Author: ow_admin

How to build your leadership team with a discerning eye

Posted on February 3, 2010 by - Client News

Erik Cassano
Smart Business Los Angeles 

Jeff Greiner, president and CEO, Advanced Bionics LLC


If you are a management-level employee at Advanced Bionics LLC, it’s probably not because Jeff Greiner made you that way.
Whether he’s hunting for management talent internally or externally, the first thing Greiner acknowledges is that there is only so much he, the president and CEO of the 650-employee cochlear implant development company, can do to mold the next generation of leaders. Ultimately, you need to be a judge of competency and character, not a creator of it.
“What I’ve learned in the last 20 years is that the selection of the people is the most important thing. If I’m selecting people who have 20, 30 and 40 years of experience, I’m selecting people whose values and personalities are already shaped, so there is little I can do other than select the right people,” Greiner says.
Smart Business spoke with Greiner about how you can learn to identify the best leaders in your organization and why you should look to hire leaders, not create them.

Secrets Students Should Know: If You Want To Be Poor, Dropout; If You Want To Be Rich, Study Economics

Posted on February 2, 2010 by - Client News

By Jim Charkins
Executive Director of the California Council on Economic Education
As posted on The Huffington Post
Teenagers,
You should be very angry. I mean very angry. The adults of your world have let you down and let you down in an incredibly important area…education. They didn’t mean to do it but they have done it nonetheless. Correct me if I am wrong, but here are some of the things I think many of you don’t know. And I want you to notice that I am not even addressing the most basic skills of reading, writing, mathematics, science and history. Even more basic than that, you don’t know economics. Many of you don’t even know what the word means. The problem with that is that economics teaches the rules of the game. It’s difficult to play a game and impossible to win if you don’t know the rules. And your adults haven’t taught you the rules of the economic game.
How do I know? Because many of you drop out of high school. Now, let me tell you as a friend that dropping out of high school in any economy, but in this one in particular is the absolutely surest most direct path to poverty that exists. So, if you want to be poor, be sure to drop out of high school. Here’s where the survival skills of economic reasoning come in and why your adults have failed you. Did you know that you make choices and that every choice you make has a cost? For example, because a high school graduate earns approximately twice as much over a lifetime as a dropout, the decision to drop out of high school is likely to cost you approximately $1 million. You are making a $1 million decision and I’m betting that no one has told you that yet.

Credit Card Legislation Means Consumers Under 21 Need a Way to Navigate the 'Plastic Gap'

Posted on February 1, 2010 by - Client News

By Jerry R. Welch
CEO of nFinanSe, Inc.
As posted on The Huffington Post
In the past several decades, the way we pay for things has made plastic, not cash, king. The rise of plastic began with credit cards which for years have attracted consumers despite high interest rates and constantly changing fine print. The new Credit Card Accountability, Responsibility and Disclosure Act, which takes full effect on February 22, promises to give consumers much-needed relief by keeping more of the hard-earned money in the pockets of the people who earned it.
This sweeping legislation cracks down on rate increases, eliminates certain tricky practices, improves transparency and protects arguably the most vulnerable among us – young consumers. Anxious to make their way in the world and not always aware of the long-term financial consequences of their actions, anyone under the age of 21 will be much more protected from the dangers of credit cards. However, there are consequences they may not like.

Ernst & Young Counts More IPO Filings as Sign of Increasing Activity

Posted on February 1, 2010 by - Client News

Bruce V. Bigelow
Xconomy
A study released today by Ernst & Young shows that 53 companies submitted the necessary paperwork during the fourth quarter of 2009 to hold initial public offerings—the highest number of new registrants in a quarter since 2007.
At of the end of December, Ernst & Young counted 54 companies in the U.S. that were ready to go public—and are seeking to raise a total $10.3 billion. There have been quarters with many more IPO filings over the past two years. And there have been quarters in which companies sought to raise more capital.
But the sharp increase in the number of companies seeking to go public was viewed as a resurgence in IPO activity by Jackie Kelley, Ernst & Young’s Americas IPO leader, based in Irvine, CA. “This is probably one of our most optimistic quarters in the past two years,” Kelley says. “The more that register, and the more that are in the pipeline means that more deals are likely to get done.”
Click here to read the full article.

Language Line Services announces introduction of on-site interpretation service in California

Posted on January 28, 2010 by - Client News

Leader in over-the-phone medical interpretation raises the standard of face-to-face interpreting with new service, brings consistent quality in language access to healthcare providers and new jobs to California
Language Line Services, the leading provider of interpretation services, announced today the introduction of Language Line® Face-to-Face Interpretation Service in 10 major markets across southern and northern California, including Los Angeles, San Diego, San Francisco and San Jose.
Language Line® Face-to-Face Interpretation Service will initially be available in nine of the most requested languages in California:  Armenian, Cantonese, Farsi, Japanese, Korean, Mandarin, Russian, Spanish and Vietnamese.
The on-site interpretation service offers healthcare providers a new option for improving communications with their multilingual patients and their families, and complements the company’s broad suite of language access tools ranging from over-the-phone and video interpretation, to language tracking, interpreter training/certification and document translation.

Not All Interpretation Services Are Created Equal

Posted on January 27, 2010 by - Client News

By Louis Provenzano
President of Language Line Services
As posted on The Huffington Post

Louis Provenzano


As a result of the devastating earthquake that recently hit Haiti, roughly 40,000 Haitian immigrants will soon arrive in the United States, mainly for medical treatment. However, they’ll be going into areas where their native language, Haitian Creole, will act as a barrier to receiving the services they need. Situations like these truly drive home the importance of having properly trained and certified interpreters in the healthcare, legal, education and other sectors. Now is the time to ensure that we can take care of a very vulnerable population.
When you go to a hospital, for instance, you hope to receive the best care and services available. It’s not just a personal expectation, either – in America, equal protection under the law for services and treatment is just that, the law. One of the barriers to providing quality care is that a growing number of institutions are hiring language service companies that use independent contractors for interpretation rather than professional interpreting services that have full-time employees.
Language interpreters are the only link between the patient and a doctor during many medical emergencies. A faulty interpretation can mean life or death. Service providers and hospitals that offer certified medical interpreters must be able to schedule, train and supervise the work of the interpreter, something that can’t be done by companies that only use contract workers. Just imagine the chaos of not having supervised, trained and scheduled interpreters in a crisis situation like in Haiti. The need for certified medical interpreters is just as necessary every day in the chaotic multi-cultural, multi-lingual world of urban hospital emergency rooms, where any mistake in understanding and communication can have tragic consequences.
The face and language of America are changing. The U.S. Census Bureau projects that by 2050, Hispanics will make up roughly 24 percent of the total U.S. population. In a major city such as New York City, for example, roughly 48 percent of residents now speak a language other than English at home. A large portion of that is the Spanish-speaking community.
Interpretation services should not be like a dating service, simply linking two people with no responsibility for the outcome. Providing quality interpretation services involves understanding the healthcare marketplace, building relationships with the employees (the interpreters) and most importantly, being able to properly train, supervise and schedule them.
The patient risk issue is grave. Only by using medical interpreters who are properly certified, trained and can be scheduled to respond to crisis situations like the earthquake in Haiti can we ensure the same standard of care as English speakers.
It’s time for non-English speakers to speak up in their language and demand better standards for medical interpreters and the institutions that hire them so that their constitutional rights, and more importantly, their lives and those of their loved ones, are not jeopardized.

Call for nominations: Entrepreneur Of The Year Awards in LA

Posted on January 26, 2010 by - Client News

Ernst & Young LLP seeks Greater Los Angeles area’s exceptional entrepreneurs
— Nominations open for the Ernst & Young Entrepreneur Of The Year® 2010 Award —

Los Angeles, CA, 26 JANUARY 2010 – Ernst & Young LLP today announced the open nomination period for the Ernst & Young Entrepreneur Of The Year® 2010 Awards in the Greater Los Angeles area.  The deadline for applications is March 19, 2010, with the awards ceremony scheduled for June 22, 2010 at The Beverly Hilton.
The Ernst & Young Entrepreneur Of The Year® Awards program, now in its 24th year, is recognized as the most prestigious business award program in the country.  Award winners are selected by a panel of independent judges, including local business owners – many of whom have won the award in the past – as well as area leaders from civic organizations and academic institutions.  
“Ernst & Young has recognized leading entrepreneurs for their contributions to society for nearly a quarter of a century,” said Larry Haynes, Americas Director of the Ernst & Young Entrepreneur Of The Year® program.  “These entrepreneurs create jobs, bolster the economy, drive innovation and revitalize their communities.  We are proud to support them.”

Many law firms staying busy despite recession

Posted on January 14, 2010 by - Client News

The legal industry in Los Angeles appears to be faring better than most which is what we’re seeing among our law firm clients.  Some practice areas like bankruptcy and distressed asset work are booming and litigation is holding strong.  The regulatory changes coming out of Washington further ensure legal employment throughout California.  (see article below from the Jan. 11 Daily Journal in Los Angeles)
– OWC Staff

 
Job Losses Continue In Legal Sector

By Joanna Lin
Daily Journal (Los Angeles)
The legal sector shed 2,100 jobs in December, bringing the total number of jobs lost in the industry in the two years since the start of the recession to 55,900, according to preliminary data released Friday by the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
The nationwide unemployment rate remained at 10 percent in December, with a total of more than 7.2 million jobs lost since the recession began in December 2007.
On average, the legal services industry has cut 2,329 jobs a month during the recession. The pace of job losses has slowed since October, when the number of legal sector jobs losses reached a recession high of 6,100.
In Los Angeles County, people might find the contraction in legal sector employment has been less severe than perceived, said Jack Kyser, founding economist at the Kyser Center for Economic Research at the Los Angeles County Economic Development Corporation.
Using state employment data, Kyser estimates there were 48,500 jobs in the Los Angeles County legal services industry in 2009, compared to 49,400 in 2007. Though many law firms laid off in great numbers, there were others that moved into the area and grew, he said.
“You’re probably going to have more work than people imagine,” he said. “People look at the national numbers and then they have a hard time putting it in the context of a local area.”
Though economic recovery may be in sight, it will come slowly, Kyser said.
The local legal sector can anticipate more activity in mergers and acquisitions, workouts and restructuring for commercial real estate, and bankruptcy, Kyser said. He added that there are indications of growth in some Los Angeles industries, including international trade, film, tourism and construction.
But employment numbers won’t bounce back as quickly as the overall economy, Kyser said. The number of “discouraged workers” – those who have stopped looking for work because they don’t believe they’ll find it – soared by 287,000 to 929,000 last year.
What this means, Kyser said, is that “when the economy really starts to add jobs year over year, you’re going to have a lot of people rush back into the labor force. The unemployment rate will probably remain at a high level for a year.”

Is the FDA getting ready to crack down on medical device clinical trials?

Posted on January 14, 2010 by - Client News

Michael Causey, Editor & Publisher
eDataIntegrityReport.com
Well, we told you 2010 was going to be a big year for the FDA.
While most of us were enjoying holiday treats or making new year’s resolutions, a leading FDA official said the agency was developing new guidelines designed to establish stricter standards for the data received from tests with human subjects used by medical device makers when they seek approval for a new or altered device.
Dr. Jeffrey Shuren, the acting director of the Center for Devices and Radiological Health, told the New York Times recently that the FDA most likely will soon urge device makers to take steps like using more sharply defined targets to measure the success of clinical trials. The agency may also urge producers to more closely follow patients enrolled in such trials to determine whether the targets are met, Shuren told The Times.
That sound you hear is the new drumbeat saying that the FDA hasn’t been tough enough on medical devices in the past, at least according to JAMA and an article published in the American Journal of Therapeutics which suggest the agency has to get stricter to better protect the public.
Click here to read the full article

What's hot at CES, and why it matters

Posted on January 6, 2010 by - Client News

By Ben Parr
CNN
We’re about to see a new wave of technological innovation kick-start the new year. Right now, more than 100,000 tech giants and gadget geeks are in one place: Las Vegas, Nevada.
They are attending CES — the Consumer Electronics Show — where countless new gadgets, devices, and technologies will be revealed to the public for the first time.
This show is a major trend-setter, not only for the gadgets people will buy in 2010, but for the direction of many businesses and industries worldwide. Technology released at CES has the potential to shift large markets such as entertainment and mobile in new directions, which is why you should be paying attention to emerging trends at this year’s show.
Click here to read more on these emerging trends.