sphinxx news alert    
27 January 2010 | www.sphinxx.com.au   

This week hear how an Australian woman is making a big difference, the perks of using LinkedIn, new technology for breast screening, and we also have lots of offers for you!

1. YOUR CAREER: An Australian woman making a difference in Haiti - how are you making a difference with your career?
2. WORK: LinkedIn and the Next Director - free online support and advice for directors and aspiring directors
3. LIFE: MEM breast screening - new technology screening without radiation or xrays
4. OFFERS: A new year, a new year... is it time you reinvented your leadership style?
5. OFFERS: Want to put your brand in the hands of 500 senior women in business?
6. OFFERS: Lifestyle Careers Online Job Board

If you have an idea for a topic we should include in a future news alert, please let us know - we’d love to hear from you!

All the best,

Jen Dalitz
Founder & The SheEO, sphinxx.com.au

An Australian woman making a difference in Haiti - how are you making a difference with your career?

I received this email today through my networks - it's a message from Alison Thompson who will be in tomorrow's Australia Day Honours list, sent yesterday to her parents in Sutherland Shire (Sydney). If you needed a reminder of just how lucky we all are, and just how much we each can do to make a difference in our own way, this could be it. If you'd like to make a financial contribution to assist in the relief efforts, sphinxx has donated with Save the Children and I invite you to do so too.

It's worthwhile pointing out that this isn't the first disaster that Alison Thompson has been on the ground at, assisting at a grass roots level. The former schoolteacher overcame a serious car accident here and then followed her dreams, moving to New York to live. On September 11, 2001, she headed downtown and set up a stand and washed the soot out of firefighters' eyes for weeks on end. When the 2004 tsunami hit Asia, Thompson grabbed her camera and boyfriend Oscar and went to Peraliya in Sri Lanka where 2500 people had died. She went for two weeks to help and ended up staying a year. With volunteers and no training, she set up a hospital and refugee camp housing 3000.

Her film of this journey, The Third Wave, was picked up by Sean Penn and screened at the Cannes Film Festival, with all box-office proceeds put towards building the Community Tsunami Early-Warning Centre in Sri Lanka. Sean Penn is now with Alison in Port-au-Prince, doing the same thing. It's women like Alison who truly make me proud to be Australian, and give me the inspiration to make a difference in the work I do every day.

So where does your inspiration come from, and what is the difference that you will make today?

Subject: Hell in Haiti

Hi mum and dad - I won't be around when they announce my award on January 26th. I am with Sean Penn, diana jenkins, Oscar and 15 doctors embedded in the 82 airbourne ( USA) Dante would describe it as hell here. There is no food and wAter and hundreds dying daily. The aid is all bottlenecked and not reaching here . The other day i assisted with amputation (holding them down) while they used a saw to cut a young boys leg off with no pain killers. Today I went with a strike force and army patrol in hummers into the streets and walked 5 miles through the camps set up on every street corner ..sewage and bodies stench is everywhere. As i attend to a patient 30 people crowd around me and it's hard to breath. I nearly fainted today as the sewage smell went straight down my throat. I went white and dizzy but couldn't sit down as sewage is running through the streets. There is much infection and it feels like the job is too big. No antibiotics anywhere.

Good news, today our new york doctors evacuated 18 patients with spinal injuries out to miami and we're all so excited. Our mash unit is in the 82 air base overlooking a refugee camp of over 50000 people. The refugees start singing Christian songs at 4 am and line up for food until the army hands it out at 8 am ( thats if there is any food)

On the first night I was in the nearby jungle camping under the stars with my team and woke up to the beautiful music drawing me to them. I thought it was a church and we went to find it and came across the 82 airbourne camp and the refugee camp.( that's how we ended up here) as it wasn't safe to stay where we were even though we had our own security force. We are totally self suffient with food gas and medicines and have a private donor (Diana Jenkins who was a refugee in camps in Bosnia as a child - her family died of starvation in the camps. ) Sean Penn is here purely as a volunteer and is cutting through bureaucracy to get aid moving and food water and medicines to the people. There is no agenda but to save lives. Helicopters fly over head and it feels like vietnam. That night 50,000 people sung me to sleep and they sing every night for the world to save them. There is always hope but she's not here right now.
Alison xxx

My writing is a mess as it's on iPhone and keeps changing my words and the generator is on for a few hours but I know it's important to tell the world. Please send to any press who may call or family and friends.

As you know I'm a fan and long time user of LinkedIn and recently I received an invitation to join the Next Director group on LinkedIn. Through my 1200+ LinkedIn contacts not a day goes by that I don't receive invitations to connect to individuals and groups of various sorts (if you haven't already connected with me on LinkedIn - send me an invitation!) The Next Director is one group I'm happy to have been invited to, and I have to say I've become a huge fan.

Next Director is focused on preparation for and the practice of Directorship. Its main objective is to build a platform where company directors from around the world and with a diverse range of experience and aspirations can engage with each other, seek and contribute advice and share ideas and information to meet the objective of bettering performance – theirs and that of the companies of whose boards they are members.

The group has over 1000 members and a very lively discussion board covering all aspects of boards and governance... as I write this there are discussion posts running on Board charter examples, Top Three Tips for Aspiring Company Directors, How to close down an NFP, structuring shareholders agreements, whether an NFP board should offer 'sitting fees' to attract high calibre directors, and much, much more.

Best of all it's all free to access! In fact I've got more value out of the Next Director group than I did in years of membership to the AICD!

I have no affiliation with Next Director other than being a happy user - and I thought you might benefit getting on board too - It's free to join, well received and used by its members and I personally have been spending FAR too much time pondering the Q&A on the discussion board. So if you're interested in building a board portfolio, you might like to join this group - click here to access it or send me a LinkedIn message and I'll send you an invitation to join.

MEM breast screening - new technology screening without radiation or xrays

I think we've probably all been touched by breast cancer in some way, through a friend, colleague or family member. In my case my beautiful aunt, Jude, survived breast cancer - so it's often in the back of my mind. But how many of us have actually had breast screening? I know I haven't.

Did you know that nearly half of women 50-70 years of age don’t get the free mammogram their entitled to; while many younger women who are worried about getting breast cancer and are too young to qualify for routine mammogram screening. So I was interested to learn from sphinxx friend Joanne Firth from Safe Breast Imaging that there is a new safe and comfortable option for women of all ages to have a regular breast check to monitor their breast health. Without radiation, because it's not an xray.

MEM electrical impedance breast screening maps the electrical properties of the breast, providing useful information on lumps, structure and early clues of possible future risk. So it may help with early detection of possible cancer warning signs, and is certainly a welcome addition to the existing suite of detection options.

If you'd like to find out more, visit www.safebreastimaging.com.au or you can phone Joanne directly at Safe Breast Imaging on 1300 310 820.

A new year, a new year... is it time you reinvented your leadership style?

I've been catching up on my emails during the lull of January and came across a terrific one by Sue Henry, asking what I'm going to do differently in 2010. Sue has some great tips to help you get more out of 2010 - and so do we at sphinxx. In fact we've put together our February leadership development day - Ascend - to help you do just that.

If you want to commercialise your networks better in 2010, to be more resilient, more confident and to influence others more effectively, you need to join us at Ascend throughout February in Adelaide, Brisbane, Melbourne and Sydney.

Sponsored by Westpac, these days are jam packed with ideas to help you reinvent your leadership style in 2010. There are currently only 8 places left in Sydney and just 24 places in Adelaide, Brisbane and Melbourne. Register your place now on the Events page at www.sphinxx.com.au - or download the flyer to faxback to the sphinxx office. But be quick - as always these events will sell out!

Want to put your brand in the hands of 500 senior women in business?

We’re in the process of collating goody bags for participants at our Ascend leadership development days in Adelaide, Brisbane, Melbourne and Sydney.

Participants at Ascend are senior women in business including managers, senior associates, directors and partners; and middle and senior managers, GMs and MDs from organisations including: Allens Arthur Robinson, Austrade, Australian Institute of Company Directors, Australian Red Cross, Australian Wine Institute, Baker & McKenzie, BAT, BDO, Bulla Dairy Foods, Caltex, Commonwealth Bank, CPA Australia, Cue Clothing Company, Deloitte, Department of Environment & Sustainability (VIC), Department of Health (SA), Eli Lilly, Energy Australia, ETSA Utilities, IBM, Laing & Simmons, Macquarie, Maddocks Lawyers, McGrath Nicol, MLC, Mount Lofty Natural Resource Management Board, Nokia, Noni B, Optus, Ord Minnett, Oroton, Parliament of SA, Pottinger, Professionals, PwC, Royal Adelaide Hospital, The University of Adelaide, The University of Melbourne, Transfield Services, United Utilities, Visy, Western Water, Westpac, Work Cover, World Vision...........and many more!

If you have product samples or branding products you'd like to include in the goody bags, please let us know before 3rd Feb.

Lifestyle Careers Online Job Board

Lifestyle Careers Australia is a Lifestyle Careers Online Job Board for Professionals seeking a flexible job and a work life balance. sphinx readers who are recruiting any roles with flexibility are invited to contact Lifestyle Careers to access a “Buy 1 get 1 Free” job advertisement, valued at $71-50. To take up this offer, simply email sales@lifestylecareers.com.au or call 1300 886 032 and quote "SPHINXX" to get the special deal.