Linda Alepin

Linda Alepin


My Encore Story:

I am the Founding Director of Global Women’s Leadership Network.

Empowering
women leaders is a critical component in solving the world’s economic, social,
technological, and environmental problems.
This belief fuels my life’s purpose – to have women be
innovative, compassionate leaders who are making a difference worldwide. I am a champion of women’s empowerment
through my leadership of Global Women’s Leadership Network. (http://www.glwn.org)

GWLN
is dedicated to educating and supporting women leaders who dare to transform
the future of their organizations, communities and the world.

GWLN
offers a variety of programs that build awareness of women’s issues and enhance
women’s leadership capacity. The programs range from an eight-day residential
global leadership intensive to local quarterly and monthly events. GWLN extends its influence into developing
countries through on-site workshops, college internships, and issue-oriented
travel programs.

GWLN’s
premiere offering, Women Leaders for the
World (WLW) is a leadership program for global women leaders who want to
increase their leadership capacity. The eight day residential portion of the
program is followed by three months of coaching calls. The curriculum is
focused on 1) sparking innovation, creativity, and breakthrough thinking, 2)
launching women into global leadership roles, and 3) expanding women leader’s
capacity and capability for creating networks, coalitions and alliances.

GWLN
provides local forums for women to expand their leadership thinking through
dialogue with Global Innovation Dialogues (quarterly) and monthly Women at the Well events. Subjects covered in these events include the
gender digital divide, multicultural team building, assessing our values and
global leadership.

The International
Internship Program provides meaningful 4-6 week globally oriented work
experiences for Santa Clara University undergraduates.

GWLN
leads International Travel Programs
to various parts of the world to help women in determining how they want to
make a difference within a global context. This spring, a week long trip is
being planned to attend the Global Summit
of Women held in Vietnam.

GWLN
has a website at www.gwln.org that supports
all these efforts. We regularly email
newsletters with editorials on various international topics, feature stories on
the progress of our WLW graduates, and local events.

All
of these programs are built around the premise that once engaged, women have a
tremendous capacity to solve even the most intractable problems. They are leaders of competence, conscience,
and compassion – characteristics coveted by our sponsoring organization – Santa
Clara University.

GWLN
is the only organization in Silicon Valley that puts the “world in a
classroom”. Internally, it runs on a
start-up mentality that fosters innovation among its volunteers. All of its programs strive to create
environments in which deep dialogue stimulates relationship and action. Belonging to GWLN is a lifelong journey with
people dedicated to changing the fundamental condition of humanity.

GWLN is creating new futures through enhancing women’s leadership. We are building a network of inspired
leaders whose passion and commitment are infectious. GWLN’s teachings connect women to themselves
and others at a deep level. The GWLN
vision reaches beyond gender equality and embraces a world of possibility and
opportunity that will result when leadership equality is pervasive.

 

  • I am in my encore career
  • I support the encore idea
  • My organization can create encore opportunities
My Bio:

Linda T. Alepin is Founding Director of the Global Women’s Leadership Network (www.GWLN.org) and Dean’s Professor of Entrepreneurship, Santa Clara University. GWLN is sponsored by the Leavey School of Business and the School of Engineering. It is a capacity building organization dedicated to igniting a new world for humanity by liberating women leaders to bring us all to a world built upon human rights and gender equality, sustainable development and global integrity.

Linda has been a pioneer and visionary all her career. She was one of the few women graduates from Stanford University in the sixties to choose a career in the information technology industry. She first joined IBM in its newly formed emerging business segment. As this part of IBM grew into a thriving division, she made a name for herself in sales, development, and management.

In 1978 she joined Amdahl Corporation as it rapidly morphed from a startup to a major force in the mainframe industry worldwide. She helped to build its systems engineering practice, a $25 million distributorship in Brazil and Japan, and to lead its billion dollar turnaround in 1993-5. She held positions of increasing responsibility in marketing, finance, and strategy, culminating with her election to corporate officer.

Linda discovered the Internet in 1995 and nurtured several experimental technologies in her role as Amdahl’s VP of Strategy. She was so fascinated by the Internet’s potential that she spun out one potential product and founded an early Internet startup called Pebblesoft where she was CEO and President. In an era when there were less than 2% women CEO’s, she raised $5 million in seed capital, took a product to market, and eventually sold it to a large international firm.

Linda next pursued her passion for leadership. She became the CEO of Center for New Futures, a leadership consulting company. Here she studied methodologies for creating breakthrough results.

In 2004, her long term partnership with Barry Posner at the Leavey School brought her the opportunity to found a women’s leadership organization. From her vision of women all over the world coming to study and being held together by the Internet, the Global Women’s Leadership Network was born. In its first three years, this organization has built a reputation worldwide for its leadership programs and the accompanying network of support that is helping to fuel worldwide change.

Linda is a noted public speaker on leadership and management. She is the recipient of the Santa Clara County Commission on the Status on Women’s award for contributions to the equality of women. She is a wife and the mother of four.

My Groups
My Interests
golf, international issues, travel
My Issues