WSJ. The Magazine from The Wall Street Journal: Summer Issue Cover Story – An Interview With Desiree Rogers, White House Social Secretary
From Dow Jones & Company:
The Wall Street Journal today unveiled the summer installment of its glossy magazine, WSJ. , centering on American style and changing lifestyle landscapes.
Click on picture to read WSJ Magazine Cover Story: Desire Rogers' "Brand Obama"
The cover story — “Brand Obama” — features an exclusive, candid interview with White House Social Secretary Desiree Rogers, including photographs of Ms. Rogers exclusively for WSJ. by Marc Hom. “Desiree Rogers is at the center of one of the most closely watched presidencies of our time, and we were able to capture intriguing insight into the challenges and opportunities for what may lie ahead over the next four years with Brand Obama,” said Tina Gaudoin, editor-in-chief of WSJ.
Summer Issue of WSJ Magazine Features Exclusive Interview with White House Social Secretary Desiree Rogers
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And to learn more about her, click on either the picture or the link below to read the February 2009 Vogue.com feature story:
=Life of the Party (Vogue.com)
- Click on picture to read Vogue.com Article
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Picture Credits: Dow Jones & Company and Jonathan Becker
Palm Pre Rumor of the Day: June 7 Release Date
From Bonnie Cha at CNET News and SprintGurus
It looks like we have a launch date for the Palm Pre!!! We love gadgets around here and this is one we’ve had our eyes on for awhile!!! Yes, yes, yes!!! (Accompanied by an enthusiastic Tiger- Woods-esque fist pump) and a loud Woo-hoo!!! 
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Palm Pre Rumor of The Day: June 7 Release Date
Bonnie Cha, CNET News
What’s a day without a Palm Pre story, right? Uhh, right. The latest rumor making its way across the Internet tubes comes via SprintGurus, which says the Pre will launch on June 7 and not May 17 as originally thought.
This is based on an internal document posted by the owner of SprintGurus, who goes by “Coal,” that shows all the devices that are in alpha/beta testing with Sprint. In the forum, Coal states, “For those asking about the Pre, there are 2 release windows, one is around 6/7/09 – the other I cannot say much on.” We’re not entirely sure where the June 7 date came from as it’s not listed on the document. More . . .
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Picture Credit: Bonnie Cha/CNET
Apple Prepping Two Wireless Devices With Verizon?
From David Carnoy at CNET News
What a lovely day!!! First, we hear about a launch date for the Palm Pre and then we find out that Verizon and IPhone may be teaming up!!! Be still my heart!!
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Apple Prepping Two Wireless Devices With Verizon?
Concept Art for an Apple Touch-Screen Netbook (Credit: Gizmodo). Click on pic to Read CNET News Article.
David Carnoy, CNET News
Over the last few months rumors have continued to swirl around a possible Verizon-Apple deal to bring the iPhone to Verizon once Apple’s exclusive pact with AT&T expires in 2010. But Tuesday BusinessWeek added a new twist to the rumor, reporting that Verizon and Apple are in talks to develop two new wireless devices that may hit the market this year.
Allegedly, one device would be a thinner, lighter, and lower-priced version of the iPhone–an iPhone Lite, if you will. While the other device would be something akin to the jumbo iPod Touch that we wrote about previously. BusinessWeek’s anonymous source describes it as a “media pad that would let users listen to music, view photos, and watch high-definition videos.”
The source, who claims to have seen the new media pad, says it’s “smaller than an Amazon Kindle electronic reader, but its touch-screen is bigger than the Kindle’s.” It would be able to place calls over Wi-Fi and a high-speed wireless data connection from Verizon. More . . .
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Click below to read the Business Week article mentioned in the above post:
=New Gear from Apple and Verizon Wireless?
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Picture Credit: Gizmodo (Concept Art for an Apple touch-screen Netbook)
Business Grads Looking Beyond Wall Street
“For the past decade, a job at an investment bank has been coveted. Now the implosion of Wall Street has not only shaken a generation’s ambitions, it has also unleashed them.”
See Steven Greenhouse’s New York Times article below for additional detail and to find out where today’s Business School Grads are looking for jobs.
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Business Grads Looking Beyond Wall Street
Daniel Miller, Nanxi Ling, center, and Jessica Levy are graduating from Wharton this spring. Many in the class of '09 are discouraged about job prospects.
Steven Greenhouse, The New York Times
PHILADELPHIA — Riana Paige, an undergraduate senior at the Wharton School of Business, had a high-paying internship at JPMorgan Chase last summer and was disappointed when she did not receive an offer for a full-time job after graduation. Now she is pursuing a job teaching in Dubai, or working for a wine importer.
Click to see New York Times (Video): Life After Wharton
Daniel Miller, a Wharton senior who interned last summer at a boutique private equity firm in Manhattan, became so discouraged by his search for jobs in finance that he began thinking about becoming a rabbi.
Jessica Levy, also a senior at Wharton, the nation’s most prestigious undergraduate business program, was stunned when her supervisor at UBS told her that although she had done a terrific job as an intern, the bank could not offer her a job after graduation. Her dreams of investment banking quashed, she recently took the Foreign Service exam and is vying for a job at the State Department.
“A lot of my peers, we’re exploring things that we used to not even think of as an option,” Ms. Levy said. “A finance major who was minoring in music was suddenly looking into opening a jazz club. All of a sudden, I saw that a lot of Wharton people were interesting.”
For the last decade, a job at Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley or another investment bank has been considered the most coveted prize for many of the nation’s best and brightest college students. But the implosion of Wall Street — the vaporization of Bear Stearns and Lehman Brothers, the general humbling of investment banks — has not only shaken a generation’s ambitions, but also unleashed them. More . . .
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Picture Credit: Laura Pedrick for The New York Times
Fortune’s 50 Most Powerful Women in Business: #47 Terri Dial
This week, we profile #47 on Fortune’s 50 Most Powerful Women in Business . She is Terri Dial, the CEO U.S. Consumer Bank Citigroup.
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CEO, U.S. Consumer BankPrevious rank: New
Age: 58
Recruited in March to overhaul Citi’s consumer strategy, Dial oversees 1,000 branches with $122 billion in deposits. As a member of CEO Vikram Pandit’s inner circle, she’ll be a key player as Citi struggles to navigate this market.
Click here to read more about her:
= Terri Dial Bio (Citigroup Website)
= The Women Who Are Fixing This Financial Mess (Forbes)
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Hanging Out with Susan Boyle! The UK Singer That Made Simon Cowell Smile
Today we celebrate the power of faith and the beauty of Susan Boyle – The UK Singer whose audition on “Britain’s Got Talent” made Simon Cowell smile.
See below for what we’re calling “Hanging Out with Susan Boyle”. It’s a compilation of several recent interviews and we’ve even got her singing another song
Click to see video of Susan Boyle having fun.
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Click here to see High Quality Video of Susan Boyle's Britain's Got Talent Audition.
The Beauty of Susan Boyle: The UK Internet Singing Sensation
Okay, you’ve seen the video (click here if you haven’t) of Susan Boyle, the woman auditioning for “Britain’s Got Talent” who surprised Simon Cowell, the other judges, the audience and the world with her singing.
But what is it that has moved her video to be viewed over 30, 000,000 times on YouTube? What is it that moves people to tears?
Is it her singing? Naahh, we’ve heard great voices before.
What we love about her is her having the “temerity” to continue to pursue a dream at the age of 47. The “audacity” to believe that she had a chance; and the “gall” to actually show up at the audition.
As Peggy Noonan, a columnist from The Wall Street Journal said on “ABC This Week with George Stephanopoulus”, ”She was lovely, she was modest, awkard . . . humble . . . she opened her mouth and she was transformed . . . and it was very tender.”
In addition, she also serves as a reminder that you can’t always judge a book by it’s cover and that it’s the pages of the book that tell the full story.
Kudos to you Susan for holding onto your dreams and in turn inspiring millions!! We’ll be rooting for you on May 23rd!
ej
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Chatting with Britain’s Singing Sensation (The Good Morning America Interview)
Click to see Diane Sawyer's Interview with Susan Boyle
Now that you’ve seen the interview, click on the articles below to learn more about her and even further down you can catch her singing Celine Dion’s “My Heart Will Go On”:
= She Who Laughs Last – Songstress Susan Boyle (The Sunday Times UK)
=Susan Boyle, an Unlikely Singer, is a YouTube Sensation (The New York Times)
Click below to watch Susan Boyle’s Interview on “Larry King Live” . During the interview, she gets a chance to talk to Piers Morgan (one of the Britain’s Got Talent judges seen on the video) and she also sings Celine Dion’s song ”My Heart Will Go On”.
Click here to see Susan Boyle sing Celine Dion's "My Heart Will Go On" on "Larry King Live." She starts singing at the 11:10 mark.
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Afghan Women Protest New Law That Regulates Marital Sex, Ability to Work Outside the Home & Their Freedom to “Dress Up”
Afghan women are fighting back! More specifically, many of them have been participating in protests against a recently enacted law that regulates their home life.
Their goal is to have Parliament repeal a new law that imposes restrictions on women and permits – among other things – marital rape.
Update: According to Afghan President, Hamid Karzai, “The law will be revised.” In an interview with Fareed Zakaria on CNN’s GPS, he states, “This law was signed without knowledge of the articles in it.” >:| Click here to see video of the interview.
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Women critical of new restrictions applying to Shiites demonstrate in Kabul.
Afghan Women Protest New Law on Home Life
Dexter Filkins, The New York Times
KABUL, Afghanistan — The young women stepped off the bus and moved toward the protest march just beginning on the other side of the street when they were spotted by a mob of men.
“Get out of here, you whores!” the men shouted. “Get out!”
The women scattered as the men moved in.
“We want our rights!” one of the women shouted, turning to face them. “We want equality!”
The women ran to the bus and dived inside as it rumbled away, with the men smashing the taillights and banging on the sides.
“Whores!”
But the march continued anyway. About 300 Afghan women, facing an angry throng three times larger than their own, walked the streets of the capital on Wednesday to demand that Parliament repeal a new law that introduces a range of Taliban-like restrictions on women, and permits, among other things, marital rape.
It was an extraordinary scene. Women are mostly illiterate in this impoverished country, and they do not, generally speaking, enjoy anything near the freedom accorded to men. But there they were, most of them young, many in jeans, defying a threatening crowd and calling out slogans heavy with meaning.
With the Afghan police keeping the mob at bay, the women walked two miles to Parliament, where they delivered a petition calling for the law’s repeal.
“Whenever a man wants sex, we cannot refuse,” said Fatima Husseini, 26, one of the marchers. “It means a woman is a kind of property, to be used by the man in any way that he wants.”
The law, approved by both houses of Parliament and signed by President Hamid Karzai, applies to the Shiite minority only. Women here and governments and rights groups abroad have protested three parts of the law especially.
One provision makes it illegal for a woman to resist her husband’s sexual advances. A second provision requires a husband’s permission for a woman to work outside the home or go to school. And a third makes it illegal for a woman to refuse to “make herself up” or “dress up” if that is what her husband wants. More . . .
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Picture Credit: Robert Nickelsberg/Getty Images for The New York Times
Iran Sentences US Reporter (and former Miss North Dakota) to 8 Years in Prison for Espionage
Initially arrested for buying wine in Iran, Roxana Saberi, a US reporter (and former Miss North Dakota) has been sentenced to 8 years in prison in Iran for espionage. The United States calls the charges “baseless.”
BREAKING NEWS Mon. 5. 11.09 (Click on the blue links below for more info):
According to CNN.com: “Iran to Free U.S. Journalist, Father Says”!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Additional report from the BBC: Iran “to release” Reporter Saberi
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Iran Sentences US Reporter to 8 Years in Prison
An American-Iranian journalist detained in Iran has been sentenced to eight years in prison on charges of spying for the United States.
A lawyer for journalist Roxana Saberi told news agencies about the court’s decision Saturday, and said he will appeal the verdict.
The 31-year-old dual American-Iranian citizen, who had been working in Iran for several news outlets, was arrested in late January for working in the country without valid press credentials.
But earlier this month, Iranian authorities announced espionage charges against her, saying Saberi used journalism as a cover to pass classified information to U.S. intelligence services.
The United States has rejected the espionage charges as “baseless.” Source
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Learn more about Roxana Saberi and her case here:
Profile: Roxana Saberi
When the journalist Roxana Saberi was first arrested in Iran, her family was told it was for buying a bottle of wine – an act banned under the country’s Islamic law.
That was in January 2009. Iranian prosecutors then accused her of working as a journalist without a valid press card, before on 8 April she was finally accused of spying for the US.
Between January and March, Ms Saberi was only able to contact her family in the US twice, according to the human rights group Amnesty International.
She told them she was not being physically harmed but was finding life difficult in Evin prison, near Tehran.
Diverse heritage
Ms Saberi, 31, was born in the US and grew up in Fargo, North Dakota, the daughter of Reza Saberi, who was born in Iran, and his wife Akiko, who is from Japan.
In 1997 she was chosen as Miss North Dakota and was among the top 10 finalists in Miss America 1998.
When she received her Miss North Dakota title, Ms Saberi said that her aim was to encourage other people to appreciate cultural differences – an ambition that eventually led her into a career in journalism.
She graduated from Concordia College in Moorhead, Minnesota, with degrees in mass communication and French.
Ms Saberi also holds a master’s degree in broadcast journalism from Northwestern University in Chicago and another master’s degree in international relations from Cambridge University in the UK.
She is currently working on yet another masters degree in Iranian studies.
Ms Saberi moved to Iran six years ago and worked as a freelance journalist for various news organisations, including the BBC, before her press credentials were revoked.
Her father said she had been determined to go to Iran, although he had expressed his concerns.
Mr Saberi said that despite losing her press status, his daughter had stayed on to finish a book on Iran and to study. He said she had planned to return to the US later this year.
Shock arrest
But then came her arrest. More . . .
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The Story of Sara Blakely
From our friends at Success Magazine.
One of our faves around here is Sara Blakely, the founder of Spanx, who is profiled in this month’s Success. See how her ideas can help improve your bottom line! >:)
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Success Stories
Beth Douglas Silcox, Success Magazine
Plain and simple, Sara Blakely wanted her bottom to look better in white pants. She was 27 and peddling fax machines to businesses, making cold-call after cold-call, facing way too many slamming doors. But at this moment, standing in her tiny Atlanta apartment, scissors in hand, she teetered on the verge of invention. One-size-fits-no-one pantyhose didn’t do the job, so Blakely lopped off the feet with two, crisp snips.
Eight years after Blakely amputated the feet of her pantyhose, her brainchild, Spanx, exceeds $300 million in retail sales. She has expanded into other types of shape wear to smooth other problem areas for women. Meantime, her footless hosiery invention revitalized an industry and answered the prayers of women everywhere who wanted to look better in all of their clothes.
Stepping from idea to prototype, she mustered every bit of perseverance and charm learned in her door-to- door years. “If you make someone laugh or smile in the first five to 10 seconds, you might get another 10 seconds,” Blakely says. Authenticity was crucial, as she pitched her idea to hosiery mill executives.
Before Spanx, the male-dominated $2 billion hosiery industry regarded pantyhose as cosmetic and simply accentuated the shine, color or smoothness of women’s legs. “I found, as a consumer, how seriously they were all trying to take pantyhose was ridiculous,” Blakely says.
By contrast, Blakely was pragmatic about her hosiery invention. Spanx would be More . . .
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Click on the items below to read more about her:
=How Failure Molded Spanx’s Founder (Business Week)
=Spanx FounderSara Blakely on Luck, Gwyneth Paltrow and Wearing Wigs (The Huffington Post)
=The Story of Spanx (Spanx Website)
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Picture Credit: Success Magazine
Fortune’s 50 Most Powerful Women in Business: #48 Lynn Elsenhans
This week we introduce you to Lynn Elsenhans, the CEO and President of Sunoco. She’s #48 on Fortune’s 50 Most Powerful Women in Business list.
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Previous rank: New
Age: 52
Elsenhans, named CEO in July, is the first woman to head a major U.S. oil company. Though the company is huge (revenues were more than $40 billion in fiscal 2007), net income fell 9%, to $891 million, and the market cap is only about $5 billion. Some analysts are expecting a strategy shift.
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Click here to read more on her:
=Strategic Shift is Expected from New Chief at Sunoco (The New York Times)
=An Interview with Lynn Elsenhans (Rice – The Magazine of Rice University)
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Picture Credit: Sunoco
First Lady Michelle Obama & Mom: On Raising Smart, Confident Kids, Strong Marriages and Future Plans
From our friends at Essence.
A Mother’s Love: First Lady and Mom Cover Essence
In their first interview together, First Lady Michelle Obama and her mother, Marian Robinson, sit down in the White House to speak exclusively to ESSENCE Editor-in-Chief Angela Burt-Murray about retaining their family values, what it takes to raise good kids, and being role models for the Black community. Read on for excerpts from the interview.
Mrs. Michelle Obama on what being First Lady means to her:
“It’s an honor and a privilege when you walk into the White House-at least I automatically felt a level of obligation. This is a big responsibility, a wonderful platform and I just want to make sure I take every advantage to serve as a role model, to provide good messages, to be a supportive mate to the President and to make sure that my girls are solid.”
Mrs. Marian Robinson on seeing her daughter step into this historic role:
“Well, to me, it’s overwhelming. I never doubted that she could do this. She is doing it with such grace and dignity. So I am just proud. I just hope she does what she wants to do. [Chuckles] Because the things that she wants to do are very important. They mean a lot to her.”
Mrs. Michelle Obama on finding balance:
“Unlike most women, I have a lot of resources: I have my mother living with me. The White House has a staff of people who are there to make my life easy. I don’t have a full-time job, although I work very hard in the role of First Lady. But I have a lot of resources. So I have been able to achieve the balance because I have the support I need.”
Mrs. Robinson on what her late husband, Fraser Robinson III, would say about this moment:
“You would not be able to shut him up! He would not be able to stand this. He would be beaming until you would just want him to stop talking. He bragged about Michelle and her brother, Craig, before they had even done anything. He always encouraged them, and when he talked about Craig and Michelle, you could just see a smile on his face whether it was there or not. He just enjoyed these two people.” More . . .
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Picture Credit: Timothy White and Stockland Martel
Getting Organized: 10 Strategies for Busy Moms
From our friends at CNN.com and Real Simple.
In this article, the author makes a very simple suggestion – Why don’t you manage your home like you manage your organization? Then, he shows you how to apply core business principles to the management of your life.
FYI – Patrick was recently named by Fortune as one of the 10 New Gurus You Should Know
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Ten Business Strategies to Organize Your Home
About 11 years ago, two big things happened in my life: My wife and I started a family, and I launched a consulting firm. For years I was much more successful at running my company than managing our family — probably because I was taking specific steps to improve my business, then going home and winging it.
Well, a few years ago, it occurred to me that this made no sense, and that my family was in fact an organization, too — the most important one in my life.
That realization was probably provoked by an innocuous (or so I thought) comment to my wife: “You know, honey, if my clients ran their companies the way we run this family, they’d go out of business.”
I’ll spare you the gory details of her response and just tell you that we eventually decided to figure out whether the tools and concepts I applied with my clients might help our home run more smoothly. I’m here to report that they absolutely did and might help you, too. (Don’t worry: None involve persuading a 10-year-old to endure the agony of a performance review.) Real Simple: How to make good decisions
1. Identify your core values. Companies define their core values because they provide a great framework for making all kinds of decisions. To apply this idea to your family, think about what common traits each spouse admires in the other. One of the things I love about my wife is that she is unafraid to speak her mind or stand up for her beliefs.
We wanted to pass that trait on to our four sons, so we made it a core value. (Our others are creativity and passion.) Then, when one of the boys was sent to the principal’s office for defending a classmate who was being bullied, we made it clear that he should be proud that he had stood up for a friend.
2. Establish a single top priority. If everything is important, nothing is. Too many companies fail because they spread their time and energies too thin. Answer this question: “In addition to our day-to-day responsibilities, if we accomplish one big thing as a family in the next few months, what should it be?” And then work on it. It could be anything from “Help Dad get healthy” to “Spend more time together as a family at home.” Real Simple: 14 shortcuts for everyday tasks
3. Keep your values and top priority visible. You don’t need an engraved plaque to remind you of what’s important. But it’s good to have a ready reference. My wife and I were out on a date around the time we were coming up with our family’s list of values and top priority. She borrowed a waiter’s pen and wrote them on the paper tablecloth. After dinner she neatly tore off that section and stuck it to our oven, where we could see it every day. More . . .
Digital Version of Real Simple Article
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About Us
Brusque is a digital newspaper that focuses on women who rock.
Here we celebrate the excellence of women and examine the issues that we face as we try to move the universe forward. Our primary focus will be on women in business. More specifically, we will focus on women as corporate leaders, and women as entrepreneurs.
The primary focus on business is because that is what we know best. (Go Blue!!!)
But as you (and we) know, women are advancing in many fields (sports, law, medicine, politics, science, etc.), so we will highlight the ascent, the successes and the key issues that pertain to women in other areas as well.
We will also focus on presenting articles that highlight issues pertaining to women in the workplace and work-life-balance.
In addition, we will take a look at how the business world is addressing and responding to the needs of women through marketing and product design; and periodically, we will highlight products that we believe will be of use to women that are also interested in the above topics.
Also note, we love gadgets, we love to cook, we love to travel, we love to shop, we love to read, we love to . . . okay you get the point, we love to have fun. So you’ll also see posts on technology and other stuff we love (cooking, shoes, biking, travel, sports, etc.) as well.
The short version is this, our goal is to create an estrogen-fueled digital newspaper that celebrates the successes of women around the globe with a focus on women in business. Again, we are big on business, entrepreneurship and marketing around here; so if you notice a bias, please excuse it, but at least you’ll know where it comes from.
Also, please note, we are new to blogging so forgive us in advance if we make a few mistakes. Feel free to let us know what you think.
Also, some people have asked “Why the name ‘Brusque’?” To put it simply - Because that’s our style (short, blunt, and straight to the point) - ESPECIALLY when we’re having pre-caffeine moments!
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