See You Next Week – You Can Still Register for The National Black MBA Association® 37th Annual Conference and Exposition 

NBMBAA has extended regular registration rates for next week's 37th Annual Conference and Exposition in Orlando. The regular rate is only good through TODAY, September 18, so save over on-site rates by registering now!

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The Federal Reserve announced on Thursday that it would keep interest rates near zero as officials assessed the impact of tighter financial conditions and slower global growth on the domestic economy. The Fed’s decision, widely expected by investors, showed that officials still lacked confidence in the strength of the domestic economy even as the central bank has entered its eighth year of overwhelming efforts to stimulate growth. (The New York Times)

A group of 203 faculty members at top U.S. business schools signed a letter Tuesday urging Congress to expand protections that would offer paid family and sick leave to anyone with a job. The faculty members cite research and sound business practices, as well as "our experiences teaching the business leaders of tomorrow," to explain their demand that "the United States must adopt a national paid family and medical leave policy." (Bloomberg)

Do you hide parts of your identity do you hide when you step into your office? You wouldn't be alone: 61% of the workforce cover aspects of who they are in front of their coworkers and managers. In fact, downplaying parts of yourself that you feel might be stigmatized may be so instinctive to you that you don't even realize you are doing it. Christie Smith, the managing principal for the Deloitte University Leadership Center for Inclusion, and Kenji Yoshino, an NYU Law School professor, have been working on ongoing research about what people choose to hide about themselves at work, their motivations for doing so, and how this behavior impacts their careers. (Fast Company)

Without it you couldn’t keep breathing, let alone reading this column. Yet how often do you think about your own brain–how it works, what it needs, and how it could work better? Your brain is both the most important and least understood organ in your whole body. But in these fascinating TED Talks, neuroscientists and psychologists shed some light on how our brains work – and what we can do to make them work better. (Inc.)

What are you doing for lunch? If you’re gulping down a quick meal alone at your desk, as well over half of white-collar workers regularly do, you might want to make other plans – especially if you’re hoping top talent will stick around. A recent white paper from consulting firm The Energy Project and the Harvard Business Review looked at the daily habits of about 20,000 U.S. managers and their teams. The researchers found that white-collar employees who step away from their desks a few times during the workday, especially at lunchtime, report feeling 40% more engaged in their work and 40% more creative than people who spend their lunch hours grinding away. (Fortune)

For a while now, young jobseekers have been encouraged to find their passion and follow it. Lately, though, it seems as though that advice is falling by the wayside. And for good reason. It isn't that being passionate about what you do doesn't matter – far from it. It's that when the notion is offered up as career advice, it can reek of elitism and ignore the, well, work aspect of work. (Fast Company)

Make no mistake: Developing a polished and powerful professional brand is a sound investment that takes time. It means crafting a solid business reputation that involves a lot of moving parts; none of which should be taken lightly. A short list of key components includes expert positioning, a team of expert advisers (also known as "best of breed") and a bit of art and science that together help to build a brand that can thrive for the long haul. (Black Enterprise)

New data released Wednesday by the U.S. Census Bureau show a very slim closing of the gender wage gap. The median women's earnings were 79 percent of men's in 2014, up ever so slightly from 78 percent in 2013. That change is not statistically significant, the Census Bureau said. In fact, not since 2007 has there been any statistically significant narrowing of the wage gap. And even then, the increase was small – one has to go back to the '80s or '90s to see more rapid change. (The Washington Post)

Greeks will head to the polls for the third time this year on Sunday to elect a government that will lead the country as it implements the bailout deal that Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras’s left-wing government signed in August. Greeks previously voted in the Jan. 25 election that brought the incumbent prime minister to power and the July 5 referendum, in which Greeks overwhelmingly voted against a package of austerity reforms submitted by the country’s international creditors. (MarketWatch)

Croatia threatened to close its border with Serbia on Thursday as migrants fled from overwhelmed police, trekked through fields and tried to steal into Slovenia by train in a desperate march westwards that is sowing discord and recrimination in Europe. The European Union’s newest member said some 8,000 migrants had trudged across its border from Serbia in one day, driven from trying to enter through Hungary by a metal fence, tear gas and water cannon. (Reuters)

The University of California is struggling with budget woes that have deeply affected campus life. Yet the system’s nine colleges still lead the nation in providing top-flight college education to the masses. At many other colleges, poor and truly middle-class students remain a distinct minority. Affluent students predominate at liberal-arts colleges like Oberlin and Bates, private universities like Cornell and Texas Christian and even many public universities, including Wisconsin, Penn State and Georgia Tech. The University of California, by contrast, enrolls large number of high-performing students of all economic backgrounds. (The New York Times)

Business schools have not always been bastions of entrepreneurship. But there are signs that many are trying to hone their entrepreneurial ecosystems. The latest indicator of this shift is the news that MBA students are spurning placements at blue chip firms for internships at start-ups, which offer the prospect of rapid growth and the potential of becoming "unicorns" – ventures valued at $1 billion. (BusinessBecause)

Ransomware is malware that locks your keyboard or computer to prevent you from accessing your data until you pay a ransom, usually demanded in Bitcoin. The digital extortion racket is not new – it’s been around since about 2005, but attackers have greatly improved on the scheme with the development of ransom cryptware, which encrypts your files using a private key that only the attacker possesses, instead of simply locking your keyboard or computer. (Wired)

The death of cell phone contracts may be great for consumers tired of being locked into a two-year commitment, but it has dragged the automatic "free" upgrade down into hell with it. Which is a shame, because top-of-the-line phones are way, way more expensive than most people realize. Do you know the list price of the new iPhone 6s, which is available for pre-order now and officially goes on sale next Thursday? No, it’s not the $199 or $299 you paid when you signed up for your old phone. It’s $649, just for the cheapest 16GB model. (Money Magazine)

Ask an entrepreneur who also serves as a busy parent to compare the two roles and most will tell you they have a lot in common. Both demand hard work, long hours, constant attention and money, but provide fulfillment difficult to find elsewhere in life. It’s also fun to watch them grow, as they take on a personality all their own. (Fortune)

Entrepreneurship is all about finding answers. Your entire business is an answer to a common consumer problem, or need. Your business plan is a general answer to the most common questions investors and lenders ask regarding your viability and potential for growth. And when you look for new clients, you’ll be answering a barrage of their questions about what your business can do for them. (Entrepreneur)

On Wednesday, the Census Bureau released its latest data on income and poverty for the country, and despite a falling unemployment rate and a rising GDP – two promising macroeconomic signs – things haven’t improved all that much for American families in the past year. In 2014, median household income was reported as $53,657 – statistically the same as it was in 2013. The same stagnation held when it came to the poverty rate, with about 14.9 percent of Americans, or almost 47 million people, falling below the poverty threshold of about $24,000 for the year. (The Atlantic)

The latest trend in hiring has a lot in common with speed-dating. Fed up with recruiting that takes weeks or months, employers are experimenting with ways to take on new employees in a matter of days or even hours. Chipotle Mexican Grill Inc. made a highly publicized push last week to hire 4,000 workers in a single day, and other technology and media companies are accelerating the way they woo and acquire talent, from entry-level workers to directors. (The Wall Street Journal)

Conventional wisdom has it that the staggering student debt incurred by the current generation of young professionals has made it harder to save for a home – and deprived the U.S. housing market of the first-time buyer lifeblood it depends on. But not so fast. A blog post published by Zillow today shows that student-loan debt has little impact on the homebuying prospects of young families. (Bloomberg)

Saving consistently is among the more difficult financial undertakings most people will ever try. So much gets in the way – income setbacks, unexpected expenses, impulse purchases. In the early years, a steady savings plan may even seem futile as your gains are slight and your sacrifices are great. Yet no path to retirement security is more certain. (Money Magazine)

At this time of year, as students return to campus, I always find myself reflecting on why I became a professor and the principles I’m about to teach the business leaders of tomorrow. But this year has been especially exciting, as employers have increasingly announced family-friendly policy changes – and as President Obama has just taken a historic step to increase access to paid sick leave for government employees, while also calling for an unprecedented U.S. national paid leave law. (Harvard Business Review)

At the Republican debate Wednesday and throughout the campaign, candidates led by Donald J. Trump have assailed illegal immigration, and some have questioned whether children who are born to immigrants in this country illegally should be considered American citizens. But here on the Texas border some local officials are engaged in activities that go beyond talk, enforcing some of the toughest rules in the country limiting the types of ID parents can show to receive copies of birth certificates. The result has been a refusal to issue birth certificates to many of the Texas-born children of immigrants here illegally. (The New York Times)

On Oct. 1, when the 2016 fiscal year starts, the U.S. government will shut down, unless Congress and the White House can agree on a bill that would keep money moving from the Department of the Treasury to the federal agencies and programs it funds. The legislative crisis is a near repeat of the dispute that triggered a 16-day shutdown in October 2013. More than 40 conservative Republicans have announced they won’t vote for any appropriations that include federal funding for the women’s health group Planned Parenthood, which is being targeted by anti-abortion activists. (Bloomberg)

In many companies and organizations, new managers are selected as a result of their success in technical and operational roles. This seems to be a sensible approach, as the manager needs to understand the challenges facing his or her direct reports. At the same time, it’s fundamentally flawed. The skill set required to excel in a technical/operational role is different than the skill set required for success as a manager. (Harvard Business Review)

When you walk into Facebook's Menlo Park, California, offices, the posters bombard you: "Let's Kick the S--- Out of Option B." It has the ring of a corporate mantra, à la "Move fast and break things," Mark Zuckerberg's famous exhortation to his colleagues. But it's something far more personal – a quote used by Facebook's second-in-command, Sheryl Sandberg. Already one of the most admired executives in America, thanks to Lean In, her 2013 female-ambition manifesto, Sandberg became a different kind of symbol in May after the sudden death of her husband, SurveyMonkey CEO Dave Goldberg. (Inc.)

"The first hour of the morning is the rudder of the day," said 19th-century social reformer Henry Ward Beecher, and a couple of centuries later, the sentiment still holds true. A great morning can set the tone for a great day, while a bad morning can make us want to give up and go back to bed. So how do you have more great starts than bad beginnings? Unfortunately, there isn’t a one-size-fits-all approach. (Fast Company)