Hottest Seat In The House

Reading the Wall Street Journal last Wednesday I came across an interesting article, More Women Primed to Land CEO Roles.

Top line stats are unsurprising; at the current time only 35 of the 1000 Fortune companies have women as Chief Executive Officers. That’s a whopping 3.5%… I had to double take, this is 2012? Women won the right to vote in 1918 and The Equal Pay Act was passed in 1970. So, why is that we still see men zooming past women in the world of business? Gene Marks gives his comments on Forbes online.

That’s 96.5% of CEO positions in the top 1000 Fortune companies going to men. I would love to interview women such as Irene Rosenfeld, Carly Fiorina and Andrea Jung and let them tell us why not more women are reaching the top spots, understand how they got there and why they wanted to?  Honestly, I think it’s because women have more to prove in business. They need to be the model employee, a good mother, wife, neighbour and daughter in law, that’s a lot of pressure.

There is good news however; Maggie Wilderotter, CEO of Frontier Communications Corp. believes that the number of major-company female CEOs will double in the next 5 years.

I often wonder how you get that top spot, man or woman. Do you take a MBA at Harvard or work damn hard from the bottom up… two options really. The formula I believe is all in the mind, set a goal and reach it. Also, surround yourself by people who you can learn from, gain profit-and-loss experience and as Denise Morrison, Chief of Campbell Soup Co says, “If you want a CEO role, you have to prepare for it with a vengeance”.

I have the next 30 years to decide if I want to be a CEO, take an MBA, learn Russian, move to New York or set up my own bakery in Ramsbottom. There certainly isn’t a rush, my advice to any working woman just be good at what you do and be proud to do it. Juggle the best you can. If you’re good at what you do people will recognise it.

The good news is that the board room is opening up to having more women in the hot seat, now you just need to decide if you want it!

Image from The Wall Street Journal

Guilt free, fat free, skinny with soya milk shopping

Now I don’t want to ‘dis’ my home town or indeed the regions north of zone 2 but I might just do that with this post. I apologise upfront, sorry.

I have been living a hop, skip and a jump from the Kings Road for a number of months now. In these months, I have now become a fat free shopper. I spend a few hours browsing the stores on the Kings Road hoping some woman (obviously me in 10 years) with far too much money, good fashion sense, a kind heart, has given her once worn Chanel dress to Oxfam or The British Red Cross.Only for me, (10 years younger) to come along and snap it up, well it was my dress anyway!

Guilt free, fat free, skinny with soya milk shopping is so tasty I’m hooked. I can’t get enough of it. It’s only in the centre of London that you have people so rich that they are willing to give away their Chanel, like it’s a t-shirt from GAP. Sorry, I am yet to walk into an Oxfam ‘up north’ and find a Chanel dress. Then again, I am from Lancashire, it’s more likely that I find a pair of Hi-Tech waterproof trousers.

It’s not only me that is hooked on guilt free, fat free, skinny with soya milk shopping. Only a couple of days ago M&S joined forces with Oxfam and actress Joanna Lumley to launch Shwopping, a clothes shopping and swapping scheme. From now on, all its stores will accept unwanted clothing of any brand, all year round. People can bring in old clothes to donate, when buying new items, thus reducing landfill. To launch M&S took over Brick Lane, they covered a section of the road, buildings, park furniture in 5 minutes worth of clothes that go to landfill. This was a great photo opportunity for the press but it also really hits home to the consumer that we don’t need to throw away all these clothes. One mans rubbish is another mans treasure.

Yet again another great CSR initiative from M&S. I agree with the CE Marc Bolland more people should be encouraged to swap, charity shop and get involved. Old clothes only clog up the wardrobe and new clothes from charity shops are from places you dream of shopping in. Next time I go into M&S looking for something in the Limited range I am taking in my unwanted clothes. Oh, and it’s most likely to be that pair of Hi-Tech waterproof trousers, I am northern after all!

Wine and Cheese

If you have time tomorrow I urge you to get down to the southbank, to the cheese and wine festival. It sure is yummy, do I need to say it twice? Cheese and wine, there I did!

Lulu Guinness for Uniqlo

Designer Lulu Guinness has branched out into the world of clothing, with a brand new collection for the Japanese high street retailer, Uniqlo.

Guinness, has used some of her favourite prints as seen on her amazing handbags to create a 14-piece collection of illustrated T-shirts. They are covered in lips, the Queens’s head and graphic cats. Retailing at a bargain price of just £14.90 each, you’d be silly not to grab one, great for pairing with a pair of denim shorts in summer!

http://shop.uniqlo.com/uk/store/clothing/ut/luluguinness/

The big C

Cancer is my star sign; it is also the word that I heard five months ago when my mum was diagnosed with stage 3 breast cancer.

Instantly I was thinking ahead, probably about three steps ahead, do I move home, get out of London and back to Ramsbottom? Will the girls cope? Will mum deal with this? I entered a new state – ‘upside down’.  Life became different, as I’m sure people in a similar situation will agree. The small things disappeared and the big things became small.

Cancer is a weird disease and it effects not only with the person with the disease but also everyone else that’s involved – it’s a nasty little bugger. Over 46,000 women get breast cancer in the UK each year and it is the most common cancer in the UK. That’s a lot of women dealing with chemo, radiotherapy, surgery, hair loss and the rest. It’s just insane.

The nasty bugger is nasty but if there is a positive that I take from this situation and I am determined to. It’s that, even when it’s rainy, as it has been in London for the last few days, that you should live life to the full, laugh when you want to and cry if you need to.

My mum is beautiful, she is 43 years old and the strongest woman I know and as she nears the end of her chemotherapy there is still a fair way to go but she remains as calm and strong as ever.

I don’t have the answers on how to deal with the nasty bugger; all I know is, keep swimming, run a marathon, https://www.justgiving.com/Gemma-Morris0 . Oh and a power tune or two is always good!

Jessie J

Who is not in love with Jessie J at the moment?

I’m totally in love with her daring fashion, attitude and amazing voice. I’m hoping her album keeps me going on my marathon … now I better get training

 

Spring Pastels

I love that this season it is all about pastels. It reminds me of being at school with a pallet of chalk crayons and sketching a bunch of flowers, with my teacher questioning if I was actually looking at the flowers and not just scribbling whatever I liked!

To be honest, I was having too much fun making the colours look pretty next to each other. This spring is all about having fun with colour. I’m totally going to, scribble away…

Image from Vogue.com