How diverse is your diversity committee? Not very, was the case with an old employer’s first attempt at spearheading diversity in the workplace. There were no women or minorities on the committee. We all knew the intention was good, but we couldn’t help but be reminded of the irony every single month the Diversity Newsletter was sent. This was back in 2000.

For better or for worse, there have been a lot of leadership changes in finance since 2000. In 2003, Stanley O’Neal was the first African American to be named Chairman & CEO of Merrill Lynch. Sallie Krawcheck became CEO of Bank of America in 2009 for a couple years. Meanwhile, Abigail Johnson assumed the Presidency of Fidelity Investments late last year.

If there ever was an “old boys’ club” breeding ground, finance was it. Have a read of Liar’s Poker by Michael Lewis if you want to get a further glimpse of how things worked in the old days. More than a decade later, the undiverse diversity committee I once knew finally reflected the people of the industry.

WELCOME YAKEZIE SENATOR Read More

At last.  Sometime in the latter half of June 2011, Google finally updated their PageRank system to the delight of many of us here at the Yakezie.  It’s been a long road for many of you who have been stuck with a 0 PageRank for months.  But, never one to lay down and roll over, we as a group collectively managed to elevate the importance of mozRank in the website ranking ecosystem.  Not only did we implement mozRank as a key metric for the Yakezie Blog Network list, we wrote posts describing the merits of the system which updates much more frequently, and have also convinced advertisers to use the metric as well.

I am extremely proud of all of you who stuck it through and got bumped up.  Instead of giving up, you kept on producing good content, linking out to each other, and sharing each others words.  A few of you have seen a loss of a PR point which doesn’t make sense.  Meanwhile, some of the less active bloggers achieved a PR of 5 or 6, which is excellent, but also quite curious as well.  Often times, there is no rhyme or reason to Google’s blackbox Pagerank system, but it is what it is.  Collectively, the entire Network wins, and if the Network wins, each individual Member wins as well given the increased authority and confluence of proposals that come our way.

Just looking at the Yakezie Blog Network list now, I am absolutely blown away by how excellent all of our sites are.  It’s one thing to have a list of personal finance bloggers, but it’s another thing to have a list of extremely impactful bloggers that know each other and collaborate!

“CREATING POWERFUL FRIENDS” Read More