Greater IBMer Julie Shore: A Volunteer SWOOPer

“…..SWOOP just goes in and totally transforms whatever they’re working on….70 women will descend on a property, and it’s transformation, what happens.”

“…It’s like we just swoop in and when we leave, everything is dramatically different.”

Those words come from two women who are part of a Raleigh, N.C. organization called SWOOP: Strong Women Organizing Outrageous Projects. Does this sound like a group of women you’d like to know? Greater IBMer Julie Shore thinks so: an IBMer for 30 years, Julie has served her community as a member of SWOOP for 17 now.

Julie Shore

Julie sat down with The Greater IBM Connection to share with us her story, and what it’s meant to her to be a part of SWOOP.

The Greater IBM Connection: How long have you worked at IBM?

Julie Shore: More than 30 years.

GIBM: What is your role today, and what are some other positions you’ve held?  

I’m in channel marketing in STG, working with independent software vendors (ISVs) to help them develop for, use and recommend IBM systems to their clients. I’ve also served a variety of roles in channel marketing in SWG, managing various marketing and certification programs and driving channel enablement for direct and indirect sellers.

GIBM: What does your typical day involve – what are some of the responsibilities of your role?

I’m now driving launch activities related to all indirect channels.  So my days are filled with keeping track and pushing progress with all aspects of launch preparation from the perspective of reseller, ISV and SI marketing teams.

GIBM: Tell us about your volunteering with SWOOP. How do you contribute?

I’ve volunteered with SWOOP since its founding in 1996. We have two key focus areas.  SWOOPin’ Saturdays are once-a-month workdays where we help agencies and individuals with large-scale, short-term projects, such as building playgrounds for at-risk kids, renovating a house for someone in a wheelchair, or painting low-income housing units.

SWOOPers in action: a ramp project in progress (Photo courtesy Julie Shore)

I’m often a team leader on carpentry projects, and help with whatever else needs to be done when carpentry is not involved.

The other key focus is our “Ramp It Up!” initiative, which provides wheelchair ramps for people with urgent needs. We work with agencies to identify the projects.  We design and build wooden ramps, and also install removable aluminum ramps for shorter-term requirements.  Our executive director is also an architect and general contractor, so SWOOP brings design and construction expertise that agencies might not otherwise be able to access affordably.

It’s easy to sign up for either or both aspects through our Web site, http://swoop4u.org.

GIBM: How did SWOOP get started, and how did you become involved?

A couple of friends had lots of trees down from Hurricane Fran in 1996.  After cleaning up their own yards, they helped some friends do the same.  It occurred to them that a team of people could accomplish more than just one or two working independently, so the growing group started showing up at the houses of other friends – in fact, my house was SWOOPed in that crazy week after Fran, so I’ve been involved nearly from the beginning.

Over time it got more organized, got an official name (Strong Women Organizing Outrageous Projects) and logo, and was accorded 501(C)(3) nonprofit status in 2001.  We now have approximately 1,400 people on the membership roles.

GIBM: What is the most rewarding aspect of volunteering for you?

Going home with a great sense of accomplishment, and in awe of people’s ability to deal with challenges and crises of everyday life. I also enjoy the camaraderie among SWOOPers, and I always learn a ton and laugh a lot.

GIBM: Raleigh has a large IBM campus – are there other IBMers/Greater IBMers involved with SWOOP?

Yes, I know several IBMers who are current or past SWOOPers – Molly Walters, Sandy Campbell, Holly Tallon Hilbrands and Betty Lynch are some of the local IBMers who are active in SWOOP.  We’re on the local and national approved agency lists for the IBM Employees Charitable Contribution Campaign.

GIBM: Tell us how you use The Greater IBM Connection: what do you get out of it personally?

I access it through LinkedIn.  Mostly I look at the summary e-mails and follow links to interesting or relevant discussions.

GIBM: You mentioned that you’re retiring by the end of this year.  What do you plan to do with the extra time?

Not sure yet. I’m considering several possibilities.

GIBM: Do you plan to stay connected with your IBM friends and colleagues?

Definitely!

GIBM: What else do you do with your spare time?

Golf and woodworking are my outside-of-work passions.

GIBM: What does the future hold for you and what are you most looking forward to?

I want to finish my IBM career with a sense of satisfaction and accomplishment, and go forward from there.

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More from SWOOP – Project videos:

• Passage Home playspace/garden
• Building a fence for a child
• Ramp It Up! projects
• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gyw8us_AlA4
• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KXVS2d_CvLE

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Know a Greater IBMer with a story to share, or want to share your own? Email us at editor.gmail@us.ibm.com and tell us your story.

Women in Technology: Make A Difference by Joining IBM

Join other exceptional women who are making a difference.

At IBM women have been making contributions to the advancement of information technology for almost as long as the company has been in existence.  Today, women represent approximately 30 percent of IBM employees worldwide and more than 22% of our global executive population is made up of women, two-thirds of whom are working mothers.

Did you know?

• IBM was named among Top 10, 2013 NAFE Working Mothers Top 50 Companies for Executive Women.
• IBM is a three-time Catalyst Award winner, recognizing innovative approaches for developing women.
• Working Mother magazine has named IBM one of its 100 Best Companies for 27 consecutive years.
• IBM is represented by 15 women in the Women in Technology International (WITI) Hall of Fame.  (see also Diane Pozefsky, Ph.D, 2011 and Joanne Martin, Ph.D, 2012)

Are you looking for a new challenge, inside a progressive organization that values and rewards collaboration, innovation and creativity?  If you want to focus on today’s most exciting technologies — Social, Mobile, Analytics, Cloud — the opportunities are endless and you can make a difference at IBM.

Learn more: Careers for Women at IBM

And apply for jobs:  Job Opportunities for Women in Technology

Why Work at IBM?

More:

• Why IBM?
• IBM Video Series Celebrates International Women’s Day
• IBM Vice President, Gill Zhou, Is a Model for Working Women in China
• Some Wise Words for Your Career, Life and Destiny, from Rebecca Munyuki, IBM South Africa
• IBM’s Pioneering Woman and 1st Executive:  Anne Van Vechten (Part 1), (Part 2)
• IBM Research Chief Scientist for Social Business, Irene Greif, Wins Technical Leadership Award
• Middle East and Africa Inspirational IBMers – Natasha Pillay-Bemath

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Check out these hot jobs today, and be sure to stay tuned for more to come.

- Posted by Regan Kelly and Julie Yamamoto

New Careers Site for Women at IBM Announced

Over the past 100 years, millions of IBMers all over the globe have helped make the world work better and smarter. Today, IBM is made up of more than 430,000 women and men in 170 countries. IBMers are leading business and technology experts working with clients in all industries in the private and public sectors to build a smarter planet. We thrive on solving problems – big and small – and are constantly building our knowledge and expertise in order to find the best solutions to help our clients achieve their goals and create new possibilities.

IBM is growing and we’re looking for more talented individuals to join our team. Looking for a new challenge? Interested in making an impact? Looking for a progressive organization that values and rewards collaboration, innovation and creativity? A pre-eminent social enterprise that is today’s most essential company?

Whether it’s consulting, management, research, sales or any other area of business, and if you want to focus on today’s most exciting technologies — Social, Mobile, Analytics, Cloud — the opportunities are endless and you can make a difference at IBM.

See the new site and view IBM hot job opportunities

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Greater IBM, what do you think of this new site? Comment below in the Leave a Reply field – thanks!

 

- Posted by Regan Kelly

IBM Vice President, Gill Zhou, Is a Model for Working Women in China (Ad Age)

Gill Zhou, Vice President Marketing, Communications & Citizenship, IBM Greater China Group

IBM Vice President, Gill Zhou, was recognized as being one of China’s Women to Watch in September 2012 at a gala event sponsored by Ad Age and Thoughtful China.  The recognition cites Gill as being a role model for Chinese women in business, as evidenced by her 760,000 followers on the Chinese micro-blogging service Sina Weibo (now more than 1M+). Gill is quoted in the article as follows: “As a woman leader, I always have to be conscious that we play multiple roles: professional, daughter, daughter-in-law, wife, mother, parent,” says Ms. Zhou, who often accommodates employees’ family needs by granting them flexibility. “It’s never easy.”   Previously in charge of Communications for IBM Asia Pacific, Ms. Zhou took on the role of leading marketing for IBM China in 2012 after driving double digit growth in the region in 2011.

At the gala event, Ms. Zhou had this thought to share with the event attendees:

“My key takeaway out of my 20 years career in the fast changing industry like IT is you have to choose your battles….but once you define your battles, DO IT with an unwavering focus…”

Ms. Zhou has also been recognized by a number of other organizations.  Prior to joining IBM, she worked at Motorola where she received the “Woman Star of Motorola” award for her role in making the company one of the top 10 brands in China (2000).   In 2004, she was recognized as being one of the top 10 women in China’s IT industry in a program sponsored by the All China Women’s Federation, Ministry of Information Industry and China Computerworld, and was also voted one of the Top 50 most influential women in China by Trends magazine.  More recently, she was a keynote speaker at Working Mother magazine’s ‘Global Advancement of Women‘ conference in Shanghai in 2011 where she spoke on Strategies in Building Your Personal Brand.

Read the full story and learn more about Ms. Zhou below, including some video footage from the event:

• (Ad Age, 2012) – IBM’s Gill Zhou is a Model for Working Women in China
• (Chinalogue Blue Ocean Network TV, 2011 video interview) – Gill Zhou:  Advice for Aspiring Women
• (IBM Research Report with Intro by Gill Zhou) – Collaborating with Gen-Y:  Leveraging generational insight to build the best workplace for Gen-Y in China
• (Working Mother Magazine, 2011) – Gill Zhou profile
• Gill Zhou Weibo Channel (in Chinese)
• IBM China Weibo Channel (in Chinese)

(Video credit: Thoughtful China Women to Watch Event)

–Posted by Julie Yamamoto, Program Manager, The Greater IBM Connection

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The January 2013 theme for The Greater IBM Connection is ”leadership”, and The Greater IBM Connection will be sharing various tips, tools, stories, and resources on this topic.

IBM Research Chief Scientist for Social Business, Irene Greif, Wins Technical Leadership Award

Irene Greif, IBM Fellow and Chief Scientist for Social Business (Photo Credit: Anita Borg Institute for Women in Technology)

Irene Greif, IBM Research Fellow and Chief Scientist for Social Business was awarded The Anita Borg Technical Leadership Award at the 12th annual Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing in October, 2012.  The award recognizes and celebrates an outstanding woman technical leader and was established to honor the legacy of Anita Borg, a significant contributor to advances for women in technology and engineering fields. Recipients are women who have inspired the women’s technology community through outstanding technological and social contributions and through leadership have increased the impact of women on technology.  Irene was recognized for founding the research field of CSCW (Computer-Supported Cooperative Work) and her continued leadership championing this kind of interdisciplinary research in the IBM Center for Social Business.  The Center for Social Business is a global effort to focus IBM’s CSCW and Computer-Human Interaction research on the growing opportunities to transform business practices through social technologies such as crowd-sourcing, social analytics, and interactive visualization. The Center has emphasized research based on large scale deployments of new technologies, providing test beds for studies of adoption rates and impact of social media on organizations. As an example, many of the core capabilities of IBM Connections, IBM’s social software for business that provides a collaborative work environment, was developed by the Center.

Irene has also been recognized by a number of other organizations.  She is a fellow of both the Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) and the Association of Computing Machinery (ACM).  Irene was inducted into the Women In Technology International (WITI) Hall of Fame in 2000 and awarded the Women Entrepreneurs in Science and Technology Leadership award in 2008.  In 2010, she was elected to the National Academy of Engineering, and in 2012 she was elected to American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

A full listing of Irene’s publications can be found here, and she also discusses social business in this video interview with IT columnist Lenny Liebmann.

Read the full story and watch Irene’s acceptance speech below:

• (Anita Borg Institute for Women in Technology, 2012) – 2012 Anita Borg Technical Leadership Award Winner Irene Greif
• (Anita Borg Institute for Women in Technology, 2012) – Interview with Irene Greif

(Video credit:  Anita Borg Institute for Women in Technology)

–Posted by Julie Yamamoto, Program Manager, The Greater IBM Connection

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The January 2013 theme for The Greater IBM Connection is ”leadership”, and The Greater IBM Connection will be sharing various tips, tools, stories, and resources on this topic.

Catch Up with The Greater IBM Connection

In this issue:

• IBM Retirees, Watch your Mailbox for Annual Enrollment Packet Soon
• The ESC Key – Did You Know an IBMer Made That?
• Women at IBM in the News
• Join the Conversation!

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IBM Retirees, Watch Your Mailbox for Annual Enrollment Packet Soon

IBM retirees, the annual enrollment period for 2013 is about to begin. This year, the enrollment period begins October 25 and runs until November 16.

Very soon, you’ll receive your packet in the mail. Take the time to thoroughly review your current plan benefits and costs, including the Retiree Health Access (RHA) plan option.

IBM is committed to providing high-value retiree benefits, and continues to offer a wide variety of plan options tailored to your needs. To read more about the available benefit plan options, learn about the advantages of each, and see why many IBM retirees and their Medicare eligible dependents have enrolled in the RHA program, click here.

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The ESC Key – Did You Know an IBMer Made That?

It undoubtedly helped drive the computer revolution of the 1970s and ‘80s. “It says to the computer: ‘Stop what you’re doing. I need to take control.’ ”

In other words, it reminds the machine that it has a human master. It’s the Escape key, and it was created by an IBMer.

Read more about the invention and the late Mr. Bob Bremer.

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Women at IBM in the News

In case you overlooked the following stories, here are three blog posts that feature one thing in common: the amazing women associated with IBM. Three not to miss:

• Working Mother Magazine Ranks IBM in the Top 10 of the 100 Best Companies
• In Campus Recruitment, IBM India Hires More Women than Men for IT:
• And some timely career advice from Greater IBMer, engineer and author Renee Weisman, who wrote Winning in a Man’s World: Advice for Women Who Want to Succeed and the Men Who Work With Them. Here she shares some career help that’s especially relevant to many women: Hate to Brag? How to Self Promote to Advance Your Career.

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Join the conversation! Don’t forget to:

• Like our Facebook page
• Follow us on Twitter
• Bookmark, visit, and subscribe to this blog
• Use the hashtags #IBMAlumni and #GreaterIBM in your own Facebook and Twitter posts and get connected!

In Campus Recruitment, IBM India Hires More Women than Men for IT

by Sujit John & Shilpa Phadnis, The Times of India

BANGALORE: In a landmark for the IT industry, maybe for most industries, IBM India has this year hired more women than men during its campus recruitment. This is significant because it’s happened in an industry where mass recruitment is the norm.

Of the campus recruitments done by IBM India till June, 52% were women — a quantum leap from the 38% in 2011 and 32% in 2010. IBM doesn’t disclose the numbers it hires, but large IT companies in India have hired over 30,000 people in recent years. Of these, about 70% have been campus hires.

Of the 265 engineers SAP Labs India hired this year, 42% are women, up from 34% last year. For Cisco India, the figure is 22% this year, down from last year’s 25%, but significantly higher than 16% in 2010.

The significant jump in the number of women hired by leading IT firms is remarkable especially because, as IBM’s recruitment leader for India Vardanahalli A Rangarajan notes, the average admission of women across engineering colleges in India is just 18%. Most companies have been working with placement cells in colleges to achieve these high numbers.

IBM says a major reason is awareness about facilities offered to women employees. “Our flexible work policies, the workfrom-home option, the ability to customize working hours are big attractions,” says Kalpana Veeraraghavan, diversity manager in IBM India.

Rangarajan says IBM has many women role models, including CEO Virginia Rometty.

SAP Labs targets the few women’s engineering colleges, including the Cummins Engineering College, Pune, and Meenakshi Engineering College, Chennai. It also conducts an online recruitment test for women across all engineering colleges on International Women’s Day. “It’s for women doing computer science and with a CGPA (Cumulative Grade Point Average) of about 8. This year, 3,000 took the test. We flew in over 200 women to Bangalore for the final interviews, and selected 45,” says Anil Warrier, director for staffing, SAP Labs.

For the past five years, Cisco has been organizing every year a programme called Girls in Technology, where about 100 engineering graduates are invited to the company’s campus in Bangalore and exposed to the labs, work environment and culture.

Protima Achaya, Cisco’s lead for scaling services staffing in Asia-Pacific and Japan, says flexible workhours and excellent creche facilities are big attractions . “The number of women who join Cisco after this programme has been increasing every year. Such recruits tend to stay on for long,” she adds.

Accenture doesn’t disclose its women recruitment numbers. However, a spokesperson told TOI: “We have exclusive campus engagement programmes for women. We have Diversity Zones, a campus event which talks about several aspects of working at Accenture. Students get an opportunity to interact with senior women leadership and young achievers, who share their experiences about working at Accenture and how they are able to manage the work-life balance.”
At HCL Technologies, the overall percentage of women is almost 25, but the campus recruitment percentage is only 12. However, Srimathi Shivashankar , AVP for diversity and sustainability, says the percentage has been steadily rising and HCL has women-focused recruitment drives.

It’s increasingly acknowledged that diversity at the workplace is not only good in itself, but also has a profound influence on the operations of an organization. “Numerous studies show that increasing gender equality enhances productivity and economic growth. The best ideas flourish in a diverse environment, and companies benefit from accessing female talent,” Shivashankar says.

Adds IBM’s Kalpana Veeraraghavan : “When you mirror external reality at the workplace, employees feel more at home, and they behave more naturally. And that environment enables us to access a lot more talent.” At IBM, the overall percentage of women still remains about 28%, but the most recent initiatives suggest that the number could quickly rise to the ideal 50%.

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Working Mother Magazine Ranks IBM in the Top 10 of the 100 Best Companies

from the October / November 2012 issue

The Working Mother 100 Best Companies know what it takes to keep their employee moms productive and engaged both at work and at home.

The 2012 Working Mother 100 Best Companies consider employee moms such valuable assets, they don’t stop at offering flexibility and nurturing leadership potential (great as these benefits are). Our winners also find innovative ways to promote wellness by offering fitness amenities, comprehensive health plans, stress reduction and other programs. We salute these Best Companies, which recognize the immense power of healthy working moms.

See the full list

The Top 10

How does IBM stack up?

Employees: 441,912*

Women: 30 %

Headquarters: Armonk, New York

It’s a Fact!
At IBM, expectant moms get 6 fully paid weeks off to deliver and bond with their infants, while birth fathers and adoptive parents receive 2 fully paid weeks of leave, and there’s up to $2,500 in adoption aid per child.

What We Love
Women are 23% of all corporate executives at this technology company, and two thirds of those who hold these positions worldwide are mothers. Among their ranks is Jeanette Horan, the company’s first female chief information officer and a mom of two who earned her position in 2011. Following in her footsteps are thousands of women who fill the pipeline for top business and technical roles, with talented candidates taking steps toward success in programs such as NextGen (for future leaders) and TechGen (for technical specialists), both offering mentoring, executive coaching and development opportunities. The company boasts more than 50 global councils and networks for women and works intently to promote their advancement through ties with organizations such as the Society for Women Engineers and Women in Technology International.

President & CEO Ginni M. Rometty

Senior VP, HR Randy MacDonald

Women managers/execs 28%

Women hires in 2011 25%

Average weeks of fully paid maternity leave offered 6

Offers paid paternity leave? Yes

Offers paid adoption leave? Yes

Women in affinity groups in 2011 Not tracked

Offers backup child care? Yes

Employees working flexibly 100%

It’s a Fact!:
At IBM, expectant moms get 6 fully paid weeks off to deliver and bond with their infants, while birth fathers and adoptive parents receive 2 fully paid weeks of leave, and there’s up to $2,500 in adoption aid per child.