Last week, the Forum for Women Entrepreneurs & Executives was proud to honor Heidi Roizen as our 2008 Achievement Award Winner. The Award was created in 1995 and Heidi was chosen as this year’s honoree as she exemplifies the spirit of entrepreneurship and represents women who have made a significant, positive and sustainable impact on their profession, their community and world.

There was such great energy in the room and it was almost impossible to get people seated and quiet in order to begin the program which is a great problem to have. Several attendees commented on the quality of people who attended along with the depth of conversations that were being held. A tribute to our transformation as we continue to grow by adding more accomplished women leaders from the Bay area into our community to add their thought leadership and influence into our mix. The San Francisco Chronicle covered the event.

Heidi herself was the crowning moment of the evening. She speaks with such open-ness, truth and with a great sense of humor leaving you feeling inspired and empowered by her story. Suzanne Shaw, Emmy award winning journalist, was our Master of Ceremonies for the evening and she did a “masterful” job of managing the conversation with Heidi.

Some of the highlights of their conversation included the value of building relationships vs “networking” - approaching a contact with genuine interest in who they are vs. what they can offer you is the best way of developing those deep relationships that lead to business and personal opportunities in many future years. Heidi has personal relationships with people such as Bill Gates and Warren Buffet that were developed before “they were famous.”

Bill took the time to participate in a wonderful video celebration of Heidi’s life and career that began the evening (directed by JuneBug Films because of her long time personal relationship with him.

Heidi has also embarked on a new venture ,”Skinny Songs“, based on a passion she has for helping women feel positively motivated to want to lose weight. She is now a lyricist (which her daughter thinks is more cool than being a venture capitalist) and developed her new entrepreneurial venture by knowing her own strengths and reaching out to other professionals who complemented her skill set in order to create something truly unique in the marketplace.

Her fearlessness comes from her ability to create her own definition of success and not worry so much about society’s definition or about what other people think. She mentioned that her first role was CEO of T/Maker and since then her titles have actually diminished in stature. Her definition of success revolves around following her passion and having balance in her life which makes some of those moments of “should I have said that” seem much less important.

Her closing remarks brought a cheer from the audience as we all felt the relevance to ourselves. She mentions that Shirley Maclaine (and feel what you will about Shirley - the message is what’s so great) has a quote on her website that states that in our twenties, we worry about what people are saying about us; in our forties we don’t care what people are saying about us and in our sixties, we realize that no one was saying anything about us.

FWE&E is thrilled to have honored Heidi as this year’s Achievement Award Winner and we look forward to continuing our relationship with her and seeing her continue on her path forward with Skinny Songs and beyond!

This entry was posted by wendybeecham on Tuesday, September 16th, 2008 at 11:14 am and is filed under Enterepreneurship, Leadership, Social Networking. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.