Deborah Streeter is the Bruce F. Failing, Sr. Professor of Personal Enterprise and Small Business Management at the Charles H. Dyson School of Applied Economics and Management. Entrepreneurship and small business management are the focus of Dr. Streeter’s teaching, research, and outreach activities. Her research interests include: university-wide models for teaching entrepreneurship, use of digital media in teaching, and gender issues in business and entrepreneurship. Dr. Streeter has received acclaim as an educator, based on her promotion of experiential learning, active learning, and innovative uses of technology inside and outside the classroom. In 2007, Dr. Streeter was given the Olympus Innovator Award by the Olympus Corporation. She received the Constance E. and Alice H. Cook Award in 2004, Professor of Merit Award in 2002, and was named influential to a Merrill Scholar in 1999, 2000, and 2003. Dr. Streeter was awarded the 2001 CALS National Food and Agricultural Sciences Excellence in College and University Teaching, and was named a Stephen H. Weiss Presidential Fellow in 2000 (Cornell’s most prestigious teaching award). She also received the SUNY Chancellor’s Award for Excellence in Teaching in 2000 and the Innovative Teaching Award in 1996. Dr. Streeter holds an MS (1980) and PhD (1984) in agricultural economics from the University of Wisconsin, Madison.
Course Overview
Leaders often ascribe different causes to their success in ascending to senior positions in their companies. Research shows that women are likely to point to the merit of their own work as the reason for promotion, whereas men tend to attribute upward mobility to their skill forging strategic relationships. In reality, strong professional networks - and the ability to leverage them to meet individual goals - are a crucial component of career advancement regardless of talent. Unfortunately, many potential women leaders undervalue or underutilize this critical tool.
In this course, designed specifically for women in leadership by Deborah Streeter, the Bruce F. Failing, Sr., Professor of Personal Enterprise at Cornell, you will deconstruct your own professional network and how it is working - or not working - for you. By defining key roles and relationships, you will identify and address areas in your network that can be strengthened. This course will also provide you the tools to overcome common challenges to developing and maintaining networks that women face due to harassment or the double bind.
Key Course Takeaways
- Map and evaluate your own professional network to identify benefits and gaps
- Identify barriers to developing a strong network and create an action plan to overcome a specific barrier
- Identify and attract potential sponsors and protégés to fill gaps in your professional network

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Not ready to enroll but want to learn more? Download the course brochure to review program details.How It Works
Course Authors
From 2010 to 2018, Dr. Susan S. Fleming was a Senior Lecturer at the Cornell School of Hotel Administration. Currently, she is an executive educator and frequent speaker on women in leadership and entrepreneurship, a corporate director, an active angel investor and a mom. Fleming began her career on Wall Street, where over a period of twelve years she held various positions in the investment community, including that of analyst at Morgan Stanley & Co.; vice president of Insurance Partners, L.P., a $540 million private equity fund; and partner at Capital Z Financial Services Partners, a $1.85B private equity fund.
After retiring from Wall Street in 2003, Fleming began work as an educator, teaching executives, investment professionals, MBAs, and undergraduates in the areas of corporate finance, insurance, valuation, and gender bias. She also enrolled at Cornell University’s Johnson Graduate School of Management to pursue a PhD in management, where her research focused on better understanding the factors contributing to a dearth of women in leadership positions in U.S. society.
In addition to her work as an educator, researcher, and business consultant, Fleming helped to found a startup company in Ithaca, NY; has served on the board of directors of five publicly traded insurance and reinsurance companies, two private companies, and three non-profit organizations; and currently serves on the board of RLI Corp., a publicly traded specialty insurer serving diverse, niche property, casualty and surety markets, and Virtus Investment Partners, Inc., a publicly traded asset management firm. Fleming has been published in the Cornell Hospitality Quarterly, Psychology of Women Quarterly, the Journal of Higher Education, and Cornell Hospitality Reports and holds a BA from the University of Virginia, and an MS and PhD in management from Cornell University.
Who Should Enroll
- Women leaders in mid- to senior-level positions (10+ years of work experience)
- Women who hold or are interested in seeking board positions
- Women entrepreneurs and founders
- Male leaders seeking to better understand gender dynamics in their organizations
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