A workplace self-defense class saved this female joggers life

A workplace self-defense class saved this female joggers lifeA workplace self-defense class saved this female joggers lifeSeattle jogger Kelly Herron, 36, was four miles into her ten-mile groe nachfrage on March 5thwhen she decided to make a pit stop at a public restroom.As I was drying my hands, I became aware that something was wrong, Herron latertold ABC news.There was Registered sex offender Gary Steiner was standing behind her.Thats when Steiner began to assault her, according to assekuranzbrief documents.He immediately took me down to the ground, hit both my knees and legs, and then it was a fight on the bathroom floor and I just kept screaming, not today motherf- Not here, not todayHerron managed to crawl to a bathroom stall to buy herself more time.I got into that stall flipped on my back and I tried to kick the door lock shut with my foot, she said.She jammed the door, but Steiner managed to break through the stall from the other side. Time was running out. Herron said she s tarted to feel like she was going to lose consciousness. But then herself-defense training kicked in. She realized that this didnt have to be a fair fight.Three weeks earlier, Herron had taken a self-defense course that her employer, RealSelf, had scheduled. It was a two-hour class at Fighting Chance Seattle where she said she learned to put hard bones in soft fleshy places.Self-defense programs are popular - just not at companiesRape Aggression Defense Systems program, or RAD, aretaught at 1,200 universities and colleges around the country.The University of Pittsburgh offers Buy Yourself a Minute, a course taught by local police to teach students avoidance techniques. For their final, students walk through the streets of Pittsburgh and are subjected to simulated attacks like purse snatchings and shootings.These programs are not guarantees for total stahlkammerty, but they teach women self-awareness- and above all, they empower women with the confidence needed to face worst-case s cenarios.As employers create employee benefits packages for employees wellness, they should look into programs that benefit their safety too.Why this company offered self-defense for employeesWhen Herrons employer RealSelf brought Fighting Chance Seattle, a local martial arts dojo, to the office, it was to empower their employees. They had no idea that it would help save an employees life.I really believe that when youre an HR Human Resources professional, youre not just there to support the day-to-day, Craig Meadows-Stein, the senior Human Resources manager at RealSelf, told Ladders, on why he brought a dojo to the office. Youre there to build confidence inside and outside of work because your employees are representing you both places.Stein wanted to promote wellness beyond pamphlets and meetings where you learn about benefits. Winter months are darkWeve got employees that work early mornings and into the night. I just wanted to make sure people felt good coming into the office an d felt safe when they were here, he said. Stein would like to expand the idea behind the workshop and partner with other companies and organizations to bring self-defense to the wider Seattle community. I just really hope that other people and other companies use this as a shining example. We need to take care of each other, he said.How to fight backHerrons case teaches us a few lessons.Trust your intuition and respond immediately if you feel threatened.Be loud and fight like a savage. Making a lot of noise can drive away attackers looking for an easy target.You dont have to punch with a closed fist. You can fight with an open hand. Usethehard bones in your hand to hit soft, fleshy places on an attacker.Being relentless and focused worked. Yelling and scratching at her attackers face, Herron was able to fight her attacker off, so she could reach for the door and escape. With the help of some passerby, Herron useda carabiner to lock Steiner in the public restroom until police could a rrive. Police have charged Steiner with attempted rape and second-degree assault.Herron said she feels empowered by the experience. She still plans to run the Seattle Rock and Roll Marathon this summer. My face is stitched, my body is bruised, but my spirit is intact, she wrote in an Instagram post.She encouraged other companies to offer the life-saving, self-defense course she received.

These are the 3-keys to daily well being that will improve your life

These are the 3-keys to daily well being that will improve your lifeThese are the 3-keys to daily well being that will improve your lifeTom Rathis a researcher, author, and filmmaker who studies the role of human behavior in business, health, and well-being. The bestselling author ofAre You Fully Charged?andStrengths Based Leadership,hes also a senior scientist and advisor to Gallup. Since age 16, hes been successfully battlinga rare diseasethat causes krebs cells to appear throughout his body.He joinedSusan Cain,New York Timesbestsellingauthor ofQuiet, for a conversation on the secrets to living ahealthy, happy, and meaningful life.SusanAt only age 39, youve lived a pretty extraordinary life. And youre well known for your natural humility. How do you channel all that quiet modesty into your work?Tom One of the lessons I learned very early in life, from my grandfather, is that it is an extraordinary waste of time to try to be someone you are not. So while I aspire to have a positive influence on other people, I know Im not going to accomplish that by being the loudest or most charismatic person in a room. What I can do is read, learn, and listen as much as humanly possible and channel my findings into something productive. This is the part that comes naturally to me.My challenge is that all the knowledge in the world does little good for others until it is shared in a practical form. This is why I have spent quite a bit of time trying to become a semi-competent writer over the past decade. There is so much amazing research being conducted today that could influence peoples lives. But that knowledge has to meet people at a time of need in order to have any gunst der stunde of influencing a persons daily choices.Susan At age 16, you were diagnosed withVHL disease, a rare genetic disorder that causes cancer cells to appear in various parts of your body. Since that time, youve been researching and experimenting with various ways of slowing down the growth of those tumors. What have your most important findings been?Tom An essential learning for me is that anyone can dramatically improve their odds of living a long and healthy life by making better choices. Just look at the physical aspects. If you get a good nights sleep tonight, it gives you a clean slate for tomorrow, where you are mora likely to be active throughout the day and make better food choices. Perhaps most importantly, this starts an upward spiral, where you feel progressively better as each day goes by.TrendingHow to Want What Youve Got in a World of Infinite ChoiceThe broader learning for me, after battling cancer for a couple of decades, isyou have to do something today that will continue to grow after youre gone. I may have a more constant threat to my mortality than the average person, but in reality the only thing any of us can count on with extreme certainty is that we have today to do what matters most. When I orient my days around this simple thought, it makes it easy to spend even more time doing things for other people each day.SusanWhat do you do when you feel scared or anxious?Tom It helps me to simply acknowledge the fact that I am feeling anxious. In most cases, this keeps my physiological response in check so it does not exacerbate the problem. I think a majority of things we allow to create anxiety in our lives are a reflection of how we choose to respond to external circumstances. Another thing that helps me is focusing on everything thatisgoing right. Simply bringing the thought of my childrens laughter to mind induces a smile almost instantaneously.When I am anxious as a result of larger stressors, I tend to tackle the problem right away. Life is too brief to let fears- that are often unfounded- erode entire days or weeks. Especially for someone like me who needs a lot of thought time, it would be easy to let fears consume far more bandwidth than they should.SusanIn recent years, and especially in your latest bookAre You Fully Charged?, your focus shifted to daily well-being. Why that shift?Tom Looking at what improves well-being in the moment is infinitely more practical. In the past, most research focused on asking people to reflect on their lives overall. That is like inquiring about the quality of someones career by asking them to read their resume. It misses almost all of the richness and emotion that occurs in the thick of a typical day.This is why Ive been deeply encouraged by a lot of smart research around daily well-being or what researchers call daily experience. When you look at what really matters on a moment-to-moment basis, it is things like brief interactions with loved ones that matter significantly more than how much money we make or whether we live in a wealthy country.SusanWhatarethe three keys to daily well-being?TomThe first key isdoing some type of meaningful work today.The second keyis having far more positive than negative interactions.The thirdkey is having the energy you need to be your be st today, which starts with eating, moving, and sleeping well in combination.SusanWhat are the essentials of meaningful work? And can most people, who are already overwhelmed with paying the bills and supporting their families, afford to think in these terms?Tom Its important to note that I am defining meaningful work as doing something that benefits another person. If you think about it in terms that are this basic, even small acts that have a little positive value for society count. In this context, I would argue that meaningful work is more of a basic necessity than a luxury for those who can afford it.Meaningful work is also a lot more practical than I ever thought before I did a deeper dive on this topic. I had always assumed things like meaning, mission, and purpose were higher level needs, but the more I learn, the clearer it becomes that meaningful work is a basic human need that cuts across professions and income levels.SusanYou write about the importance of positive social interactions. What does this mean for introverts, who often prefer their social time in smaller doses, with closer friends, and punctuated by solitude?Tom There is nothing more appealing to this introvert than a combination of solitude and a little time with my closest friends. Perhaps this is why the research around ratios of positive to negative interactions has always resonated with me. The quality of social interactions matters far more than the frequency of those interactions. Based on what I have studied, we need about 80% of our interactions with other people to be more positive than negative. This is simply because negative interactions carry much heavier load and outweigh positive ones.I have also learned to leverage my more analytical and inquisitive personality to create better interactions. It is a lot easier for me as an introvert to ask a good question than it is to initiate a story or other banter. So I ask a lot of questions, listen well, keep my electronic devices stowed away, and learn as much as I can during each interaction. In a world where attention is so incredibly fragmented by voices and devices, I have a feeling that some of these things introverts naturally do better will be even more highly valued in the future.This article originally appeared on Heleo.

Amazon reportedly scraps AI recruiting tool that was biased against women

Amazon reportedly scraps AI recruiting tool that was biased against womenAmazon reportedly scraps AI recruiting tool that was biased against womenFor stakeholders who see artificial intelligence as a magical cure-all, they believe that a bunch of computer code can quickly and mora accurately fix inefficiencies in anything with the right software application. But machines are only as intelligent as the human intelligence that guides them.Let Amazons reported recruitment software experiment be a cautionary tale on the limits of this line of magical thinking. From 2014 to 2017, Amazon built an internal artificially-intelligent recruiting tool, but the plans backfired when the company realized that the system was biased against women, according to a new Reuters report.Report Amazon sought holy grail of recruiting through AIReuters said Amazon set up an engineering gruppe in Edinburgh, Scotland, to create 500 computer models to recognize some 50,000 terms that showed up in past resumes. T he machine definitely learned, but it did not learn perfectly.Amazon reportedly wanted a recruiting tool to quickly judge the qualifications of a large dataset of candidates. Everyone wanted this holy grail, one of the Amazon sources that Reuters interviewed said. They literally wanted it to be an engine where Im going to give you 100 resumes, it will spit out the top five, and well hire those.To learn good from bad hires, Amazons team taught the AI to learn from the past 10 years of Amazon resumes, which were male-dominated. In 2014, Amazons employees were about 63% men. This is how Amazons system taught itself that male candidates were preferable over female candidates.It downgraded resumes that included the word womens, such as womens chess club captain, Reuters said. It would favor candidates that used language found on male candidates resumes like executed and captured.Amazon reportedly scrapped the AI recruitment project by the beginning of 2017.Following the Reuters report, a n Amazon spokesperson told Ladders that, This was never used by Amazon recruiters to evaluate candidates.But the reported experiment points to a larger trend. Amazon is not the only company that has introduced artificial intelligence into employment practices, or is planning to in the future.HireVue, a company with a video interview intelligence platform, uses it to screen candidates for companies. mora than half of human resources employees - 55% - said that they expect AI to be a regular feature in HR in the next five years, according to a 2017 CareerBuilder survey.Reutersreports that Amazon is not giving up the idea of an AI recruitment tool entirely a new Amazon team is reportedly working on an automated recruitment system with a focus on diversity.Artificial intelligence can make more rapid connections than humans can, but as the Amazon reported experiment shows, they are not necessarily always more accurate connections. AI can introduce more problems by perpetuating subconsc ious biases that were already there. Before employers departure feeding an AI their judgments about what the perfect hire should be, they first need to examine their personal biases behind what an ideal candidate should look like.This post has been updated with a comment from Amazon.