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Career Smart: Clear Straightforward Career Advice

By Stuart Nachbar

I worked with career counselors for ten years before becoming a writer. I had the chance to observe their interactions with students and recent graduates. In large part, their advice on the job search was consistent on research, resume preparation, interview tactics and choosing the best fit based on the job seeker’s interests and personality. This is all part of the path towards a good entry level opportunity.

Career Smart

Career Smart: Five Steps to a Powerful Personal Brand, by Sherri Thomas, is a reader-friendly guide to younger workers on the next stage of their career journey whether it be an upward move, lateral move, or even a switch to a new industry. Career Smart embellishes two major points: provide something of value to your employer and clients; and, deliver it in such a way that or clients feel loyal to you. The emphasis on loyal is the author’s, not mine.

Thomas believes that you provide value and earn loyalty in part by building a powerful personal brand in five steps: define the five core ingredients that make you unique; send the right messages; build relationships with the right career influencers, and strengthen your visibility and credibility with them; and, create a return-on-investment dashboard to measure and build your success.

Thomas, who has managed several career transitions herself within marketing and communications positions in different industries, gives advice within each steps that at times seems basic and obvious, but necessary for a worker with limited experience. Career Smart is a perfect book for someone who has spent time in one function such as accounting, computer programming or sales, and wonders what his next position might be. Corporations cut back on providing such direction in difficult times, so Career Smart provides an inexpensive substitute to support a self-directed career plan. Career Smart has exercises that are very easy to do, but require thought. However, anyone who has earned an entry level position should do these exercises after they have worked in their company or industry for two years. Most corporate communities and industries expect you to advance out of your entry level position by then.

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Pearls of Political Wisdom

Reviewed By Stuart Nachbar

Pearls Politics and Power: How Women Can Win and Lead by Madeleine Kunin is a primer on women in politics. It is a very well-written work that tells why women have run for office, how they have succeeded, the obstacles they faced, as well as their leadership and legislative styles. It also provides ideas on how women can better help women get elected to office.

Pearls, Politics and Power

Kunin, a former three-term governor of Vermont, assistant secretary of education and U.S Ambassador to Switzerland has not only presented an insider’s perspective; she has used anecdotes from history and other elected officials to effectively present all of the arguments about why women run—and why they do not. While most of the points appear obvious, family responsibilities and fear of electoral defeat being two examples—and it would be a disservice to the reader to the ignore them—some also go back to history. For instance, we are reminded that women were not given the right to vote in the presidential elections until 1920, 65 years after that right was granted to African-American men.

Most interesting was a chapter on the history of female heads of state outside the United States; so much of the world has a lead on us. Egypt had a female pharaoh, Hatshepsut, who ruled 3,480 years ago. Joan of Arc saved France from British dominance during the 15th century, at the age of 19. Five British queens wielded the same powers as a king, up to the end of Queen Victoria’s reign in 1901. Since 1960, 44 women have been elected as the leaders of their country, some by parliamentary governments where the head of state is selected by the legislative branch--which was mostly men—or won the popular vote in a general election. The first country to elect a female prime minister was Sri Lanka, the Philippines are the first nation to elect two.

Kunin served in the Clinton Administration, so she adds her two cents on Hillary Clinton’s prospects in the upcoming election. Clinton, she mentions, is not the first woman to run for president. Twenty one women have sought the office since 1872. Two ran on the Equal Right Rights party in 1872 and 1884, the rest sought the support of Democrats or Republicans, but none came close to winning the nomination.

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Standing Tall: The True Tales of a Hall of Fame Coach

By Stuart Nachbar

Standing Tall

Rutgers head woman’s basketball coach C. Vivian Stringer has been a larger than life sports figure in New Jersey for the past 13 years. Her teams continually contend for national championships, although it was not until this season that they outdrew a far less successful men’s basketball program. It was no surprise to me that she would come out with a book; she and her team handled racial slurs with considerable grace on the eve of a national championship game.

Standing Tall: A Memoir of Tragedy and Triumph is an inspirational biography, not a primer on leadership or X’s and O’s as other sports coaches are prone to write. Stringer is a very strong woman who has lived through personal tragedies: a daughter who became stricken with spinal meningitis at 14 months and the loss of a husband to an unexpected heart attack at a relatively young age. She is also a great coach with over 800 career wins who has taken three different schools to title rounds in the NCAA tournament. I have had the opportunity to listen to Stringer speak in person—and you cannot help but be inspired by her as a person and a coach.

For most readers unfamiliar with Rutgers women’s basketball, Standing Tall will more than suffice as an inspirational biography. She goes further into her humanity in print than most coaches ever do. You don’t have to be a basketball fan to appreciate Stringer or like this book.

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Secrets of the Beauty Insiders

Interview with Nada Manley, author of Secrets of the Beauty Insiders

Secrets of the Beauty Insiders is Nada Manley’s first book. The Florida resident is a recognized fashion and beauty writer with over 1,000 magazine articles to her credit. She is also a former beauty editor with more than a dozen years of experience.

Lauren Smith. How and when did you become so interested in beauty?

Secrets of the Beauty Insiders

Nada: I’ve been interested in beauty since I was very very young. It’s been a lifelong obsession. My mother claims that as a toddler I threw a tantrum when she forgot to pack perfume on a trip. Bad behavior aside, I first started reading about beauty when I was 6 or 7, and I trying on all of my mother’s products at around the same time.

Lauren Smith: What did you do to prepare for writing Secrets of the Beauty Insiders?

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Your Heart Needs the Mediterranean Diet

Lauren Smith: What is your book about?

Your Heart Needs ....

Emilia Klapp: Your Heart Needs the Mediterranean Diet is about preventing and reversing high cholesterol, high triglycerides and high blood pressure. The book is written in a dialogue format. Al, the patient, is referred by his doctor to the dietitian because he has the three health conditions mentioned above, which put him at risk for a heart attack or stroke. The dietitian guides the patient on the principles of the Mediterranean Diet, a diet that for centuries has protected people in the Mediterranean region from many chronic diseases such as heart disease, cancer, diabetes, and obesity.

However, the book is not only about eating healthy, which of course contributes to our health, but about a way of life. Al learns how to include physical activity into his life with little effort; he finds ways to include his children more into his life and share activities with them, as well as with his wife. He learns how to cook. Even his dog is happier with the new way of life. In sum, Al learns that a Mediterranean life style encompasses sharing activities and meals with family, friends, co-workers, physical activity.

Lauren Smith: With all the diet books out there, what makes yours different and unique?

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