NETWORKING WOMEN GET A BOOST ; Cohasset Resident Provides Services for Several Groups

By ANTHONY CAPUTO

South Shore INSIDER – DIANE DANIELSON

The Downtown Women’s Club has improved its Web site to offer online social networking.

Diane Danielson, founder and CEO, started the group as a part- time venture in 1998 as a way for her and other women in business to network. At the time, she was working in real estate development for Meredith & Grew in Boston. A few years later, she was working for Spaulding & Slye, now Jones Lang LaSalle Inc. After leaving Spaulding & Slye in 2002, Danielson began working full time on the Downtown Women’s Club.

A 39-year-old Cohasset resident, Danielson graduated from Colgate University in 1989 with a bachelor’s degree in English and finished law school at Boston College in 1993.

This past April, she launched DWC Faces, an Internet social network similar to MySpace that makes it easier for members to communicate with one another. Danielson runs the firm, which provides support services for affiliated clubs in several metro areas, out of her house.

It has affiliated clubs in Boston, Worcester, Providence, New York City, Pittsburgh, Washington, Los Angeles, San Diego and, starting this year, Chicago and San Francisco.

How did the Downtown Women’s Club get started?

It was kind of accidental. I was trying to be my efficient self and when I’d go out to these industry events, I was one of the few women. And so I’d meet all these other fabulous women who were also some of the few women in the industry or other related industries and they’d all invite me to lunch. … But I just invited them all out together.

That’s where we started talking and realized we had a lot of the same issues, whether (we) were lawyers, accountants, in financial services, whatever it was. And then we kept meeting and we said, “Well, we’re kind of like a downtown club. We’re the Downtown Women’s Club.” Then we just kept growing from there because it just kept spreading the word and then we just started having our cocktails and lunches and it just grew.

How does the DWC help businesswomen?

A lot of women at the office don’t have these natural business networks the way the men do. A lot of it is work-(and)-family- balance issues. A lot of it is that a lot of the companies are still run by men. …

So what we do at the Downtown Women’s Club is try to create that sort of business environment for women in a comfortable way. We have a golf outing every year. … We have cocktail get-togethers. We have professional development lectures. And we just have casual ways for women to get together. Sometimes we’ll have salon nights, shopping nights.

This is probably the one (DWC) club that has the most men show up, which is great. We don’t exclude men, it’s just we might be doing something that they might not want to do. I think we’ve also had Red Sox nights in the past, too, so it just depends.

How does the Web site help businesswomen?

We added DWC Faces, which is the first social network for businesswomen. And what that means is that it’s sort of like … MySpace. Basically, you can post your profile up there so that it helps people be found on the Web, because right now the Web is the new yellow pages.

For some of our more senior members, we talked to them about why they need to be found on the Web and how they can help control (their) image. So if somebody finds you, they find your professional image. And so for our younger members, we always tell them, “Do you want your employers to find your MySpace profile or do you want them to find your DWC Faces profile, which is a little more professional?”

How has your company changed over the years?

Well, we’ve always been a step ahead on technology, whether we planned it or not.

We break it down by generations and we see the difference between baby boomer(s), Gen X and Gen Y. And so we’re preparing so that we will be a women’s company that can adapt to these needs.

Because I still think there’s always going to be a need for women’s organizations because we still only have about seven women CEOs in Fortune 500 companies, which isn’t a lot of change in 20 years since Katharine Graham first appeared on there. So, as long as there’s still that need for women’s support groups, we’re going to exist.

But we need to exist in a way that the Generation Y members are comfortable. I also have this mission of teaching our boomer members and Gen X members the technology they need to know.

I guess technology is a big thing with me. I love it. But I think from the people I’ve interviewed for articles I’ve written about it, if you don’t get on board with what’s going on with social networks, with text messaging, all this stuff, you’re going to be outdated in the work force in three to five years. And so a boomer might be thinking, “Well, I’m going to retire soon. Why do I need to know this stuff?” Unless you’re retiring in three to five years, it’s going to affect how business is done.

Anthony Caputo may be reached at acaputo@ledger.com.

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