served as a state legislator for eight years, and became an inspirational voice for national unity.

Be honest: Do you think this is the biography of someone who could be elected to the U.S. Senate? After less than one term there, do you believe she could be a viable candidate to head the most powerful nation on earth?

I read this and thought "You have got to be kidding me. There is no way that this person is ready to be president." Change the first paragraph to MAN. Behold Barack Obama who I would consider voting for. He is definitely a credible candidate in my mind.

As a woman, I am ashamed that my response to this article was what it was. Bias and discrimination can be so subtle, so insidious. What does it matter that the fictional candidate described is a woman? As a woman, how could I hold it against her and think that the male equivalent of her is ready while she is not? I have personally been granted wonderful opportunities in my life, likely both in spite of or because of being female. And yet, as a woman I have worried about facing bias, not being a source of it.

Gloria Steinem, the author of the above article (it's worth reading the entire thing), has been a champion of women's rights for decades. I was born after she'd discarded her playboy bunny ears, but not by much. I am grateful that she is still there writing to remind me of the subtle biases in our society and in me. 

A room with a view

My new office overlooks the 16th street mall in downtown Denver.

I have not made many changes to my office yet except to bring in a coffee maker. The first image  is what you see when you walk in the door. My old office had brick walls on the inside. I'm enjoying the change.

Today I came back from a meeting over in the main business school building and walked into a big surprise. The enclosed note was from my "friends at Fairfield and Woods" wishing me success in my new position.

It completely made my day.

I had run into one of my friends from Fairfield and Woods at the awards event for the Technology Transfer Office of the University of Colorado.

Our governor, Bill Ritter, gave the keynote address. The state and the university system are focusing on key areas of excellence and opportunities for economic growth: tourism, sustainable energy, bioscience and aerospace.

Through my new position, I now sit on the advisory board for the technology transfer office of the university. As a scientist, I know that many of us are drawn into academic research for the pure joy of discovery. Invention disclosures and patents are not part of our thought processes. The idea of starting our own companies to develop commercializable products is rarely considered or it is considered something that someone else might do with our ideas.

How can I, as the executive director for one of our entrepreneurship centers, facilitate the transfer of the technology out of the university and into the companies in our communities creating jobs? How can we encourage and educate our students and faculty  to think about their research endeavors in a new way? I have been tasked with bioscience and building on our fledgling bioentrepreneurship program.

I love my new job.

More Widgets

This is a test post to see whether my newly installed Intense Debate commenting system is working. You should be able to see my profile here. I've used Intense Debate on other blogs and liked it so wanted to give it a try.

I also finally started using Bloglines to keep track of all of the blogs I read in a single location. I'm up to 53 feeds and expect more. Now rather than clicking through 53 weblinks each morning I can quickly glance at who has updated in the night. I wish I had done this a year ago. I'm sure my list will grow now that I can easily look for the new posts. I'm sure that I will need to sort them by type at some point but for now they are all mixed together.

New Job, week 1

I'm one week into my new job as the Executive Director of the Bard Center for Entrepreneurship.

When I was doing HR training last week one of the other participants asked me how I spend me day. I half-jokingly replied that my job was talking with people. Yes I do things, and write things, and will ultimately help build new programs but a large majority of my time is spent meeting  and talking with people. There are many people to meet: students, incubator companies, faculty, advisory council members, interested community members, potential program sponsors, etc.

Soon it will be time to begin advertising our annual business plan competition. We have some terrific new courses being offered for the first time this semester including one geared for people interested in launching non-profit ventures as well as a series of classes in bioscience entrepreneurship. I wish these courses had been available when I was student. I definitely plan to sit in on the classes I did not get the opportunity to take as a student.

I have been incredibly fortunate in that three of the people who have held this job in the past have been willing to meet with me, share their insights, and give advice and suggestions. The Chair of my advisory committee has been wonderfully generous with his time, advice, experience and insight.  More importantly, all seem willing to help or provide candid feedback going forward. In these early days, it is difficult to know in what ways I will need their help or in what areas I will need their insights. However, it is reassuring knowing they will be there if and when needed.

Week 1 summary: busy, optimistic

Pondering Conflict Resolution

I have been struggling with a conflict avoider over the last few months. I simply cannot get this person to engage in meaningful conversation to move toward resolution. As a learning experience it has been somewhat fascinating but in the day to day it's been fairly frustrating.

There are five major ways that people deal with conflicts that arise.

1. Avoid - truly these folks just avoid the conflict at all costs.
2. Accommodate - these folks give in to the demands of others. It's fast but then they rarely get what they want.
3. Compete - these are your typical "win-lose" folks. They must get what they want and you must not get what you want.
4. Compromise - these folks meet in the middle with neither really getting what they want. So neither person wins but neither really loses either.
5. Collaborate - these folks want to find a way for both parties to win and will work together until they do.

Depending on the situation, any of these can be very effective ways to resolve conflict. If you're interested, you can determine your preferred method of dealing with conflict with this simple test (pdf). I'm generally a collaborator, but have certainly used each of these methods at different times.

But lately I've been at an impasse. There is a situation involving both money and credibility that I would like to see change. I have raised my concerns with the person who has the power to change the situation who merely says to me "I understand." Well, that is a mighty conversation stopper. In fact we have had the same exact conversation several times over the last few months. My concerns have been heard and allegedly understood. But there is no action to resolve the underlying issue. 

I am befuddled. Is it that the person merely does not care about my concerns? Or is the person simply avoiding a difficult conversation? How does one get an avoider to engage? Is it possible? Or is the appropriate response to avoid the avoider until something has changed?

Happy New Year

Many of the blogs I read have shunned New Year's resolutions this year. I personally like them. I like to take the time to ponder my goals for the coming year. What do I want to accomplish? What do I hope to achieve?

I just looked at my post from last year. Talk about prophetic. I wrote, I feel some huge change is coming that will likely impact any plans I make, any goals I set. Wow.

It's been an incredible year. My husband finished law school, passed the Colorado Bar and the Patent Bar exams and began work as a patent attorney. I applied for and ultimately won my dream job. Tomorrow I begin a new career. I feel so excited, nervous, hopeful, driven, overwhelmed and exuberant all at the same time. I hope that I will sleep. It is like the night before Christmas morning. Tomorrow I get to open presents.

I have spent the holiday week tidying up details related to my old job as the acting director of my research institute. We are in the process of closing a 50,000 square foot facility (pdf) and moving the research laboratories to the main University campus. Our last biotech tenant moved out last week. We will probably move our own laboratories in the next two weeks. I almost got everything done that I hoped to before leaving. Today I sent numerous memos out to the affected people for those last details on so very many work(s) in progress.

It took some serious negotiating by I am remaining as the principal investigator on my research grant at my old institution, retaining my research faculty appointment there. I have been so incredibly fortunately in my supervisors. My former boss who stepped down as Dean over the summer has agreed to serve as my co-principal investigator and oversee the day to day operations of the project. His replacement, who started on September 1, requested that I give her (and my current institution) my Saturdays for the duration of the research grant. She rightfully reminded me of my need to finish what I had started, to complete and publish the work. My new boss, Dean of the Business School at a different institution, has agreed to all of this. I am truly blessed. I won't sleep much in the coming year but it's the right thing. Thankfully the NIH has approved these changes in principal and several folks helped me get all of the appropriate paperwork filed before the holiday.

So what does 2008 hold? I have no idea. I am heading into the unknown, leaving that well worn path.

However, there are some things, beyond work, that I plan to focus on.

(1) Fitness. With all of the other changes over the last year, fitness fell off of my list of priorities. It's time. I've found a plan that I think I can stick with. I mentioned a few days ago that I had recently invested in Turbulence Training. I'm not sure whether I will sign up for the 12 week challenge (but the lure of prizes does tempt me), but I will start doing the workouts 3 days a week. Of course the first one I tried, workout A from the 500 workout, left me virtually crippled for 3 days. I need to start with the beginner program or perhaps the intermediate. I was reading through one of the e-books and he recommended that for the first week you just do one set of everything. I think that would have been much smarter for me.

(2) Spanish. Living in Colorado it's somewhat embarrassing that I know absolutely NO Spanish. I took French and Latin in high school with more Latin in college. I ordered Learning Spanish Like Crazy last year but have not get gotten past lesson 5. When I ordered it, from learningspanishlikecrazy.com, it came with FSI Programmatic Spanish Level 1 and Level 2 as well. Like with fitness, this is surely something that I commit to regularly. I even have some of the CDs in my car, I just don't listen to them. Partly this is just because I learn best in the classroom. Partly just laziness. And perhaps a bit of avoidance of an activity that is challenging. It does not come naturally. I may need to actually sign up for a graded class just to get over the hump. My husband is going to be taking a few more classes this spring so I should have some time and a great role model.