Media Contact: Micki Leventhal 312-344-7383
CHICAGO, IL (March 28, 2008) – Pamela Kendall-Rijos, a Vice-President at Goldman Sachs & Co., has been named to the Columbia College Chicago Board of Trustees, announced college President Warrick L. Carter, Ph.D.
During her twenty-year professional career, Kendall-Rijos has been an investment advisor to many of the Forbes 400 families. At Goldman Sachs, she and her team are distinguished as one of the largest wealth management teams worldwide with more than $9 billion of assets under management. Kendall-Rijos was recently recognized for her success and was named a member of the Goldman Sachs leadership Council for Private Wealth Management. She holds a Masters of Business Administration from Southern Methodist University as well as a Bachelor of Business Administration with a major in Accounting from Southern Methodist University. Professionally, Kendall-Rijos has earned the designation of Chartered Financial Analyst with the Association of Investment Management and Research. She is an active member of the Chicago Society of Investment Analysts.
Kendall-Rijos has served as a Board Member for the 100 Club of Chicago, a non-profit organization that responds immediately with financial support to families of fallen police officers, paramedics and firefighters located in Cook County, Illinois. Additionally, through Goldman Sachs Community Team Works efforts, she has championed many local volunteer projects for variety of public charities including: Habitat for Humanity, Food Bank, YMCA, as well as numerous volunteer teaching efforts throughout underserved urban campuses.
Kendall-Rijos has a growing personal interest in music and theatre and is an avid patron. She is a member of the Ravinia Festival and the Van Wezel Performing Art Center in Highland Park, IL and Sarasota, FL, respectively.
She resides with her husband, John, her daughter and step-sons in Highland Park, Illinois.
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For Immediate Release
March 24, 2008
Media contact: Priscilla L. Hunter, 312.344.7805 or phunter@colum.edu
Trendmaster Robyn Waters to Speak to Chicago’s Fashion Design Students
This is not a public event. Media welcome to attend.
Robyn is available for interviews.
The Arts, Entertainment and Media Management (AEMM) department at Columbia College Chicago will host a lecture and book signing with trendmaster Robyn Waters, the former vice president of trend, design and products for Target Corporation, on Tuesday, April 15 at Film Row Cinema, 1104 S. Wabash Ave., 8th floor from 10 to11 a.m. Afterwards Waters will sign copies of her books, “The Hummer and The Mini: Navigating the contradictions of the New Trend Landscape (2006)” and “The Trendmaster’s Guide: Get a Jump on What Your Customer Wants Next (2005)” from 11 to 11:30 a.m.
Waters’ lecture will focus on marketing and entrepreneurship, incorporating excerpts from “The Hummer and the Mini.” In “The Hummer and the Mini,” Waters explores the new trend landscape and urges companies to stop looking for the one right answer in their industry and, instead, embrace the paradoxes.
In addition to Columbia student and faculty, Dana Connell, part-time fashion retail management faculty member and the event coordinator invited fashion design students and faculty from other area college’s and universities: College of DuPage, Dominican University, Harpers College, International Academy of Design and Technology, The Illinois Institute of Art-Chicago and The School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Students much present a valid student I.D.
“’The Hummer and the Mini’” is required reading for our Clothing & Society class,” said Dianne Erpenbach, coordinator of Columbia’s fashion retail management program. “Robyn has an uncanny ability to motivate her audiences into action as a speaker and author. Her gift to identify, track and translate trends into sales and profits is the type of insight we would like our students to incorporate into their thought process and creativity.”
Waters began her career in the late 1970s when a trend was defined as something that everyone wanted at the same time. She has served as juror for numerous national design competitions, including the BusinessWeek IDEA Design Awards, the National Design Awards for the Cooper-Hewitt Museum and the international Housewares Association.
She is the author of “The Trendmaster’s Guide: Get a Jump on What Your Customer Wants Next” and “The Hummer and the Mini: Navigating the Contradictions of the New Trend Landscape.” Waters speaking engagements for clients such as P&G, Nestle’ USA, Hewlett-Packard, Starbucks, General Mills, GlaxoSmithKline, United Nations UNIFEM and Microsoft have helped these corporations revolutionize sales. She encourages her clients to tap into the hearts and minds of their customers by focusing less on ‘what’s next’ and more on ‘what’s important.’ It is advice she followed as she transitioned from her successful retail career with Target Corporation, as vice president of trend, design and product development, to a consultant, author and speaker.
Columbia College Chicago, an urban institution committed to open access, opportunity and excellence in higher education, provides innovative degree programs in the visual, performing, media and communication arts to more than 12,000 students in more than 120 undergraduate and graduate programs, including film & video, art & design, arts management, television, radio, music, interactive multimedia – all within a liberal arts context. Founded in 1890 as a communications school, Columbia College Chicago was revisioned in 1963 as a liberal arts college with a “hands-on minds-on” approach to arts and media education and a progressive social agenda. Under the modern leadership of President Warrick L. Carter, Ph.D., Columbia is aggressively pursuing this mission. Columbia is accredited by the Higher Learning Commission of the North Central Association of Colleges and Schools. The college is accredited as a teacher training institution by the Illinois State Board of Education. For further information visit www.colum.edu. 5.07
For Immediate Release:
March 24, 2008
Media contact: Priscilla Hunter, 312.344.7805 or phunter@colum.edu
CHICAGO—Columbia College Chicago has launched a national video competition on YouTube for a new American Sign Language (ASL) symbol to represent the English language word “poverty.” The competition, Signs of Our Ideas, was conceived out of discussions by students and faculty in Columbia’s ASL English Interpretation department that centered around the topic of poverty and privilege, the theme of the college’s civic engagement initiative, Critical Encounters.
ASL, a unique, independent and fully developed language, has signs for “rich,” “poor,” “access,” and “permission” – but no sign to represent the complex meaning of the English language word “poverty.”
According to Peter Cook, Columbia College ASL faculty member and an internationally renowned Deaf performing artist who incorporates ASL, “The most common idea of poverty has to do with the lack of money. In the deaf community, the sign poor is often used as a common translation for the English word poverty. For the deaf community this is problematic because the concept of poverty in English can apply to imbalances of resources other than money and the sign for ‘poor’ does not encompass these ideas.”
The Signs of Our Ideas contest started on March 11th and ends on May 1st. The deadline for uploading videos to YouTube is April 23rd. The contest is open to all—hearing and deaf. To enter, create a sign(s) that you believe encompass the concept of poverty. Videotape yourself demonstrating your sign and go to http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H0RtsxEIqYE and upload your video. Videos should be no longer than 15 seconds.
Submissions will be reviewed and curated by students and faculty in Columbia’s ASL – English Interpretation degree program and then posted on YouTube. Once submissions have been posted, viewers will be able to vote for their favorite entries. The five videos with the most viewers will advance to the final phase of the competition to be judged by a national team of ASL linguists. The winning sign will be presented to the American Deaf Community with a recommendation that it be recognized as the ASL sign for the English language word “poverty.” For further information go to: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NC4L8MMXzHU to view a video introduction.
“The end result of the contest is to create a new and more flexible sign for the word poverty and to address the poverty of understanding between the hearing and deaf communities,” said Cook.
“The Signs of Our Ideas project is an opportunity for Columbia College to lead a national conversation about the many aspects of poverty and privilege that involve or affect language in America,” said Lott Hill, acting director of Columbia’s Center for Teaching Excellence and a member of the Critical Encounters task force. Hill contacted YouTube and they agreed to be a part of the competition and create new signs for the concept of poverty.
Signs of Our Ideas Background:
In the spring semester of 2008, when Columbia embarked on its second Critical Encounters initiative “Poverty & Privilege,” students and faculty in the ASL program found themselves having to fingerspell poverty every time they wanted to use a word without it relating to money.
Having to spell out a word that did not fit within the complex definition of poverty became a huge challenge and made it difficult for students and faculty to participate in classroom discussions/lectures, conversations and public programming centered around the theme of poverty and privilege.
Critical Encounters: Poverty + Privilege—During the 2007-2008 school year, Columbia College will critically encounter the complex relationship between poverty and privilege. Building upon the focus of the college’s inaugural year’s theme of HIV&AIDS, this year’s Critical Encounters focus presents the Columbia community with the opportunity to further expand conversations already begun, as well as to invite new and difficult aspects of civic engagement and community concerns regarding the myriad ideas, mythologies, beliefs, realities, and responses to poverty and privilege. As before, the overarching goal will be to explore definitions and implications of these terms on multiple levels, as citizens, artists, scholars, individuals, a college, a community. Through these multiple lenses, Columbia hopes to sharpen the point, to better iterate, the places and spaces where and when art and activism intersect. For further information visit www.colum.edu/criticalenounters.
YouTube is the leading online video community that allows people to discover, watch and share originally created videos. YouTube allows people to easily upload and share video clips on www.YouTube.com and across the Internet through websites, blogs and email.
Columbia College Chicago, an urban institution committed to open access, opportunity and excellence in higher education, provides innovative degree programs in the visual, performing, media and communication arts to more than 12,000 students in more than 120 undergraduate and graduate programs, including film & video, art & design, arts management, television, radio, music, interactive multimedia – all within a liberal arts context. Founded in 1890 as a communications school, Columbia College Chicago was revisioned in 1963 as a liberal arts college with a “hands-on minds-on” approach to arts and media education and a progressive social agenda. Under the modern leadership of President Warrick L. Carter, Ph.D., Columbia is aggressively pursuing this mission. Columbia is accredited by the Higher Learning Commission of the North Central Association of Colleges and Schools. The college is accredited as a teacher training institution by the Illinois State Board of Education. For further information visit www.colum.edu.