President's Newsletter – October 2015
Dear Member,
With the leaves turning golden and falling from the trees and the sudden chill in the air, I wanted to catch up with you with all our CWN news.
First up, CWN Rising Star and Secretary to the Board, Sarah Brakebill won a 2015 WeAreTheCity (WATC) Top 50 Rising Star Award in the Investment Management category in September. The WATC Rising Star Awards showcase the UK pipeline of female talent below management.
Next, CWN President Emeritus Brenda Trenowden and Professional Development Committee member Miranda Brawn were finalists in Brummell's 2015 list of Most Inspirational City Women which this year focused on 'City Champions of Diversity.' Panelist Heather Melville of RBS said this year's finalists had "spearheaded nothing short of a cultural revolution in their organisations ... and proved diversity is the key to success for every business." You can read more here.
I’m also excited to tell you about Fractio Vitri – this is a new cross sector independent network for early stage career women working in the City or thinking about it. Fractio Vitri (FV) founders Kelly Blair, Claudia Buffini, Harriet Sasson and Sophie Sinclair-Kemp are holding their launch event on Tuesday, 27th October at Morrison Foerster. There’s lots more information on our website about and you will see that I with a few other CWN board members will be FV’s advisory committee.
As someone who received support on tap from sponsors throughout my career, I feel it’s my responsibility to give back and help those who will be our next generation leaders. This is a commonly held view of the CWN Board. We want to accelerate the career advancement of emerging leaders and will contribute as best as we can be that to FV or for example our Corporate Rising Stars.
Our Gala Dinner was once again a great success with the substantial sum of over £16,000 raised for Eaves’ Poppy Project. I was so sorry that work commitments kept me away but I hear it was a very enjoyable evening. I hope those of you who were there have had a chance to look at the gallery of photos on our website. And for those of you who were unable to make it- take a look at what you (and I) missed!
Our next CWN event will be our Membership Breakfast on Tuesday, 17th November at One Lombard Street, EC3V 9AA. These events are very popular and are a great opportunity for people who are interested in knowing more about CWN to come along and meet us. Equally, it’s a terrific networking event for our individual and corporate members too.
We have decided to mix things up a little this year and will host a New Year event with a difference (as opposed to our traditional Christmas drinks). We know how crowded all our diaries become towards the end of the year so we are planning something exciting and fun for you in January 2016 - more news will be sent out shortly.
Watch out for news too on choosing our next Charity of the Year. As you will know, we have changed the timeframe so that we work with our selected charity for the calendar year. We will be making full use of technology and asking you to vote by email – there will be the opportunity to see the different presentations from the nominated charities and of course, we will announce the result as soon as we can.
Finally, I know many of you enjoyed the Resilience & Well Being event last week; we were delighted to have a full house. Thank you to RPC for hosting us. I have committed to introduce a few small changes in my life as a result of what I heard on the night. It was exciting to see the huge amount of Twitter activity during and after the event. Twitter is a great way to be part of the CWN community and we make every effort to tweet and retweet items of interest to our membership. Here is our Twitter handle - @CityWomenLondon - join the 3300+ CWN followers and keep up to date. Remember too our LinkedIn group with over 700 members initiating and commenting on discussions about topical and relevant items to the wider CWN community.
So hopefully, catch up with many of you over the next few months.
With best wishes,
Sandy
Sandy Lucas
President, CWN