If 20 years of coaching business owners to grow their companies has taught me anything, it's this: The average business owner is overworked, stressed out, and feels pulled in twenty directions all at once. Most of all they're frustrated. Frustrated that they have too many lower value tasks that clutter up their day and make it difficult to focus on those fewer, better things that potentially create the most value for their company. (Inc.)

Nomble Coleman, an active member of the Boston Chapter, is the winner of the 2015 China Europe International Business School Essay Competition! Nomble, a recipient of the NBMBAA scholarship as an undergraduate, has served in various leadership roles in the Chapter including Director of University Relations, LOT Case Competition mentor, and LOT Case Competition judge. Noble will join the CEIBS Pre-MBA Summer Boot Camp this summer in Shanghai.

What qualifies as a "diverse" workplace? Does it mean that employees are of a variety of different races and genders? Or does it mean they’ve had a variety of life experiences? Millennials seem to be tilting toward that latter, more easily attainable vision. A recent study from Deloitte and the Billie Jean King Leadership Initiative, found that when it comes to defining diversity, rather than focusing on demographic features, such as race, or gender, Millennials – hose born roughly between 1980 and 2000 – are more concerned with hiring those who may have different cognitive viewpoints due to growing up in a different part of the country, or attending a different type of school. (The Atlantic)

It's official: The phenomenon known as El Niño has returned, raising the prospect of extreme weather that could cause billions in economic damage. Three major meteorological agencies – the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, Japan's Meteorological Agency and the Australian Bureau of Meteorology – have determined that water in the Pacific Ocean is now warm enough to say that El Niño is back. (CNN/Money)

Business analytics has become a key tool for managers who increasingly need to use scientific methods to drive decision making and increase productivity. But a dearth of talent has put pressure on companies and higher education to equip graduates and staff with the right skills. Tech is helping to close the gulf. (BusinessBecause)

A reporter recently interviewed me for an article about a product called the Listening Table. This slightly more sophisticated version of a tape recorder would record meetings, and highlight the transcript in places where someone tapped the table to indicate an important point. The reporter asked if this was an efficiency breakthrough. My gut reaction was no. Physically taking notes isn’t a burden, it’s a benefit in meetings. I suspected that people taking notes would have a better handle on information than those outsourcing this to the table. (Fast Company)

If the recession taught us anything, it should be not to get complacent and take your job for granted, because it could be gone as fast as you can say "downturn." But it seems that many workers, especially older ones, didn’t get that memo. A new survey from jobs site Monster finds that 41% of workers 55 years and older don’t have a current resume. (Time)

Howard University freshman Alanna Walton knew something was different about the professor teaching her introduction to computer science course. First, there was her name: Professor Sabrina. She was an African American woman, kept office hours until 2 a.m. if that's what it took to see everyone, and had an additional title: Google In Residence. (HuffPo)

When Robi Ganguly speaks in front of a group of people, he knows most crowds take one good look at him and think, Oh, I expected this. The cofounder and CEO of mobile startup Apptentive is half-Indian, half-white, and is considered a racial minority in most instances, except in the tech world, where being male, white, and/or Asian is the typical majority. Nearly two years after his company launched, Ganguly and his cofounders continued talking about hiring a more diverse team, but couldn’t quite crack the diversity code. (Fast Company)

There's one big issue for the new UK government that stayed below the radar during the election campaign - trade negotiations between the European Union and the United States, known as TTIP, the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership. The big political parties didn't make much of it during the campaign. Both the Conservatives and Labour are broadly in favour, though the Greens are very critical. (BBC News)

Greece is starting to talk turkey. As the country lurches closer to default, Yannis Varoufakis, the country’s flamboyant and polarizing finance minister, broke one of the key taboos over its debt crisis Thursday, calling for the rescheduling of two big debt repayments in July. (Fortune)

Business schools worry that not enough women see an M.B.A. in their future. B-school deans say the pipeline of young women may be running dry as fewer U.S. students overall appear to be interested in a graduate business degree. That trend has schools fighting over top woman applicants and anxious about their ability to graduate enough female talent to satisfy employer demand as well as make progress toward gender parity in the upper ranks of corporate management. (The Wall Street Journal)

Chinese e-commerce behemoth Alibaba Group Holding launched a new effort to recruit and train some of the same promising managers North American companies are clamoring to hire, as part of a broader expansion into foreign markets, the company said Sunday. As one element of the initiative, called the Alibaba Global Leadership Development Program, second-year MBA candidates at top business schools worldwide will compete for a two-year rotation among various divisions of the company. The program's standouts will be hired full time at the end of the two years. (Bloomberg)

Georgetown’s McDonough School of Business in Washington became the latest top management school to build up its real estate portfolio – a new property centre will compete with those in the US including at Columbia, Wharton, Rutgers and Mays. Georgetown will bolster its suite of real estate courses with a focus on practicality and globalization. Georgetown MBA students have already worked with Invesco, the investment manager, to underwrite more than $1 billion in live real estate transactions. (BusinessBecause)

The Charlotte School of Law is only nine years old, but it’s about to get its third president. Chidi Ogene was interim dean at Florida Coastal School of Law in Jacksonville before deciding he’d come here to lead the Queen City’s independent training ground for lawyers. Before joining Florida Coastal, he was general counsel at InfiLaw, a Naples, Fla.-based consortium of independent law schools. (Q City Metro)

43North announced it will host a networking event titled "Think Big with 43North" from 5:30-7:30 p.m. May 21 at the Design Innovation Garage ("dig") within the Buffalo Niagara Medical Campus Innovation Center. The event, which is being held in partnership with the National Black MBA WNY and National Association of Women Business Owners, is intended to create new networking opportunities for local minority and women-owned businesses and aspiring entrepreneurs, as well as inspire other Western New Yorkers to become 43North applicants. (Niagra Frontier Publications)

Honoring Amy Hilliard and Don Thompson: Tickets just $150 for the NBMBAA 45th Anniversary Celebration, June 12 in Chicago

As a valued supporter of the National Black MBA Association’s legacy, we invite you to join us on Friday, June 12, as we celebrate 45 years of creating economic, educational and employment opportunities for Blacks in the business world. Plan now to attend this extraordinary event. Buy early and take advantage of $150 tickets before the price goes up!

HONOREES
Amy Hilliard, President, Fashion Fair Cosmetics
Don Thompson, retired President and Chief Executive Officer, McDonald's Corporation 

ENTERTAINMENT
Terisa Griffin, as seen on season 3 of "The Voice" 

Buy Tickets!

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For the second time in two years, a passenger train traveling well above its speed limit has derailed, leaving a trail of death and injuries. And for the second time, existing technology that might have prevented the accident was missing. Amtrak has installed the technology, known as positive train control, on parts of its rail network in the Northeast Corridor. But the technology, designed to automatically slow or stop a train to prevent accidents, was not available on a critical stretch of track in Philadelphia where Train No. 188 derailed on Tuesday night, killing at least seven and injuring more than 200. (The New York Times)

Google's "mobilegeddon" update last month, which was designed to favor mobile-friendly sites in search results, had no impact on HubPages. But a secretive algorithm tweak soon after was disastrous HubPages, a collection of more than 870,000 miniblogs covering everything from the "History of advertising" to "How to identify venomous house spiders," saw its Google search traffic plunge 22 percent on May 3 from the prior week. Of the company's 100 top pages, 68 lost visitors over that stretch. (CNBC)

Let’s face it: surreal moments in business can happen at the most unexpected times. But what I’ve discovered through the years is that they can often be the catalyst to eye-opening realizations. Two years after launching my beverage bottle company S’well, I was traveling overseas on vacation when I happened upon an international retail conference. Being fairly new to the retail game, I decided to take a look around and very quickly came face-to-face with the "founder" of S’well, offering to sell me S’well bottles. The man clearly was not me, but he definitely had a bottle with my logo on it. (Entrepreneur)

Jan Ihmels is 40. And despite a few quirks – being a German living in Tel Aviv, for instance – in most ways, his life resembles that of any other average 40-year-old professional. He has a graduate degree. He has two kids with his ex-wife (she has custody; he spends several afternoons a week with them). He lives just outside of the city, braving the awful traffic for his commute to work. The one thing that sets Ihmels apart from many 40-year-olds? He runs an early-stage startup – his first. (Fast Company)

The U.S. economy has shown signs of capsizing this year. Growth has been weak and consumers still aren't spending. One bearish economist sees the U.S. and global economies on course to hit the next iceberg – another recession – in the near future. "The world economy is sailing across the ocean without any lifeboats to use in case of emergency," says HSBC chief economist Stephen King (no relation to the novelist). (CNN/Money)

Even though it's crept up in the past couple of months, the price of a gallon of gasoline is still about $1 less than it was a year ago. That's saving drivers $15 to $20 every time they fill up. Economists were quite convinced late last year that would boost growth because consumers would go out and spend that extra money. But things have not unfolded exactly as forecast. (NPR)

Known as the 4 percent rule, it found that retirees who withdrew 4 percent of their initial retirement portfolio balance, and then adjusted that dollar amount for inflation each year thereafter, would have created a paycheck that lasted for 30 years. The concept has been both celebrated and criticized, and it has recently come under scrutiny yet again, particularly as the current crop of retirees are entering retirement during a period of historically low interest rates. (The New York Times)

The bird flu outbreak in the Midwest has increased egg prices at the supermarket. On Tuesday, agriculture officials confirmed that the bird flu outbreak that has spread throughout the Midwest for months had reached Nebraska, making it the 16th state affected. "There is no food safety risk for consumers," the Iowa Poultry Association has stated. "Chickens, turkeys and other poultry infected with bird flu will be destroyed and will not enter the food supply." (Money)

NBMBAA Members Can Take Advantage of Discounts on CertifiNOW PMP®/CAPM® Prep Courses 

The NBMBAA National Rollout of the CertifiNOW program has begun!!

Did you know that during a recent study, 90 percent of executives surveyed claimed that project management is either critical or important to their operations. The same study stated, "Employers tend to feel that MBA graduates are strong in technical business areas like marketing, finance and accounting but need more project management skills." Furthermore, more than 1 million project management related positions will be created each year for the next decade.

General Public: $1850 (Public Classes)
NBMBAA Members: $950 (50% Discount – public and private courses)
--To receive the member discount, log in to the member portal and pick up your discount codes 

PUBLIC CLASSES 

NBMBAA Members can take CertifiNOW public classes.
--To receive your 50% discount, visit the member portal for the promo code.

PRIVATE CLASSES 

May 22-24 (Friday-Sunday)
Orlando
(Central FL, South FL, and Tampa Bay NBMBAA Chapters)

May 29-31 (Friday-Sunday)
Chicago
(Chicago NBMBAA and NBMBAA HQ)

August 26-28 (Wednesday-Friday)
Howard University
(Washington DC NBMBAA DC Chapter)

Coming Soon...

June (4 consecutive Saturdays: June 6, 13, 20, 27)
Clark Atlanta University
(Atlanta NBMBAA Chapter)

July 10-12 (Friday-Sunday)
San Francisco
(San Fran NBMBAA Chapter)

Contact membership@nbmbaa.org for more information.

In March, Zappos CEO Tony Hsieh issued an ultimatum of sorts to his employees. If they didn't feel like they could get behind the company's radical new management system – in which there are no traditional managers or job titles – he would give them until April 30 to decide whether they wanted to leave in exchange for at least three months' severance. The company said it was offering the option to eligible employees in order to expedite the new system's adoption. (The Washington Post)

If you want to understand the health of retail – follow the money. It ends up in a relatively small number of cash registers anyway. Just 10 food, staples and general retailers in the broad Standard & Poor’s 1500, including giant Wal-Mart, drugstore CVS Health and membership-based seller Costco Wholesale collected two-thirds of all the revenue generated by this broad universe of publicly traded retailers over the past 12 months. (USA Today)

Suppose you’re evaluating a job candidate to lead a new office in a different country. On paper this is by far the most qualified person you’ve seen. Her responses to your interview questions are flawless. She has impeccable social skills. Still, something doesn’t feel right. You can’t put your finger on what – you just have a sense. How do you decide whether to hire her? You might trust your intuition, which has guided you well in the past, and send her on her way. (Harvard Business Review)

Brigham and Women’s had never simulated a mass-casualty situation across multiple trauma services. There was no real plan, and certainly no rehearsal. Their response was simply an extension of what they do every day – adapt. A unit functioning as a command, with members waiting for instruction from authority, would have been too hidebound to respond effectively. (Fast Company)