Posted by Elena del Valle on May 11, 2011
Scene from German series No Mataras
Photo: Vme
In addition to targeting cooking aficionados and young children (see Starting today Vme, National Wildlife Federation to air translated program for preschool kids and National Spanish language TV network offers extensive cooking programming) Vme programming executives want to reach adults 18 to 49 years of age. With that goal in mind the Spanish language network is launching No Matarás, a German produced series making its United States debut on Vme this month. The show was translated into Spanish.
No Matarás (Spanish for You Will Not Kill) features Father Simon Castell (Francis Fulton-Smith), a special commissioner of the Holy See and the Vatican’s personal private eye, and Marie Blank (Christine Döring), his police partner, as a crime fighting duo. Vme plans to broadcast 15 episodes of the hour long program produced by UFA International Film and TV Production GmbH and shot in Rome and Caprarola.
In the program, Father Castell is cast as handsome, outgoing, and tenacious with an atypical personality to match the job the Vatican has assigned him. He is aided in his task by a good sense of humor, a fanatical love of soccer and the ability to crack safes. His partner is a police inspector described as a clever and tough single mom. The two team up to catch crooks and build a sometimes difficult relationship that relies on his knowledge of the church and her knowledge of the streets. The episodes will air at 10 p.m. ET Wednesday nights beginning May 11, 2011.
Vme (pronounced veh-meh) is a national Spanish-language television network presented by public television stations. The 24-hour Spanish network available in 10 million homes, offers drama, music, sports, news, current affairs, Latin cinema, food, lifestyle, nature and educational preschool content.
Posted by Elena del Valle on May 9, 2011
Debra L. Ness, president, National Partnership for Women and Families
Photos: National Partnership for Women and Families, American Association of University Women
On average, full-time working women in the United States are paid $10,622 less than their male counterparts, according to recent research conducted by the National Partnership for Women and Families, in conjunction with the American Association of University Women (AAUW), in all 50 states and the District of Columbia.
In California, for example, where 1,593,474 households are headed by women, there is a wage gap of $8,370 between full-time working men and women. In New York, 1,050,106 households are headed by women and there is a wage gap of $8,590; in Florida 897,308 households are headed by women and the wage gap is $7,013 between full-time working men and women.
The researchers in this case estimate that were the gap to close it would have a dramatic impact on the lives of many families. They point out that in Alaska, but for the gap women could buy 1.7 years’ worth of food; working women in Connecticut could afford 15 more months of rent; their counterparts in Michigan could make 10 more months of mortgage and utility payments; and working California women could buy 2,100 more gallons of gas.
“This new data illustrate the very real harm unequal wages are doing to America’s working families,” said Debra L. Ness, president, National Partnership for Women and Families. “It is long past time to close the gender-based wage gap. With women playing an increasingly important role as family breadwinners, there is no time to waste.”
Although women head nearly 14.5 million households nationwide and the majority of working mothers in the United States are the source of at least a quarter of their families’ earnings, women working full-time are only paid an average of 77 cents for every dollar paid to full-time working men, according to the Partnership. Since the 1963 Equal Pay Act passed the wage gap has narrowed half a cent per year, the research points out; and if it continues the same way, the working women of tomorrow will earn the same as the men by 2058.
Linda Hallman, executive director, American Association of University Women
“This research proves that the gender pay gap is not simply a numbers issue or a women’s issue,” said Linda Hallman, executive director, the American Association of University Women. “It’s a bread and butter issue. It’s an everyday issue for people who are trying to support their families and provide for their futures. No more lip service, it’s time to act.”
It is harder still for African-American and Latino women. Nationally, in 2009, African-American women working full-time, year-round were paid only 61 cents for every dollar paid to men and Latinas only 52 cents, for every dollar paid to white, non-Hispanic men.
Established in 1971, the National Partnership for Women and Families is dedicated to creating “a society that is free, fair and just. Where nobody has to experience discrimination, all workplaces are family-friendly, and no family is without quality, affordable health care and real economic security.” The mission of the American Association of University Women, a nationwide network of more than 100,000 members and donors, is to advance “equity for women and girls through advocacy, education, philanthropy, and research.”
Posted by Elena del Valle on May 6, 2011
The Worrier’s Guide to Overcoming Procrastination book cover
Photos: New Harbinger Publications
Putting things off until mañana or the next day is common practice. It has become widespread in people’s personal and professional lives. Many staff and executives today may be living in what my college professors called management by crisis (as opposed to management by objectives). Procrastination often results in last minute rushing, stress and in many cases mediocre or poor presentations, reports and results. Why do we procrastinate? And, for those who want to modify their behavior is it possible to stop procrastinating?
Pamela Wiegartz, M.D., co-author, The Worrier’s Guide to Overcoming Procrastination
Kevin Gyoerkoe, Psy.D., a clinical psychologist, and Pamela Wiegarts, M.D., a psychiatrist, believe shifting the way we think and modifying the rules we live by can have a dramatic effect in reducing the postponing of actions. In The Worrier’s Guide to Overcoming Procrastination Breaking Free from the Anxiety that Holds You Back (New Harbinger, $19.95), a 159-page softcover book published in 2010, they address the topic.
The first step toward change, according to them, is to be aware of the rules we follow sometimes without even realizing it. For example, people often believe they should avoid difficult situations, they say, when in fact they should deal with the anxiety a situation provokes by facing it instead of avoiding it. Another reason people wait, they believe, is because they are seeking perfection.
Instead, the coauthors suggest readers accept less than perfect results that allow them to move forward rather than remaining stagnant awaiting perfect results that may never come. Fear of failure is another reason to procrastinate the coauthors cite in their book. They point out that failure is part of life and it should not stop us from taking action. Another flawed perspective, according to them, is to think that if something is boring or less than pleasant we shouldn’t have to do it; they counter that there are times we have to do things that are not fun and the sooner we do them the sooner we can go back to doing fun things.
Their book is divided into 13 chapters and four main parts, Learn About Your Anxiety and Procrastination, Change Your Mind About Anxiety and Procrastination, Get Moving on Your Goals, and Maintain Positive Change. Each chapter includes exercises, follow up suggestions and a summary at the end.
Wiegartz, coauthor of 10 Simple Solutions to Worry and The Pregnancy and Postpartum Anxiety Workbook, is director of CBT services and training in the Department of Psychiatry at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston and is on the faculty at Harvard Medical School.
Kevin Gyoerkoe, Psy.D, co-author, The Worrier’s Guide to Overcoming Procrastination
In addition to this book, Gyoerkoe is coauthor of 10 Simple Solutions to Worry and The Pregnancy and Postpartum Anxiety Workbook. He is codirector of the Anxiety and Agoraphobia Treatment Center, a group practice in Chicago and Northbrook, Illinois. He teaches courses on cognitive behavioral therapy at the Chicago School of Professional Psychology, has been certified by the Academy of Cognitive Therapy, and serves on the Scientific Advisory Board of OCD in Chicago.
Click here to buy The Worrier’s Guide to Overcoming Procrastination
Comments:
Filed Under: Books
Posted by Elena del Valle on May 4, 2011
Gerardo Piña-Rosales, president, ANLE
Photo: North American Academy of the Spanish Language (ANLE)
Only 9 percent of Latinos in the United States are monolingual Spanish speakers and 22 percent are monolingual English speakers, according to United States Census estimates. The rest of the population, about 70 percent, speak both languages with varying degrees of proficiency.
The North American Academy of the Spanish Language (ANLE) believes there are as many as 45 million Spanish speakers in the United States. Academy leaders want Spanish speakers in the United States to maintain and improve their Spanish language skills. To that end the organization began placing segments on Univision Channel 41 and on stations in Texas and California in 2010. Now the organization has teamed up with five impreMedia print publications to continue its outreach efforts.
“I am delighted to know that our language tips are appearing little by little in the most important Hispanic newspapers in the country,” said Gerardo Piña-Rosales, president, ANLE. “One of our basic missions is to disseminate Spanish, and with the collaboration of the media, I am sure that they, too, will benefit from our advice. Together we will assure that Hispanics increasingly use an international Spanish that, although born in Castilla, has become firmly rooted in the Americas.”
Academy volunteers write the columns, one per day, and provide slightly different materials for the broadcast media outlets. The Academy receives no outside funding for the work nor does it remunerate its volunteers financially, according to a representative of the organization who replied to questions by email.
“Just when the Hispanic population surpasses 50 million, it is of vital importance to establish a bridge between the Academy and the press to better serve the language and our cultures,” said Jorge Ignacio Covarrubias, secretary of the board of ANLE and chair of the information committee.
Beginning last month, five impreMedia Spanish language newspapers will carry advice columns on the Spanish language prepared by the North American Academy of the Spanish Language. The papers publishing the language tips are El Diario-La Prensa in New York, La Opinion in Los Angeles, La Prensa in Orlando, La Raza in Chicago and Rumbo in Houston.
“One of the basic functions of a news organization is to educate our communities,” said Pedro Rojas, executive editor, La Opinion. “I am sure that these columns will be the perfect tool to help us improve our command of Spanish. What better way than with the guidance and collaboration of the ANLE.”
According to promotional materials impreMedia owns nine print publications and eleven on-line news services via mobile phones. Founded in 1973, the Academia Norteamericana de la Lengua Española is the youngest of 22 national academies that make up the Asociación de Academias de la Lengua Española, an international association of Spanish language academies. Last year ANLE published a book (see New York organization provides Spanish language tips, advice for North Americans) with Spanish language tips for Spanish speakers in the United States.
Comments:
Filed Under: Media
Posted by Elena del Valle on May 3, 2011
Information provided by Event Partner
2011 Latin Alternative Music Conference
July 6-9, 2011 New York City
The LAMC is the only major conference devoted to bilingual and bicultural cutting edge music. The four-day event takes place July 6-9th in New York City and includes panels, concert showcases, art exhibits, parties and films and draws a tastemaker crowd of leading artists, label executives, journalists, managers and fans. LAMC is celebrating its 12th year. The conference is based at the Roosevelt Hotel in midtown Manhattan, New York City, with concerts throughout the New York City boroughs including Central Park SummerStage, Celebrate Brooklyn @ Prospect Park, Bowery Ballroom and Mercury Lounge.
Conference registrations are discounted at $99 until May 15th at www.latinalternative.com; Registrations will be the standard $299 at walk up.
This year’s highly-relevant panel topics include many of the industry’s prominent decision makers.
Panel topics are as follows:
Soy tu brand: Latin Music and the Art of
Sponsorship, Branding & Licensing
@Digital: Engaging Your Audience & Monetizing Music
99 Problems: And Putting Together A Tour Shouldn’t Be One
This is radio clash: Bridging the Terrestrial and Digital Divide
Patrons of the arts: Who Are Today’s Music Investors?
Please take a moment to visit our website at www.latinalternative.com and also check out the video highlights: http://latinalternative.com/video/highlights/. This should give you a good idea as to what the conference is all about.
Posted by Elena del Valle on May 2, 2011
Birute Regine, Ed.D., author, Iron Butterflies
Photo: Annie Holt
A podcast interview with Birute Regine, Ed.D, author, Iron Butterflies: Women Transforming Themselves and the World is available in the Podcast Section of Hispanic Marketing & Public Relations, HispanicMPR.com. During the podcast, she discusses success for women today and her book with Elena del Valle, host of the HispanicMPR.com podcast.
After earning her doctorate degree in human development at Harvard University Birute spent 25 years as a clinical psychologist in private practice. She now works as an executive life coach, facilitator, speaker and author. Prior to Iron Butterflies she co-authored The Soul at Work: Embracing Complexity Science for Business Success with her husband, Roger Lewin, a science writer.
In Iron Butterflies Birute set out to place femininity and masculinity in context and explore what it means to be a successful woman today. Birute has been a key note speaker for organizations such as Inter-American Development Bank and the United Way.
To listen to the interview, scroll down until you see “Podcast” on the right hand side, then select “HMPR Birute Regine, Ed.D.” click on the play button below or download the MP3 file to your iPod or MP3 player to listen on the go, in your car or at home. To download it, click on the arrow of the recording you wish to copy and save it to disk. The podcast will remain listed in the May 2011 section of the podcast archive.
Posted by Elena del Valle on April 29, 2011
The New Three-Legged Stool book cover
Photos: News and Experts
Rick Rodgers, a certified financial planner and certified retirement counselor, believes the federal and state government is after your money. Well maybe not your money exactly but your retirement money as a part of a larger whole. He is optimistic that some simple adjustments will make it possible for tax payers to pay less in taxes in preparation for their retirement. In his 2009 book, The New Three-Legged Stool A Tax Efficient Approach to Retirement Planning (Marketplace Books, $24.95) he explains his reasoning.
“The IRS sees a huge amount of collective dollars, $17 trillion, to be exact, stashed away in IRAs and retirement savings,” said Rodgers. “This has caused the IRS to become very aggressive in taxing those assets. While you might not think the IRS is after your retirement money, they actually have a big red bull’s-eye painted on your retirement plan. As of September 2010, our country’s national debt totaled more than $13.5 trillion (and the number continues to rise by $2 million every minute!). That amounts to $121,600 of debt for each taxpayer in the United States. Yet this is a mere drop in the proverbial bucket compared to what the government will owe in benefits to Social Security and Medicare recipients far into the future, as well as in pensions to military and civilian government workers.”
Author Rick Rodgers
The 202-page hard cover book is divided into an introduction and six chapters: Leg One: Tax-Deferred Savings Strategies; Leg Two: After-Tax Savings Strategies; Leg Three: Tax-Free Savings Strategies; Distributions: Strike an Ideal Balance Among All of Your Accounts; Understanding Social Security; and Keep the IRS Out of Your Estate.
The three legs of the stool are tax deferred strategies to save which addresses IRA accounts, 401 (k) and other tax deferred retirement vehicles; strategies to save after taxes which addresses asset allocation, risk reducing options and structuring investments in a tax efficient manner; and tax free strategies like the Roth IRA and Roth 401 (k) and ways to convert accounts into them.
Rodgers is an author, keynote speaker, wealth manager and president of Rodgers and Associates in Lancaster, Pennsylvania. His articles on retirement planning have appeared in Wealth Manager magazine, CPA Magazine and Physician’s Money Digest. He also writes a column for Lancaster County Magazine.
Click to buy The New Three-Legged Stool
Comments:
Filed Under: Books
Posted by Elena del Valle on April 27, 2011
By Catherine Lovell
Consumer behavior analyst
Varga Media Solutions
Catherine Lovell, consumer behavior analyst, Varga Media Solutions
Photo: Varga Media Solutions
The growth of the Hispanic market is certainly not a secret. In fact, this market is expected to account for nearly 11% of the nation’s total buying power by 2015 according to the Selig Center for Economic Growth. Many marketers have been anxiously awaiting the 2010 census results to assist in devising marketing plans that accommodate the emerging Hispanic market. What most of these marketers don’t realize is the data compiled by the census has never been more inadequate in pinpointing today’s Hispanic shopper.
In 2010 the U.S. Census Bureau sent out surveys by mail to households in order to estimate their base counts for the next decade. These counts rely upon each household accurately filling out a data questionnaire and then mailing it back to be compiled and modeled over the next ten years. Once the results are published, there are several data compilers who specialize in updating census data for small area geographies in between the 10 year census periods. These companies blend the census data with other inputs, using it to create estimates of consumer demand and segmentation, otherwise known as “modeled data”.
Click to read the entire article Don’t Rely on Census Bureau Survey Results to Drive Your Hispanic Targeting
Posted by Elena del Valle on April 25, 2011
Photo: Brookings Institution
Although little information seems available about the attitudes and opinions of the up and coming generations, D.C.’s New Guard: What Does the Next Generation of American Leaders Think?, a 22-page report on the findings of a recent survey among youth with an interest in political careers, indicates this subgroup of the Millennial Generation, a large demographic group by all accounts, has its own characteristics and opinions as might be expected.
In terms of their political affiliations, 38.2 percent self identified as Democrats, 28.8 percent as Independents, and 26.4 percent as Republican. The profile is, according to the survey authors, different than the trends in the prior Generation X who grew up in the Reagan-era and exhibited more conservative attitudes than the Millennials. What the authors found most interesting was the large segment of youth leaders who remained unaffiliated with a political party even though many expressed views that might be associated with the Democratic point of view.
Want to target this group of leaders who may include future mayors, governors, and representatives through a news medium? Don’t try the evening news or late night comedy shows. While their responses to the survey indicate their source of news is traditional new organizations the evening news and late night comedy shows ranked low among them as a source of news. Thirty percent of Republican respondents preferred cable news to stay informed while Democrats and Independents consumed news from online news websites.
Who do they look up to when forming political opinions? Many of the respondents, 61 percent, said their parents were major influences. Political leaders accounted for 19 percent and media 12 percent. The survey authors concluded this aspect of the Millennials was quite different from the Baby Boomer Generation. When the Baby Boomers were young they tended to select a political view that was the opposite of that of their parents’. Celebrities and faith leaders had a relatively low political influence level among young Millennial leaders.
Assuming that the models young people admire today may influence their attitudes tomorrow, the survey authors asked what leaders from history they admired. More than one third (under 36 percent) chose a military leader or civilian leader closely associated with wartime like Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Abraham Lincoln, Dwight Eisenhower and Woodrow Wilson. The survey authors believe that is not surprising given that the United States the respondents have known to date has been at war for a majority of their lives. Fourteen percent admired a founding father such as Thomas Jefferson, James Monroe and Alexander Hamilton while 10 percent chose leaders of social change such as Martin Luther King, Jr. and Nelson Mandela. About one percent chose a religious figure such as Mother Theresa or the Prophet Mohammed as a leadership model for the 21st century.
When asked about a leader today that they admired more than 49 percent said Barack Obama, well past any other leader named. The political affiliations of those who preferred Obama as their “ideal leadership model,” were 62.8 percent Democrats, 28.5 percent Independents and 8.7 percent Republicans. Other listed as models who received between one and five percent included John McCain (with 5.5 percent favoring him as their model leader), Al Gore, Bill Clinton, Colin Powell, Condoleezza Rice, Nelson Mandela and Hillary Clinton.
Although the survey authors did not ask about the ethnicity or cultural background of respondents (or did not share the information in the report), it is safe, based on the degree of diversity among American youth revealed by 2010 Census, to assume some degree of diversity among the respondents. It is unclear from their findings exactly what affiliations and opinions Hispanics, African Americans, Asians and others in this group of leaders may have. Now that this youth demographic group has been identified as worth watching maybe future surveys and research will reveal more about the leadership attitudes of the Millennial Generation and its diverse market segments.
The survey, published on the Brookings Institution website in February 2011, was conducted among 1,057 young American leaders who were attendees at the National Student Leadership Conference, as well as the Americans for Informed Democracy young leaders’ courses, and DC internship programs by P.W. Singer, Heather Messera, and Brendan Orino. The respondents were 16 plus years old on average, 45 percent women and 55 percent men. The largest geographic representation was 34.6 percent from the Mid-Atlantic region followed by 15 percent from the South, 14 percent from the Pacific, 13 percent from the Midwest, 12.1 percent from New England, 8.7 percent from the Southwest, and 2.6 percent from the West. The northeast was overrepresented while the rest of the country was underrepresented according to the survey authors.
