Women in Poker: Prima Divas
When founder and CEO Ellen Leikind gets talking about her business, it is all about vision — literal, metaphorical, peripheral. And, oh, what she sees.
A former marketing executive who still keeps her hand in that arena, Leikind took a break from corporate America and started taking classes that piqued her interest. Among those was playing cards, as she had always been a card player.
“When I went back to work, I noticed I was using the skills from poker,” Leikind said in our recent interview. “When people were trying to negotiate me down in price, I held fast. I kept coming up with correlations between business and poker.”
Among those, she found, were how to set the tone, be a leader, read people and pick up on nonverbal cues.
“It’s a game of psychology,” Leikind said. “Poker helps to enhance skills where women are weaker.”
In fact, when Leikind started getting invited to networking events, she noticed there would be “60, 70, 80 guys and a handful of women.” That was the void she suddenly wanted to fill and so about four years ago she formed Poker Prima Divas
“It’s poker for professional women, not only teaching them how to play the game, but the need to be aggressive,” Leikind said.
t is her mantra, in fact, that poker is the new golf. In that regard, it may also be an innovative way to get an ‘in’ during the recession. The skills it fine tunes are an obvious benefit, but the networking opportunities are vast as well, especially in the financial careers arena.
“This is not a bunch of degenerates playing cards,” Leikind said.
Even for those who have never been dealt a hand, the surge of poker is apparent simply from channel surfing on any given day. Poker tournaments are everywhere, from ESPN to the Travel Channel. According to PokerPages.com’s Industry Index, as of 2006 poker had grown over 400 percent since 2001; they cite “increased production and distribution of poker related television, the penetration of online poker and the creation and expansion of the World Poker Tour and The World Series of Poker” as reasons for the popularity explosion.
While much of that is tied to money, Poker Prima Divas is not. There’s no gambling — that’s illegal in New York, except in limited cases — but there are prizes and donations to charity.
One of the most intriguing things about talking to Leikind about poker is what she has learned about the proclivities of people.
“Men don’t care if they lose fake chips,” said Leikind, whose program is inclusive of men. “Women would rather have one chip left. They won’t go for it all and risk losing that chip. Men play to win as opposed to avoid losing their chips.”
