Leadership and WORMS -- Women in Operations Research and the Management Sciences

Leadership comes in many forms -- scientific, political, intellectual, academic, business and industry, professional, artistic, and societal from the individual to the familial levels and beyond.

Great leaders have courage and integrity and, through their vision and ability to capture the imagination and support of others,  can elicit fundamental change.

Being a great leader is never easy and one can experience isolation, marginalization, and even discrimination -- it is the work and novel ideas that matter and the documentation of them.

Great leaders care about others and, under what, at times, may seem to be too many constraints, create opportunities and long-lasting effects. You may become a great leader even if your own organization, for whatever reasons,  does not understand or appreciate your contributions.

Leaders help to build communities. 

There is a lot of renewed interest in women and leadership lately with the new PBS production that starts airing next week entitled: Makers: Women Who Make America to Sheryl Sandberg's forthcoming book, Lean In, with a provocative article in The New York Times: A Titan's How-To on Breaking the Glass Ceiling. Sandberg is the Chief Operating Officer of Facebook.

One of my favorite communities is WORMS -- Women in Operations Research and the Management Sciences.

WORMS is a forum of INFORMS (Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences).

According to the WORMS website, the goals of WORMS are to:

• To encourage interest in the field of operations research and the management sciences;
• To encourage discussion and interaction among individuals having interest in the issues facing women and its relationship to the profession of operations research and the management sciences;
• To advise the INFORMS Board on aspects of issues facing women in the profession of operations research and the management sciences and to keep the INFORMS Board apprised of developments in this area.

WORMS organizes great activities and also recognizes those who have contributed significantly to the advancement and recognition of women in the field of Operations Research and the Management Sciences (OR/MS) through the awarding of the WORMS Award.

Recently, we received the message below, which announces the immediately past and incoming new WORMS Officers.

Dear WORMS Members, 

As the outgoing WORMS President, I wanted to write and officially welcome the incoming WORMS Officers. Our "new" officers as of January 2013 are:

President Laura McLay, Virginia Commonwealth University, lamclay@vcu.edu

President ElectSusan Martonosi, Harvey Mudd College, martonosi@g.hmc.edu

Past President Esma Gel, Arizona State University, esma.gel@asu.edu

SR VP of Meetings  Mary Beth Kurz, Clemson University, mkurz@clemson.edu

JR VP of Meetings Erica Klampfl, Ford Motor Company, eklampfl@ford.com

SP VP of Communications Anna Nagurney, University of Massachusetts, Amherst, nagurney@isenberg.umass.edu

JR VP of Communications Lisa Yeo, University of Alberta, myeo@ualberta.ca

SR Treasurer Guzin Bayraksan, University of Arizona, guzinb@sie.arizona.edu

JR Treasurer Muhong Zhang, Arizona State University, Muhong.Zhang@asu.edu

Secretary Renata Konrad, Worchester Polytechnic Institute, rkonrad@wpi.edu

Please remember to renew your membership for 2013 and let us know if you have any questions/concerns/comments! 

Regards,

Esma Gel 

Past President, WORMS 

Coincidentally, the past several days there have been several professional activities that I have been involved in from the Dynamics of Disasters Symposium that I organized for the 2013 AAAS Annual Meeting in  Boston that took place Sunday, February 17, to the hosting of Professor Tina Wakolbinger for a talk at the Isenberg School, with the great help of our award-winning UMass Amherst INFORMs Student Chapter. 

In the former,  the new President of WORMS, Professor Laura McLay, was a panelist and also blogged about the experience, and Professor Tina Wakolbinger, who traveled all the way from Vienna, Austria, where she is a Professor at the Vienna University of Economics and Business,  was a discussant (our photo at AAAS Boston is above).

When we hosted Professor Wakolbinger for her seminar this past Tuesday, Professor Ana Muriel of the Department of Mechanical and Industrial Engineering at UMass Amherst, who is a past President of WORMS, came to the lunch, reception, and presentation, along with a nice group of her students.

 

And, I might add, Professor Wakolbinger is a past Senior VP of Communications of WORMS!

Interview with Dr. Ruth Simmons, President of Brown University, on Leadership

Dr. Ruth Simmons, the President of my alma mater, Brown University, will be stepping down at the end of this year. She will have served Brown brilliantly over a period of 11 years.

The New York Times has a great interview with Dr. Simmons, as part of its Corner Office series.

What especially impressed me in the interview, was how she had to overcome some tough times (it was suggested to her to leave the PhD program at Harvard, for example), and how she learned from those experiences. She very much values team-work, ambition in her employees and members of her leadership team and people who are genuinely interesting (physicists who like poetry, for example).

One of my favorite excerpts from the interview with Dr. Ruth Simmons is below:

I keep going back to this fundamental idea of being able to respect other people, especially if you’re in a senior position. You can get a lot more done if people have a sense that you respect them, and that you listen to them. You would be surprised at the number of interviews I’ve done where the person never stops talking. If I’m interviewing someone and if they never stop talking, I will never hire them, no matter how qualified they are. If you cannot listen, you can’t be the site of welcoming, nurturing, facilitating new ideas, innovation, creativity, because it really is ultimately only about you. So I look for people who listen well and can respect the ideas of others.

It is truly amazing what this youngest of twelve children from Texas has been able to accomplish.

Her shoes will be really tough to fill.

I wish the next President of Brown a lot of luck.

Leaders Offer Advice on How to be Successful

I very much enjoyed the panel yesterday morning at the 2011 INFORMS Charlotte Conference on "Leaders Offer Professional Advice to Both Women and Men."

The panel was sponsored by WORMS (Women in Operations Research and the Management Sciences).

Joining me on the panel: Dr. Eric Wolman, Dr. Radhika Kulkarni, Dr. Les Servi, and Dr. Mark Daskin.

Below I highlight some of the advice offered that resonated:

1. Find your passion and stick with it -- have fun and make your life worth living.

2. Your character, credibility, and integrity matter -- be fair and others will respect and trust you. Also, realize the importance of your organization's culture and that culture is local.

3. Hire the best people that you can for your team and believe in your plan. Understand the big picture.

4. Celebrate accomplishments and make sure that you give "pats on the back" for great performance.

5. Communications are key -- how can your ideas be used by the organization? Innovation happens when you put great ideas into action. Also, remember the human element.

6. You, as an individual, should define success for yourself so know yourself.

7. Find a great mentor and also mentor others.

8. Take advantage of opportunities and engage in networking. Be open to opportunities and new responsibilities.

9. Realize that you are a member of different communities and gain support from them and solace, if need be.

10. Look at the trajectory that you are on and imagine yourself 5 years from now.

Many thanks to WORMS for sponsoring this great session which also had a terrific discussion!

Thanks to all the panelists -- We all learned alot from them and from one another.

Why Small Gestures are Big and What Great Leaders Already Do and Know

It is always so interesting to observe and see how those in positions of "substance" behave and act, especially when it comes to those that they oversee or who may report to them.

I continue to be impressed by those who lead by example and -- who

• take the time to write a nice note, which need not be on fancy stationery, or send a timely, enthusiastic and supporting email;
• congratulate those who have achieved something special and do so publicly, which makes it even more special;
• praise members of the organization for a job well-done;
• show up to events even when bosses may not be there to take attendance;
• do what should be done without extra financial compensation;
• mentor and advocate for those less fortunate or without the "right" connections;
• create opportunities that build up people and an organization rather than use tactics that "divide and destroy;"
• add humor and spirit to daily interactions.
  

As people move up (and down) the hierarchies of various organizations, institutions, corporations, and even universities, great leaders are those that will be followed because they took the time to acknowledge others.

One cannot be successful by doing it alone.