Winning a talent competition is no small accomplishment, especially when you’re potentially up against more than 7,000 people.
On October 1, Ryan Luse, a business process analyst for Thomson Reuters, Legal, stepped up to that challenge in our annual employee talent competition at our headquarters in Eagan, Minn.
He definitely put his own spin on what could have been just a typical guitar act.
Luse told us he drew his inspiration for an original song, appropriately, from his work. But he said that inspiration didn’t hit him until the night before the competition. That’s when he decided he would wow the employee crowd with a song they could relate to.
He spent about two hours writing “Rock You Reuters”
After practicing the morning of the competition the song was still rather new to Luse, so he opted to bring the lyrics and music on stage with him. But that didn’t seem to hold back his performance and he was voted the winner by an employee vote, online.
You can watch a video of part of Luse’s song, on our YouTube Channel.
Luse has participated in all three of our talent competitions in Eagan. In the first year, he took third place with another original song.
His win this month earned $5,000 for his chosen charity, Depression and Bipolar Support Alliance. (more…)
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In a video just posted today to the Thomson Reuters YouTube channel, President & CEO Tom Glocer offers some remarks on the people behind the information and many products the company provides, and our legacy.
“We live at the crossroads of the most interesting trends and the most interesting people,” says Glocer. “Without the most talented individuals in our company, we can’t ever hope to serve the talented individuals at the most professional firms around the world.”
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Thomson Reuters, Legal sponsored and participated in the Asian Legal Business (ALB) In-House Legal Summit, the largest annual in-house counsels gathering in China. The event was held on October 14th at Sofitel Hotel in Shanghai, China’s financial center and the host city of World Expo 2010. About 150 in-house counsels and business executives attended the event.
ALB is a leading legal news magazine, published in English, and circulated throughout Asian countries.
Legal’s China team set up the largest booth, and displayed banners throughout the site. Thomson Reuters’ products and services attracted great attention from the attendees.
Posted by Chang Wang in:
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Khalid Al-Kofahi is one of our brightest colleagues and leaders within Thomson Reuters, so it’s no surprise his kids count on him for homework help.
Al-Kofahi talks about that in this video, recently posted to the ThomsonReutersCorp YouTube channel.
He also reflects on his career at Thomson Reuters and the satisfaction he gets from solving problems as a vice president in Research. Al-Kofahi was part of the R&D team that developed WestlawNext.
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Courtesy: Fotodog
One of the most interesting people at Thomson Reuters has to be Tonya Custis.
By day, she’s a woman of letters and a Senior Research Scientist. By night, she’s a skater with North Star Roller Girls in Minneapolis. Custis, or RAGE-edy Ann, as she is known by fans and teammates, has worked in the R&D group at Thomson Reuters for five years and has been skating for the last three.
Custis’ day job consists of performing research primarily in the areas of Natural Language processing, machine learning, and information retrieval, to provide software solutions to R&D’s corporate customers. Her job is a perfect fit for her educational background, which consists of a bachelor’s degree in clarinet performance and music theory from the University of Connecticut; a Master of Arts in linguistics; a Master of Science in computer science; and a Ph.D. in linguistics from the University of Minnesota.
She attests that all her degrees are actually similar.
“Music theory isn’t so different from linguistics or computer science; it’s all about abstracting larger patterns from data in order to make sense out of it,” she explains.
Custis also has no problem drawing a relationship between her professional career and her illustrious – if somewhat curious – hobby as a roller girl.
Courtesy: Preflash Gordon
“In a lot of ways being a research scientist and being a member of a roller derby team are the same. In both you work with others, trying to find a solution to a common goal,” she explains.
Custis started roller derby after one fateful match, or bout, as they are called in the derby world.
“I saw it and I had to do it,” she said. “I watched and thought, ‘Oh, I could do that,’ and then I did.”
Next year Custis will be appearing in a diversity calendar through Novations, a Boston-based global talent development company. Novations approached her league, which has one other Ph.D. holder and a third currently working on her Ph.D, and ultimately decided on her.
“They took pictures of me at my desk and had me skating around the halls at work. It was kind of embarrassing, but also fun,” she said.
It turns out, the most interesting aspect of Custis is not just her career or hobby, or that she does both. It is her ability to find the relationship between what seem to be completely different things and making connections that show information and ideas in a different, and clearer, light.
Posted by Anne Lawver in:
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Editor’s note: Guest blogger Richard Steel is the author of Steel on Immigration Law, published by Thomson Reuters. He practices at Steel, Doebly & Glassman, P.C., in Philadelphia. This post was written before a federal judge’s decision to halt key elements of the Arizona immigration law, before they took effect.
It seems that nothing has galvanized the debate over immigration – illegal and legal – as much as the Arizona statute that, among other matters, enables law enforcement officers to stop and inquire into a person’s immigration status if there is a “reason to believe” that the person is in the United States illegally.
This, and matters relating to immigration in general, raise a whole host of political, economic, social and legal-related issues. Of the numerous issues that are – and will be – raised, the ability to stop a person because of a “reason to believe” that that person is in the United States illegally has sparked debates everywhere. (more…)
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Thomson Reuters has released several video profiles of employees, including our own Stephen Yao, CEO of our Legal business in China, as well as iPhone app developer and senior software engineer, Jay Peyer, and others from across the business.
The purpose of the vignettes is to demonstrate the impact that individual employees can have on our business – how they bring its vision and values to life.
According to our Senior Vice President of Talent, Dimitra Manis, “the stories help us understand what Thomson Reuters stands for as an employer and aims to encourage us all to think about what each of us can do to create a best place to work.”
The stories appear on our refreshed Career Center on thomsonreuters.com.
They’re worth checking out. Let me know what you think.
Posted by Scott Augustin in:
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On May 21, bicycle enthusiasts around the U.S. celebrated National Bike to Work Day. With increasing attention being paid to this not-so-new method of commuting, we thought we’d get some insight from some of our employees who regularly bike to work.
Richard Baum, director, IP Marketing, is an avid outdoorsman and has been commuting to work by bicycle for the last five years. Baum said his 19 mile round-trip commute not only saves money in car repairs and gas, but it also has serious benefits for his health.
“I notice a big difference in my conditioning when I ride to work. For example, my cholesterol typically goes down at least 10 percent when I’m regularly biking,” says Baum.
Baum occasionally runs across interesting things on the commute. “Once I came across a large snapping turtle that was crossing the road to get to a pond. I stopped to take a picture of it before getting on my way.” Baum recalled. “I wouldn’t have been able to see that if I were in my car.”
Sarah Ditzler, an office manager at our 1 North Dearborn Chicago office, is the team lead for a city-sponsored “Bike to Work Week,” June 12-18.
Thomson Reuters Professional employees in Chicago can participate and compete for the highest percentage of employees who biked to work in their category and division.
Each participating employee will track their bike trips and the team leader will submit the total to the Active Transit group. The team with the most miles wins!
“We have 11 employees signed up so far,” Ditzler said. “Everyone seems really engaged and ready to take on the challenge.”
Posted by Nicole Hansen in:
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I attended a World Research Group (WRG) conference in New York with IP corporate counsel.
The topic “Open Innovation” was on the agenda, featuring a panel with the senior corporate counsel from SAS, open innovation director from GSK, and an independent consultant.
The moderator started the session by asking how many people in the audience engaged in open innovation in their companies. No one raised their hands. This was very surprising to me. (more…)
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Editor’s note: Kim Massana is the interim president and general manager of Elite.
In our continuing conversations with law firm leaders about how they are managing in the current economy, one thing we’re hearing at Elite is that the panic of last year is gone and that our clients and prospective clients are ready to invest in technology again.
While there’s more confidence to invest, there’s also more focus on return on investment and in getting the right infrastructure in place. Firm are looking for technology that helps them manage their business to be more efficient and helps identify opportunities for greater profitability.
Law firms, in general, tend to change their financial management systems every 10 years. It’s often described as being like buying a new car. You can postpone it for one or two years, but you can’t postpone it forever.
Once a law firm is ready for a new system, they look for a solution that will be around in the future and in developing a long-term relationship with an innovative and trusted company. Being part of Thomson Reuters brings us the credibility of a trusted brand, the market capability and the financial strength that are key differentiators and, we hope, provide value for our clients.
What else are we seeing in the marketplace right now? Well, there is significant uptake in areas like business intelligence, budgeting and forecasting, and SharePoint integration.
And, we’re hearing from firms around the world that they want fewer systems in place for managing their accounting, multi-currency and multi-language needs. Firms also are looking for help with international compliance matters.
We are cautiously optimistic for 2010, and with solutions like ELITE 3E we are confident that we will be able to meet the needs of law firms.
2010 will be an interesting year for the legal industry as the downturn gives way to renewed confidence.
Kim Massana
Interim President and General Manager
Elite
Editor’s note: Elite is hosting its 2010 User Conference June 15-17 in Miami. Click here for more information.
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The U.S. Constitution is one of the most powerful and impactful documents in existence. It literally touches every American’s life, and has since its creation in 1787. Recently, I had the opportunity to view the document first-hand as part of a new exhibit, “We the People: The First Official Printing of the U.S. Constitution,” sponsored [...]
Earlier this week, we released our 2011 Annual Report in an interactive format available online at thomsonreuters.com. Along with information on the company’s financial performance as well as business unit overviews, this year’s annual report contains a variety of dynamic content including interviews with our new business leaders as well as stories of how we [...]
We’ve got a great episode for you this month, kicking off with our “Chaos in the Courts” segment that, believe it or not, is yet another story about the Heart Attack Grill in Las Vegas. Since our March podcast, another person has fallen victim to the establishment’s trademark bypass burger.
Then in our “On the Blawgs” [...]
