The team representing Acacia at the Simmons Leadership Conference

My favorite talk was by Susan O’Malley, American Sports Executive. I found it so impressive that she was running a national sports franchise at age 29. I think her Seven Rules can benefit everyone, so I’ll share those below:

1. Make your bed every day
2. Always work on your craft
3. Set expectations
4. When you mess up; make it right
5. Do the right thing – even when no one is looking
6. Have fun
7. People make the difference

I was proud to attend the conference with the strong group of women we have at Acacia. Each one of us was impacted in a different way. Here’s what some of my colleagues had to say:

Janene Asgeirsson, Chief Legal Officer and Secretary

“Julia Gillard, the former Prime Minister of Australia, was my favorite speaker of the day. Her suggestions on how to accelerate the rate of change were powerful: recognizing unconscious bias and checking and correcting our own judgments towards other women; making a point to involve men in the conversation and journey; and shifting the conversation away from “gender wars” and playing the “gender card” which tends to stop the conversation and thereby benefiting the people who are engaging in the discrimination in the first place. As she noted, gender issues are hard and require a lot of work.”

Nancy Trout, Talent Acquisition Leader

“I was impressed by the diversity of the women who presented both as keynote speakers and in the breakout sessions. There were so many different professional fields represented as well as nationalities and ages and all had a common theme – they defined their own success, led by example and encouraged others to do so. There were many messages and examples I heard and experienced throughout the day supporting that theme that I will keep with me. I was happy to share such a great day surrounded by the smart, funny women of Acacia.”

Tina Galanti, Senior SQA Engineer (System Quality Assurance)

“During Julia Gillard’s speech, I was struck by the university study she referenced titled “What’s in a Name: Exposing Gender Bias in Student Ratings of Teaching.” This study was a blind online teaching experiment showing the subtle hidden gender biases we all carry around with us. During this study, the same instructor received different ratings depending solely on their perceived gender. Regardless of actual gender or performance, students rated the perceived female instructor significantly more harshly than the perceived male instructor, which suggests that a female instructor would have to work harder than a male to receive comparable ratings. The results of the study indicate that the bias observed was not a result of gendered behavior on the part of the instructors, but of actual bias on the part of the male and female students.”

Rachelle Garcia, Reliability Engineer

“I also enjoyed the opening speech by Susan O’Malley and thought it was a great start to the day. She was humorous and engaging, and her seven rules for Leadership and Life were spoken about long after her speech was over. I particularly liked Rule 1 ‘Make your Bed’, which is the idea that motion creates motion and doing the little things right can affect the big things in your work and home life.”

Jessica Youlton, Senior Contracts Manager

“One of the biggest things that resonated with me was when Julia Gillard said, “you shouldn’t let the urgent get in the way of the important.” It’s important to remember to take more quiet time to reflect and focus on long term goals, both at work and personally. I think it’s important to carve out time when we can tune out the constant flow of “urgent” messages, so we can devote time to long term projects that keep getting pushed to the wayside.”

Namitha Mandayam-Krishnakumar, Associate Hardware Engineer

“I also thoroughly enjoyed the opening keynote speech by Susan O’Malley. Being an American sports executive who was the president of the Washington Bullets is an achievement that is applaudable and very inspirational. Two of her rules stood out to me, ‘Always strive to be better at your craft’ and ‘Have fun.’ I believe life is a learning curve and change is the only constant. Striving to better oneself to adapt will always generate positive results. The highlight of my day was taking a picture with her.”

Pauline Monteiro, Senior Software Engineer

“I found the seminar on deception to be enlightening. We all think we can spot liars because occasionally we do, but unfortunately, the statistics on lying are insanely high. For example, for married people, a lie occurs 1 out of every 10 interactions, and for people living together, it is 1 out of every five interactions. As the presenter pointed out, lying is a cooperative act and connects wishes/fantasies with reality. Power emerges when you agree to believe the lie, which means that if you are being lied to, then you are complicit.”

In summary, I think I speak for all of us Acacia ladies when I say we are already looking forward to next year’s conference. We are so fortunate to work for a company that supports our growth and development and this conference is a nice reminder of that!

What began as a single employee’s vision has become a company-wide initiative. We’re happy to be able to bring a little holiday cheer to our neighbors.

Pictured below are Acacia employees along with Juvenile Detective/School Resource Officer of the Maynard Police Department Trista Manchuso and her children who graciously picked up the gifts.

The team representing Acacia at the Simmons Leadership Conference

I know I wasn’t the only one who left the conference feeling recharged and motivated! Some of our attendees shared their biggest takeaways from the event:

Nuzhat Alamgir, Talent Branding and Campus Programs Manager

“The session led by Raquel Eatmon, CEO of Rising Media LLC, stood out to me in particular. During her keynote she broke down 10 relationship building techniques to master networking events. One thing Eatmon said on the topic of engagement stayed with me, ‘if you aren’t inspiring or informing, you’re not a resource.”

Janene Asgeirsson, Vice President, General Counsel and Secretary

“Personally, I got a kick out of a statement made by Roopa Unnikrishnan, head of strategy at HARMAN International. During her speech she said, ‘Don’t roll your eyes. Engage.’ As a lifelong eye roller, this spoke to me! It’s better to be a part of the solution than lamenting the problem.”

Patricia Tervo, Configuration & Hardware Release Engineer

“Nely Galan, former president of entertainment at Telemundo, led a session that energized the whole room, ‘The Adelante Movement.’ She impressed on attendees to:’‘make fear and failure your best friends. Fear is not a fact, hold on to the things that scare you anyway;’ ‘Power is taken, not given;’ and, ‘be louder and braver, lead by example and pass the torch!'”

Xun Zhang, Principal Engineer

“Whitney Johnson, Co-founder, Rose Park Advisors’ Disruptive Innovation Fund, shared the following slide during her keynote. I think it provides a great roadmap for each phase of successful career development and is something everyone can apply to their careers, regardless of role or industry.”

Ruby dela Torre, Senior Reliability Engineer

“Our whole team was impressed by Edie Weiner’s insightful keynote titled “A Break with History, and our Collective Impact.” Weiner is the president and CEO of The Future Hunters and one of the nation’s top futurists. She shared an interesting idea:

“Mankind is at the forefront of creating a new civilization, civilization alpha. Civilization alpha is at the technological frontier, when mankind has the potential to create or destroy a planet. While it is quite scary, it also enables us to feel more responsible. We need to put more thought in our actions, as they have great consequences for the future of our planet.’ Her bottom line was that we have to adapt to all the changes that are happening around us. We need to liberate our minds from old assumptions and institutional biases and evolve.”

Valeria Arlunno, System Applications Engineer

“Edie Weiner had some interesting insights into the different ways male and female brains process information. She said the male brain is efficient, it understands the problem and focuses on solving the problem. But the female brain is effective, tacking the problem from many different angles before claiming it’s solved.”

Renee Pianka, Chief Human Resources Officer

“While each of us left the conference with their own set of takeaways, I think we all left with a commitment to pay this information forward, sharing it with the other women in our personal and professional lives. This was a terrific conference, one of the best I’ve attended, and I’m looking forward to next year’s!”

Well said ladies! Did you attend the conference? What was your experience like? We’d love to hear your thoughts.