For more than 18 years, Erna Grasz has led organizations, teams and individuals to success in fast paced, high stress, and results-orientated high-tech environments. She is known as an organizer of chaos and a "turn-around" leader. Check out her web site at www.erna-g.com. Most recently, as a Vice President of Research and Development at Nellcor/Tyco Healthcare she is managing a team of 100+ scientists and engineers. Previously as VP/ General Manager at KLA-Tencor, a semiconductor capital equipment company, Erna managed the Automation and Robotics Business Unit. In her leadership roles she turned around non-responsive organizations to competitive, results focused stand alone businesses, where customers wanted to use the products and employees actually had fun coming to work. Prior to the semiconductor industry, she led multi-million dollar programs at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL), a national defense laboratory. At LLNL, she represented the US State Dept. as a Science Advisor to Russia and the Ukraine, built class 100 clean rooms, and deployed numerous robot systems for land mine discovery, radioactive waste handling, and bomb removal. This presentation holds MS degrees in Electrical Engineering and Engineering Management from Texas Tech University and Santa Clara University. Outside of the “day job” she is a fitness instructor, married (no children), seeks adventure-traveling world wide, and creates opportunities to make a difference. * * * MOVERS AND SHAKERS: ROCKING THE WORLD BEFORE IT ROCKS YOU Influencing a company's decision to hire you is only the first step along the road to success in your technical profession. In this world of constant change, you need to rock the world before it rocks you. Convert motion and change into your own kinetic signature, your personal stamp on the world. It is up to you to define your personal goals, use your unique talents and skills, and finally reap the benefits of a job when it has been well done. Each of us has natural abilities and talents that enable creative, "out of the box" solutions that make us successful as individual contributors, as team members, as leaders, and as pioneers in the technical world. This presentation will share what it takes to get your foot in the door, to have immediate impact in your first technical assignment, and to carry that impact into your long-term career. She will emphasize first-year tips, not for being a mere survivor but for being an immediate and future mover and shaker. * * * Choosing Your
next job with Corporate, Government or Small Business: A job decision is not for life but it is a large part of your daily life. If you are entering the workforce or just making a job transition, it is important to not gamble with just a coin toss. When making this decision, elements to be considered include level of volatility, level of risk taking, types of rewards, daily pace and speed of action. In this workshop you will identify the elements of an ideal career, use a methodology to weigh your choices against those elements, and leave with tips to make the critical personal and professional trade-offs. You will learn several key techniques to negotiate your next offer. We will also discuss the differences in office politics, upward mobility and career paths in a government organization, academia, high tech silicon valley corporation or a small start-up business. * * * Opening the Door
and Closing the Deal: The resume only gets you into the interviewing chair, but what really counts is what happens when you are in the hot seat. Interviewers are individuals searching for the best package of skills — intellectual, interpersonal, and motivational — which will satisfy their employer's needs. Putting your best foot forward requires you to walk in prepared by knowing yourself, fairly representing "all" of your skills, and understanding the needs of the prospective employer. In addition, learn to ask what you need to know about them. This presentation will discuss specific techniques to prepare you for your first encounter with the interviewer, follow-on site visits, and negotiating the optimal closing package. We will also review how to best interview your potential employer while he or she is interviewing you as a prospective employee. By the end of this workshop, you will know what interviewers really want to know, and you will see the hot seat as your driver's seat on the road to success. * * * Attracting the Magical Mentor by Being the Perfect Protégé Most of us want to be successful. Even with the aid of advanced technology and tools, nothing replaces one of the oldest, most invaluable tools of success — a mentor. A mentor is someone who is successful in their own right, whose knowledge comes from experience and who is willing to help guide, coach and inspire others. Mentors help you develop career skills and life skills. The real trick is finding the magical mentor and attracting him or her to you. Typically it has depended on luck, pluck or interpersonal chemistry. This workshop focuses on how to identify the type of mentor you are looking for, how to be a protégé that another busy and successful people want to take under their wing, and finally how to foster a successful mentoring relationship. You will learn skills to help you identify what you want from a mentor / protégé relationship, techniques to getting the relationship off to a great start, to make it a continuously learning experience for both participants, roles and responsibilities, and when to know it is time to move on. * * * How to Communicate like "Dogbert" When You Feel Like "Dilbert:" Assertive Communications for Engineers One of the most important business skills you can have is your ability to communicate assertively and effectively with others in a variety of settings and situations. This skill can propel you along your career path to success and personal achievement by creating rapport, building trust, and establishing credibility. Assertive communication is not just about talking. It’s not dominating everyone around you. It’s your physical presence, body language, and listening ability combined with what you know. In this workshop, you will distinguish between assertive, passive, and aggressive communication styles, and learn to project confidence through words as well as body language, even when you do not ‘feel’ confident. You will also learn to think on your feet when questioned or challenged, handle "put-downs" and offer constructive feedback to others. You will learn to express your ideas in ways that gain the attention, support, and respect of others and walk away with techniques that increase your personal confidence, establish team collaboration, and garner mutual support from colleagues and managers. You now know, more like Dogbert and less like Dilbert. * * * CORPORATE KUNG-FU: ALL IT TAKES IS ONE GOOD QUESTION Have you ever been in a situation where you felt vulnerable because you were not quite sure what to say? Knowing when and how to turn a tough situation around with a question instead of being at a loss for words is a unique and admired skill required at every level of an organization. Learning to ask the right question at the right time can diffuse a potentially volatile situation, clarify what is being discussed, and make your demands known in a subtle manner. This career-building skill not only helps you defend yourself but can even turn trouble into advantage. The speaker has blended her own experience with the tenets of a popular book into a unique approach to this rare and valuable skill. She will discuss verbal techniques that can turn confusion into clarity, resistance into acceptance, and frustration into satisfaction, as well as how to best use this skill within your own organization. * * * DARE TO BE DIFFERENT: TRUE LEADERSHIP HAPPENS AT ALL LEVELS It has become increasingly clear that both leadership and management skills are required for organizations to survive and flourish in these turbulent and changing times. There is this "magic" balance of focusing attention on the future while successfully implementing processes that work within the current organizational culture. These two are often seen as mutually exclusive, but a great leader learns to do both. A managerial job assignment gives you the positional authority you may desire, but it is your leadership behavior that makes others follow you and earns their respect. To date you have established yourself as a strong and talented technical contributor, and now you have decided to develop additional skills that prepare you for leadership opportunities. Growing into a great leader is an evolutionary process calling upon all your past experiences, your gut feeling, and class-taught skills. This workshop will help you begin to determine what your leadership track looks like, target what skills you will need, and identify how to master and begin implementing those skills.
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