Fall 2016

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Inside the Fall 2016 Issue:

How I Became a CEO
While public perception of CEOs is that they have “cushy” jobs and get paid handsomely for telling everyone else what to do, Alliance members know the truth. The CEO accepts the responsibility for an organization’s success or failure, and is the one most likely to lie awake at night worrying about the challenges and threats that lie ahead. And between customers, employees, investors and board members, nobody has more people to answer to than a CEO. Alliance members, Kirsten Bay, Rachel Haurwitz, Nadim Maluf, Sameer Padhye, Chris Rivielle and Timothy Robertson talk about the expectations and challenges that came with sitting in the top chair.

Alliance Community Activities
The Alliance partnered with the Directors’ Academy to accelerate the development and placement of the next generation of board members to ensure future boards include greater diversity, and several Alliance members were selected for the NextGen Director Program. In July, Alliance member Christine Heckart of Brocade Communications Systems hosted an interactive Alliance Roundtable on How to Compete with Big Companies. Recent Alliance Community Activities also included Keynote discussions with Eric Kaufmann, President & Founder of Sagatica, who shared practical ideas and tools to deepen a leader’s ability to be efficient, effective and deliberate, and Alliance Director, Russ Harrison, who shared his leadership lessons learned from both Fortune 100 and entrepreneurial organizations such as American Airlines, McKesson, Bank of America and many others. At our Alliance Regional Meeting in May, we were proud to roll out a new presentation series called “Alliance Voices, which showcased interesting, influential and valuable topics from Alliance members Ebbe Altberg, Lisa Dyson, James Kilpatrick, Peter Koshland, Cat Lincoln and Chris Mittelstaedt.

Nuggets From Behind Closed Doors
There are hundreds of years of experience inside every private Alliance meeting. While protecting the confidentiality of the member who challenged their private Alliance Group to “sit in their seat,” we’ve captured just a few of the insightful comments from a handful of members. Read how Glenda Anderson of Farsight Genome Systems and Sheeroy Desai of Gild would address the challenges faced by two of their fellow Alliance members.

New Members
Check out our newest Alliance members, who run a wide range of companies in industries such as Immunology, Construction, Wine, Healthcare, Specialty Pharmaceuticals, Life Sciences Services, Marketing Communications and Semiconductor Equipment & Services.

Upcoming Events
We've got some great events coming up, including Alliance Keynotes, John Chambers, Executive Chairman of Cisco, Curt Carlson, former CEO of SRI International, and Bill Coleman, CEO of Veritas.  In addition, our Alliance Roundtables will bring together leaders of Software, Consumer, Life Science and Professional Service companies. And, our Alliance Fall Dinner for all members and their guests, is on Thursday, September 22nd.

Also inside: Learn how you can “Follow” the Alliance on LinkedIn and keep up-to-date with member news, upcoming Alliance events and keynote speakers, and much more. Download it now!