I never won anything in those “prize drawing” activities in any functions, seriously, never. But I did win a $25 ticket for attending a breakfast because I was one of the four people responding to an email the quickest. This ticket turned out to be very important for me to know more about the women business community in Pittsburgh.
The breakfast was one of a breakfast series organized by the Center for Women Entrepreneurship at Chatham University. Despite the fact that Chatham University has a most charming campus in Shadyside neighborhood, the breakfast at the center was healthy and delicious as well. The building, James Laughlin Music Hall, housed the breakfast was very lovely, those big windows giving away the snowy scene outside made me feel even more cozy while sitting inside and listening to those inspiring stories. The speaker was the President of BodyMedia, a Pittsburgh-headquartered medical and consumer technology company, Ms. Christine Robins. Her take-away message for the audience was “Be yourself, have a direction, work hard, don’t hesitate making decisions and taking opportunities, and when you do start or run a business, you do all the above and trust your team, especially their talents.”
Courtesy to the director of the Center, Dr. Rebecca Harris, I attended several other events with scholarships. During the annual Think Big Forum in October 2012, I listened to a talk given by keynote speaker, Ms. Michele Fabrizi, the CEO of MARC USA, about her business experience as a woman and a leader in her industry. What’s interesting about this is that her company was the designing company for 2008 Imagine Pittsburgh campaign commemorating the 250 years foundation of the City of Pittsburgh. She herself was heavily involved in the process due to her board member position at the Allegheny Conference on Community Development (ACCD), the very organization championing the marketing for the City of Pittsburgh in every dimension you can imagine: business investments, cultural visibility, policy advocacy, and social life experience, and etc.
I have been a loyal follower of ACCD since February 2012 after listening to a community development model presentation given by VP of ACCD Mr. Dewitt Peart, who himself is a customer of BodyMedia product. And better yet, in October 2013 I met another visionary leader from ACCD, Mr. Bill Flanagan, during a GlobalPittsburgh event and had the opportunity to converse with him. He ended up being an important enabler of this blog and its publication!
You see, how neatly everything is connected! This is one of the reasons why I love Pittsburgh so very much and will always strive to be part of it, to enjoy its prosperity and to contribute to its continuous development.
Beer winning trivia @ Center for Women Entrepreneurship, Chatham University
1. CWE was founded in 2005 through the funding from the Claude Worthington Benedum Foundation and the Lois Tack Thompson Fund of the Pittsburgh Foundation. Later, the PNC Foundation, and the Alcoa Foundation joined the efforts for this noble course. Claude Worthington Benedum Foundation is the only one that has accompanied CWE all the way along. The center has 5 core programs to help business, especially women led business: Small Business Bacis, MyBusiness Startup, MyBusiness Growth, MyConsulting Corner, and MyBoard. 3 social network events: Open House, Think Big Forum, and Women Business Leaders Breakfast Series.
2. BodyMedia was founded in 1999 by four Carnegie Mellon University people. It started with Mr. John Stivoric. He met +Astro Teller (CS’98) on a Carnegie Mellon soccer field in 1994. After working on several projects together, they started a university-sponsored consulting company called Sandbox Advancement Development. In this adventure, gradually the idea of wearable body monitors surfaced. In 1999, they met Chris Kasabach and Chris Pacione started the BodyMedia company. Currently CEO Ms. Christine Robins joined the company in August 2009. Because of BodyMedia’s strong tech team, its informatics group made available a large anonymised human physiology data set for the 2004 International Conference on Machine Learning, running a Machine Learning Challenge. They published about their very large data set and data modeling methodology at the Innovative Applications of Artificial Intelligence conference in 2011 winning the IAAI Deployed Application award.
3. The luncheon that directly catalyzed the official foundation of the Allegheny Conference on Community Development was held in William Penn Hotel. One of the first and foremost policy advocacy the ACCD did was “Clean Air Act”, which directly impacted a series of changes to the City of Pittsburgh.
Your ID @ CWE, Chatham University
Who is the staff member in CWE gained degrees in Ireland, UK, and visited U.S. as an international scholar, plus a marathon runner?
When and why did Dr. Harris go to the White House and meet the President ?
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