I know it’s Mother’s Day but I wanted to share this picture of my kids and their father because he does so much of what we see often think of as “mothering” – the care and feeding of others. In his case, it’s the lion’s share of the childcare, as it evolved from infant and toddler care to adolescent care and (the hardest) teenage care, all of the cooking and the laundry and most of the errands. I know he is not the only one.
Continue reading The Meaning of “Mother”
I recently had the chance to be a guest on the “Great Women in Compliance” podcast, hosted by Lisa Fine of Pearson and Mary Shirley of Fresenius Medical. We talked about the founding and growth of the Cybersecurity Law Report and the Anti-Corruption Report, trends in data privacy, cybersecurity and anti-corruption compliance and the challenges of being a woman in the workplace, like being aggressive without being called shrill, the assumption that you take care of the children, and a requirement that you wear heels to court (yes that still exists!).
The Apple podcast is available here or search “Great Women in Compliance” on any podcast player.
This post appeared in Role Reboot.
The second woman to occupy 10 Downing Street offered to step down if Parliament passed her latest Brexit plan. Though lawmakers rejected it, Theresa May’s apparent “sweetener” marks the latest instance of female executives rising to power in times of crisis only to shoulder the blame for that crisis itself. The pattern is all too clear.
The past few years, along with anti-corruption, I have been immersed in data privacy and data protection law. I got the chance recently to sit down with Georgia Reid, the managing editor of Cybercrime Magazine, published by Cybersecurity Ventures, for a video podcast to talk about what we do at The Cybersecurity Law Report and some of the hot topics we have been covering.
A short write-up I did about the interview that links to the video is here.
2017 was the “year of the book” for me.
In the Spring I wrote about the books I read the first quarter, but after that, mainly I just picked up the next book once I hit that last page – often because a long-awaited hold had come through from my library account and my full-time job of writing and editing consumed all my writing energy. I am left with a list of books that connect to memories of what was happening when I read them and how I was feeling. Looking back, these reflections often map a very particular response to a year addled by some serious back pain that only began to lift at the very end of the year.
History books (both non-fiction and well researched fiction) have always been a mainstay for me but I found that in this era of “America First” and nasty childish tweets from our leader, those books have taken on new meaning, especially those about World War II – particularly how our leaders acted during it and after it. What’s most striking in all of these is the level of deliberation – strategic, political, moral and ethical – that these portraits reveal about genuine leaders in troubled times.
I also found a few contemporary fiction books that stayed with me and some that really got me through (along with the Hamilton soundtrack). I single out a few from each genre below that may help those looking for their next read.
We lost our beloved Estelle Lana Pastarnack – Stelly or Nana to many – on July 6, 2016.
She was an outspoken and strong woman who loved red lipstick that left a telltale mark when she kissed your cheek. She loved designer shoes – especially if they were discounted at Loehmanns. She adored “making parties” and fur coats. She also could not resist a good hot dog, no matter what diet she was on.
Most of all she loved her four children, ten grandchildren, four great grandchildren, her nieces and nephews and her friends.
Continue reading Stelly