wall street role model

I love reading about people, especially individuals who I can look up to or admire because they are somehow relevant to me and my future. Maybe because I love receiving and giving advice and counsel...?

Anyway, Sallie Krawcheck is described by some as the most powerful woman on Wall Street, and being fortunate enough to hang out or chat with a few of my Wall Street friends this summer, I have a better idea of what goes on in this financial black hole many of my college friends (and apparently the world's money) disappear into. Working in the office until 4A.M.? Only social life is with office "pals", where it's neck to neck competition? And...A fully paid/furnished pad in the city center with a maid that cleans every week? A six-figure salary right out of college???

Sallie, in this culture, field, galaxy, whatever, has risen to the top and I came across this interesting

interview that was featured in the Wall Street Journal. Something that stuck out to me was this

inherent reason Sallie stated as an explanation why women did not typically raise to higher level positions.

Let's start with the basics, which is the hair and the makeup. Let's assume it's 15 minutes a day. I've gotten up earlier than my husband since the day we've been married; 15 minutes a day, 75 minutes a week, 3,900 minutes a year.

Now you can say, "Well, don't wear makeup." Give me a break. So you start with the hair and the makeup. You then have the fact that women do twice as much of the housework as the guys do. And we do three times the amount of child care.

I've had this great husband without whom I couldn't have done it. So it's learning to have a relationship that's a relationship of equals. My breakthrough moment was when I convinced my husband that when the toddler woke up in the middle of the night and screamed, "Mommy," he actually meant, "Parent of either sex."

And you have to recognize we just get less sleep. And you have to have the stamina to deal with it.

How am I supposed to think of this? Is it OK to be content with the fact that there will always be this inherent inequality (read: the number of hours we sleep), which will discourage women from reaching the top of industry?

Hmph.

Planning before acting

In Thomas Friedman's latest opinion piece, he raises some important points about this debt-ceiling crisis that is before us. First though, I do not agree with his comparison of the US government with a business- they are two different entities who function differently because one is based on the idea of efficiency and profits, whereas the other is fundamentally the opposite in that it is supposed to be a democracy, prioritizing the opinions of its participants versus productivity.

However, Friedman does bring up the important idea that we must have a plan of action before moving forward, regardless of what type of ideology any entity is operating under. He names the five pillars as such:

"Yes, we have developed such a formula over the course of American history, and it is built on five basic pillars: educating the work force up to and beyond whatever technology demands; building the world’s best infrastructure of ports, roads and telecommunications; attracting the world’s most dynamic and high-I.Q. immigrants to enrich our universities and start new businesses; putting together the best regulations to incentivize risk-taking while curbing recklessness (not always perfectly); and funding research to push out the boundaries of science and then let American innovators and venture capitalists pluck off the most promising new ideas for new business."

Something to consider, as we move forward with negotiations and talks about this debt situation, if we are serious about preserving American credibility and integrity in the eyes of the international community.

Role Model in faith

Selections from John Stott's obituary in Christianity Today:

"Stott believed in the mind as a gift from God. In an evangelical world tempted to rely on proof texts and emotive stories, Stott drilled down deep into Scripture to display its power. Many people, hearing Stott preach for the first time, said they had never heard the Bible expounded with such clarity and depth. His passion was to learn what God said, and to let it shape life. Stott's preaching and writing renewed faith in the inspiration of Scripture—not only because he defended it, but because he displayed it."

"Here then are two instructions, 'love your neighbor' and 'go and make disciples.' What is the relation between the two? Some of us behave as if we thought them identical, so that if we have shared the gospel with somebody, we consider we have completed our responsibility to love him. But no. The Great Commission neither explains, nor exhausts, nor supersedes the Great Commandment. What it does is to add to the command of neighbor-love and neighbor-service a new and urgent Christian dimension. If we truly love our neighbor, we shall without doubt tell him the Good News of Jesus. But equally, if we truly love our neighbor, we shall not stop there."

Stott's skill as a diplomat was never more in evidence, as he chaired potentially fractious meetings, getting people to listen to each others' views. He worked tirelessly behind the scenes to draft and redraft the covenant, finding wording that would capture various points of view without doing violence to any. In the end, the Lausanne Covenant spoke to the moment, expressing a common mission that most delegates could enthusiastically endorse; and it spoke to the future, providing a framework that evangelical groups could use as their basic statement.

"There have been mixed feelings about the West among our leaders," says Ajith Fernando, a Methodist church leader and head of Youth for Christ in Sri Lanka. "Sometimes I feel an anger close to racism has arisen in the minds of Christian leaders, out of the sense that Western leaders do not understand the concerns of people in the rest of the world. There is a suspicion that what they want is to fulfill their agenda in our countries—another form of colonialism? With people like John Stott around it was impossible for me to nurture such feelings toward the West. Here was humility personified …. We are grateful that he gave so much time coming to the poorer nations not with some huge program which would impress the whole world, but simply to teach us the Bible."

An outsider's view on John Stott's legacy, another individual I have come to respect, Nicholas Kristof:

Partly because of such self-righteousness, the entire evangelical movement often has been pilloried among progressives as reactionary, myopic, anti-intellectual and, if anything, immoral.

Yet that casual dismissal is profoundly unfair of the movement as a whole. It reflects a kind of reverse intolerance, sometimes a reverse bigotry, directed at tens of millions of people who have actually become increasingly engaged in issues of global poverty and justice.

Mr. Stott didn’t preach fire and brimstone on a Christian television network. He was a humble scholar whose 50-odd books counseled Christians to emulate the life of Jesus — especially his concern for the poor and oppressed — and confront social ills like racial oppression and environmental pollution.

But in reporting on poverty, disease and oppression, I’ve seen so many others. Evangelicals are disproportionately likely to donate 10 percent of their incomes to charities, mostly church-related. More important, go to the front lines, at home or abroad, in the battles against hunger, malaria, prison rape, obstetric fistula, human trafficking or genocide, and some of the bravest people you meet are evangelical Christians (or conservative Catholics, similar in many ways) who truly live their faith.

Why does all this matter?

Because religious people and secular people alike do fantastic work on humanitarian issues — but they often don’t work together because of mutual suspicions. If we could bridge this “God gulf,” we would make far more progress on the world’s ills.

And that would be, well, a godsend.

Christianity today has lost a great, faithful, and true leader of our faith.