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!

I recently had the pleasure of spending time with Mike Cassidy, Business Columnist of the San Jose Mercury News where we talked about a myriad of issues including the significance of Hillary’s recent campaign and the lack of women CEO’s in Silicon Valley.

On Monday, Mike also wrote a follow-up post, reflecting the truly ongoing nature of this conversation.

On Saturday, we watched Hillary Clinton suspend her historic campaign. Regardless of your political affiliation or your perspective on race and gender issues in America, there is no denying that this event underscored what an incredible achievement Hillary’s campaign has been for women in America, and that has hopefully smoothed the course somewhat - in one way or another - for more women who deal with a range of barriers to professional success.

Hillary mentioned the glass ceiling in her speech stating: “Although we weren’t able to shatter that highest, hardest glass ceiling this time, thanks to you, it’s got about 18 million cracks in it. And the light is shining through like never before, filling us all with the hope and the sure knowledge that the path will be a little easier next time. That has always been the history of progress in America.”

But, turning to business, the statistics are still very unsettling and there is little progress being seen when it comes to shattering that glass ceiling at the most senior levels. Mike Cassidy alluded to this in his recent article about the lack of Women CEO’s in Tech.

David G.Thomson, a former McKinsey & Co. consultant and author of Blueprint to a Billion: 7 Essentials to Achieve Exponential Growth, and upcoming speaker at FWE&E has recently written an article in USA Today where he reports that only 43 women have climbed the traditional ladder to become CEOs of Fortune 1000 companies in the last 35 years, and fresh research from executive women’s organization Catalyst suggests that the pipeline is not exactly filling up with future candidates.

But if 43 seems like a low number, consider how many companies were founded by women, then grew into the Fortune 1000. The total is three. And all were co-founded by men. At USA Today’s request, Thomson re-examined his data and re-interviewed women entrepreneurs to make sure that the early signs of a change weren’t around the corner. He learned two things: There are no signs of change and, “This is a very emotionally charged topic,” he says.

Women who have built big companies don’t know why they remain so rare, but explanations fall largely into two camps: discrimination and nature. They say men have easier access to money from bankers and venture capitalists, the lifeblood of growth. Women also are often more devoted to family, and even those who out-earn their husbands often remain responsible for children and households.

Turning back to Silicon Valley, moving women in to leadership positions in tech lacks the momentum that other industries experience. What does the future hold for women leaders in tech and what are the challenges women face in moving higher up the leadership ladder? Mary O’Hara Devereaux, CEO of Global Foresight and an internationally recognized business forecaster and strategist will be discussing this at an event on June 17th. She has some provocative insight into what women could be doing differently to start to change this picture but also how corporations need to be more conscious of the impact on their future results in not creating intention to change the statistics.

So, why are there not more women in senior management and CEO ranks? What is the critical value to society of having women in CEO and Board positions? Why is female leadership still such an emotionally charged issue? And finally, did Hillary’s campaign help raise awareness or continue to polarize the conscious or unconscious biases and barriers that exist?