Tuesday, September 14, 2010 – 19H00-21H30 at KPMG

We’ll kick off the new WPNG season with “The Science of Happiness : What it’s all about.”

The new “Science of Happiness” and the growing field of positive psychology have been attracting lots of media attention recently, but is there substance in all the hype? Happiness has been studied for millennia by philosophers and other scholars, but can it be studied as a science? What is the research all about? Can it really make you happier for the long term? This talk will first give a broad scope of the field of positive psychology and then present in greater detail one area of research where simple techniques yield promising results.

After her successful talk about “Choice” last year, we welcome back guest speaker and WPNG vice-president Evie Rosset. Evie is a cognitive psychologist and earned her PhD from Boston University where she is an adjunct professor. In France, she does research through affiliations with the Ecole Normale Supérieure in Paris and the Université Pierre Mendès-France in Grenoble. She also gives workshops to help businesses and individuals benefit from research in the brain and behavioral sciences. More information can be found at www.aboutmind.fr.

Please bring HEALTHY snacks and drinks to the meeting. Home-made quiches, cakes and other dishes are always appreciated and the purchased varieties are welcome too.

Tuesday, September 14, 2010 – 19H00-21H30 at KPMG

Welcome to a new season at our usual meeting place, KPMG offices in Lyon Vaise.
Let’s all kick off the new year by bringing HEALTHY snacks and drinks to the meeting. Home-made quiches, cakes and other dishes are always appreciated and the purchased varieties are welcome too.

More details about the evening to follow but we can already announce that the topic is HAPPINESS and the guest speaker will be Evie Rosset.

2010/2011 membership fees are also now due: please make out a check for 30€ to WPNG and hand it to our new treasurer Marie-France Derderian, at the next meeting. Alternatively you can post your check. The new mailing address can be found on the downloadable membership form under the page Membership.

Coming soon: The 2010/2011 speaker program.

Tuesday, May 11, 2010 – 19H00-21H30 at KPMG

Dr. Donna Willis will be talking to us about the Effective Use of Social Media.

Social technology participation has grown rapidly in just two years. Using any tool or technique without a reasonable strategy is a missed opportunity. She will share with us some fundamental principles and tips based in current brain and family system research so that you can leverage the social media space to make connections that matter to you personally and professionally.

Donna Willis, MD, MPH is on faculty at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine in the department of Internal Medicine and the Center for Health Promotion. She has an extensive background in implementing international city-wide health intervention programs. She has an extensive media background as the medical correspondent for NBC News and a contributor to ABC The View. Her work in medicine and media have converged in a implementing the third edition of the Lyon Rhône-Alpes international expat expo. This year featuring two best selling authors Lucy Wadham (The Secret Life of France), Ruth Van Reken (Third Culture Kids), and top chef Bernard Mariller.

Tuesday, April 6, 2010 – 19H00-21H30 at KPMG

Do you have a blue print for creating the life you are dreaming about? Do you know what your success looks like? Like most people, you deserve to be successful but you may not have an effective system to rely on. You need a plan, methods to use every day and a support system that keeps you energized and inspired. Success is achieved by design and effort not by chance.

Why are results not showing up? If you are not getting the results you want, you are missing a success plan and a good compass.

Please join us for what promises to be another exciting meeting with a dynamic and energetic speaker – Hervé Da Costa.
Hervé, whose time is spent coaching executive boards about creating high performance organizations, juggles his roles as Managing Director at Softlink International & Associates, Affiliate Professor at EM-Lyon, and Leadership Coach at Companies such as Google, Sanofi, Orange, Sephora-LVMH, Volvo will guide us through the meeting.

Working mainly in the US and Europe, Hervé helps executives become transformational leaders and realize their vision. In addition to his Master’s Degree in Computer Sciences and a certificate in Marketing from UC Berkeley, he has over 20 years of experience as a senior executive in Silicon Valley and has served as Vice President of Sales, Marketing and Operations at Scientific Learning in California (NASDAQ listed since 1999). He has received the Exceptional Management Award from the Chancellor of the University of California and the Outstanding Teaching Award from the UC Berkeley Society of Electrical Engineers.

Tuesday, March 9, 2010 – 19H00-21H30 at KPMG

Joint meeting with the American Chamber of Commerce Rhône-Alpes.

Guest speaker: Sarah Sanrey-Clifft, expert in Sales and Business Development.

Sarah has been living in the Lyon area for the last 11 years. After 13 years in the Information Technology sector, focusing on Business Development internationally for new technologies, Sarah took a career break. When she returned to the work force, she moved in a new career direction: business development in the professional sales training and coaching industry.  Sarah then decided to make another career move and is now teaching in the ESDES business school and EM Lyon as well as planning students’ internships.

How has she been able to successfully use her network to gain new business opportunities? How has the strength of her network helped her in her career transitions?

Please join us for a joint meeting with the American Chamber of Commerce. Learn how AmCham and WPNG can help strengthen your network and hear about Sarah’s success in turning her network into business opportunities.

Drinks and snacks will be provided.

We’re happy to confirm the new date for our postponed February meeting: Tuesday, February 16th starting at 19H00 at our usual location KPMG in Vaise. Topic and guest speaker remain unchanged. We hope the weather gods will be with us that day and that many of you can attend, despite the school holidays!

Due to the inclement and uncertain weather conditions (and thus also uncertainty of our guest speaker’s availability) we are sorry to inform you that tonight’s meeting has been postponed. We will let you know as soon as we have a new date (we’re trying for next week Tuesday). Our apologies for this extremely late notice.

Tuesday, February 9, 2010 – 19H00-21H30 at KPMG

Going back to school offers a way to increase your knowledge, inmprove your job skills, or maybe even jump-start your career. It is also a way to change career streams – and perhaps start something new. This meeting will introduce you to the further education arena in France. Just how would you go about returning to school; what do you need to know about the French higher-education system; will a new diploma really help your career? To answer these questions and more, we have our guest-speaker Wendy Hédiard, from the EMLYON Business School.

Wendy Hédiard is a Dutch national with over 10 years of experience in international marketing in business-to-business as well as business-to-consumer environments. She started her career marketing software for Corel Corporation in Canada and spent two years in France marketing wine on the Belgian market for the direct mail company Le Savour Club. After a short passage in the consulting industry, she moved to the position of Marketing Manager EMEA (Europe, Middle East & Africa) for Crown Worldwide Group, a relocation services company operating more than 100 offices worldwide, and worked primarily based out of The Netherlands and the UK. Wendy returned to France in 2003 for family reasons, and arrived in Lyon in 2006. She started at EMLYON Business School as Head of International Marketing & Development and currently heads up the marketing team in charge of both French and International graduate programmes.

We hope you will join us for this educational evening, and that you will share your “back to school in France” experiences with us.

Tuesday, January 12, 2010 – 19H00-21H30 at KPMG

Celebrate the New Year and keep the self-improvement resolution we all made by joining us in revisiting the theme of using recruitment agencies,  but this time with a difference.

We will have a closer look at the temporary job market and who better to come and talk to us than Adecco.

Marjolaine Jamesse, Communications Manager at Adecco Medicale will come and present the Adecco Group and give us some hints of what the typical French recruiter looks for.

Marjolaine is a business school graduate and worked for Sanofi before joining Adecco 4 years ago.

This is meant to be an interactive session and we are going to give 10 people (or more if we have time) the opportunity to stand up and present themselves in 1 minute. The objective being that first impressions are so important and learning how to focus on what is really important is not always that easy.

Aided and abetted by Laetitia Valli, of Corporatys Search and Selection, Marjolaine will give us immediate feedback after each presentation.

Don’t forget to bring a healthy snack and something to drink – we haven’t been doing so well on that front lately…

Be early, because we will try and start at 19h45 and finish the interactive sessions by 21h00, leaving us enough time to ask questions and network some more afterwards.

A quick reminder:  The first session on recruitment was held back in November 2008 and welcomed local headhunters from Hays Executive Recruitment, Corporatys Search & Strategy and aKtor Interactive

Tuesday, December 1, 2009 – 19H00-21H30 at Espace Ricard

Do you consider yourself a great networker? Or do you think it’s more a necessary evil? And what exactly is your definition of networking…? Our December meeting will be focused on you and an opportunity for you to meet other WPNG members through more structured networking sessions.

These networking sessions will allow you to spend time with 6 – 8 other members to discuss what our group is all about: networking! What do you expect from it? What networking ‘tools’ do you use? What do you get out of it and… how do you profile yourself? Each group will summarize it’s findings after the discusssions and there should also be the opportunity to do ‘before’ and ‘after’ personal presentations so you can bring the things you’ve learned during the discussions into practice right away!

So come prepared – start thinking about the above mentioned questions – and don’t forget to bring your business cards!

And remember: we’re at Espace Ricard this time (see the ‘venues’ page for full address)!