Barbara Krumsiek to Highlight Women in Business Symposium at Douglass Residential College

NEW BRUNSWICK, N.J. – On Wednesday, March 26, Douglass Residential College will host the “Women in the Era of Globalization: Women in Business” daylong symposium and the 2008 L’Hommedieu Lecture.

The symposium will focus on women and business and include sessions on microcredit, social entrepreneurship, negotiation and women in small business. It will culminate in a lecture by Barbara Krumsiek, one of the financial services industry’s highest-ranking female executives, titled “Advancing Women and Minorities in Business.”

Krumsiek, the chief executive officer and president of the Calvert Group, Ltd., investment firm for the past 11 years, created the Calvert Women’s Principles, a code of corporate conduct focusing on gender equality and women’s empowerment. A former managing director at Alliance Capital Management LP, Krumsiek has been active in domestic and international initiatives encouraging corporations to adopt sustainable business practices.

She graduated Phi Beta Kappa with honors from Douglass College in 1974 with a bachelor’s degree in mathematics and holds a master’s degree in mathematics from New York University. In 2000, Douglass College and the Associate Alumnae of Douglass College named her to The Douglass Society, and in the same year, the Rutgers University Alumni Federation added her of the Hall of Distinguished Alumni.

 The symposium’s keynote address will be given by Joan Verplanck, president of the New Jersey Chamber of Commerce and the first woman to hold that position. Scheduled speakers include Sara Laschever, author of Women Don’t Ask: The High Cost of Avoiding Negotiation – And Positive Strategies for Change; Abena P.A. Busia, associate professor of English at Rutgers and co-director of the Women Writing Africa Project; and Jean Stockdale, executive director of Who is My Neighbor? in Highland Park. A symposium schedule, which is subject to change, may be viewed at http://www.douglass.rutgers.edu/index.php?page_name=globalization.

The L’Hommedieu Visiting Lecture Series, sponsored by the Associate Alumnae of Douglass College, began in 1984 through the generosity of the late Frances Bradley L’Hommedieu, a 1926 Douglass graduate. Recent lecturers in the series have included legendary researcher Jane Goodall, former White House press secretary Dee Dee Myers, Nobel laureate Jody Williams and Pulitzer-Prize-winning author Frank McCourt.

Scheduled during Women's History Month, the bi-annual Women in the Era of Globalization Symposium was begun in 2004 and is held in conjunction with the L'Hommedieu Lecture. The 2008 symposium is cosponsored by Douglass Residential College, the Vice President for Undergraduate Education at Rutgers, and the Associate Alumnae of Douglass College.

The symposium and the lecture will be held at Trayes Hall, Douglass Campus Center, 100 George Street, New Brunswick. The symposium will take place from 9:30 a.m. to 2:45 p.m., including lunch, and the lecture will begin at 7 p.m. Both are free and open to the public.