2012 Board of Directors

The Healthcare Businesswomen’s Association (HBA), persevering in its commitment to strengthen relationships with members and corporate partners to foster the advancement and impact of women leaders in healthcare worldwide, now serves over 130 corporate partners and nearly 6,000 members across 15 chapters in the US and Europe. HBA president Buket Grau, global commercial strategy director at Stryker, is focused on making the HBA’s unique offerings and leadership opportunities accessible to members and corporate partners worldwide. Grau says, “Because of this strong foundation, we can now set our sights on what I believe is a unique opportunity: to become the most engaging and the most trusted healthcare women’s leadership organization worldwide. My vision for the HBA is that whatever leadership challenges they have or whichever cross-roads they are at, every single member, volunteer and Corporate Partner feels they can come home to the HBA, like coming home to their family–where we all unite passionately under a common purpose.”

Over the past 35 years, the HBA has developed into the foremost women’s leadership organization in the healthcare industry, dedicated to recognizing outstanding women in the healthcare industry, providing educational opportunities for its members to develop cutting-edge industry knowledge and leadership skills, creating greater visibility for individuals in the industry through networking, and fostering mentoring opportunities. The HBA’s values continue to be fueled by the commitment of its board of directors, advisory board, regional boards and committee chairs.

• President: Buket Grau, global commercial strategy director, Stryker
• President-elect: Terri Pascarelli, principal, TAP Business Strategies
• First vice president: Jeanne Zucker, VP, client development, athenahealth
• Second vice president: Janis Cohen, EVP, group managing director, Draftfcb
• Immediate past president: Deborah Coogan Seltzer, life sciences practice member, Spencer Stuart
• Treasurer: Beth Eby, financial advisor, Eby Financial
• Secretary: Wendy White, founder and president, Siren Interactive Corporation

Members of the board are representative of the HBA’s diverse membership, which represents all aspects of the healthcare industry, from pharmaceutical and medical device companies to patient advocacy groups, healthcare communications and consulting firms across the US and Europe.

In addition to the executive committee, the 2012 HBA directors-at-large are:

• Amy Bybee, VP, pharmaceutical markets, Harte-Hanks
• Linda DaSilva, sales executive, Priority Solutions International, Thermo Fisher Scientific
• Pat Gibson, president and CEO, PMG Communications
• Jolanda Groenhuijzen, president and managing director, MyLanda GmbH
• Taren Grom, co-founding partner/editor in chief, PharmaVOICE*
• Sharon Henry, VP, Global Medical HQ, Bristol-Myers Squibb
• Liz Kay, VP, account strategy and business development, Cramer
• Cathy Kerzner, SVP & Head, strategy and marketing, Nestlé Health Science*
• Ilyssa Levins, founder and president, Center for Communication Compliance*
• Ann Mohamadi, managing director, health advisory, PwC
• Laurie J. Murphy, president and CEO, PeopleAreKey Inc.
• Lesley Reynolds, senior associate, Fulbright & Jaworski LLP
• Roslyn Schneider, senior director, medical affairs, Pfizer Inc.*
• Charlotte Sibley, president, Charlotte E. Sibley Associates LLC

*indicates non-voting director-at-large

Election of the 2012 slate of officers and directors-at-large took place at the HBA’s Annual Business Meeting, during the two-day HBA Leadership Conference in National Harbor, MD. The 2012 HBA Leadership Conference will take place November 7-9 in Orlando, FL.

About The HBA

The Healthcare Businesswomen’s Association (HBA) is in its fourth decade as a global not-for-profit organization dedicated to furthering the advancement of women in healthcare worldwide. With 15 chapters throughout the US and in Europe, the HBA is headquartered in New Jersey with offices in Philadelphia and Research Triangle Park. The HBA provides educational opportunities for women and men to develop cutting-edge healthcare industry knowledge and leadership skills; recognizes outstanding women and men in the industry; provides opportunities for networking; creates greater visibility for women in the industry; fosters mentoring relationships and serves as a conduit and sponsor for research on career advancement issues. HBA has nearly 6,000 individual members and over 130 Corporate Partners. It is widely recognized as the catalyst for leadership development of women in healthcare worldwide. For more information, visit www.hbanet.org.

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Media contact:
Philip George
Healthcare Businesswomen’s Association Marketing and Communications

Here’s an excerpt:

A New York City subway train holds 1,200 people. This blog was viewed about 5,000 times in 2011. If it were a NYC subway train, it would take about 4 trips to carry that many people.

Click here to see the complete report.

Incoming 2012 HBA President Buket Grau at the HBA Leadership Conference

I feel privileged to accept the role of president of the HBA, and I am grateful to you and to our past presidents for your service and leadership.

This year, Deb has been leading us through a unifying theme of “the year of the volunteer.” Last year, Susan Torroella instituted the focus on “the year of the chapter.” And the year before, Ceci Zak had us strategically address how to engage Corporate Partners in our mission.

Collectively, dedicated focus on these areas made us a much stronger organization. HBA today represents 6,000+ members, 130+ corporate partners, and thousands of volunteers with its 15 chapters. It is a reflection of incredible leadership of our board members, staff, volunteers, and committed corporate partners.

Today, because of this strong foundation, we can now set our sights on what I believe is a unique opportunity: to become the most engaging and the most trusted healthcare leadership organization worldwide.

This is an ambitious overarching goal for HBA. But it is the kind of goal that, I would argue, is now appropriate for an organization of our size and of our talent. If you think about it, engagement and trust have always been at the core of HBA. By focusing on this goal, we are pushing ourselves to be more of who we are already.

Clearly, we know that engaging our members by our offerings and volunteer leadership opportunities is critical for our sustainable growth. Our programs must be not only relevant; they have to be accessible. Our volunteer opportunities must be a great return of value not only to them and to their employers.

Trust already lies at the heart of our programs and is the backbone that allows the countless connections which HBA facilitates for its members. Trust is also especially important during times of change and economic or professional turbulence and stress that many experience today.

So, my dream for HBA is that whatever leadership challenges they have or whichever cross-roads they are at, every single member, volunteer and Corporate Partner feels they can come home to HBA, like coming home to their family–where we all unite passionately under a common purpose.

And focusing on the essential values of “engagement and trust” will give us guidance to best serve them when they come home, and it will also help secure the future of our influence in the healthcare industry.

So with this overarching goal in view, I see 2012 as a year for key strategic investments and accomplishments that will mark important milestones along our journey. We’ll accelerate innovation. We have an incredible pipeline of new offerings coming up to ensure we satisfy the evolving needs of our members and partners. We have a robust approach to expand our reach across healthcare sectors to broaden learning and collaboration across the industry.

And we are building required capabilities to ensure sustainability, quality and efficiency in everything we do and stand for, especially, as we prepare for our expanding membership base.

I have no doubt we will be successful – thanks to your support, to our dedicated leadership, Corporate Partners, sponsors and advisory board.

In closing, let me say that my involvement in HBA has been one of my most rewarding professional and personal experiences.  I joined HBA as a volunteer with the Boston chapter seven years ago. Since then, HBA has truly become a family to me, with many invaluable friendships. It has engaged me professionally and has instilled great trust personally.It was an honor to serve under Deb’s leadership on the board this year.

I am very excited about 2012. I am grateful for the opportunity to serve HBA and help to advance the organization toward the next level of achievement.

As my first official order of business as the incoming president, I would like to announce the location of next year’s leadership conference. The 2012 HBA Leadership Conference will be held from November 7 to 9 at the Gaylord Palms in beautiful Orlando, Florida.

HBA 2011 President Deborah Coogan Seltzer at the HBA Leadership Conference

many of you as individuals has made my time as your president so very rewarding. Each year, we grow, not just in number, but in resources, in opportunities, and in potential. That kind of growth would not be possible without the generous support of our sponsors.

Thank you to all of the HBA 2011 Leadership Conference sponsors:

Bronze
Allergan, Clinlogix, CMI, CompasInc, Siren Interactive

Silver
Merck, Fullbright& Jaworski, LLP, BoehringerIngelheim, Allergan

Pearl
Segmedica

Gold
Sanofi, Merck, Kaiser Permanente, Celgene, cegedim

Amber
Publicis Healthcare Communications Group

Topaz
Medlmmune, AstraZeneca

Sapphire
GSK

Platinum
Lilly, Takeda Millennium, Novartis

Trillion
Insigniam Performance, Genentech, Johnson & Johnson

Diamond
Bayer Healthcare, Shire

Capitol
Medlmmune

Smithsonian
OmnicomGroupInc

I was warned by two of my wonderful predecessors, Susan Torroella and Ceci Zak, that my presidential year would fly by – and yet I am still somewhat amazed as I stand here that it is already November… that I am just weeks away from passing the reins to another wonderful woman.

Let me first congratulate Buket Grau, who was elected last evening as 2012 HBA president. I am so happy for Buket, and for the HBA. Because sometimes fate, or destiny, smiles upon an organization and allows it the right leader at the right time – and I know that to be the case with HBA and Buket.

Buket,  if you trust in your own innate abilities and instincts – and the valuable experience you’ve already gained in your years as an HBA leader – you will shine and HBA will be the better for it. I benefited greatly from the advice of the women who came before me, and there are a few other things I’ve learned this year that might prove helpful.  At least I hope so – here goes.

Remember you are not alone.
That is the true strength of HBA – the wealth of talent and commitment of its leaders and staff, past, current and up & coming.

Where possible, strive for balance:

• Between strategy and tactics
• Between honoring and learning from the past, and what drove success, and visualizing and seizing a changing future – the Blue Ocean
• Between expectations and reality – especially when it comes to how you judge yourself

Finally, don’t forget to stop every now and again, and savor the moments that add the texture to your presidential year – because it will go faster than you can know.

@PharmaVOICE: Lewis-Hall says new types of healthcare companies are needed at the table: food, retail, communications, technology, etc.
@BetsyLane The difference between a vision and an hallucination is the number of people who share it. (Wendy White)
@DMoysychyn Things don’t change when people see the light, they change when they feel the heat (Freda Lewis-Hall)
@Janet_Twitchell Invest in your social intelligence – adopt host behavior (Roz Usheroff)
@CeciZak Roughly 80% of Internet pages are in English. Suggests that English is becoming a second language across the world. (D Blackwell)

Search #HBAlead on Twitter for the entire list.

The popularity of our tweeters has brought the HBA to a milestone–@HBAnet now has 800 followers on Twitter. A huge thank you to everyone who tweeted the HBA 2011 Leadership Conference:

@aminal100 Amina C Lobban
@BetsyLane Betsy Lane
@CeciZak Ceci Zak
@CiaranSB Ciaran Bellwoar
@CMI_Media Communications Media
@DMoysychyn Debbie Moysychyn
@EileenOBrien Eileen O’Brien
@HBAnetMA HBA Mid-Atlantic chapter
@HBAnet Carol Meerschaert
@Janet_Twitchell Janet Twitchell
@jillroyston Jill Royston
@JenAntonacci Jenifer Antonacci
@Julgram Julie Kelly
@KarenShopmyer Karen Shopmyer
@katiereedy Kate Reedy
@lanihashimoto Lani Hashimoto
@Lisa_Sassman Lisa Sassman
@MadKatHealth Jaclyn Grovich
@MontgomeryMeg Megan Montgomery
@motivstrategies Motiv Strategies
@PassportHealthT Passport Health
@PharmaVOICE PharmaVOICE
@PSUMaryDom Mary Dominiecki
@RosettaMktg Rosetta
@RuderFinn Ruder Finn
@sirenwendy Wendy White
@tgrom Taren Grom
@thehealthmaven Lea Carey

Following our hashtag/retweeting:
@Graphixlink Lynn Kendall
@BioPharmaRob Robert Nauman
@roadmapwarrior Jen Klingensmith
@sdorfman Susan Dorfman
@vdazzle Vicki Zidwick

Dear Writer,

Like most editors, I’m a writer too. I greatly appreciate the work you put into this. As I edit the piece you submitted, I think of the many hours you put into creating this piece of writing. I know you wrote, re-wrote, spell checked, fact checked and put both heart and head into this before you emailed it. I then use the modern equivalent of the red pen, the dreaded track changes tool, to massage your work.

An editor is like a diamond cutter. I try to take the diamond in the rough you submitted and polish it for maximum brilliance. As editor, I have the best interest of the publication at heart; please know that I’m not making changes to hurt your feelings or to drive you nuts. Please don’t be married to each word you wrote. Understand that articles on a website have a different tone than those in a magazine, which are in turn not the same as a business report or journal article. I know my readers and will apply lessons learned to your article as I edit.

It’s my job to create and apply a consistent style for the medium whether that is our website, blog or magazine. That means I have to enforce our editorial guidelines and style guide. I’m simply creating a consistent look and style to give our readers an enjoyable experience. Please proof-read your writing once just for those picky rules on capitalization, punctuation and our own spelling rules ( we write kickoff and website as one word).

Try to understand that an editor cannot create space on a page so I will have to edit down to meet the space allowed. Our length guidelines are not random, but were developed by using industry best practices and examining analytics from our media properties.

Thanks for listening,
Your Editor

 In my role as the director of marketing and communication for the Healthcare Businesswomen’s Association I spend a great deal of time editing. I love great writing and mentoring aspiring writers and watching them become great writers.

The competition is fierce. Your writing must be accurate, compelling, to the point and fun! You must make it personal so that the reader feels you have written just for them. Ask yourself, why would anyone read what I wrote? What’s in it for them? What can I say that will keep that person reading the rest of your article?

Grab ‘em
A catchy title means much more on the web. You need a short, catchy, attention grabbing title. Your title may be all that comes up on a search engine and you want the user to click and read your article. “CEO Leadership Secrets” is better than “Chapter Event from May.” Print magazine covers offer great examples.

Hold ‘em
Now that you have grabbed eyeballs with the catchy title you need a snappy introduction. You must hold the reader with every sentence. Get to the point and skip that introduction text. Your writing must be tight. Edit carefully and delete every extra word. Try removing 50% of your words. Boredom is the cardinal sin of the web. Bonus points if you spice it up and make it more fun!

Link ‘em
A hyperlink is an underlined or highlighted word, phrase or web address (URL) in an article linked. Don’t underline anything that is not a hyperlink. You click on the link and it brings you to another article, page on the website or to another website. You should think of possible links when you write. Visit the site you are writing for and search for keywords you will probably use in your article. Hyperlinks make your job easier as you can simply link to another article instead of explaining every term. For example:

Building on the E.D.G.E. in Leadership study results to improve women’s representation at senior levels, we’re investigating career tools to help the individual manage her professional development needs and companies attract, promote and retain talent.

Our Building Better Business Connections (3BC) program offers the corporate partner community in-depth information on how to start and ways to mature their women’s networks as well as how to identify and address hidden bias, a potential barrier to achieving true diversity.

The ACE award continues to honor internal leadership programs that perform. As constructive feedback is given to all submitters, I encourage every company to investigate how ACE can help – June 1 is the deadline so act quickly.

The Career Center job board now has close to 1,000 job postings and nearly that many resumes to help both job seekers and companies find the right match.

Follow these hints and you will educate and entertain your readers. Want to see how you’re doing? Check your bounce rate.

Carol Meerschaert, MBA, RD is the director of marketing and communications of the Healthcare Businesswomen’s Association (HBA). This article was adapted from a handout Carol wrote for a lecture delivered in 2007.

How often do you run across a riveting topic that you would like to explore in depth, or a recurring challenge that you would like to address head on, only to be sidetracked by your usual day-to-day responsibilities? Way too often, right?

On May 18, the HBA San Antonio Chapter tapped into that widespread thirst for topical knowledge and practical solutions with a timely, tightly focused debut event called HBA Concepts and Conversations. Ten subject-matter experts led roundtable dinner discussions on topics ranging from military medicine to conflict management, from transitioning into healthcare to genetic testing breakthroughs. HBA members and guests with overlapping interests and/or challenges sat at the table focused on their topic of choice.

As a longtime HBA member, I had no doubt that the facilitators would be engaging and that the event would be informative. But I was unprepared for how readily participants shared their experiences, insights and encouragement, and even some vulnerabilities, with their tablemates.

This event seamlessly evolved into a combined learning opportunity, leadership development and networking experience that had members asking for more. Clearly, no matter how seasoned we may be, no matter how diverse our career paths, the discovery of common ground in a safe, professional environment is, at least in my experience, both relatively rare and refreshingly invigorating.

Ian Clark, HBA 2011 Honorable Mentor

I’m genuinely inspired and a little humbled to be here. You know, I’ve been lucky enough to receive a number of accolades over the years, had some successes. I’ve not ever had a reward or an accolade that I’ve received more comments on, ever, in my working life, than this Honorable Mentor Award.

It would be remiss of me not to thank the folks who nominated me. Carol Wells, the president of the HBA San Francisco chapter, and all those who nominated me on behalf of the Genentech Women’s Professional Group. I want to give a shout out to that group. It’s a grassroots organization that has been in place now for about five years and has 1,000 members, which is quite the size. Every year they put on a leadership conference. It’s a whole day event aimed very specifically at leadership for women. This year they had 400 people attend. It really was quite the event.  So congratulations to all of you.

I’m the executive sponsor of that group, which you might think has sort of figurehead written all over it. And it’s a bit more than that.  And I say that because there is one message for the men in the audience today, and that’s about engagement. So I get engaged with that group all the time. And it was through that group that I originally met the folks from the HBA.

Let me talk a little bit about diversity. I think if you ask most of the people in this room to comment on the concept of diversity, everyone’s subscribed to it. The question is whether or not you do anything about it. I was talking to a couple of the founders of the HBA, outside earlier on, and when they started, there were actually people trying to get in their way. I don’t think that’s the world we live in right now.

We do live in a world where people kind of take the view that if we build it, they’ll come. I have to say when I was a younger manager, that was kind of my view, that as long as I created the right environment, women would advance. And I found that, quite frankly, didn’t work. If you measured the number of women vice presidents at Genentech, it really wasn’t a great success. And as a consequence of that, myself and my leadership team met with the HBA for about 10 or 12months. We sat down, and basically my folks said, “Look, we’re not succeeding. What should we do differently?” And that was the point they introduced us to the … the E.D.G.E. Study, and (many of you all know) the six best practices for advancing women. We put that plan into place in Genentech, and it’s been phenomenally successful, and it’s now the foundation of our broad diversity strategy. So I want to thank the leadership of the HBA for helping us out. So thank you very much indeed.

That brings me to the mentoring side of things. It was interesting. One of the E.D.G.E. best practices was mentoring. Particularly mentoring for younger women leaders, and the value of having a much more senior mentor. They didn’t necessarily have a precise idea as to why that worked, but it seemed to work. The assumption was that at a certain point in careers, women kind of have a potential lack of confidence in their likelihood of succeeding. Interestingly, men are the reverse. And having someone who is more senior as a mentor helps you reassure yourself that success is possible in the long run.

So that was all part of our program. One of the key jobs that the Genentech professional women’s group does it provide an environment for people to discuss their careers, at a point where maybe they’re worrying about their long term success. You know, it’s not coincidence, I guess, but there’s a certain point in women’s careers where business success and seniority unfortunately coincides frequently with starting of a young family, which creates a huge amount of pressure at times in terms of, “Can I do all of this and so it well?,” and in some sense that they’re the only ones going through it. And certainly maybe their boss isn’t going through it, so he is often not the best person to go to. One of the things that the we’ve done is create an environment where people can have those discussions, realize it’s not just them, it’s typical, and there are methods and ways of getting through it.

We’ve also built it into our corporate strategy now that we have much more, I think, visible and usable, flexible working arrangements. We’ve got on ramps and off ramps put in place so other people can get through that part of their life successfully both as a businessperson and as a mother if that happens to be the case. So that was all very valuable, and thanks to the HBA.

And it would be remiss of me not to congratulate our own Rising Star who’s here, Ann Lee-Karlon, PhD, a fabulous leader I met. I met her nine years ago, I think it was, when she was a junior leader. When I met her, she was so obviously very poised and competent and able. So it’s no surprise to me whatsoever that she’s now a vice president in our research and development group.  So, Ann, from me, congratulations.

Maybe this isn’t all entirely altruistic; I have three daughters. They’re all in high school.  I have a freshman, a junior, and a senior. So we’re in the midst of university apps right now. I’ve just finished reading a book called “Crazy You” which is which is an absolutely fantastic book about the whole application process. It’s very funny; if you’re stuck in it, read the book.  Anyway, a consequence of this brings one to think about careers, and it’s made me think about the future of my daughters. I’d like them to grow up in an environment where they can have a successful career in whatever they want they want to progress their lives in. And maybe, who knows, one day they might be members of the HBA as well.

This speech was delivered at the Healthcare Businesswomen’s Association‘s Woman of the Year Luncheon in New York City on May 5, 2011. The speech was broadcast live to Paris, France and San Fransisco, California.

Photo by Claire Allison Photography.

Daria Blackwell HBA 2011 Star Volunteer

Three events changed my life forever: 1) losing my sister to cancer, 2) serving as HBA president, and 3) moving to Europe by sailing across the Atlantic.

How you deal with things that come your way makes all the difference in living a life to its fullest. My remarkable sister and best friend, Dr. Oksana Korzeniowski, passed away in 2002 after a long fight with peritoneal cancer. She said, “I thought I’d have more time… make sure you do what you really want before you run out of time.” A few months later, I also lost my mother to advanced breast cancer.

As healthcare businesspeople, we deal daily with such heart-wrenching stories. Yet, when they become personal, it changes everything.  I was serving on the HBA board of directors at the time. How would I have coped without HBA? Kathy Giusti, former WOTY, gave me courage. The Board gave me strength. My clients, many of them HBA members, kept my business strong.

I am eternally grateful. I know now that you have to lead yourself to what you really want without wasting time.  When I was elected HBA president in 2004,I was ready to give back. I learned more about leadership in the subsequent years in HBA than in my entire career.  It was a challenging but hugely rewarding year.

We dealt with the sudden decision of the then board of the new San Francisco chapter to step down and become independent. Within one month, amazing women stepped in, rebuilt the chapter board, and continued superb programming. As you saw earlier, we have a vibrant San Francisco chapter and for the third year in a row they are hosting WOTY west. A remarkable achievement in crisis management and an event that propelled the HBA into change.

We restructured HBA that year into a global non-profit umbrella corporation enabling easier formation of chapters throughout the US and Europe. We then hired our first employee, CEO Laurie Cooke. We became stronger and healthier.

There were about 1,500 members then. There are over 6,000 today.

HBA led me to other opportunities, too. It was my HBA board seat and the people I met as a result, that secured my first independent corporate board appointment to Agile Therapeutics, a start-up biotechnology company dedicated to women’s health… seizing a venture capital-backed opportunity. HBA helped me make yet another transition. My husband’s family was in Ireland and we wanted to be there for them. To keep working trans-atlantically, I needed to extend my network. So I started a European affiliate of HBA, together with women from Novartis in Switzerland. Under Florence Manger’s leadership and with an enthusiastic board, HBA Europe became a full chapter in 2009. They now nurture the careers of women across an entire continent. I was honoured to serve as mentor to the affiliate and as past president of the Europe chapter board.

From a regional… to a national… to a global force, together we bridge the continents and mobilize thousands of women, clearing the way for each one to achieve her very best. That’s the power of volunteering.

Welcome to the board of directors of the HBA Europe Chapter and all the executives joining us by live link from Paris.

In 2008, I resigned as managing partner of Sudler & Hennessey. My husband Alex and I set sail across the Atlantic on our 57-foot sailboat. Here we were, responsible for our entire universe in the middle of a vast ocean. It was another life-altering experience, teaching me leadership on a new scale. I was the captain of my ship. I had to sail it well, with serious consequences if I didn’t. Conquering fear of the unknown was a great reward. I have since crossed the Atlantic three times and am now starting my own new business in Ireland.

Take calculated risks. Reach for what you want and lead your own life well. If it’s there, take advantage. If it’s not there, build it. If you are in a dark corner, remember that opportunity lurks there. Grasp it, things often change for the better. Although you may not understand its relevance in the moment, you will benefit from a seemingly irrelevant experience when time comes.

Volunteering is an amazingly easy way to uncover these opportunities. Join me in celebrating the European Commission’s Year of Volunteering by getting involved with HBA and stepping up to leadership roles in your own organizations. Remember, leadership is the trait you develop most when you volunteer.

Without it, I may never have had the courage to cross oceans and stand here before you today. Thank you again for the privilege. Bonsoir Paris!

This speech was delivered at the Healthcare Businesswomen’s Association‘s Woman of the Year Luncheon in New York City on May 5, 2011. The speech was broadcast live to Paris, France and San Fransisco, California.

Daria’s HBAdvantage article from 2008: This article describes her trans-Atlantic sail.

Photo by Claire Allison Photography