American Cities Losing The Most Jobs This Year

 

The U.S. economy added roughly 2.4 million workers over the past year. Over the same period, the unemployment rate fell from 5.0% to 4.9%, close to the lowest it has been in nearly a decade. The 1.7% employment growth nationwide was not uniform, and some areas lost a substantial share of workers.

To determine the cities that lost the most jobs, 24/7 Wall St. analyzed employment data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Most cities added jobs in past 12 months, and most have posted unemployment declines. In 75 metro areas, however, there was a net loss in total employment. The Lafayette, Louisiana metro area had the greatest loss workers, with total employment falling by 4.5% since October 2015.

One major factor driving employment changes across the United States is industrial composition. Continued outsourcing and automation has lowered international demand for American manufacturing, and the downturn in the price of petroleum has hurt the oil and gas sector. Nationwide, the worst performing sectors were manufacturing, information, and mining, logging, and construction.

Click here to see the American cities losing the most jobs this year.

Cities with economies that heavily depend on these industries tended to have the most job loss. In an interview with 24/7 Wall St., Martin Kohli, chief regional economist at the BLS, explained that a “large concentration of employment in energy and construction-related industries has definitely been negative in the last few years for communities.” In many cases, a major round of layoffs or plant shutdowns contributed to employment declines in the past year.

People are not likely to move to a city without a job or some other opportunity available. As a result, the distribution of employment growth across the country mirrors today’s domestic migration patterns. Kohli added that residents of the Northeast and Midwest, where a majority of the metro areas are losing workers, have been relocating to major cities in the Sun Belt, which is gaining the most workers.

Employment tends to increase as unemployment declines. In metropolitan areas losing the most workers, employment declines contributed to labor force declines and a rise in unemployment. In Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, for example, the 14,200 workers lost in Oklahoma City was among the most of any metro area. At the same time, the labor force shrank by a total of 9,000 workers, while area unemployment rate rose from 3.6% to 4.4%.

To identify the cities losing the most workers, 24/7 Wall St. reviewed metropolitan statistical areas with the largest employment decline from October 2015 through October 2016. Unemployment rates, the size of the labor force, and employment levels are from the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) and are seasonally adjusted. Industry-specific growth rates for the same period are from the Current Employment Survey (CES), a monthly BLS survey. Educational attainment is from the 2015 American Community Survey (ACS) of the U.S. Census Bureau.

These are the cities losing the most jobs.

5. Mansfield, OH

• Employment change: -2.33%

• No. of jobs Oct. 2015: 50,576

• No. of jobs Oct. 2016: 49,399

• Unemployment rate Oct. 2016: 5.6%

Cities without a talented, educated workforce often rely on one dominant, low-skilled industry and may be more vulnerable to changes in commodity prices and other market shifts than more diversified economies. Nearly one in five workers in Mansfield works in manufacturing, and just 14.4% of adults in the metro area have at least a bachelor’s degree. As demand for American manufacturing continues to decline, Mansfield’s reliance on the industry may have partially caused accelerated employment decline over the past year. The number of employed workers in the city decreased by 2.3% in 2016, more than nearly any other metro area.

4. Shreveport-Bossier City, LA

• Employment change: -2.35%

• No. of jobs Oct. 2015: 180,977

• No. of jobs Oct. 2016: 176,731

• Unemployment rate Oct. 2016: 6.8%

Employment in the Shreveport-Bossier City area decreased by over 4,200 workers in the past year. During the same period, nearly an equal amount of people left the labor force.

Following the statewide trend, the Shreveport area is losing workers in the oil and gas sector. Unlike other areas in Louisiana that are more dependent on the oil and gas industry, however, Shreveport has a more diverse economy, and employment losses in this industry have had a less dramatic effect on the area's overall employment. Still, due to falling oil prices and reduced natural gas production at the Haynesville Shale -- a rock formation rich in natural gas -- the industry's job losses accounted for a sizable share of the area's 2.3% employment decrease.

3. Houma-Thibodaux, LA

• Employment change: -3.74%

• No. of jobs Oct. 2015: 91,738

• No. of jobs Oct. 2016: 88,311

• Unemployment rate Oct. 2016: 6.7%

The number of employed workers in the Houma-Thibodaux area decreased by around 3,400 in the past year. While area employment declined by 3.7%, the number of workers increased by 1.7% nationwide. A large share of the area’s employment decline resulted from a shrinking oil and gas sector. Following a drop in oil prices and the first decrease in North American oil production in years, many oil workers nationwide have lost their jobs. The effects of these industry declines are exaggerated in Houma-Thibodaux, where a large share of residents are employed in the sector.

2. Casper, WY

• Employment change: -3.77%

• No. of jobs Oct. 2015: 40,156

• No. of jobs Oct. 2016: 38,644

• Unemployment rate Oct. 2016: 6.6%

The Casper metro area lost around 1,500 employed workers in the past year. This 3.8% decrease was largely caused by a declining coal mining industry in Wyoming. During the first quarter of 2016, coal production nationwide was the lowest it has been in 35 years, with Wyoming among the regions whose production has declined the most. The Casper metro area is around 100 miles from America’s two largest coal mines. Earlier this year, both of these mines announced large layoffs.

1. Lafayette, LA

• Employment change: -4.46%

• No. of jobs Oct. 2015: 210,224

• No. of jobs Oct. 2016: 200,845

• Unemployment rate Oct. 2016: 7.1%

The Lafayette metro area lost around 9,400 workers in the past year. Employment in the area fell by around 4.5%, even as nationwide employment increased by 1.7%. Following a trend of declining manufacturing employment nationwide, Lafayette’s manufacturing sector shed the most jobs of any industry. The employment declines likely led to a large share of residents giving up looking for work or leaving the area. The overall labor force decreased by nearly 8,500 in the past year. This 3.8% decline in labor force was the largest of any U.S. metro area.

How to Start Your Emergency Fund Today

By Laura McMullen

Say 2017 has a rocky start -- maybe your car needs repairs that will set you back $1,000. Would you have the money available? This is the kind of unexpected expense that an emergency fund could cover, preventing you from taking on debt.

If you don't have an emergency fund, make a New Year's resolution to build one. Here's how to start.

Open a savings account. For an emergency fund to be useful, it must be handy. Tap a certificate of deposit or your 401(k) for those car repairs, and you'll face hefty early-withdrawal penalties. Keep your emergency fund in its own savings account, which you can access easily and for free. This account should be separate from one where you save for short-term goals, such as paying for a vacation.

Start small and keep saving. An emergency fund that's too small won't be able to cover life's unexpected scrapes. Replacing a broken water heater could send you into debt, for example. But an emergency fund that's too big has its own drawbacks. With more cushion than necessary, those extra funds will earn little in interest in a savings account when they could be growing more quickly in investments or paying off high-interest debt.

To find the sweet spot, aim to start with $500. That can be enough to keep you from having to take cold showers. Continue adding to your safety net so you're prepared for bigger crises, like losing your job. Build up to a fund that would eventually cover living expenses for three months, then work up to six months.

Figure out exactly how much to save. Determine how much money to set aside for your fund by tallying the monthly costs of indispensable needs. Account for electricity, heat, water, food, rent, health care, insurance and payments for your mortgage and car. (Nice-to-haves, such as cable, don't make the list.) Multiply the sum of those costs by the number of months -- aim for three to six -- you're aiming to cover.

This formula isn't a perfect science, given that everyone's situation is different. If you're the breadwinner for your family or are expecting a child, for example, you may want to shoot for a larger fund.

Diversify your savings. You'll likely have to toggle between other priorities, such as long-term savings, as you work up to this three- to six-month goal. For most people, that means contributing to a 401(k) or other tax-advantaged retirement account while growing an emergency fund. If your employer offers a 401(k) match, contribute at least enough to get the maximum. After you snag the match, start tackling whatever you have in toxic debt, like high-interest personal loans and payday loans.

Once you've built an emergency fund that covers up to six months, direct your savings entirely to retirement and debt repayment. If you have to dip into your emergency fund later, you can always divert money back to the safety net to replenish it.

Laura McMullen is a staff writer at NerdWallet, a personal finance website. Email: lmcmullen@nerdwallet.com. Twitter: @lauraemcmullen.

Deregulation That Will Make the Home Mortgage Market Work Better: Eliminating Rigid Income Documentation Rules

The incoming Trump administration has made very clear that eliminating regulations of all types was a major agenda item. The question is whether or not they can do that effectively, and the home mortgage market will be a good test case. New home construction today is running well below what would ordinarily be expected at the current phase of the business expansion, and a major cause may be some of the regulations imposed in the aftermath of the financial crisis.

I underscore "some" because regulation is not a quantity - something that conservatives want less of and liberals want more of. Some regulations are good and some are bad, and the objective ought to be to get rid of the bad ones and retain or even strengthen the good ones as needed. A good regulation is one that makes the market work better, and a bad regulation is one that doesn't, which makes it worse than no regulation.

It often takes a great deal of knowledge and wisdom to fashion a good regulation, and here also you have a political split. Conservatives usually have less confidence than liberals that regulators have the competence necessary to fashion good regulations. But what we are going to see in the next year or so is how well a new batch of conservative regulators do in identifying the bad regulations that need to be axed. This article aims to give the new mortgage regulators a head-start by identifying a particularly bad regulation directed to mortgage documentation requirements.

In the decade prior to the financial crisis, documentation requirements evolved from full doc for every borrower to a range of requirements, from full doc to no doc, with 5 categories in-between. The less complete the documentation, the higher the price of the mortgage and the larger the required down payment and credit score. These three poles of the underwriting system were flexible in the sense that a good score on one could offset a poor score on another.

That sensible market-based system worked well until the housing bubble emerged in the early years of this century, when lenders and borrowers alike came to believe that house prices would rise forever. When house prices continually rise, it is very difficult to make a bad loan because borrowers unable to pay can sell their houses at a profit.

In that atmosphere, large numbers of borrowers elected less than full documentation so that they could exaggerate their incomes and purchase more costly houses, while many lenders accommodated them by relaxing their standards and reducing their surveillance. When the bubble burst in 2006, mortgage defaults and foreclosures rose to levels not seen since the 1930s.

The Federal Government in response imposed a range of new regulations, one of which was to eliminate all documentation options other than full documentation, and to make it an absolute requirement. No longer could inadequate documentation be offset by good credit or large down payment. That is when I began to receive letters from self-employed loan applicants whose applications were rejected because they could not document adequate income, notwithstanding that their credit was pristine and they were making a substantial down payment. Many of these rejected borrowers are small business owners who collectively are important contributors to economic growth.

In an important recent article in The Journal of Finance, Brent W. Ambrose, James Conklin and Jiro Yoshida show that the income exaggerations that played a major role in the boom and bust were concentrated among borrowers who could have documented their incomes with W-2s but chose not to so they could lie. Self-employed borrowers did not lie about their incomes.

The implications for regulatory reform are very clear. Full income documentation should be required only for those with incomes shown on W-2s. Self-employed applicants should have access to multiple documentation options, and underwriters should have discretionary power to balance the option selected against the applicant's credit score and down payment.

This is one small yet important example of a bad regulation that is easily fixable when there is a will to fix it. In the weeks to come, I plan to identify a number of others.

For more information on mortgages or to shop for a mortgage in an unbiased environment, visit my website The Mortgage Professor

With No Hope Under Trump, Gender Pay Gap Action Goes Local

The Republican capture of the Oval Office along with majorities House and Senate is bad news for women when it comes to closing the gender pay gap in the next four to eight years. Nothing new there -- we've already endured more than a half century with zero progress on gender pay equity in the U. S. Congress, and some not inconsequential losses in the courts since the Equal Pay Act passed way back in 1963. The gap in women's pay compared to that of men for full-time year-round work now at 79.6 cents on the dollar has been stuck for over a decade.

But there is some good news: The action is moving to states and cities. California amended its decades-old pay laws in 2015 to require equal pay for "substantially similar" work, prevent use of the ill-defined "factors other than sex" justification for pay differentials, and prohibit retaliation for disclosing pay to coworkers. Following California's lead on disclosure, in 2016 Maryland expanded its own law, going beyond pay disparities. The state now also prohibits employers from channeling workers into less favorable career tracks or limiting employment opportunities because of sex or gender identity. Missouri issued guidelines for employers to voluntarily conduct self - audits to identify and remedy gender-based pay disparities, and make salary ranges by title public to job applicants.

New state measures are without question good news, but the most innovative action is coming from cities. And it's bi-partisan. It started with Albuquerque in 2015, when Republican Mayor Richard Berry pushed through an ordinance with the help of democrats on the city council requiring gender pay equity reporting by contractors as a condition of bidding for city business. It was the first such city action in the nation, and has since been mimicked in one form or another by San Francisco, Oakland, Erie County New York, and several smaller jurisdictions.

In 2016, Mayor Martin Walsh, a Democrat, signed the Boston Women's Workforce Council 100% Talent Compact, a different first-of-its-kind initiative. Companies signing the Compact (over 180 so far) agree to provide the Council with anonymous payroll data broken down by sex, race, job category, and length of employment. The data will be used to provide an accurate measurement of the wage gap and to help employers develop solutions later on.

There's no doubt that more ground-breaking city action is on the horizon. Since it's well known that when women start careers at a lower salaries than male counterparts the gap follows them throughout their working lives, New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio recently signed an Executive Order prohibiting city agencies from asking about prior salary history when interviewing job applicants. Advocates in New York, Philadelphia, and D.C. are pushing for bills with similar prohibitions for all city employers, inspired by a Massachusetts measure taking effect in 2018. Others are sure to follow suit.

With the federal government's most likely action on gender pay disparities in the coming administration being "none," women must look to local and state jurisdictions to move the needle on equal pay. Fortunately it looks like that's already happening.

The Disney Marketing Machine Strikes Again

The stars are twinkling once again for Disney. The Star Wars franchise Disney acquired from Lucasfilm in 2012 for $4 Billion continues to pay dividends as Rogue One scores the second biggest December opening on record behind last year's Star Wars release - The Force Awakens. It generated $155 million in box office during its North American weekend debut despite some "not so great" reviews.

Star Wars is a forever franchise

Since the first Star Wars film came out in 1977, box office revenues have totaled roughly $6.84 billion. Even more exciting, total franchise revenue (including merchandise and licensing) is estimated to be $30.54 billion. Since Disney acquired the franchise, it plans to bring out a new Star Wars movie every year for as long as people will buy tickets. In most minds, this means forever. By applying its synergy marketing strategy to this forever franchise, Disney gets about as close as you can to a sure bet.

Disney Synergy

Perhaps no company is better than Disney at taking a character, TV Show, or movie and turning into a money making franchise. In addition to creating a series of movies, episodic TV shows, and online serials, Disney takes the characters and licenses them for toys, games, apparel, and a wide variety other merchandise. There is even a Mickey Mouse watch face app for the Apple Watch. In the case of Star Wars, Disney is embarking on a 14-acre expansion of its theme parks that will have Star-Wars themed, lands, rides, attractions, food, and characters walking around the parks. If there is a way to monetize a property, Disney will figure it out, and create numerous channels through which to distribute it.

What makes this machine possible?

Of course, at the heart of its ability to make money, is Disney's ownership of content that uses its proprietary cast of characters. Starting with Mickey Mouse, Disney created (or acquired in the case of Marvel and Star Wars) a world of characters and animated actors that are unique to Disney. If you want a product associated with any of these creations, money flows into Disney's pockets. Once created, Disney has the ability to use these characters in television shows, movies, theme parks, and just about anywhere and everywhere. They can also license them to others and make money from license fees.

Mickey Mouse Club

Dating back to the Mickey Mouse Club of the 1950's, Disney created a series of brand extensions. The kid actors on the TV Show were called Mouseketeers. The shows targeted young baby boomers that loved to watch them and couldn't wait for the next one. New characters, such as "Davy Crockett" were created with additional opportunities for merchandise that kids wanted to buy. The Mickey Mouse Club evolved with new young talent including Britney Spears, Justin Timberlake and Christina Aguilera.

Successive generations

After three successful runs of the Mickey Mouse Club, the Disney synergy machine created new characters, such as Lizzie McGuire, played by Hillary Duff, and Hannah Montana played by Miley Cyrus. In addition to the TV show, Miley portrayed Hannah on record albums, Disney Radio, and the Disney channel, and in "sold out" concert performances. Disney even launched a Hannah Montana clothing line in 2007.

ABC network

The Disney-owned ABC network creates a TV and radio platform to promote everything Disney. While the network has not always fared well compared with its major rivals, it gives Disney the potential to spread the synergy to the small screen and radio.

Acquisitions give Disney more opportunities

With the acquisition of Marvel in 2007 and Lucasfilm in 2012, Disney has many more franchising opportunities to leverage the branded characters that already have relationships with many in their target audience. The parents that have a relationship with these characters can pass on, and share their experiences with, their kids. From the success of the movies, books, comics, and related merchandise, this acquisition appears to be a windfall for Disney and its shareholders.

Cross-branded product placement deals

Disney's Marvel studios has struck a lot of cross-branding product placement deals with Dr. Pepper, Audi, Samsung, Kia, Acura, and Southwest Airlines to name a few. Disney's Star Wars has cross-promotions with the Nissan, Duracell, General Mills, Gillette, Verizon, and others. In addition to the brand building potential of these deals, the revenue possibilities for both parties is also exciting.

Social media

According to Variety, 'Rogue One' and 'Guardians of the Galaxy 2' are dominating social media with Rogue One generating over 2.4 million cumulative conversations followed by Guardians of the Galaxy 2 coming in second with 296,293 from November 28th through December 4th.

What businesses can learn from Disney's Marketing Machine

If you achieve uniqueness and desirability in your brand and products, you can augment your revenue model in many synergistic ways. You can...

1. Merchandise. Create additional products that promote your brand such as t-shirts, coffee mugs, mascots, and other promotional items you can sell or give away.
2. Partnerships. Strike licensing, cross-promotion, and product placement deals with business partners that will promote and distribute your products via their channels.
3. E-commerce. Make electronic versions and themed apps of your products available on your Web site and via other online distributors.

What gives you control and enables you to expand your revenue model is the uniqueness and desirability of your brand and your various products. Uniqueness that provides clear benefits to your target audience is a wonderful thing to have because at some point in the purchase process somebody in the distribution channel has to pay you.

Star Wars and Marvel characters provided a whole cast of unique brands, and Disney's marketing machine is able to find more and more value in these brands from their movies, TV shows, radio stations, toys, theme parks, and licensing. Moreover, they can distribute them through a variety of lucrative channels including their Web sites and Disney stores. It's amazing that this all started with one little animated mouse.

Hopefully the Disney marketing machine will give you some ideas as to how you can extend and better monetize your brand. Best of luck.

Maintaining Your Company's Yelp Profile (And How I Used the Platform to Bring in $1 Million)

By Tommy Mello

Yelp has been in the news recently for raising its revenue by 30 percent. The consumer-driven review platform remains a core part of your marketing campaign, regardless of whether or not you decide to leverage it. Ignoring hostile ratings only adds to naysayers' power, but there are ways to acknowledge even the poorest reviews so that they can work in your favor. Most potential customers look for social proof when buying new products, so positive Yelp reviews can be the deciding factor when they are comparing your business to your competitors. In the last 10 months, I have brought in over $1 million from Yelp.

In 2015, the Google Pigeon update pushed Yelp pages above local listings, creating a prime spot for anyone savvy enough to keep their presence on track. Keywords are still the foundation of rank-building on the site, but Google also rates businesses according to user-created content (such as Yelp). This is why Yelp usually shows up at the top of the Google search results page. Having the right keywords or phrases on Yelp will help increase your ranking even further.

Keeping your profile up-to-date and asking customers for reviews after you deliver a service will increase your chances of success on the platform.

Updating Your Profile

Your profile is your opportunity to shine, so include as much information as the platform will allow. It's crucial that you claim your business before anyone else does. Include:

• Images and logos (Geotag them. This tells Google where the pictures are located, which increases your visibility.)
• Website address
• Hours of operation
• Price range
• Miscellaneous information relevant to your business (The more the merrier. On my page, I include details about myself and what we do differently from the competition. I put as many words as Yelp will allow in each description field.)

Networking in an Influence-Led World

Sixty-seven percent of consumers are influenced by reviews when they buy. Encourage engagement without being overly promotional. Consumers don't like being exploited as marketing fodder, so mentioning that you're on Yelp will garner a better response than sending out specific requests for reviews. I would recommend always asking happy customers to "Check us out on Yelp. It really helps us show people what kind of company we are."

Bear your chief influencers in mind during your campaign planning. "Yelp Elites" are approved annually based on their activity and candidness. Their review quality has been rated as superior than the average user, and many have pseudo-celebrities on the site, so this is the category of user you're looking to engage.

Yelp events give you the chance to network with reviewers, and Elite members make ideal hosts. Keep your eye on events and focus on becoming a Yelp Elite. When this happens, strong Yelp members will find you. The site itself has an event section, but that does not mean you are privy to the same events as the Elites are.

Including a basic Yelp badge on your site and social media pages will encourage engagement as well.

Coping With Complaints

Negative reviews can obliterate your progress if they're not managed intelligently. Research the problem before you respond. Find out all you can about the complaint and the influence of the writer. Take your time carefully reviewing the tone, location, and other specifics that might influence your reply. A careful, honest apology is warranted, but keep your response solution-based. For example, I always contact customers with a private message like, "I am so sorry about your experience and would love to hear what happen and make it up to you. What is the best number to call you?" I continue to contact them until they respond.

Using It to Your Advantage

Users have accused Yelp in the past of punishing businesses that don't pay for advertising by pushing their ratings down. All legal complaints attached to this myth have been dismissed. Yelp has a powerful algorithm that no one really knows how to beat, but you can bet that people will continue to complain about fake reviews.

Take advantage of your network. If you own a restaurant, go on Yelp and ask all your friends who have eaten at your place to check you out on Yelp. Ask people if they know others on Yelp who would be interested in coming in for a private tasting or something pertaining to your industry, and watch the reviews pour in. My business has over 200 Yelp reviews and has been able to retain a near-five-star rating.

One strong key to success is remembering to use it as a tool. When you reach out about a negative review, you are also learning about what you can do better as a company to prevent this from happening again. You can't silence online chatter about your brand, but think of every review as an opportunity to mold the public's perception. Humility, honesty, and a proactive approach are the nuts and bolts of a successful presence on Yelp.

Tommy Mello is the owner of A1 Garage Door Repair, a ten-million-dollar per year company. He is a partner of Highest Cast Offer and a partner/owner in over 14 businesses.

Self-Driving Uber Blows Through Red Light On First Day In San Francisco

Either driverless cars replicate humans a bit too well or they need more tweaking before they’re ready for prime time.

Just hours after Uber proudly rolled out a fleet of sleek self-driving Volvos in San Francisco on Wednesday morning, one of them barreled through a red light. Now California officials have called a halt to the pilot.

All of Uber’s self-driving cars in both San Francisco and Pittsburgh, the first city to see Uber’s autonomous tech, do have an engineer at the wheel, so this could technically be classified as human error. 

Notably, the car’s brake lights were on as it entered the intersection, indicating perhaps someone aboard the vehicle attempted to stop but did so too late.

Somewhat ironically, the incident was captured by a dash cam mounted aboard a taxi in the next lane, aka the thing Uber’s technology aims to one day replace. 

An operations manager at Luxor Cab, which operates the taxi in the video, confirmed its authenticity to the San Francisco Examiner, which first obtained the video.

Demanding that it first obtain a permit for operating the autonomous vehicle, California’s Department of Motor Vehicles ordered Uber to halt testing its self-driving cars on public streets in a letter sent to the company Wednesday.

“It is illegal for the company to operate its self-driving vehicles on public roads until it receives on autonomous vehicle testing permit,” the letter from state officials said. “If Uber does not confirm immediately that it will stop its launch and seek a testing permit, DMV will initiate legal action.”

Uber had hailed the novelty for its customers Wednesday: “Starting today, riders who request an uberX in San Francisco will be matched with a Self-Driving Uber if one is available. Expanding our self-driving pilot allows us to continue to improve our technology through real-world operations.”

In a statement to The Huffington Post, Uber said the incident was a human mistake, not a technical one.

“This incident was due to human error,” the spokesperson said. “This is why we believe so much in making the roads safer by building self-driving Ubers. This vehicle was ... not carrying customers. The driver involved has been suspended while we continue to investigate.”

The Oppenheimer Way

On its web site, Oppenheimer sets forth its purported goal of helping investors. Here's what it asserts: "We strive to help individuals maximize returns through an investment approach that's rooted in four key principles. Make global connections, look to the long term, take intelligent risks, and invest with proven teams."

Let's take a closer look at the "proven teams" who stand at the ready to assist you with reaching your retirement goals.

A checkered history

According to a comprehensive study by the Securities Litigation and Consulting Group (SLCG), the "team" at Oppenheimer consists of 2,217 registered brokers. 276 of these brokers (12.45%) had "investor harm" events in their background. "Investor harm" is defined as an award or settlement in excess of a threshold amount. Of this group, 92 (4.15%) were previously fired by other firms and hired by Oppenheimer.

While Oppenheimer ranked #7 in the top 30 firms with 400 or more registered brokers ranked by the percentage of brokers with investor harm events as defined in a previous study, it was #1 among brokerage firms with more than 1000 registered brokers. That's not a ranking to be proud of.

This data is significant because findings of a number of studies indicate the risk a broker will commit misconduct is "significantly increased" if co-workers have previously committed misconduct.

The SLCG study quantified the risk to investors of dealing with the six brokerage firms with the highest misconduct disclosures (Oppenheimer was #7 overall) in no uncertain terms, as follows: "Given their coworkers' disclosure record as of 2014, 83.7% of the brokers at these six firms would be in the highest risk quintile as defined by Qureshi and Sokobin and should be avoided by investors."

A cover-up

Clearly, this is data Oppenheimer and others in the securities are not eager for investors to learn. It appears that Oppenheimer intentionally delayed reporting events relating to misconduct by its brokers in order to keep that information from the prying eyes of the investing public.

According to a News Release dated November 17, 2016 issued by the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority, over a multi-year period, Oppenheimer failed to timely report more than 350 required filings to the regulatory authority. These filings included "actions taken by Oppenheimer against its employees, and settlements of securities-related arbitration and litigation claims."

The delay in reporting these claims was not minor. On average, according to the Release, "Oppenheimer made these filings more than four years late."

The Release also noted other misconduct by Oppenheimer, including failing to produce documents in discovery to customers who filed arbitrations, and for not applying applicable sales charge waivers to customers.

FINRA fined Oppenheimer $1.575 million and ordered it to pay $1.85 million to customers. As is typical, Oppenheimer " neither admitted nor denied the charges, but consented to the entry of FINRA's findings."

Lofty principles

In its annual report for 2015, Albert G. Lowenthal, the Chairman and CEO of Oppenheimer, stated: "As we stay true to our principles, always doing what is right and best for our clients in the best and worst of times, we can feel justly proud of our efforts."

Clients and prospective clients of Oppenheimer need to ask themselves whether these lofty statements have a hollow ring.

The views of the author are his alone. He is not affiliated with any broker, fund manager or advisory firm.

Any data, information and content on this blog is for information purposes only and should not be construed as an offer of advisory services.

Get Dan's investing insights by signing up for his free, weekly newsletter here.

Correction: The FINRA sanctions were levied against Oppenheimer & Co., Inc.. My blog mistakenly referenced the web page of the Oppenheimer Funds. The Oppenheimer funds were not involved in the FINRA matter. I regret the error.

Uber Said It Protects You From Spying. Security Sources Say Otherwise.

By Will Evans 

For anyone who’s snagged a ride with Uber, Ward Spangenberg has a warning: Your personal information is not safe.

Internal Uber employees helped ex-boyfriends stalk their ex-girlfriends and searched for the trip information of celebrities such as Beyoncé, the company’s former forensic investigator said.

“Uber’s lack of security regarding its customer data was resulting in Uber employees being able to track high profile politicians, celebrities, and even personal acquaintances of Uber employees, including ex-boyfriends/girlfriends, and ex-spouses,” Spangenberg wrote in a court declaration, signed in October under penalty of perjury.

After news broke two years ago that executives were using the company’s “God View” feature to track customers in real time without their permission, Uber insisted it had strict policies that prohibited employees from accessing users’ trip information with limited exceptions.

But five former Uber security professionals told Reveal from The Center for Investigative Reporting that the company continued to allow broad access even after those assurances.

Thousands of employees throughout the company, they said, could get details of where and when each customer travels. Those revelations could be especially relevant now that Uber has begun collecting location information even after a trip ends.

Spangenberg is suing the San Francisco-based ride-hailing behemoth for age discrimination (he’s 45) and whistleblower retaliation. He has worked information security jobs for a variety of tech companies. Uber tasked him with helping develop security procedures and responding to problems from around the world.

In addition to the security vulnerabilities, Spangenberg said Uber deleted files it was legally obligated to keep. And during government raids of foreign Uber offices, he said the company remotely encrypted its computers to prevent authorities from gathering information.

After beginning in March 2015, Spangenberg said he frequently objected to what he believed were reckless and illegal practices, and Uber fired him 11 months later.

“I also reported that Uber’s lack of security, and allowing all employees to access this information (as opposed to a small security team) was resulting in a violation of governmental regulations regarding data protection and consumer privacy rights,” he stated in the declaration, referring to requirements that companies notify consumers of any breach of personal information.

Michael Sierchio, a tech industry veteran who was a senior security engineer at Uber from early 2015 until June of this year, agreed that Uber had particularly weak protections for private information.

“When I was at the company, you could stalk an ex or look up anyone’s ride with the flimsiest of justifications,” he said. “It didn’t require anyone’s approval.”

In a statement, Uber said it maintains strict policies to protect customer data and comply with legal proceedings. It acknowledged that it had fired employees for improper access, putting the number at “fewer than 10.”

“We have hundreds of security and privacy experts working around the clock to protect our data,” Uber said in a statement.

“This includes enforcing strict policies and technical controls to limit access to user data to authorized employees solely for purposes of their job responsibilities, and all potential violations are quickly and thoroughly investigated,” the company said.

Uber would not give more details on its technical controls. In practice, the security sources said, Uber’s policy basically relies on the honor system. Employees must agree not to abuse their access. But the company doesn’t actually prevent employees from getting and misusing the private information in the first place, the security sources said.

Uber has a history of data problems

As Uber has rapidly grown to more than 40 million users worldwide, the gig-economy giant has also been dogged by leaks, hacks and privacy scandals.

In 2014, BuzzFeed reported that an Uber official had tracked its reporter’s movements without her permission, around the same time another executive suggested digging up dirt on critical journalists. The controversy – and an entrepreneur’s claim that he was tracked as well – drew attention to the company’s internal God View tool, which provided a real-time aerial view of Uber cars in a city and details of who was inside of them.

It later came out that a data breach that year exposed the personal information of more than 100,000 drivers.

After the embarrassments of 2014, Uber hired chief security officer Joe Sullivan, a prominent tech figure who previously held that post at Facebook and used to be a federal prosecutor. His team drew heavily from Facebook, including chief information security officer John “Four” Flynn.

The Federal Trade Commission, the consumer protection agency, is investigating Uber’s information security practices and recently deposed Sullivan, according to security sources.

Spangenberg and Sierchio – as well as three other former Uber security professionals granted anonymity to confirm their accounts – describe a startup culture that pushed back against security protections in favor of unbridled growth.

“Early on, ‘growth at all costs’ was the mantra, so you can imagine that security was an afterthought,” said Sierchio, whose tech career includes designing video games for Atari in the early 1980s.

Even after Uber assembled a security team, the pushback continued when employees raised concerns, he said.

“One of the things I was told is, ‘It’s not a security company,’” Sierchio said. Spangenberg said he was told the same thing.

As disclosures about God View sizzled on the internet in 2014, the company posted a statement saying that, “Uber has a strict policy prohibiting all employees at every level from accessing a rider or driver’s data. The only exception to this policy is for a limited set of legitimate business purposes.”

Lawmakers, including Sen. Al Franken, D-Minnesota, demanded details about those “legitimate business purposes.” Franken later wrote he was “concerned about the surprising lack of detail in their response.”

Sierchio, who said he was pushed out in June, said the company’s policy limiting access was “never enforced.”

After an investigation by New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman, Uber settled in January and promised to “limit access” to real-time trip data “to designated employees with a legitimate business purpose.”

Even after the attorney general settlement, Spangenberg and Sierchio said thousands of employees could still search Uber’s database to get real-time ride information. The company said it complies with the settlement.

Uber did adopt some reforms. There was a pop-up message warning employees that their activity was being monitored, but few took it seriously, Spangenberg said. Another change flagged searches for customers considered “MVPs.” But that didn’t protect anyone not labeled an MVP, Spangenberg said.

It also changed the name of God View to Heaven View, Spangenberg said.

An internal audit team searched for abnormalities in all the database activity to nab employees tracking customer data illicitly, said Spangenberg, who assisted the investigations. Those they caught were referred to HR to be fired, he said.

“If you knew what you were doing, you could get away with it forever,” Spangenberg said. “The access is always there, so it was a matter of whether you got caught in the noise.”

Many employees, Uber said, need access for reasons such as providing customer refunds and investigating traffic accidents. The company added that it blocks some teams of employees from getting the data without approval, though it did not specify which teams or how the approval process works.

Drivers’ personal details, including Social Security numbers, were also available to all Uber employees, Spangenberg said in his declaration.

Spangenberg said he argued for shutting off access to sensitive data for those who didn’t need it.

“I would say, ‘We can’t keep this information, you can’t allow this information to be stored like this, you can’t leave it all connected like this,’” he said.

Uber, in its statement, said, “We have made significant investment in tightening our access controls during the past several years. Allegations that simply acknowledging our policy in a pop-up window would provide access to customer data for unauthorized employees are not correct in our current environment.”

According to his lawsuit, Uber told Spangenberg he was fired for violating a code of conduct and reformatting his computer, which erases everything on it. He said he deleted and began rebuilding his laptop because it had crashed, and that it was common practice.

He also got in trouble for accessing emails that dealt with his own job performance review. Spangenberg said he was only testing out a program to search company emails. The whole thing was a pretext, he said, to get rid of him.

In court filings, Uber responded that it “generally denies each and every allegation” made by Spangenberg.

Lawsuit says Uber destroyed documents

Spangenberg accuses Uber of destroying information he believed it was obligated to preserve. “Uber routinely deleted files which were subject to litigation holds, which was another practice I objected to,” his declaration says.

A company can face legal penalties or be held in contempt of court for scrubbing evidence it was supposed to keep.

Among his duties, Spangenberg said he was also a point person when foreign government agencies raided company offices abroad.

“Uber would lock down the office and immediately cut all connectivity so that law enforcement could not access Uber’s information,” his declaration states.

In May 2015, for example, the tax agency Revenu Quebec raided Uber’s Montreal office to gather evidence of tax evasion. Spangenberg said he worked from San Francisco to encrypt the office’s computers.

“My job was to just make sure that any time a laptop was seized, the protocol locked the laptops up,” he said.

Indeed, Quebec investigators – armed with a warrant to copy information from Uber computers – went back to a judge to say the computers had been remotely restarted and apparently encrypted, according to court records. They got permission to take the computers with them, but the machines are of little value if the information on them stays encrypted.

Efforts to encrypt data once a government search is in process “raises red flags and serious concerns,” said Judith Germano, a cybersecurity expert and former federal prosecutor.

A company could argue it was protecting sensitive information, she said. But if a judge determined it was a deliberate effort to hide evidence, the judge could impose legal sanctions or fines, and order the company to decrypt the data.

In its statement, Uber said, “We’ve had robust litigation hold procedures in place from our very first lawsuit to prevent deletion of emails relevant to ongoing litigation.” Uber said it has an obligation to protect personal information and that “we cooperate with authorities when they come to us with appropriate legal process.”

Uber challenged the Quebec search warrants in court, but in May, a Canadian judge wrote in French that Uber’s actions had “all the characteristics of an attempt to obstruct justice,” suggesting that “Uber wanted to shield evidence of its illegal conduct.” Uber is still appealing.

Looking back, Spangenberg describes a tangle of questionable practices and gaping vulnerabilities.

“The only information, truthfully, that I ever felt was safe inside of Uber is your credit card information,” he said. “Because it’s not stored by Uber.”

Branding from Why

Co-written by Gasper Patrico

The cultural context of business has changed and today, people believe their lives have an impact and hold their brands to this higher bar. Customers, employees and forward-thinking investors no longer see meaning as just nice to have, but now gravitate toward businesses and organizations that deliver it.

This shift in belief calls for a wide range of disciplines such as marketing, design, engineering and production, to collaborate in generating purposeful value. As Simon Sinek states: "People don't buy what you do; they buy why you do it. What you do simply proves what you believe."

According to a study conducted by Debbie Millman, of Sterling Brands, over the past one hundred and fifty years, customer expectations of brands have undergone a series of transitions. These transitions continually redefine the quality of relationship and dimensions of value delivery required for the success and sustainability of brands.

In the late eighteen hundreds, users wanted "quality, consistency and safety" (1876-1919) - "Just give me a product that actually works."

Then, in the early nineteen hundreds, increasing product choices challenged brands to "differentiate" their offerings via features and benefits and anthropomorphizing became important - think Betty Crocker, Dr. Pepper, Mercedes and Marlboro (1920 - 1964).

During the mid-to-late nineteen hundreds, Baby-Boomers demanded more from their brands and the act of purchasing also became a means of "self-expression" (1965-1984). Illustrated by Red Bull, LaCoste, Hushpuppies and Jeep.

Generation X began seeking brands as "experiences" (1965 - 1976) such as Urban Outfitter, Interrail, Starbucks and IKEA.

In the last transition of brand-value demand, the world is more interconnected, thus, change happens quicker and news travels faster. The outside world has moved closer and our world seems less predictable as a result. Millennials (1977 - 1995) and Centennials (1996 and later) are living with hyper-change as the metronome of their lives.

The forces of globalization and technology forged Millennials (now society's largest birth cohort). The Centennials are growing up in a post-9/11, climate-change-kind-of-world. Both generations are desperately seeking to make the world a better place, are driven to "make a difference" and associate their identities with brands that seek the same.

How does an organization develop its brand and deliver on promises that "Start with Why?"

When internal stakeholders ask, "Why are we doing this?" or when customers ask, "Why am I buying this?" it substantially heightens the critical relationship between strategy and brand. Brand is strategy in action and intentional brands have a higher purpose that frames the context of the products, services or experiences they create. Meeting business financial goals is a must, however is only table stakes in the challenge to attract and retain customers in today's cultural context.

Take for example a seeming commodity type business--green tea. Working the nexus of strategy and brand, could one build a business where "Why" is part of the sensory experience of the product?

Organic India does this beautifully. The company positions their tea as a "Vehicle of Consciousness." Is this just a clever and lofty claim? Hardly. The business strategy is built on this bedrock.

When one opens a box of Organic India tea, the first thing one sees is a small booklet that instantly shifts the perception and meaning of what's in the box. The booklet declares a Why for the business-- an ideology or belief, one that makes a difference and makes the user part of the story.

One might say that's all well and good for a tea business, but can one innovate technology businesses on the foundation of "Why?" Apple's purpose statement infuses everything they do--it's part of the sensory experience of the brand: "We want to make a contribution to the world by making tools for the mind that advance humankind." Mission continually accomplished.

In pursuit of Why, and the execution of your business - products, services or experiences - Inspirational Design Thinking may offer some refreshing insights and methods on how to make purpose one's guiding star.

Instead of uncritically guiding offerings by what customers say they want, Inspirational Design Thinking first explores breakthrough innovative opportunities via a taxonomy of Big Questions under the main heading: Love, Courage and Accomplishment.

Once a big enough "Why" has been identified that resonates with the organization's culture, business opportunities are conceptualized and customers' insights and opinions solicited, all followed by the established Design Thinking process. In this way the Why - How - What are connected and a comprehensive and a cohesive meaningful brand message is developed.

Branding from Why is a strong beginning, however if customers sense the organization is inauthentic, its business will not stand the test. Upcoming generations will continue to keep organizations feet to the fire with their focus on measurable actions.

Special thanks to Gasper Patrico for researching and co-writing this article

Sustainable Motivation for New Year Resolutions

Photo: deathtostock.com

By: Chris White, Center for Positive Organizations, University of Michigan

As this year winds down and the new year approaches, many of us are reflecting and setting new goals. Maybe we want to get a new job, or form closer relationships with partners, colleagues, or friends. Maybe we want to get more involved in helping our communities. Maybe we want to get fitter or healthier (this is mine, by the way... again...).

Our underlying motivation for these goals is crucially important in determining whether we will be stick with the pursuit of a goal or not. So often when setting goals, we focus on what we want to do and do not dig into why we want to do it. Yet it is this deeper self-reflection that drives sustained commitment to a new habit or behavior. Michelle Segar, a faculty associate at the University of Michigan's Center for Positive Organizations, has called this process "finding the right why."

So what is the right why? "People are more motivated by immediate rewards than they are by ones they have to wait to experience," says Segar. In other words: when debating whether to lace up your running shoes, thinking about the endorphin rush coming your way in 30 minutes is often a more sustainable motivator than living a little longer in thirty years. This translates to organizational goals too. If you are considering organizing a team-building activity, focusing on how fun it will be may encourage better attendance than emphasizing that the group might experience less turnover or burnout next year.

Segar suggests four action steps to begin applying the Right Why to changes you want to make in 2017:

#1: Reflect
Consider your "whys" for initiating a lifestyle change; and ask yourself if it has symbolized that this change/behavior is a chore or a gift?

#2: Reset
Know that we've all been socialized to think about and approach "healthy" lifestyles from the same perspective, one that has turned them into medicine instead of the vehicles of joy and meaning that they truly are - let go of any sense of personal failure because the formula we've been taught sets us up for starting and stopping but not sustaining. People feel like failures and this is very bad for motivation.

#3: Choose
Consider the specific experiences, that if you had more of them in your day, would lead you to feel better and drive greater success in your roles. Do you feel drained and need more energy? Do you need more time to connect with loved ones? Then pick one of these experiences - this is what the Right Why is - and identify what lifestyle behavior might deliver it to you. It's important to focus on changing one behavior at once because the goal is to institutionalize it into our lives. Humans have a limited capacity for decision making so we must strategically use it as the limited resource it truly is.

#4: Experiment
Experiment with a plan for one week to see what happens, including the types of things that get in the way. Plan a date on your schedule to sit down and evaluate whether that behavior helped you realize your Right Why and also what you might want to tweak going forward. Because it's an opportunity to learn, there is no failure. It's about continuing to experiment with whys and ways to achieve them until you discover what works for you.

What is one of your goals for 2017, and what is your motivation for pursuing it?

Chris White (@leadpositively, leadpositively.com) is managing director of the Center for Positive Organizations (@PositiveOrg) at the University of Michigan's Stephen M. Ross School of Business.

Trailblazing Women: Rachel Delacour, General Manager and Co-Founder of BIME Analytics at Zendesk

This interview is part of a series on Trailblazing Women role models (Entrepreneurs and Leaders) from around the world and first appeared on Global Invest Her. You have to see what you can be.

"We are only at the beginning of technology and what we can achieve to craft a better world. I want to be part of shaping that."

Rachel is the General Manager and co-founder of BIME Analytics, a pioneer in SaaS Cloud Business Intelligence (BI) startup originally located in Montpellier, France. BIME Analytics was recently acquired by Zendesk in October 2015.

As a young, female financial controller she saw a real business need for BI tools in the age of Big Data, leading her to found BIME in 2009. The company offers true cloud BI service and was the first front-end analytics partner of Google BigQuery. Prior to BIME, Rachel held finance positions at Carrefour and FM Logistics Russia. She holds a Masterʼs finance degree from the Euromed business school in Marseille.

Learn more about BIME Analytics on their website and follow Rachel on Twitter @BIME_Rachel and @bimeanalytics.

Who is your role model as an entrepreneur?

My role models are: Elon Musk, Jane Poynter, Marie Ekeland, three folks from Denmark who created a unicorn in a very short amount of time in California (Zendesk cofounders!), and Calamity Jane. I am a big fan of space opportunities as a business and what people are trying to achieve there. Elon Musk is investigating options on Mars to also ensure his own children have enough resources when there will be too many people on Earth! Jane Poynter - I love the type of business she is building where everyone will be able to afford a trip into space in future! She did it to shock people, because those who do go to space realise how fantastic our world is and that we really need to preserve it. Getting more people into space will hopefully shock more people into action to realise we are living on a fantastic planet and we've got to protect it.

Marie Ekeland is a real role model for me. She is a French investor who is passionate about investing in startups and watching them grow. She has been very vocal with the French government to make sure that companies are heard. Marie is a very smart, approachable woman who has that fantastic mix of human magic, pure business and finance who has been very helpful to startups in France. I really like the fact that she started her own fund (Daphni) with more humanity and is a strong women's advocate too. Finally, Mikkel from Zendesk is a role model for me. When they acquired us, they were only two years older than us! It's crazy to see how you can build a business that motivates the team, keeps customers happy and remains cutting edge. My final role model is Calamity Jane! I love what she represented by wearing mens' clothes and helping Native American Indians - she was such a role model from Frontierland, when it was so difficult for a woman to assume that role.

What is your greatest achievement to date?

"I am very proud of creating real value for my customers and jobs for my growing team. The fact that the whole team of millennials stayed on with us after we were acquired by Zendesk and that after five years we still have the same people on board is something I am very proud of."

It's an everyday struggle to keep our team happy, which we do by sharing our ideas and vision. Millennials can be hard to manage because they are so smart, yet they bring out the best in you. This year, several members of the team have had babies - it's wonderful to see the team growing with you - literally!

On a personal level, I was so frustrated that our solution didn't exist, that wecreated it ourselves with my cofounder. I am very proud that our customers liked BIME (now Explore as part of Zendesk) from a technology and branding point of view and that our loyal team believes in our vision and sees us all growing. We all know why we get up in the morning - it's a virtuous circle! We try to stay as normal as possible, while keeping a close eye on the big picture too.

What has been your biggest challenge as a woman entrepreneur?

We work in a very male-dominated industry and I took advantage of being a woman to stand out and make a difference in this analytics world. It's hard to smash the clichés - already the software industry is very male dominated, and the analytics space even more so; there are even fewer women there. To be honest, I haven't seen a big difference in then number of women going to analytics conferences from 2009 to today: there are very few women CEO's and women speakers on the topic. It's a pity. In the past, at some meetings with new prospects, many of them didn't realise I was the CEO and would say things like "you are so passionate about your product, your boss must be so proud of you" So many clichés in two sentences! When I told them I was the CEO, they were so surprised. It happens so often, that now I say to myself, 'that's life'! So now I use my gender to my advantage to stand out in this industry, while at the same time not over-playing the fact I'm a woman. I never try to be a victim - I always stand up for myself as a woman.

What in your opinion is the key to your company's success?

The fact that we have managed to keep the same team for so long means we have been something right!

Three things have been key to our success:

1.Internal Communication. Always try to improve it.
2.My cofounder's vision has been key from a technology/product standpoint.
3.Good execution with a long-term and loyal team.

Nothing's perfect, but we always try to give the right communication at the right time, be as transparent as possible and keep everyone in the loop. When we were first approached for the at the acquisition, we took the risk of telling the team early in the process, to show them we really trusted them. Good communication is an everyday fight - the more you grow, you need to have communication on a daily basis. We followed our vision from the beginning. A lot of people say you have to really listen to paying customers - we also kept our vision and stuck to it, shared it with the team and made sure they followed it. This transparent communication and bringing talented people to the team to help us sell and grow have made us what we have become.

If you could do 1 thing differently, what would it be?

I would have spent more time on marketing execution from the beginning. Even though we are based in France, we mostly sold our solutions abroad and built everything in English from the start (not French). We were very creative with the resources we had before Zendesk. When you build a business on a global scale you need to have global markets on the other side too. The reality is that companies in the U.S. are better funded than companies in Europe. I should have approached that differently and would have invested in global marketing, sooner. The whole world is your playground when you have a cloud business, which is great in terms of opportunities but you need global marketing as well! I also discovered how you have to adapt your global marketing in different countries.

What would you say to others to encourage them to become entrepreneurs?

I have two personal mottos:

"On est jamais mieux servi que par soi meme" => "if you want something done right, do it yourself."

"la valeur n'attend point le nombre des années" => "value does not depend on how old you are."

My younger sister (10 years younger than me) is thinking of starting her own business and was stressing out a lot about how much she didn't know what to do. I told her - think about the problem you want to solve and the product first - you don't need to know everything. You may think you need to go back to school and learn via classes but that's bull**** All you need is talented people and execution - don't spend your time with your head in books - don't be afraid you are too young or old to start! If you are willing to work, are smart, creative, you can start a fabulous business - be sure to focus on execution.

How would you describe your leadership style?

It's important to stay humble and keep your feet on the ground. Stay humble enough to execute tasks at all levels, while being bullish on important and strategic topics, challenges & targets. When I heard the French President Hollande was going to California with several entrepreneurs, I told my team that we had to be part of this trip, even though it had all been set up. I worked so much on it (= harassed the President's team!) and I did it - was part of the French Delegation representing BIME. My team didn't believe it. I wanted to show them that if you want, something, you can do it! This trip gave us a lot of credibility. It also taught my team that you can always hustle to get things done, don't be afraid to be pushy (without crossing the line and harassing!).

What advice would you give to your younger self?

"Focus on these things in this order: People, product and profit. You won't find the entrepreneurship recipe in books. Spend your time building your product first, be confident in your vision and execute your business asap, go fast. ..and listen to your paying customers, not the other ones."

With my co-founder we won an award from the Ministry of Research that we were able to leverage to on-board business angels early in the process, so I knew I didn't need to be fighting for money to build my business. Be careful not to spend all your time on raising money because it's more fashionable - in reality - it's all about the problem you want to solve and your product to solve it.

What would you like to achieve in the next 5 years?

• Make my family happy (am the proud mother of two beautiful children).
• Become a great business angel.
• Become the de-facto online analytics choice on a global level...which is happening thanks to joining forces with Zendesk.

We have the same culture fit and vision about analytics, which is enabling us to get from A to B more quickly. I love the fact Zendesk took a bet on us - for me it's like a 'modern wedding'.I am now the General Manager of Explore (former BIME Analytics ) at Zendesk - this is where I want to be and feel at ease to spread our analytics message to the world.

3 key words to describe yourself?

• Passionate (life is short right ? )
• Team first
• Execution
• Special mention to my cofounder (who is also my husband).

--------------

Watch Anne Ravanona's TEDx talk on Investing in Women Entrepreneurs.

See more Trailblazing Women role models from this Huffpost series

Learn more about Global Invest Her www.globalinvesther.com @GlobalInvestHer

9 Office Gift-Giving Dos And Don’ts

Keep the occasion jolly by following these nine rules of office gift-giving etiquette.

1. If you give your boss a gift, make it a group effort. Doing so allows everyone to participate at a lower cost per person while providing a more substantial offering than any one individual could (or should) give on their own. If you must do it alone, opt for something heartfelt (a holiday plant or baked goods) rather than expensive and overly personal.

2. Participation is key. If your office has an exchange, plan on being a part of it. If you sit on the sidelines for any reason, you could be viewed as a Grinch. The cost is usually minimal, and it opens the door to build holiday goodwill.

3. Give discreetly to work friends. If you have a small present for a few select colleagues, swap gifts outside of the office. Otherwise, you risk other people finding out and wondering why they were excluded.

4. Remember your team. The holidays provide an opportunity to say thank you to the people who support you year-round. If you supervise a small team, (say, less than five) consider a token of appreciation for each. A gift card to a favorite restaurant or retailer you know they like is a welcome treat.

5. Aim for the sweet spot on price limits. No matter the spending guidelines in an organized office event, there will always be someone who exceeds them. This holiday blunder can inadvertently cause problems, making the appropriately priced offerings look meager by comparison. Conversely, don’t underspend, either. Purchase something near the top of the recommended range.

6. Wrap it up. Embellish your package with pretty paper, gift bags and bows. The extra effort makes the person receiving the present feel special – and that’s what the season is all about.

7. Don’t overdo it. Resist the temptation to go overboard. Avoid using the holidays as a time to show off, or ingratiate yourself with an over the top gift to impress. Clients can read through shallow attempts of grandeur. A modest gift showing gratitude is a far better holiday choice.

8. Smile and say thank you. This is the correct response when a co-worker (or anyone else, for that matter) presents you with something but you don’t have anything for them. You are not obligated to buy a present in return if you had no intention of doing so. The only requirement is to offer your sincere thanks for their thoughtfulness.

9. Remember extraordinary acts of kindness. If your mentor gives you guidance or a colleague goes out of their way to help you succeed this year, now is a great time to recognize them. An act of appreciation doesn’t have to be fancy – a pretty mug with a bag of chocolate-covered espresso beans and a gift card to a nearby coffee shop is perfect. The holidays provide extra room to acknowledge their acts of thoughtfulness.

For more of Diane’s etiquette tips, visit her blog, connect with her here on The Huffington Post, “like” The Protocol School of Texas on Facebook, or follow her on Pinterest and Instagram.

Innovation Velocity: Memory-Driven Computing Could Transform our Global Future

The end of the year is a good time to both be thankful and to remind us all that we face a future of immensely complex challenges. These challenges we face in our global future are many. Increased population. Ending hunger. Universal education. Sustainable energy. Clean water. Global security. Safe megacities. Gainful employment and improving health. To name a few.

I am not a pessimist about these global challenges but rather reporting that this is our shared destiny--to find global solutions to meet the challenges of our future is what our civilization has done for millennia. We adapt, innovate and invent to survive. This will require that we invent jobs, solutions, innovations faster. We need to collapse time. To do this we need the next generation of computers to deliver the "what's next" much faster than ever before.

As a global futurist I care about shaping better futures. All of my clients do as well. Many innovations in technology have proven up to be quite useful in creating better futures. But frankly we need faster solutions to keep pace with the growing challenges. And many of the ways to meet these challenges must deploy a new generation of thinking machines, predictive analytics, big data, synthetic biology, 3D makers, smarter robotics. We need to do better.

According to a recent forecast by Gartner, by 2020, the number of connected devices will reach 20.8 billion. The amount of data this represents in voice, email, GPS, DNA is beyond our capacity to store or capture today. We cannot do the big data to big insight discovery process without new tools to process data.

We need a faster than Moore's Law technology to keep pace. The existing computing platforms do not have the bandwidth and capabilities to process, store, manage, transmit and secure the big data we need to solve problems. And the gargantuan Data Tsunami coming, driven by the Internet of Things, mobile devices, enterprise applications and digital transformation of the planet--cannot be managed without new computing tools. You see the dilemma.

We need to accelerate invention--Innovation Velocity. We need not just more powerful or smarter computers, we need an entirely new computing architecture that can address big complex global challenges. That is the breakthrough that we need to shape the future. Enter Memory-Driven Computing.

I am excited by Hewlett Packard Enterprise's Memory-Driven Computing because it appears to be a breakthrough, based on a proof of concept just revealed, in creating a new paradigm in computing based on memory. Memory-Driven Computing is an entirely new architecture with memory, not the processor, at the core of computing platform. Also a photonics fabric, a new way to accelerate and enable high performance communications has been proven up to show speeds that are much faster, then anything we have today in computing. The new metric of Memory-Driven Computing can process in 500 nanoseconds 64 terabytes of data.

What are the advantages? We could be looking at creating a new energy source, ending diseases, increasing agriculture production, enterprise productivity, climate change forecasting, financial modeling, cybersecurity or meeting other global challenges. We could be inventing better futures to also solve challenges in space travel, understand Black Holes or the next fusion reactor for clean energy production.

When it comes to the enterprise and entrepreneurs well, Memory-Driven Computing could create a new dynamic global marketplace of services, inventions and applications. This could enable innovation faster, exponentially faster than anything we have seen. The future needs new ideas and a new generation of entrepreneurs and companies that are ready to leverage Innovation Velocity.

If you want to know where the next jobs are, what careers are coming and how to beat out that robot for your job--check out Memory-Driven Computing for where innovation will be going this coming year and beyond.

Donald Trump And The Republicans: The Art Of The Steal

During the campaign Donald Trump boasted that he could kill someone on Fifth Avenue and it wouldn't affect his standing among his supporters. Whether or not this is true, this appears to be the approach that Trump and his fellow Republicans are taking to their role in governing. The basic story is that they can rip off the public as much as they want, because ain't no one going to stop them. They could be right.

The most immediate issue is Donald Trump's refusal to sell his assets and place the proceeds in a blind trust. This was a practice followed by every president in the last half century. The idea is that the president should be making decisions based on what they think is good for the country, not based on what they think will fatten their pocketbooks.

Trump's proposal in this area is essentially a joke. The idea is he turns over the operation of his empire to his kids. It's not clear how this helps at all. His kids will never discuss any business issues with him and also have no opportunity to discuss policy with their father or father-in-law?

Perhaps more importantly, he knows what properties are in his empire. This means that if he decides to make an issue of the crackdown on opposition by Turkey's president, Recep Erdogan, it is likely that Erdogan will retaliate against the Trump resorts in Turkey. The same applies to his dealings with many other countries.

We shouldn't have to rely on a "trust me" pledge from the president that the financial interests of his family will not be a consideration in his foreign policy. That is exactly why prior presidents put their assets into a blind trust. And, there is little reason to believe that Donald Trump is more honest than our past presidents.

It is also important to realize that divestment of Trump's empire is not an insoluble problem. The key is to have an appraisal process, which would set a value on his assets. Trump can then lock in this price by buying an insurance policy, which would protect him from the risk that the assets may be sold off at a lower price than the appraisal. The proceeds from the sale of properties would be put directly in a blind trust. Any extra funds go to a designated non-Trump affiliated charity.

From the point of the appraisal forward, Trump would have no financial stake in his empire. That would end this huge conflict of interest problem.

It appears that Donald Trump's indifference to problems of conflict of interest is likely to extend to his top appointees as well. Politico reported on evidence that Steven Mnuchin, Trump's nominee as Treasury Secretary, used the money from a tax exempt foundation under his control, to engineer a lobbying campaign. According to the article, when Mnuchin was chair of the bank OneWest, he used funds from the bank's foundation to make payments to non-profits that later lobbied on the bank's behalf.

If Politico's information is accurate, and the payments were in fact made to support a lobbying campaign, then it would be a clear case of tax fraud. A nice twist to this story is that as treasury secretary, Mr. Mnuchin would be responsible for overseeing the I.R.S.

We have yet to see the full list of top level appointees, but it is already clear that it will include some of the richest people in the country. Wlibur Ross, the billionaire private equity fund manager, is slated to head the Commerce Department. His pick for secretary for the Department of Education is Betsey DeVos, an heir to a multi-billion dollar fortune.

If Trump refuses to hold himself to the same ethical standards as past presidents, it is difficult to believe that he will pressure his cabinet and top advisers to avoid conflicts of interest. And given the wealth of some of his appointees, there will be plenty of opportunity for conflict.

In fact, it looks like the tidal wave of conflicted government has already spilled over to the legislative branch. Senate Majority leader Mitch McConnell announced that he will not recuse himself from voting on Elaine Chao, Trump's pick to head the Department of Transportation. Chao also happens to be McConnell's wife.

When it comes to ethics in government, presidents usually start out setting high standards which they don't always live up to. By refusing to put his holdings in a blind trust, Donald Trump is starting in the sewer. It is likely to go down from there.

To Bot or Not to Bot. Here Come the Chatbots

Donna Peeples, CCO, Pypestream

How intelligent automation can improve the customer experience for brands

The bot economy has arrived. These days, chatbots are on the tip of everyone’s tongue and at our fingertips. Easier to build and distribute than mobile apps, bots are invading the mobile messaging platforms of choice for consumers today.

While it’s still early, thousands of bots are now available. Consider the fact that Facebook Messenger had zero bots in February of 2016 and by November of this year had over 34,000. Today bots allow consumers to do everything from call an Uber, book a flight or make a restaurant reservation, to review an e-commerce order or ask for the latest news or weather forecast.

While many bots are more annoying than helpful, 2017 represents the turning point where we’ll see more companies leverage bots for customer service and to aid consumers in making buying decisions. That could mean fewer Google searches for consumers in the future, allowing them to get the information or help they need directly from brands in a more conversational and engaging way.

Chatbots offer brands a chance to be where consumers are: messaging. While smartphone owners only use a handful of apps, messaging apps are the platform of choice for consumers with more than 2.5 billion global users this year. And this trend is set to continue, with messaging apps now outpacing social media networks in growth.

Without a doubt, mobile messaging is a channel brands absolutely must embrace. And chatbots, if done the right way, offer businesses an opportunity to create a better real-time experience for customers. That said, not all examples of chatbots we’re seeing right now are good ones.  In the case of Microsoft’s Tay earlier this year, we saw how disastrous an open-ended AI bot system can be. Tay showed us what can go wrong when there are no guardrails in place to prevent comments outside the scope of what would be helpful to a customer.

As we head into 2017, one of the biggest misconception about chatbots is they can answer anything and everything. The belief that automating conversations in an open-ended way will in itself add value for customers. The reality is the most effective bots are purpose-built to solve very specific problems for customers–making common customer service requests and commerce easier, while ensuring customer privacy.

In other words, less is more. The focus of any bot should be intelligent automation of existing business processes delivered in a conversational way. And it’s critical to keep the customer experience in mind.

Delivering a great experience through intelligent automation

At the end of the day, chatbots should improve customer service, save customers time or help them with their buying decisions - such as customizing a product order or helping with a specific request. The experience and use case has to make sense and add value to the conversations customers are already having. How will a bot relate to customers? What specific problems will it solve? How will it improve existing processes for customer service, communication and commerce?

The ideal approach is to analyze customer communication and transactional processes, then identify areas where automation is both easy and effective. An example of this is the range of frequently asked questions that require a repeated and often scripted response from a live agent. Instead of having the customer go through the process of speaking with an agent, a chatbot can easily handle this conversation and transform an otherwise annoying experience.

Solving for these low-hanging-fruit issues first with bots allows brands to learn how to effectively automate their business, and over time they can increase the complexity. But keeping it simple is key, initially. We’re only just starting to see the ways in which chatbots can improve customer relationships. Any new technology needs to be implemented strategically and mastered over time, in gradual increments. Trying to do too much, too soon, often results in poor customer experiences.

Our approach at Pypestream reflects this philosophy. When we deploy bots for businesses we assess specific conversations and look for the repeatable interactions and apply business rules that a chatbot can handle with ease. From there, we grow and expand the chatbot’s capability using both business and behavioral data. Eventually, the chatbot can handle the majority of conversations allowing for lightning fast interactions and happy customers.

Customer service: the sweet spot for bots

Customer service is a natural for chatbots. Most often we see about 80-90% of customer service inquiries are for the same issues and require the same responses. These repetitive interactions are easily automated and streamlined with chatbots. The desired result is a reduction in operational costs for businesses while improving the speed and efficiency of customer service. In addition, chatbots can be triggered to proactively address real-time issues avoiding the costs of inbound calls. For example, alerts to a cable outage with instructions on how to reset the modem; where is my insurance claim in process and when can I expect my payment or storm notifications with safety instructions around down power lines and updates on when power will be restored.

Given how fresh chatbot technology is right now, the best outcomes are those that combine bots with humans. This is particularly true for customer service interactions. It’s difficult to predict or plan for every potential customer inquiry. Therefore, live agents are still needed to field the questions and inquiries that fall outside of a chatbot’s parameters - the more complex, higher touch interactions.

Overall though, for customers, the ideal experiences with businesses are intuitive and easy. The less friction, the better. That’s the central idea for the use of bots: convenience. When customers send a message to businesses to resolve problems, schedule appointments and make secure payments, the customer service experience is streamlined, frictionless and, well, easy.

Expect chatbots to continue to grow in popularity

Mobile messaging is steadily becoming the most popular means of communicating, as indicated by the staggering number of people on WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger and other p2p applications. Chatbots offer a way for businesses to enter the messaging era and join the conversation. New platforms will emerge to support issues of privacy and security that are so essential to customer communication. But ultimately, as investment in the technology increases, we can expect to see more companies ditching traditional communication models for messaging.

If done the right way, conversational technology and bots have the potential to make a dramatic and positive impact on the customer experience, but only if brands take the right approach through intelligent automaton.

ADHD makes for better entrepreneurs

Entrepreneurship researcher Johan Wiklund of Syracuse University was alerted to the link between ADHD and entrepreneurship after family experiences led him to learn more about mental health issues. This encouraged him to look at how ADHD can be a positive influence. We spoke to Wiklund about his research.

ResearchGate: What inspired you to study ADHD and entrepreneurship?

Wiklund: I have been involved in entrepreneurship research for 20 years. A couple of years ago we had some mental health issues in the family for the first time. This opened my eyes. After learning more about mental disorders, I began to see links between ADHD and entrepreneurship. I asked some psychiatrist and psychologist friends and they thought it made sense. I conducted a case study with 16 entrepreneurs who all had a formal ADHD diagnoses. This case study confirmed many of my hunches and set me off on the course I am now pursuing.

RG: What makes a good entrepreneur?

Wiklund: It is virtually impossible to define what makes a good entrepreneur, because as an entrepreneur you can choose to do whatever you want, for whatever reason you want. So, first you need to have your own definition of what a 'good' entrepreneur is. But fundamentally, you must be willing to try out new things even if you are uncertain, be willing to accept failure, and to get back up when you fail.

RG: What are your results so far? What is it about ADHD that could benefit or lead someone to become an entrepreneur?

Wiklund: Hyperactivity and impulsivity among people with ADHD can be positive for entrepreneurship. Impulsivity is particularly interesting because it is such a negatively loaded word. But it is impulsivity that triggers people with ADHD to act and take risks where other people would wait and see. They also tend to look at the potential gains rather than fear the potential losses, which helps them keep going and to keep coming back.

RG: Are there downsides as well?

Wiklund: The attention deficit aspect of ADHD is negative unlike the impulsivity and hyperactivity aspects. It seems that people high on the attention deficit dimension shy away from entrepreneurship.

For practicing entrepreneurs with ADHD, organization is a problem. Every person that I have spoken to with ADHD hates bookkeeping and has a very hard time with it. This is why they need people around them for support.

RG: Does this apply to people who medicate their ADHD symptoms?

Wiklund: ADHD symptoms can be difficult if they become too extreme. If this happens medication is of course helpful. However, from what I have seen, entrepreneurs with ADHD typically don't medicate when they want to be creative and generate ideas, but do medicate when they meet with customers, or need to be focused on tasks that they consider boring.

RG: Are there any famous entrepreneurs that have ADHD?

Wiklund: Yes, there are several famous entrepreneurs with ADHD. It is hard to get confirmation on who actually has a formal diagnosis, but it seems that David Neeleman of JetBlue and Richard Branson of Virgin do have confirmed formal diagnoses.

RG: Are there other examples of disorders benefiting a person's pursuit?

Wiklund: People with dyslexia are also attracted to and can do very well in entrepreneurship. But the link between dyslexia and entrepreneurship is less straightforward. There is nothing directly related to reading difficulty that makes you suited for entrepreneurship. It may be other neurological differences that matter, such as creativity.

RG: What studies have you done so far?

Wiklund: To date I have carried out three primary studies. The first was a case study of 16 entrepreneurs with ADHD diagnoses. This helped me get a basic understanding of how ADHD symptoms manifest in entrepreneurship and develop a conceptual model. The second study was a survey of MBA alumni. The third study is a survey of successful entrepreneurs. Preliminary results suggest that ADHD symptoms are directly linked to behaving more entrepreneurially within their organizations, and positively linked to growth and performance. Very interesting findings!

This interview originally appeared on ResearchGate News. For updates on this research, follow the project on ResearchGate.

Dollar Strength To Weigh On GDP

The dollar has spiked rather dramatically over the past several weeks on prospects of better economic growth and higher interest rates.  In fact, on a trade-weighted basis the dollar has eclipsed its highs from January of this year and is now hovering around levels last seen in early 2002.  While it’s generally a positive sign when a currency strengthens, dramatic movements in short periods of time can have serious repercussions for trade.  A rising dollar makes US exports less competitive relative to products and services sold by competitors based in countries with weakening currencies.  Therefore, dollar strength can act as a strong headwind for those US companies heavily dependent on exports.  And since 40-50 percent (estimates vary) of S&P 500 revenues are derived outside the US, a rapidly rising dollar is no trivial matter as it relates to corporate sales and profitability.  US consumers, on the other hand, generally benefit from dollar strength as they can use their stronger dollars to buy more goods and services imported from other countries.  But then again, the consumer’s gain comes at the expense of US companies that are losing US wallet share to foreign competitors.

We generally hear our politicians say that they are supportive of a strong dollar.  However, an appreciating dollar can cause problems for policymakers and central bankers as well as US corporations.  Why?  Because the size of our economy is measured by the following formula:

GDP = Personal Consumption Expenditures (~68% of total GDP in 2015) + Gross Private Domestic Investment (17%) + Government Expenditures (18%) + Net Exports of Goods & Services (-3%)

The final component in the equation, Net Exports of Goods & Services, is derived by subtracting imports from exports.  Because we always import more than we export, this component of GDP is always negative.  So, as we discussed above, we can expect imports to increase and exports to decrease in a rising-dollar environment.  If we hold all else equal, the rise in imports and drop in exports caused by an appreciating dollar is a drag on economic growth.  How much of a drag?  Well, since 1995 net exports have subtracted anywhere from 0.8% to 5.6% from GDP (on a quarterly basis), with an average of 3.4%.  This compares to about 3.1% in the most recent quarter (3Q16).  With the trade-weighted dollar at 14-year highs, net exports are currently subtracting just 3.1% from GDP – below the 20-year average of 3.4%.  You would think that the drag would be much greater given the huge dollar appreciation over the past couple of years.  Seems like something has to give, right?

We decided to go back and try to quantify the possible effects on GDP from the recent spike in the value of the dollar.  The last time the trade-weighted dollar index was this high (approaching 130) in 2001-2002, the trade deficit was subtracting 4.0%-5.0% from GDP.  In the chart below, we went back 20 years and tracked the quarterly average trade-weighted dollar against the ratio of trade deficit to GDP.  We also ran a regression to see how GDP growth would be affected if the trade-weighted dollar held current levels for the remainder of the fourth quarter.  Our regression analysis told us that the dollar’s recent strength could be a drag of 0.50%-0.90% of GDP in the fourth quarter.  It is hard to see how we hit some of the optimistic estimates out there (some as high as 3.5%-4.0% for the 4Q) if trade is causing such a nasty drag.

Source: The Bureau of Economic Analysis and The Federal Reserve

It should also be acknowledged that the effect on net exports from changes in the dollar seems to lag.  As such, we may not see the full negative impact in the fourth quarter.  In the second chart below, we put a three quarter lag on the historical deficit data.  It turns out that there was a much better correlation (R-squared of 42%) with a three quarter lag.  In other words, it seems to take (on average) three quarters for changes in the value of the dollar to affect the ratio of trade deficit to GDP.  As such, we suspect that if the dollar maintains current levels or rises further there will be a sizeable drag on GDP in 2017.

Source: The Bureau of Economic Analysis and The Federal Reserve

So what is our message?  Sudden and dramatic strength in the dollar is not without its risks, and the markets appear to be ignoring these risks (for the most part).  Aside from corporate profits and GDP, the bigger immediate risk is that of capital flight from the emerging markets.  We saw this late last year when the Fed had been forecasting as many as four interest-rate hikes in 2016.  The problem is that there has been a massive amount of dollar-denominated debt issued by entities in emerging markets over the past several years.  If money starts pouring out of those regions and into the US, those entities will find it that much harder to pay back their debts.  In addition, interest rates will rise in those regions, compounding the difficulties in servicing and refinancing that debt.  These pressures, at worst, could lead to a financial crisis.  At best, we can expect extended economic weakness in the emerging market countries.  Secondly, dramatic dollar appreciation can lead to disinflationary effects in the US as importers can lower prices in dollar terms and still maintain profitability.  While this is not as big an issue as it was in years past, the Fed is still trying to spur inflation through monetary policy.

As noted, sustained dollar strength could also have a longer-term effect on US economic growth and corporate profits.  At present, economists and stock analysts don’t appear to fully appreciate the impact that the surge in the dollar could have.  But the risks are clear and present, and this is a major reason why we do not believe the US economy can dramatically “decouple” from the rest of the world.  Like it or not, we’re in a global economy and can’t go it alone.