The World's Youngest Billionaires 2014: 31 Under 40-- from Forbes

Ryan Mac, Forbes Staff

Getting to the $1 billion mark isn’t a race, but some just get there faster.

Of the 1,645 members of the Forbes Billionaires list, 31 are under the age of 40. That elite group no longer includes the  Google guys, Sergey Brin and Larry Page, both of whom have crossed into their 40′s. One unexpected twist: this year’s group includes a new youngest billionaire.

Little-known Perenna Kei, a newcomer to the list, displaces former Facebook cofounder Dustin Moskovitz as the very youngest billionaire. Hailing from Hong Kong, Kei oversees an 85% stake in Logan Property Holdings through various companies and a family trust. Her father, Ji Haipeng, serves as chairman and CEO of the Hong Kong Stock Exchange-listed company, which went public in December.

The 39 youngest people on the 2014 Billionaires list have a combined net worth of $115.7 billion. Facebook employees past, present and future–including Sean Parker, Mark Zuckerberg and WhatApp’s Jan Koum–account for 42% of that. Koum,  a newcomer following Facebook’s decision to purchase WhatsApp, is worth $6.8 billion. He sold his mobile messaging company to the Menlo Park, Calif.-based social networking company for $19 billion in stock and cash last month.

Thirteen of the world’s young and wealthy call the U.S. home, while the others hail from the rest of the globe. Find the full list below.

No. 1: Perenna Kei & family
Age: 24
Net Worth: $1.3 billion
The world’s youngest billionaire title goes to Perenna Kei, who owns an 85% stake in Logan Property Holdings through different companies and a family trust. Logan’s chairman and CEO, Ji Haipeng, is her father. Previously known by the name “Ji Peili,” Kei is a non-executive director at the company, and holds a bachelor’s degree in economics and finance from the University of London.

No. 2: Dustin Moskovitz
Age: 29
Net Worth: $6.8 billion
No longer the world’s youngest billionaire, Dustin Moskovitz will turn 30 this year. Mark Zuckerberg’s former roommate, Moskovitz helped kick start the social network from a Harvard dorm, dropping out of school after two years to work on the venture full-time as Facebook’s third employee. He left Facebook in 2008 to start Asana, a software company that aims to improve how people work with project collaboration tools. He got married in the past year to longtime girlfriend Cari Tuna.

No. 3: Mark Zuckerberg
Age: 29
Net Worth: $28.5 billion
Facebook turned 10 this year and no one was celebrating harder than CEO Mark Zuckerberg. After seeing his company past the growing pains of a disappointing May 2012 IPO, Zuckerberg has the Menlo Park, Calif.-based company flying high. Facebook’s shares are up more than 130% over the past year as of mid-February. That’s caused Zuck’s net worth to more than double over the same period, even after he gave away 18 million shares in late December. He sold more than 41 million shares and exercised 60 million options around that time as well.

No. 4: Anton Kathrein, Jr
Age: 29
Net Worth: $1.35 billion
Anton Kathrein, Jr. is the third generation to lead his family’s Kathrein-Werke AG–”the oldest and largest antenna manufacturer in the world,” according to the company’s website. A pioneer in automotive antennas, it also makes radio and TV broadcast antennas, satellite and terrestrial reception systems, equipment for high-speed multimedia transmission by cable TV operators and antenna systems and electronic components that allow cell phone signals to bounce across the world. The company–with 18 production sites worldwide, over 6,800 employees and $1.8 billion in revenue in 2012–was founded by Kathrein’s grandfather in 1919. Anton Sr. ran the company from 1972 until his unexpected death in 2012.

Read the full list and article online. 

7 Tips For Boosting Your EQ (Emotional Intelligence)- from Levo League...

by Meredith Lepore

IQ gets all the fame. It has Albert Einstein as a poster child and it just sounds so, well, smart. But your EQ, your emotional intelligence, is so important as well but sometimes we don’t realize it. Your Emotional Intelligence accounts for 58 percent of performance in all types of jobs! Also studies have found that 90 percent of high performers are also high in Emotional Intelligence and that every point increase in EI increases annual salary by $1,300 on average.

Plus, a high IQ is less important when it comes to leadership skills. That is where your EQ really comes into play. EQ addresses how we perceive and understand our own emotions and the emotions of others. And then we get into Behavior Emotional Intelligence (BEQ) which is the evolution of that awareness; it is our ability to use EQ to manage personal behavior and relationships.

We talked with Casey Mulqueen, Ph.D., Director of Research & Product Development for  The TRACOM Group, one of the nation’s top leadership development companies. They have developed a proven BEQ training program used by many Fortune 100 and 500 companies from all around the world. Mulqueen wrote an entire white paper on the subject called, “ “Behavioral EQ: Putting Emotional Intelligence to Work.” Here are a few of her best tips so you can get your EQ in check.

1. Control your behavior by understanding your emotions.
Learn and understand your emotional triggers — the things that result in losing behavioral control.

This is invaluable for understanding the situations and emotions that you experience just prior to losing control of your behavior. Understanding emotions is important for learning how to manage your behavior.

2. Mentally rehearse common situations that set off your emotional triggers.
Research shows that when you mentally rehearse scenarios, you are activating the same neural circuitry that is activated when you are actually in the scenario. Instead of responding the way you typically have in the past, imagine yourself acting in a more productive way. Develop a mental “movie” of yourself and clearly imagine yourself behaving in the ways you want. This will help prepare you for when these situations actually occur. You will have a script to follow.

3. Force your brain into action by solving a problem.

Actively distracting yourself is an effective way to maintain self-control. If you are suddenly in a situation where you are feeling anger or frustration, for instance, shift your focus from the other person or situation to a mental problem. Make the problem challenging. For example, work out the solution to 15 x 18. This will force your brain to focus on the math problem and away from the stressful situation. The old adage that you should count to ten is not effective. The reason is that it is too easy and, therefore, does not actively engage the brain. Distracting yourself with a difficult problem is an effective strategy for avoiding an emotional reaction. It is not important to solve the problem correctly.

The point is to engage the brain region that solves problems, thereby preventing the emotional center of your brain from flooding the bloodstream with adrenalin and other stress hormones that cause strong emotional reactions.

4. Engage in healthy escapism.

If it is too hard to find a mental problem to solve, another form of distraction is to actively let your attention shift to a pleasant memory. You can sing a song in your mind, think of your favorite place or activity, a funny TV show, whatever works best for you. Similar to solving a problem, this will engage your mind and prevent the amygdala from taking control and causing a strong emotional reaction.

Think of this as a healthy form of mental escapism.

Read the full article online! 

How to Develop an Effective Team- from Levo League

by Alexandra Moncure

What industry has a $100 billion dollar annual spend and is controlled by 2.3 million women? Weddings. Kellee Khalil is thefounder and CEO of Lover.ly, the world’s first visual search and commerce engine revolutionizing the weddings industry. Lover.ly allows brides and grooms to search, save, shop, and share all things wedding in one place through beautiful, curated images from targeted vendors and partnerships.

Khalil began her career in finance before joining her sister’s wedding industry focused public relations agency. While working in the bridal industry and simultaneously helping her sister plan her wedding in 2010, Khalil experienced first hand the difficulty of making a wedding come to life.

On the hunt for the perfect wedding elements—from dresses, shoes and accessories to event decor and wedding vendors—she was also overwhelmed by the millions of pages of wedding content on Google. It was then that Khalil decided to create an all-in-one resource to help brides and grooms discover, search, shop, and share wedding ideas and products in a simple, streamlined, fun and tech-savvy way.

However in order to accomplish this, Khalil needed to build a team that understood her vision and possessed the skills she lacked from a technology perspective to make the vision a reality. She understood that it was important that she not only hire people who possessed the skills she needed, but would also  be a good fit for the company culture she was hoping to build. When building her team, she focused on hiring people who had tremendous amounts of passion, creativity, and interest in the problems that they’re working to solve.

“I think especially in early stage companies, the culture is derived from the founders and the CEO,” Khalil said. “I tend to surround myself with people with skill sets that are far beyond mine. One of my core strengths I think is that I’m good at finding people who are better at things than I am and bringing them around me.”


Read the full article and other articles from Levo League online.

10 Key Job Search Tips For New Graduates- from US News

By Alison Green

With a new class of college graduates preparing to earn their diplomas, millions of new grads are going to be trying to figure out how to find a job. Here are 10 key tips they should know as they enter into what's still a tough job market.

1. Don't wait to start job searching. You might be tempted to take a few months off after graduating to relax, but you might not realize how long job searches take. Hiring processes often take months, and getting a job in this market--especially without much experience--may really take a long time. Start actively searching now, since even with a May start, you might not find a job until the fall or later.

2. Include all of your work experience on your résumé. New grads sometimes exclude certain types of work from their résumé, like fast food or retail, figuring that it won't be relevant to the types of jobs they're targeting now. But especially if you don't have much other work experience to show, these sorts of jobs can be key in demonstrating that you know how to deal with customers, show up reliably and that you have a track record of handling paid employment like an adult. Don't shy away from including them.

3. Don't listen to every piece of job-search advice you hear. If your parents or friends are your main source of job-hunt guidance, you might be at a disadvantage. Job-search conventions have changed significantly in the last decade, so your parents might not know what's most effective in the process today. And your friends probably don't have much more experience than you do, so take their suggestions with some skepticism. Seek out more current and reliable sources of advice instead.

4. Don't apply for everything you see. Anxious job seekers sometimes blast off their résumé to every opening they spot, hoping that something will garner them a call-back. But carefully targeting your search to jobs you're truly qualified for--and writing a tailored cover letter for each--will get you far better results than simply aiming for quantity. That said?

5. Broaden your horizons. While you shouldn't apply for everything you see, you also shouldn't be narrow and only willing to consider a very specific role in a very specific field. The reality is, in today's job market you might not have the luxury of being picky about the specific roles you'll take. Open yourself up to a broader range of possibilities, and you might find it easier to find work (and might also discover that you like some of the alternatives that you hadn't originally considered!).

Read the full article online. 

Why Don’t People Want to Work for Women?

by Meredith Lepore

Bad news ladies. When asked by a Gallup poll if they prefer a female or male boss,  just over half of Americans say they don’t have a preference, but those who do strongly lean towards men. Forty percent of women and 29 percent of men say they prefer a male boss over a female one. Unsurprisingly, conservative Republicans also prefer men to be in charge while democrats were more split down the middle. Why don’t people want to work for women?

Even though more women are advancing into managerial and executive positions, the world does still not see them as capable and likeable as men. Guardian writer Jill Fillpovic smartly pointed out that when people don’t like their male boss, they write it off as that individual failed. When people don’t like their female boss, the entire gender is criticized and put down.

As Sheryl Sandberg reminded us in Lean In, ambition has a positive connotation for men and a negative one for women. Ambition is practically synonymous with the “b word” when it comes to women, and Sandberg wants to change that. Women, especially those in authoritative positions, can often simply not win in the workplace.

Just look at the portrayal of female bosses in film and television. Miranda Priestly in The Devil Wears Prada, Margaret Tate in The Proposal, Katherine Parker in Working Girl, etc., These women struggle with their powerful roles and the only way to deal with it is to be a deathly terrifying ice queen (who dresses great.)

“It’s a general cultural phenomenon, the preference for men leaders and bosses,” Alice Eagly, Ph.D., a social psychology professor at Northwestern University, told Forbes in 2010. She supposes that “leaders are thought to be people who are dominant and competitive and… confident. Those kinds of qualities are ascribed to men far more than women. Women are ascribed to be nice. We are, above all, nice.”
 
Read the full article and others from Levo League online.