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The number and scope of women-owned businesses have risen at an unprecedented rate. In an era of new opportunities, this paper profiles eight courageous and resilient women who share their personal stories and the lessons they learned building successful businesses. One theme that emerged from these women’s stories was the critical role of mentorship; another key factor was access to capital.

At the heart of risk management is a gloomy truth: You can never achieve zero risk. In a world of limited resources there are always tradeoffs to be made: how much to invest here and how much there, how much risk to tolerate and how much to mitigate or insure against. To answer those questions, risk quantification is necessary—to estimate how likely an outcome is to occur and more importantly, what will the cost be; translating complex real-world events into dollar figures that can enable rational decision making is critical to effective risk management.

Workplace harassment costs employers millions of dollars every year through poor employee morale, higher absenteeism, reduced productivity and costly settlements and lawsuits. Employers need to create the right culture, supported by appropriate policies and training. With the recent stunning revelations from Hollywood, the Media and Washington have clearly signaled that sexual harassment remains a serious social issue.

Now that the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act is law, it is helpful to have a checklist for determining how tax reform changes your employee benefit programs and a chart outlining the key benefit plan limits for 2018. Also in this issue of HR Focus, we revisit what sexual harassment is and what employers should be doing to prevent it, address it and help protect themselves from potential liability.

The Tax Reform Act contains sweeping changes and impacts all taxpayers, from individuals to businesses, and the rules for each category are different.

The 13th edition of the World Economic Forum's Global Risks Report, undertaken with Marsh & McLennan Companies, examines the evolving macro-level risk landscape and highlights the systematic threats that may disrupt expectations.

The Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017 and the recent taxpayer victory in the U.S. Tax Court’s Lender Management, LLC decision have created important planning opportunities for closely held and family-controlled entities in 2018.

Three major cyber events in 2017 set new precedents for the scope and impact of damage wrought by cyber-attack in terms of geographic and industry reach, operational disruption, and economic losses, as well as the destruction of market capital and reputation. While the concepts of cybersecurity may be foreign for many executives and board members, protecting their companies against risk is not. Great executives understand their limitations and leverage resources to fill the gaps.

You’ve made the right moves in your operating business—you’ve developed and executed your IT plan and upgraded your ERP, EAM, and CRM systems to improve efficiencies and gain new insights. You're starting to see results, but these new systems are generating vast amounts of data you aren't always sure what to make of.

The benefits of the U.S. 2017 tax reform act (the Act) should be broadly felt by Americans, and businesses large and small will see tax relief. The Act contains elements important for stronger economic growth—a competitive corporate tax rate and a move toward a territorial system of international taxation. At the same time, the House and Senate tax-writing committees have indicated that there may be a need to consider technical corrections or more substantive changes to the Act.