Like many workers, Ivelisse Rivera, a physician at Community Health Center, Middletown, Conn., feels stressed-out by mounting workloads. And she didn’t expect to get much help during her employer’s annual staff meeting last November—just the usual speeches on medical issues.

Instead, she got a big dose of something new: Happiness coaching. Keynote speaker Shawn Achor—a former Harvard University researcher and former co-teacher of one of the university’s most popular courses, Positive Psychology—extolled 90 listening employees to shake off dark moods at work by practicing such happiness-inducing techniques as meditation or expressing gratitude.

To her surprise, Dr. Rivera says, she drove home filled with thoughts about cheering up; “if I assume a negative attitude and complain all the time, whoever is working with me is going to feel the same way.”

Happiness coaching is seeping into the workplace. A growing number of employers, including UBS,

American Express,

KPMG and the law firm Goodwin Procter, have hired trainers who draw on psychological research, ancient religious traditions or both to inspire workers to take a more positive attitude—or at least a neutral one. Happiness-at-work coaching is the theme of a crop of new business books and a growing number of MBA-school courses.

Victor Juhasz

Critics say that pushing positive thinking is just a way for companies to improve morale while they continue to burden employees with the threat of layoffs and an ever-increasing workload. Barbara Ehrenreich’s recent book, “Bright-sided,” blames “positive thinking” for enabling people to avoid confronting a wide range of serious problems in the economy and workplace.

Still, there’s no doubt that workers could use a little cheering up. Employee satisfaction has hit the lowest level in the 22-year history of the Conference Board’s annual survey on the topic. Only 45% of U.S. workers are satisfied with their jobs, down from 52% in 2005 and 61% in 1987, says this 5,000-household study. Mr. Achor describes one employee audience he encountered at a big banking concern as “ashen-faced and anxious.”

Research shows that employees’ positive attitudes can be good for business, too. A 2004 study of 60 business teams in the journal American Behavioral Scientist found teams with buoyant moods who encouraged each earned higher profit and better customer-satisfaction ratings. A 2001 study at the University of Michigan says people who are experiencing joy or contentment are able to think more broadly and creatively, accepting a wider variety of possible actions, than people with negative emotions. And a 2005 research survey in the Psychological Bulletin shows happier people miss work less often and receive more positive evaluations from bosses.

Of courses, coaches have long tried to instill proactive skills to help clients extract career or personal success from tough situations. What’s different now is the emphasis on inner happiness, and controlling your own mood in the face of turbulence or misfortune.

Indeed, the happiness coaches go beyond traditional positive-thinking approaches, taking new tacks that tend to ring true with workers. Some examples: Write e-mails to your co-workers every day thanking them for something they have done. Meditate daily to clear your mind. Do something for somebody without expecting anything in return. Write in a journal about things you are thankful for; look for traits you admire in people and compliment them. Focus on the process of your work, which you can control, rather than outcomes, which you can’t. And don’t immediately label events good or bad, but remain open to potentially positive outcomes of even the most seemingly negative events.

Mr. Achor bases his training on a burgeoning body of research on the positive psychology movement, which emphasizes instilling resiliency and positive attitudes over analyzing mental illness and dysfunction. Srikumar Rao, a Long Island University emeritus professor whose training courses in workplaces and business schools have earned him the nickname “the happiness guru”, draws on tenets common to such religious traditions as Hinduism, Sufism, Buddhism, Christianity and Judaism.

People who use the principles say they work. Greg Johnson, a Charlotte, N.C., corporate real-estate executive, says Dr. Rao’s training helps him avoid rushing to negative conclusions about daily events. Amid staff changes or reorganizations, he has taught himself to think, “Good thing, bad thing? The reality is, I don’t know” how the change will turn out in the long term. That mindset helps him remain open to the possibility that seemingly negative events can produce positive outcomes in the long term, he says.

Andrew Potter, chief executive of National Car Parks, London, says a tenet he learned from Dr. Rao to focus on work processes, rather than outcomes you can’t control, helped him manage his company’s recent bid for a big contract. His employees felt intense pressure to wrest the contract away from a competitor. But instead of “talking to the team about how great it would be if we win it,” Mr. Potter says, he asked them, “What more should we be doing” to prepare?”

His company didn’t win the contract, but “We had 20 minutes of grumbling,” then everyone bounced back, he says. When the next bidding opportunity rolled around, “we walked in with confidence and we won it.” Dr. Rao’s training is “very, very practical in the fiercest corporate battle,” he says; he plans to enroll several of his executives.

In Marshall Goldsmith’s new book, “Mojo”, the respected executive coach emphasizes finding “a positive spirit toward what we are doing now, that starts from the inside,” he says. Many companies are trying “to increase employee satisfaction by asking themselves, ‘What can we do to make the employee’s job more meaningful? How can we make employees happier?”‘ Dr. Goldsmith says. “My approach is quite different, in having employees ask themselves, ‘What can I do to make my work more meaningful? What can I do to make myself happier?”‘

To help employees keep tabs on their inner attitudes, Dr. Goldsmith will start offering free software for iPhones and BlackBerries on his Web site next month.

—E-mail sue.shellenbarger@wsj.com.

By SARAH E. NEEDLEMAN

Around 6 p.m. on Oct. 27, two men entered a Houston business establishment and robbed the place while holding a pregnant employee at gunpoint. The robbers made off with an estimated $500, plus $50 and a cellphone from Karina Monita, the expectant mother.

“It was really scary,” Ms. Monita says. “I was shaking.”

Ariel Zambelich for the Wall Street Journal

“Visitors can’t take two steps without someone greeting them,” says Gordon Fowler of 3Fold Communications, which was robbed last summer.

The location wasn’t a bank or convenience store—cash-heavy businesses that typically attract thieves. It was Don Francisco Insurance & Services, a quiet insurance company that generally keeps little money on hand, according the owner, Francisco Diaz. Local police say the perpetrators, who remain at large, are suspected of robbing at least 29 other insurers in the area since May.

These days thieves are really reaching. As traditional targets for theft have beefed up their security and the recession has driven people to desperate measures, robbers are infiltrating corporate offices. Many of the incidences involve small companies with ground-level offices that offer easy access. And sometimes the perpetrators are armed, heightening fear among office workers who thought their sleepy cubicle farms were safe.

While the total number of robberies in general decreased slightly in 2008 from 2007, according to estimates from the Federal Bureau of Investigation, there was an estimated 10.1% increase from 2004. In 2008, there were an estimated 2.2 million burglaries—an increase of 3.6% when compared with 2004 data.

During the third quarter of this year, Crisis Care Network Inc. provided crisis counselors to employees at 206 workplaces—including offices and retail stores—following incidents of armed robbery, up from 185 during the same period in 2008.

“A little heightened vigilance could be helpful,” says Bob VandePol, president of the Grandville, Mich., company.

In the past year, ComPsych Corp. , a provider of employee-assistance programs, has seen a 21% increase in the number of requests for crisis counseling at offices that were robbed while employees were present; requests from banks rose 16%.

But the crimes may be more widespread than that since counselors typically are called in only following incidents in which employees’ lives were actually threatened, says Richard Chaifetz, chairman and chief executive officer of the Chicago firm, which services more than 11,000 organizations and 29 million workers world-wide.

Employees at 3Fold Communications LLC, a Sacramento, Calif., marketing firm, declined counseling after a burglar made off with $6,000 of office goods and personal items in August while they were meeting in a conference room. Gordon Fowler, president, says video surveillance didn’t capture footage of the crime because it covers only the rear of the firm’s office building. He says he filed a police report online after local law enforcement declined to investigate the matter.

A spokesman for the Sacramento police says nonviolent thefts may not be investigated if the perpetrators can’t be identified in any way.

Meanwhile, 3Fold’s 13 staffers are making sure its three entrances are monitored at all times by employees. “Now visitors can’t take two steps without someone greeting them and asking why they’re here,” says Mr. Fowler.

Office thieves may be hard to detect at first glance. In the past year and a half, intruders got into Crosby-Volmer International Communications LLC’s Washington, D.C., office three times during normal business hours.

“All of these people had on ties and were wearing dress pants,” says Robert Volmer, president of the public-relations firm. “People in offices tend to give [strangers] the benefit of the doubt. Whether it’s caterers, deliverymen or people who water the plants, there are always news faces coming in and out.”

Rifling Cubicles

Crosby-Volmer’s D.C. office is on the fourth floor of a large building five blocks from the White House. Mr. Volmer says two of the intruders were caught and escorted out by employees who saw them rifling through colleagues’ cubicles; one successfully made off with a laptop computer. He suspects the intruders snuck in through the parking garage or a side door by closely following someone with access to those entrances. Mr. Volmer emailed a letter of complaint to the building’s owner, Blake Real Estate Inc., in July but says he hasn’t seen any signs of increased security. (Offices of The Wall Street Journal are located in the same building.)

Two months later he says he stopped a person trying to enter a side door and asked what he was doing there. He says the man claimed to be making a delivery but couldn’t name a recipient, so he escorted the stranger off the property. Mr. Volmer admits he didn’t consider the possibility of the intruder being armed and says he wasn’t worried for his safety. “I just went on instinct,” he says.

Stephen Lustgarten, Blake Real Estate’s executive vice president, says, “The crime in that building would be no higher than any other urban environment in Washington. [Crosby-Volmer employees] left their back door open and unattended which is why they had a problem.”

After receiving the complaint email, Mr. Lustgarten said the company briefed tenants on how to prevent future incidents by reminding them to be prudent, and avoid leaving personal items and entrances unattended. He said the property manager replied to Mr. Volmer’s email as well as visited Crosby-Volmer’s office, but Mr. Volmer wasn’t there so the manager briefed his assistant instead.

Mr. Volmer says he used to keep the back door to his office suite unlocked during the workday because the building has a security desk at the main entrance on the first floor for greeting visitors. But he’s been keeping it locked at all times ever since the intrusions occurred.

Face to Face With a Thief

Of course, confronting a workplace thief can be dangerous. “The worst thing you can do in a robbery is resist,” says Dr. Chaifetz.

Earlier this year, he says, his firm dispatched crisis counselors to an office where an employee was pistol-whipped after trying to talk a gunman out of doing harm. “He had a pretty damaged face because of it,” says Dr. Chaifetz.

If you do find yourself face to face with a robber, avoid looking the person in the eye, says Bruce Blythe, chief executive officer of Crisis Management International Inc. of Atlanta. “Keep as much distance as possible,” he says.

Federal law and most state laws require employers to provide safe workplaces, says Jennifer Rubin, an employment lawyer for Mintz, Levin, Cohn, Ferris, Glovsky & Popeo P.C. in New York.

In general, worker-compensation laws prohibit employees from suing employers for workplace injuries except in circumstances involving gross negligence or recklessness, she says.

“It’s hard to make the connection between employer recklessness and injuries sustained during a robbery,” she says.

But even if no employees are hurt during a break-in, the experience can have a lasting impact on a work force, says Debra Holland, a crisis counselor in Los Angeles. Victims often experience symptoms such as anxiety, nightmares and difficulty concentrating for several days.

“People can’t go back to work like normal because they’ve been traumatized,” she says.

One strategy for coping is to pick something positive to focus on for whenever crippling memories of a robbery surface, says Kate Harri, vice president of workplace interventions for Behavioral Medical Interventions, a national post-trauma-counseling provider in Minneapolis. This might be a favorite song or scene from a movie that you’ll play in your head to change the image and the memory, she says. In the past year, BMI has seen a 20% increase in demand for its services following robberies that took occurred in workplaces of all kinds, Ms. Harri adds.

Employees also can feel scathed even if they weren’t present when their co-workers were robbed since what happened occurred in a setting that is typically assumed to be safe, adds Ms. Holland, the crisis counselor. “They’re imaging all the things that could’ve gone wrong,” she says.

Managers can help employees by asking how they are doing—without mentioning deadlines, quotas or other work pressures—to show they care, she says. “It has to be done with delicacy and empathy,” she says.

Write to Sarah E. Needleman at sarah.needleman@wsj.com

Turn down the Rihanna. No more bikinis and beer. Spring break is winding down, and college students are heading back to campus—which, if they’re at a name-brand school, is the one place, whatever their actual smarts or behavior, that guarantees them approval. Kids don’t put Harvard stickers on their rear windshields, parents do.

But for how long? These schools have much to recommend them: impressive students, organic dining halls, presidential alumni. To maintain their reputations, however, elite colleges have long relied on limiting access—Harvard’s class of 2015 is about 1,700 students, Yale’s is 1,300—and that may be coming to an end. Revolutionaries outside the ivy walls are hammering their way not onto campus but straight into class.

It’s a thrilling collegiate coup. Last fall, a couple of hundred Stanford students registered for Sebastian Thrun’s class on artificial intelligence. He offered the course free online, too, through his new company Udacity, and 160,000 students signed up. For the written assignments and exams, both groups got identical questions—and 210 students got a perfect overall score. They all came from the online group.

So if you bluffed your way into the Ivy League with plumped-up credentials or an essay edited by somebody else, it’s time to start breaking a sweat.

“I like to compare it to film,” Mr. Thrun told me at a coffee shop between Stanford and Mountain View, Calif., where his day job is running Google X, the company’s experimental lab. “Before film there was theater—small casting companies reaching 300 people at a time. Then celluloid was invented, and you could record something and replicate it. A good movie wouldn’t reach 300 but 3,000, and soon 300,000 and soon three million. That changed the economics.”

It is education’s time to change now. At the high-school level, interactive study sites are increasingly ingenious: Look at Piazza, Blackboard and Quizlet, founded by a 17-year-old. TED-Ed just launched a channel on You Tube, with three- to 10-minute lessons for kids. YouTube’s EDU Portal has been viewed 22 billion times. Khan Academy, a favorite of Bill Gates, has four million unique users a month and thousands of educational videos, from “Napoleon’s Peninsular Campaigns” to “Python Lists.” If you think that last one is about snakes, please download Khan’s new iPad app immediately.

The next big thing, though, is college-level MOOCs and MOOSes: Massive Open Online Courses and Seminars. Harvard already showcases coursework like professor Michael Sandel’s “Justice” lectures online, gratis. Now Georgia Institute of Technology, MIT, Stanford and others are offering advanced online courses, some with accreditation.

“The current search for new educational funnels must be reversed,” wrote Austrian philosopher Ivan Illich, in “Deschooling Society.” He called for “educational webs” woven among us all. That was 1971. Today, Web courses don’t just meet but beat their impersonal offline counterparts. Studies show that tutorial-style teaching is more effective than lecturing (as Oxford and Cambridge have known for centuries), even when prerecorded. Mr. Thrun’s online students told him that the course felt more personal.

In this new educational model, the shy and the easily distracted get advantages. You can rewind a video and watch whenever and as many times as you like. Plus, teachers save time with computerized grading and students save money. (U.S. college debt, nearly $1 trillion, is bigger than housing or credit card debt.)

Most important, the system promotes driven and talented students who might otherwise be denied access to higher education: a kid in Afghanistan, a young mother in Scotland, an ignored pupil in Detroit. From Mr. Thrun’s class (translated into 44 languages) Udacity chose 200 students based purely on performance and, a few weeks ago, forwarded their resumes to companies including Amazon, Bank of America and BMW.

There are glitches, of course, including a high online dropout rate, complaints about speed, questions on accreditation and the predictable whining from old-school alumni who have gotten too cozy in their club chairs.

To be truly egalitarian, classes will need to go not just online but mobile. Still, the upshot of it all is clear: more smart people is better. Just watch that ivory tower topple.

Corrections & Amplifications

Udacity recently forwarded the resumes of 200 students to companies. An earlier version of this article incorrectly said 15 students.

A version of this article appeared March 24, 2012, on page C12 in some U.S. editions of The Wall Street Journal, with the headline: Watching the Ivory Tower Topple.

By SARAH E. NEEDLEMAN

The Job: Museum Curator

Nature of the Work: Ever been to a museum? Well, it’s these nonprofit professionals who are responsible for identifying, acquiring, arranging and protecting the various bodies of work you’ve admired. They’re also often tasked with writing descriptions and interpretations of items on display and contributing to exhibition catalogs, trade magazines and other publications.

Science Fiction Museum & Hall of Fame

Curator Jasen Emmons prepares a costume for a coming exhibition.

Curators at small institutions may be expected to handle additional duties, such as fund raising, guiding visitors and even maintenance work. “If it means you pick up the garbage before the guests arrive, that’s what you have to do,” says Paula Tognarelli, curator and executive director at the Griffin Museum of Photography in Winchester, Mass., who is one of three employees there.

The Pay: Salaries vary depending on the size and type of the institution. At art museums, assistant curators earn a median annual salary of $42,642, while chief curators earn $87,125, according to a 2007 survey from the Association of Art Museum Directors. Curators at the Newark Museum (N.J.), which offers a mix of art, history and science, earn between $35,000 and $95,000, depending on experience and the level of the post. Pay typically is much higher at larger, more well-endowed museums.

The Benefits: Standard health-care and dental plans are common, as are retirement-savings accounts.

The Hours: In addition to traditional business hours, curators must attend industry events such as gallery openings and trade shows. Those at institutions with big budgets may be required to travel frequently to meet with artists, donors and other museum contributors. Zöe Ryan, a curator at the Art Institute of Chicago, says her job has taken her to Milan, London, Miami and New York.

Incentives: The opportunity to interview musicians like Elvis Costello for a film exhibit has been an exciting perk, says Jasen Emmons, director of curatorial affairs at the Experience Music Project at the Science Fiction Museum & Hall of Fame in Seattle. Ms. Tognarelli has met many esteemed modern photographers, including David Levinthal, Joyce Tenneson and Sebastião Salgado.

Best Part of the Job: Working behind the scenes with rare objects, says John Bidwell, curator of printed books and bindings at the Morgan Library & Museum in New York. He recently put together a display of three Gutenberg Bibles, which are currently on display. “It was quite a thrill,” he says. Another plus, says Ms. Ryan, is that the job involves a lot of socializing and provides exposure to emerging talent. “You’re constantly meeting new people, and you very much are the eyes and ears on the ground,” she says. “There’s never a dull moment, and no two days are the same.”

Worst Part of the Job: Preparing budgets for exhibitions is challenging because funding is limited, says Ulysses Grant Dietz, a senior curator at the Newark Museum. “We’d love to be able to do more than we have time, space and resources for,” adds Kathleen McCarthy, head curator at Chicago’s Museum of Science & Industry.

Career Path: Curator jobs require strong writing, research and communications skills. The ability to be persuasive is also critical. “A lot of times, you’re wooing collectors,” says Mr. Emmons. “You’re trying to convince them that they should loan their artifact, which they (then) may not see for the next three years.” An advanced degree in art, history and other relevant fields is a common prerequisite. Entry-level posts often call for an internship or volunteer experience.

Hiring: Many museums and associations advertise job openings for curators on their Web sites. There are also job sites for curators and other museum professionals, such as museum-employment.com, globalmuseum.org and museummarket.com. Experienced museum workers say networking at industry events is also an important avenue for learning about career opportunities.

Competition for curator jobs can be stiff, as positions are limited and turnover is rare. Mr. Dietz, one of six curators at the museum, has held his position for 28 years. And consider, for example, that the Salvador Dali Museum in St. Petersburg, Fla., has just three curators on staff, including Joan Kropf, who has held her post for 35 years. “These types of jobs are few and far between,” she says.

Write to Sarah E. Needleman at sarah.needleman@wsj.com

Printed in The Wall Street Journal, page D5

By DENNIS NISHI

It had been pouring rain when Eric Voskuil rode his motorcycle to the Navy recruiting office in Albany, N.Y., intending to enlist. He had just quit an internship at International Business Machines Corp. where he was learning programming; he thought he’d like to work with nuclear power and submarines instead. When the recruiters saw his wet helmet, they thought he was a better fit as a pilot.

“He definitely was not your typical college kid. It was obvious from his grades that he was a super smart guy, but he didn’t fit the mold of a surface warfare officer,” says John Ortolf, a former Navy recruiter who is now a financial planner at Morgan Stanley Smith Barney. “It takes that to get through aviation training. He clearly had a lot of determination.”

After completing his bachelor’s degree in computer science at Rensselaer Polytechnic in New York, Mr. Voskuil went on to Officer Candidate School. Later when he learned how to fly the F/A-18 Hornet fighter aircraft, he was unexpectedly pulled back into programming. Another officer was trying to cobble together a flight-scheduling program to track work hours. Mr. Voskuil offered to help and ended up taking over the project. The software was later adopted throughout the fighter community.

Although he enjoyed programming again, Mr. Voskuil stayed focused on his aviation career. His skills there were put to the test during the Bosnian War in 1994 when he was deployed to the Mediterranean Sea to serve aboard the U.S.S. Saratoga. His squadron was responsible for keeping the skies clear and for providing air support for NATO ground operations. Mr. Voskuil says he never fired a shot, but he did chase aircraft out of the no-fly zone.

After returning from his second deployment to Bosnia in 1996, Mr. Voskuil was accepted into the U.S. Navy Fighter Weapons School—also known as Top Gun. He went through 10 weeks of intense training to become a strike fighter tactics instructor and then spent the next two years in Florida training other aviators throughout the fleet in the same advanced tactics that he had been taught. He considered it to be the pinnacle of his career.

Again, Mr. Voskuil’s technical skills were tapped while he was stationed in Florida. His commanding officer asked him to manage the squadron computer network. To save time, Mr. Voskuil created a program called ProfileMaker that allowed him to automate the Windows software setup process for users. He started selling the program online for 10 cents per user, keeping the price low because he wasn’t sure it would sell. When Neenah, Wis.-based Kimberly-Clark Corp.

purchased an enterprise license for 10,000 users, he made just $1,000.

That’s when a college friend suggested Mr. Voskuil start a new software company with ProfileMaker. Mr. Voskuil hated to give up flying, but it was time to decide whether to re-enlist after nearly 10 years in the Navy. “I knew I could [make] CO [commanding officer]. But the options narrow as you get higher and you don’t get to fly much,” he says. “I knew it was time to move on.”

He resigned his commission in 1998, moved to Portsmouth, N.H., and started Automated Profile Management LLC with his friend and another partner, each forking over $5,000. The company sold management tools that allowed administrators to control user access. Mr. Voskuil was chief technology officer.

The trio did well in its first year and received $2.5 million in additional venture funding and was rebranded Desktop Standard Corp. The company had grown to nearly $10 million in sales and 55 employees when it was acquired by Microsoft Corp.

in 2006. Mr. Voskuil was hired on as a software architect to work full time at Microsoft headquarters in Redmond, Wash. He led a work group of 12 of his employees who were absorbed into Microsoft. They integrated their former software into Windows Server 2008.

Two years later Mr. Voskuil, restless to do more, left the company. In March 2009, he became CTO for BeyondTrust, a company spun off from Desktop Standard after the acquisition. The company had been based on the software that Microsoft didn’t buy, including software that allows system administrators to restrict access and still grant users the ability to run specific software. “We’re larger than we were but not as big as Microsoft.”

He says his time in the Navy only enhanced his ability perform in his second act career. “My experiences as a pilot, teacher and organizational leader as an officer have helped me accomplish everything I’ve aimed for,” he says.

Write to Dennis Nishi at cjeditor@dowjones.com

By KATHERINE ROSMAN

Before there was Facebook, there was the Wednesday 10.

In 1957, as men in their late 20s, they began meeting—initially over breakfast, then over dinners held at the Sherry-Netherland Hotel or at the Harvard Club in midtown Manhattan. Few were born to means. Many were sons of immigrants. Most went on to become luminaries in their fields—presidents of television networks, partners at banks, editors of magazines.

On occasion, they shared their influence with one another. When member Mort Janklow made a career switch from corporate attorney to literary agent, a fellow member, columnist William Safire, offered himself as a famous first client. When Robert Menschel, a senior director at Goldman Sachs Group Inc., was considering deals involving large consumer companies such as Procter & Gamble, he would pick the brain of fellow club member Ed Meyer, the former chief executive of Grey Advertising.

In a day when “social network” is a buzz term from colleges to board rooms, the members of Wednesday 10 show the benefits of old-fashioned networking. “We were all young kids starting out, and it is easy when you are so involved in building your career to lose touch with other people who are outside your field,” says Mr. Menschel, who has been at Goldman Sachs for 55 years. “It helped me to understand why other people do what they do—which is important in life and in business. You don’t learn anything from talking to sameness.”

The Wednesday 10 comprised, at various points, more than 20 men; the goal was a number small enough to maintain intimacy yet large enough to ensure that at least 10 members would show up for each of the monthly Wednesday-night meetings. No more than two representatives of any one industry were permitted. The idea was to combat insularity, to keep the men connected to people and events outside their own professions.

Last Wednesday, in a prewar Manhattan duplex, the membership met for the first time since the death of the group’s founder, Mr. Safire. At a sit-down dinner of lobster pot pie, short-ribs stroganoff and fall-vegetable slaw, 16 of the group’s members engaged in spirited discussion about the economy, the Palestinian-Israeli conflict and the friendship they have cultivated during the past 52 years.

The members bantered like brothers as they greeted one another over cocktails, hors d’oeuvres, handshakes and a few hugs. “How old are you Larry?” Lawrence Grossman, the former president of NBC News and PBS, was asked as he walked into the reception.

“What the hell kind of question is that?” Mr. Grossman replied. Turns out he was born in 1931, making him the youngest member.

“I am the oldest,” said Charles Sigety, 87, a former nursing-home owner whose family has significant real estate holdings. Later, he pointed out another distinction. “I’m probably the only gentile here tonight,” he said.

“We’ve been meaning to talk to you about that,” replied Mr. Menschel. (The group is about 75% Jewish.)

By today’s definition, the Wednesday 10′s idea of diversity isn’t expansive. “They’re anti- women,” Barbara Walters says. When she worked in public relations with Mr. Safire in the 1950s, she would rib him about the all-male make-up of the group. “No women!” he would respond, Ms. Walters says.

“In 1957, it didn’t occur to us to include women,” says Mr. Menschel. “If we formed it today, it wouldn’t occur to us not to include women.” When asked about the homogeneity, other members point to the many banquets that included wives and their invitations to Ms. Walters, Gloria Steinem and the late “Feminine Mystique” author Betty Friedan, each of whom addressed a Wednesday 10 meeting as a guest. Ms. Walters says she recalls nothing from the meeting she attended. Nor does Ms. Steinem. “It may not please them to know that I don’t remember,” she says. “But I would urge them to change the name to the Wednesday Men’s 10.”

The advantages to membership were many. Mr. Janklow secured Mr. Safire lucrative contracts and also scored book deals for other members: Edward Bleier, a former top executive at ABC and Warner Bros., wrote “Thanksgiving,” a guide to and history of the holiday; George Lang, who owned restaurants including Café des Artistes, chronicled his journey from a Nazi work camp to the height of New York’s culinary world in “Nobody Knows the Truffles I’ve Seen”; and Mr. Menschel wrote “Markets, Mobs & Mayhem: a Modern Look at the Madness of Crowds.” Mr. Safire wrote the forewords to the books of Messrs. Bleier and Menschel.

Mr. Menschel was the chairman of the board of trustees of the Museum of Modern Art from 2005 to 2007. He encouraged curators to attend the one-man photography exhibits of Wednesday 10er Marvin E. Newman, who shot for Esquire, Sports Illustrated and Life

magazine. Mr. Newman’s work is featured in permanent collections at MoMA, the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Whitney Museum of American Art. When members get sick, they call member Mortimer Lacher, a pioneer in lymphoma research who has been on the staff of Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center since 1961. “I’m the house doctor,” he says.

By almost every account, Mr. Safire founded the group after one of his superiors at public-relations agency Tex McCrary Inc. asked him to round up some of New York City’s most promising young businessmen. The rumor was that Ruder Finn Inc., a competing publicity company, had a connection to the Young Presidents’ Organization, a networking group of business leaders.

‘Our Own Organization’

One of the Tex McCrary executives said, “We need our own organization which has a purpose but might feed business to the firm,” recalls Mr. Bleier, who was also a Tex McCrary employee.

Mr. Safire shared the plan with Mr. Lang after the two men worked together on a 1956 reception hosted at the Waldorf-Astoria (Mr. Lang was assistant banquet manager) for Princess Grace and Prince Rainier by the Overseas Press Club (Mr. Safire handled the PR).

Valeche Studio

The Wednesday 10, shown at a 1960s banquet with their dates, began meeting 52 years ago.

They each invited friends and acquaintances. Over time, Mr. Lang says, the group helped him to understand the motivations and concerns of powerful men who worked in New York City’s core industries—the type of men who were his customers. “Through the Wednesday 10, you begin to understand the world,” says Mr. Lang, 85. “I knew about restaurants but not about Wall Street or show business.”

To begin the meetings, each man gave an update on his life. Impending marriages and expected babies were nodded to, but the thrust of the discussion centered on career development. “It was a professional support system,” says Mr. Meyer, 82. By the end of each meeting, he had a snapshot of what was going on in the realms of law, media, art, finance, real estate, public service and cancer research. “It was like reading a newspaper cover to cover,” he says.

Distinguished Guests

For the first 15 years or so, the men invited one guest per meeting to brief them on the issues of the day and answer questions. As the members’ careers got traction, the profile of the people to whom they had access grew. Over the years, the roster included CBS

News’s Mike Wallace, Public Theater founder Joseph Papp, former New York City Mayor John Lindsay, accused Soviet spy Alger Hiss and Roy Cohn, who was a prosecutor during the espionage trial of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg and an aide to Senator Joseph McCarthy during his anti-Communism hearings.

On Friday, Nov. 19, 1971, the group traveled to Washington, D.C., for a black-tie dinner at Blair House. The highlights included a speech on domestic policy delivered by Donald Rumsfeld, who was a Cabinet-level counselor to President Richard Nixon. (Mr. Safire was by then a White House speechwriter.) “I rarely got into black tie, but Bill said it was important,” Mr. Rumsfeld says.

Once Mr. Safire moved to Washington, D.C., the group scaled back the frequency of its meetings to twice a year and stopped inviting guests so the members could spend their time together reconnecting. At one gathering last year, though, the group gave special dispensation to a doctor of gerontology.

“I don’t know why someone thought that was appropriate for this group,” says Mr. Bleier, 79.

‘Daddy’s Ideas’

The men had hoped their sons would create an adjunct group that would one day assume the Wednesday 10 mantle but none took the initiative. “Daddy’s ideas are not the ones children tend to take on,” says Mr. Menschel.

Mr. Safire’s is the club’s eighth death, according to Mr. Bleier. A few decades ago, one member dropped out—Bill Adler, a former publishing entrepreneur. “It was getting to be a very self-admiring group, and it lost appeal for me,” says Mr. Adler, who also says that the idea for the club was his, not Mr. Safire’s. The rest of the membership disputes that contention.

At the apartment of Jenifer and George Lang last Wednesday, the men sat around a large rectangular table set with china, flowers and printed menus. (Mrs. Lang cooked the entire meal but disappeared at dinner time.) The formal discussion began when member Robert K. Lifton, the former president of the American Jewish Congress, was asked to address the peace process in the Middle East. “I see nothing changing in the next five years” unless the interested parties change their patterns of conduct, Mr. Lifton said, after giving his impressions on Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, whom he has known for 20 years. The situation in Afghanistan? “Quagmire,” Mr. Lifton said.

“I’d like to hear a little about the economy from our financial guru,” said the photographer Mr. Newman, in reference to Mr. Menschel.

“The question is, what is going to get 15 million people back to work,” Mr. Menschel said. “It won’t be big companies. It’s going to be driven by the ‘mom and pop economy’ and that takes a long time.”

During the economic discussion, Mr. Menschel had to weather some Goldman Sachs-bashing. Dr. Lacher called one of Mr. Menschel’s colleagues a “bozo.” Stanley Bartels, a banker who made his career at smaller establishments, called Goldman a “monster,” and Mr. Menschel rolled his eyes.

Most of the meal was spent discussing Mr. Safire and the group he built. James Rosenfield, former president of CBS Television Network, looked around the table and gave in to a moment of wistful congratulations. “Each of us started from zero with a common denominator—we were ambitious and hard-working,” he said. “And I look around and there isn’t a single guy in the group who wasn’t a winner in his own world.”

“This group is amazing in its longevity,” added Dr. Lacher.

The brandy had been served, so Mr. Menschel said, “Let’s drink to that.”

Write to Katherine Rosman at katherine.rosman@wsj.com

By SARAH E. NEEDLEMAN

Around 6 p.m. on Oct. 27, two men entered a Houston business establishment and robbed the place while holding a pregnant employee at gunpoint. The robbers made off with an estimated $500, plus $50 and a cellphone from Karina Monita, the expectant mother.

“It was really scary,” Ms. Monita says. “I was shaking.”

Ariel Zambelich for the Wall Street Journal

“Visitors can’t take two steps without someone greeting them,” says Gordon Fowler of 3Fold Communications, which was robbed last summer.

The location wasn’t a bank or convenience store—cash-heavy businesses that typically attract thieves. It was Don Francisco Insurance & Services, a quiet insurance company that generally keeps little money on hand, according the owner, Francisco Diaz. Local police say the perpetrators, who remain at large, are suspected of robbing at least 29 other insurers in the area since May.

These days thieves are really reaching. As traditional targets for theft have beefed up their security and the recession has driven people to desperate measures, robbers are infiltrating corporate offices. Many of the incidences involve small companies with ground-level offices that offer easy access. And sometimes the perpetrators are armed, heightening fear among office workers who thought their sleepy cubicle farms were safe.

While the total number of robberies in general decreased slightly in 2008 from 2007, according to estimates from the Federal Bureau of Investigation, there was an estimated 10.1% increase from 2004. In 2008, there were an estimated 2.2 million burglaries—an increase of 3.6% when compared with 2004 data.

During the third quarter of this year, Crisis Care Network Inc. provided crisis counselors to employees at 206 workplaces—including offices and retail stores—following incidents of armed robbery, up from 185 during the same period in 2008.

“A little heightened vigilance could be helpful,” says Bob VandePol, president of the Grandville, Mich., company.

In the past year, ComPsych Corp. , a provider of employee-assistance programs, has seen a 21% increase in the number of requests for crisis counseling at offices that were robbed while employees were present; requests from banks rose 16%.

But the crimes may be more widespread than that since counselors typically are called in only following incidents in which employees’ lives were actually threatened, says Richard Chaifetz, chairman and chief executive officer of the Chicago firm, which services more than 11,000 organizations and 29 million workers world-wide.

Employees at 3Fold Communications LLC, a Sacramento, Calif., marketing firm, declined counseling after a burglar made off with $6,000 of office goods and personal items in August while they were meeting in a conference room. Gordon Fowler, president, says video surveillance didn’t capture footage of the crime because it covers only the rear of the firm’s office building. He says he filed a police report online after local law enforcement declined to investigate the matter.

A spokesman for the Sacramento police says nonviolent thefts may not be investigated if the perpetrators can’t be identified in any way.

Meanwhile, 3Fold’s 13 staffers are making sure its three entrances are monitored at all times by employees. “Now visitors can’t take two steps without someone greeting them and asking why they’re here,” says Mr. Fowler.

Office thieves may be hard to detect at first glance. In the past year and a half, intruders got into Crosby-Volmer International Communications LLC’s Washington, D.C., office three times during normal business hours.

“All of these people had on ties and were wearing dress pants,” says Robert Volmer, president of the public-relations firm. “People in offices tend to give [strangers] the benefit of the doubt. Whether it’s caterers, deliverymen or people who water the plants, there are always news faces coming in and out.”

Rifling Cubicles

Crosby-Volmer’s D.C. office is on the fourth floor of a large building five blocks from the White House. Mr. Volmer says two of the intruders were caught and escorted out by employees who saw them rifling through colleagues’ cubicles; one successfully made off with a laptop computer. He suspects the intruders snuck in through the parking garage or a side door by closely following someone with access to those entrances. Mr. Volmer emailed a letter of complaint to the building’s owner, Blake Real Estate Inc., in July but says he hasn’t seen any signs of increased security. (Offices of The Wall Street Journal are located in the same building.)

Two months later he says he stopped a person trying to enter a side door and asked what he was doing there. He says the man claimed to be making a delivery but couldn’t name a recipient, so he escorted the stranger off the property. Mr. Volmer admits he didn’t consider the possibility of the intruder being armed and says he wasn’t worried for his safety. “I just went on instinct,” he says.

Stephen Lustgarten, Blake Real Estate’s executive vice president, says, “The crime in that building would be no higher than any other urban environment in Washington. [Crosby-Volmer employees] left their back door open and unattended which is why they had a problem.”

After receiving the complaint email, Mr. Lustgarten said the company briefed tenants on how to prevent future incidents by reminding them to be prudent, and avoid leaving personal items and entrances unattended. He said the property manager replied to Mr. Volmer’s email as well as visited Crosby-Volmer’s office, but Mr. Volmer wasn’t there so the manager briefed his assistant instead.

Mr. Volmer says he used to keep the back door to his office suite unlocked during the workday because the building has a security desk at the main entrance on the first floor for greeting visitors. But he’s been keeping it locked at all times ever since the intrusions occurred.

Face to Face With a Thief

Of course, confronting a workplace thief can be dangerous. “The worst thing you can do in a robbery is resist,” says Dr. Chaifetz.

Earlier this year, he says, his firm dispatched crisis counselors to an office where an employee was pistol-whipped after trying to talk a gunman out of doing harm. “He had a pretty damaged face because of it,” says Dr. Chaifetz.

If you do find yourself face to face with a robber, avoid looking the person in the eye, says Bruce Blythe, chief executive officer of Crisis Management International Inc. of Atlanta. “Keep as much distance as possible,” he says.

Federal law and most state laws require employers to provide safe workplaces, says Jennifer Rubin, an employment lawyer for Mintz, Levin, Cohn, Ferris, Glovsky & Popeo P.C. in New York.

In general, worker-compensation laws prohibit employees from suing employers for workplace injuries except in circumstances involving gross negligence or recklessness, she says.

“It’s hard to make the connection between employer recklessness and injuries sustained during a robbery,” she says.

But even if no employees are hurt during a break-in, the experience can have a lasting impact on a work force, says Debra Holland, a crisis counselor in Los Angeles. Victims often experience symptoms such as anxiety, nightmares and difficulty concentrating for several days.

“People can’t go back to work like normal because they’ve been traumatized,” she says.

One strategy for coping is to pick something positive to focus on for whenever crippling memories of a robbery surface, says Kate Harri, vice president of workplace interventions for Behavioral Medical Interventions, a national post-trauma-counseling provider in Minneapolis. This might be a favorite song or scene from a movie that you’ll play in your head to change the image and the memory, she says. In the past year, BMI has seen a 20% increase in demand for its services following robberies that took occurred in workplaces of all kinds, Ms. Harri adds.

Employees also can feel scathed even if they weren’t present when their co-workers were robbed since what happened occurred in a setting that is typically assumed to be safe, adds Ms. Holland, the crisis counselor. “They’re imaging all the things that could’ve gone wrong,” she says.

Managers can help employees by asking how they are doing—without mentioning deadlines, quotas or other work pressures—to show they care, she says. “It has to be done with delicacy and empathy,” she says.

Write to Sarah E. Needleman at sarah.needleman@wsj.com

By ALEXANDRA LEVIT

Standing out in a crowded marketplace isn’t always easy. And these days, people have seen it all, which means you might only get ahead if you use a compelling and unique approach like Pat Lencioni’s to present your ideas.

Several years ago, Mr. Lencioni, 44 years old, of Lafayette, Calif., was a Bain & Co. consultant who loved writing screenplays and fiction pieces on the side. He didn’t move to Hollywood or New York City to pursue his passion.

Instead, Mr. Lencioni stayed where he was—in the business world—and used his talent to break out of the typical management-consultant mold. He began writing business books that read like novels and featured real characters to which textbook- and theory-fatigued readers could relate. In “The Five Dysfunctions of a Team,” for example, the fictional DecisionTech’s new CEO, Kathryn, must unite a fractured executive team.

Many say Mr. Lencioni’s parables have sold over 2.5 million copies because they attract people who need to be better managers but don’t want to read a traditional business book to do it. “The plot-driven approach makes people want to read to the end,” says Mr. Lencioni. “Readers are also more comfortable passing the books on to friends because they personally enjoyed them and were able to learn without a lot of effort.”

So, how do you infuse your day with creativity if it’s not your natural strong suit?

First, block out some time on your calendar to think about it. When you set aside time to do something, you elevate its importance in your mind.

Practice clearing your head of all of your everyday concerns, turn on some music, and let your mind wander. If you’re having trouble letting go, ask one of your artistic friends what she does to get in the right frame of mind and try adapting that technique to make it your own.

It also helps to look at your life and business from a different perspective. In providing career advice during this recession, for instance, I often pretended I was the person I needed to reach—a reader who was out of work. I asked myself, “What information do I need right now, and how would I best like to receive it?”

If your daily reading consists of one paper or online publication and Google news, you might try expanding your horizons.

In particular, today’s literary fiction and narrative nonfiction books are often worded so eloquently that they can’t help but inspire you to express yourself in a more creative way.

If you read before going to sleep, be sure to keep a pen and a notebook by your bed to jot down ideas that come to you in the middle of the night.

You might also want to start carrying a pad and pencil with you when you commute or travel. Inevitably you’ll overhear or see something that provokes an interesting train of thought.

Mr. Lencioni suggests forcing yourself into an uncomfortable situation to get your mind going—like doing manual labor if you’re a high-ranking executive, for example.

Sometimes just getting out of your comfort zone can spark creative ideas. “And finally,” he says, “you have to be willing to throw stupid ideas out [there], or ideas that no one believes in but you.”

Recognize that creativity doesn’t understand deadlines. Because you can’t depend on a terrific idea to show up at a certain point, you might try to build in long timelines for projects that require creative zeal and try not to put a lot of pressure on yourself.

“My best insights don’t usually show up when I’m sitting at my computer waiting for them,” says Mr. Lencioni. “I’ll usually be jogging or in the shower, or out in the public where my creative mind is stimulated by watching others.”

Once you’ve begun to think more creatively, look for ways to apply this change at work, from suggesting new projects to discussing projects in a new way.

— Alexandra Levit is a business and workplace author and speaker.

Write to Alexandra Levit at reinvent@wsj.com

Kelley McDonald has always loved exploring new terrain. In home videos as early as age 3, “I’m always off by myself, looking under rocks or catching and studying bees,” she says. Today, at 18, the Apple Valley, Minn., college student is studying for a science career in the fast-growing field of nanotechnology—working with materials at the molecular or atomic level.

That makes her one of the lucky ones—a young adult whose career passion is in sync with one of the hot jobs of the near future.

Predicting the jobs or skills that will be in demand years from now is a tricky task for many teens, young adults and their parents. Luckily, there are rich sources of information on the Web, in books, and in most people’s communities; the challenge is to sift through them all.

Ms. McDonald found her passion through a community-college nanotechnology program funded by the National Science Foundation, where one official foresees hundreds of thousands of job openings in the field in the next five years. Other sources include government forecasts, school or college career counselors, and neighbors and friends employed in growing fields.

The richest vein of job-growth information is the Labor Department’s 10-year forecast for demand, pay and competition for more than 300 jobs in 45 categories. The department’s latest biannual compilation, published last month as the “Occupational Outlook Handbook,” is great for sizing up the long-term outlook for most fields. The forecasts have often been prescient—accurately predicting this decade’s fast growth in special-education teaching jobs and the widening range of hot health-care careers, for example.

In the coming decade, engineering—already known for paying college graduates some of the highest starting salaries—is expected to offer the fastest-growing area: biomedical engineering. Jobs in this field, which centers on developing and testing health-care innovations such as artificial organs or imaging systems, are expected to grow by 72%, the Labor Department says.

Among other professions, job opportunities for physicians should be “very good,” the guide says; health care dominates the list of the fastest-growing jobs, capturing 11 of the top 20 slots. While more attorneys and architects will be needed, competition for these jobs will be intense. Psychologists will be in demand, but growth will be fastest in industrial and organizational psychology.

The forecasts have limitations. The Labor Department’s macroeconomic model works on two noteworthy assumptions—that the economy will rebound to long-term growth and that there won’t be any more big shocks like the 2007-2008 recession. Thus its forecasts don’t predict the big job-market swings or sudden changes in the supply of workers that can easily happen in a volatile economy.

That means you could pick a job from the Labor Department’s “fastest-growing” list when you enter college, only to find the field in a slump by the time you graduate. For example, a 2006 high-school graduate eyeing the government’s 2004-2014 forecast for nursing at that time would have read about excellent job prospects, with “thousands of job openings” predicted because experienced nurses were expected to retire.

While that forecast is likely to hold for the long term, the job market for students graduating from college this year is headed in the opposite direction: Thousands of experienced nurses who had been inactive or retired have been re-entering the work force because of the recession.

Similarly, a high-school grad in 2000 might have picked computer programming—No. 8 at the time on a government list of fast-growing, high-paying jobs—only to graduate to the aftermath of the dot-com collapse.

And finally, no economic model can forecast growth in jobs that are still evolving. While the government’s latest handbook contains a supplement on “green occupations” in emerging industries such as biofuels and wind energy, it has no data on many of the jobs these industries are creating, such as fuel-cell technologists.

“Right now, all the projections we have are about a world that existed” in the past, says David Passmore, director of The Pennsylvania State University’s Institute for Research in Training & Development. “We are sitting on the precipice of the next big transformation” in energy production, “and no one in the occupational-projections area knows how to handle that.”

All that leaves much to the resourcefulness, imagination and research skills of young people weighing a career choice. The first step is to explore and try out various fields in order to figure out what kind of work you love and can do well. The next is to learn about broad career fields that are likely to grow; the government’s handbook lists job-by-job career-information contacts, such as professional associations or industry groups. Then, pick a field with this attitude: “I think I’ll jump in and learn what I can learn,” says Bob Templin, president of Northern Virginia Community College in Annandale, Va.

Networking with people in your target industries can help. Russell Wagner, a 20-year-old from Prior Lake, Minn., likes electronics and science, but when he tried robotics in high school, he found it boring. His mother contacted friends in industry and learned nanoscientists are in demand in many industries, developing a wide range of products, from electronic memory devices and coatings for stents to mold-resistant shingle coatings.

At Dakota County Technical College, Rosemount, Minn., where Mr. Wagner and Ms. McDonald are enrolled, program head Deb Newberry says employers contact her trying to fill more job openings than she has students.

All job markets are local, so it is important to check out job demand in the locale where you want to live. Community colleges tune into regional work-force needs and are often set up to provide counseling and work-force advice to the public.

Also, ACT Inc. compiles state-by-state data comparing the career interests of students who have taken its college-entrance exams with the job outlook in each state.

In Virginia, for example, student interest in computer-related jobs is falling far short of likely demand; only 3% of Virginia students are interested in the field, which has projected growth of 23%. To see the data, go to ACT.org, click on “2009 College Readiness Report” and scroll down to the state list; work-force data is on page 10 of each “Readiness Report.”

Of course, many people fare best by holding out for a job doing what they love. Careers in filmmaking are expected to grow very slowly in the coming decade, and competition for jobs will be keen.

But that isn’t stopping Kiel Greenfield. He has loved movies for so long—watching them, talking about them and working with them as a video-rental store employee—that he has decided, at age 28, that filmmaking is the only career for him. He signed on for a film-making program at a respected school, the Zaki Gordon Institute, Sedona, Ariz., and plans to do whatever it takes to land a job in film photography.

“It’s going to be hard,” he says, “but it’s totally worth it.”

Write to Sue Shellenbarger at sue.shellenbarger@wsj.com

By KATHERINE ROSMAN

Before there was Facebook, there was the Wednesday 10.

In 1957, as men in their late 20s, they began meeting—initially over breakfast, then over dinners held at the Sherry-Netherland Hotel or at the Harvard Club in midtown Manhattan. Few were born to means. Many were sons of immigrants. Most went on to become luminaries in their fields—presidents of television networks, partners at banks, editors of magazines.

On occasion, they shared their influence with one another. When member Mort Janklow made a career switch from corporate attorney to literary agent, a fellow member, columnist William Safire, offered himself as a famous first client. When Robert Menschel, a senior director at Goldman Sachs Group Inc., was considering deals involving large consumer companies such as Procter & Gamble, he would pick the brain of fellow club member Ed Meyer, the former chief executive of Grey Advertising.

In a day when “social network” is a buzz term from colleges to board rooms, the members of Wednesday 10 show the benefits of old-fashioned networking. “We were all young kids starting out, and it is easy when you are so involved in building your career to lose touch with other people who are outside your field,” says Mr. Menschel, who has been at Goldman Sachs for 55 years. “It helped me to understand why other people do what they do—which is important in life and in business. You don’t learn anything from talking to sameness.”

The Wednesday 10 comprised, at various points, more than 20 men; the goal was a number small enough to maintain intimacy yet large enough to ensure that at least 10 members would show up for each of the monthly Wednesday-night meetings. No more than two representatives of any one industry were permitted. The idea was to combat insularity, to keep the men connected to people and events outside their own professions.

Last Wednesday, in a prewar Manhattan duplex, the membership met for the first time since the death of the group’s founder, Mr. Safire. At a sit-down dinner of lobster pot pie, short-ribs stroganoff and fall-vegetable slaw, 16 of the group’s members engaged in spirited discussion about the economy, the Palestinian-Israeli conflict and the friendship they have cultivated during the past 52 years.

The members bantered like brothers as they greeted one another over cocktails, hors d’oeuvres, handshakes and a few hugs. “How old are you Larry?” Lawrence Grossman, the former president of NBC News and PBS, was asked as he walked into the reception.

“What the hell kind of question is that?” Mr. Grossman replied. Turns out he was born in 1931, making him the youngest member.

“I am the oldest,” said Charles Sigety, 87, a former nursing-home owner whose family has significant real estate holdings. Later, he pointed out another distinction. “I’m probably the only gentile here tonight,” he said.

“We’ve been meaning to talk to you about that,” replied Mr. Menschel. (The group is about 75% Jewish.)

By today’s definition, the Wednesday 10′s idea of diversity isn’t expansive. “They’re anti- women,” Barbara Walters says. When she worked in public relations with Mr. Safire in the 1950s, she would rib him about the all-male make-up of the group. “No women!” he would respond, Ms. Walters says.

“In 1957, it didn’t occur to us to include women,” says Mr. Menschel. “If we formed it today, it wouldn’t occur to us not to include women.” When asked about the homogeneity, other members point to the many banquets that included wives and their invitations to Ms. Walters, Gloria Steinem and the late “Feminine Mystique” author Betty Friedan, each of whom addressed a Wednesday 10 meeting as a guest. Ms. Walters says she recalls nothing from the meeting she attended. Nor does Ms. Steinem. “It may not please them to know that I don’t remember,” she says. “But I would urge them to change the name to the Wednesday Men’s 10.”

The advantages to membership were many. Mr. Janklow secured Mr. Safire lucrative contracts and also scored book deals for other members: Edward Bleier, a former top executive at ABC and Warner Bros., wrote “Thanksgiving,” a guide to and history of the holiday; George Lang, who owned restaurants including Café des Artistes, chronicled his journey from a Nazi work camp to the height of New York’s culinary world in “Nobody Knows the Truffles I’ve Seen”; and Mr. Menschel wrote “Markets, Mobs & Mayhem: a Modern Look at the Madness of Crowds.” Mr. Safire wrote the forewords to the books of Messrs. Bleier and Menschel.

Mr. Menschel was the chairman of the board of trustees of the Museum of Modern Art from 2005 to 2007. He encouraged curators to attend the one-man photography exhibits of Wednesday 10er Marvin E. Newman, who shot for Esquire, Sports Illustrated and Life

magazine. Mr. Newman’s work is featured in permanent collections at MoMA, the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Whitney Museum of American Art. When members get sick, they call member Mortimer Lacher, a pioneer in lymphoma research who has been on the staff of Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center since 1961. “I’m the house doctor,” he says.

By almost every account, Mr. Safire founded the group after one of his superiors at public-relations agency Tex McCrary Inc. asked him to round up some of New York City’s most promising young businessmen. The rumor was that Ruder Finn Inc., a competing publicity company, had a connection to the Young Presidents’ Organization, a networking group of business leaders.

‘Our Own Organization’

One of the Tex McCrary executives said, “We need our own organization which has a purpose but might feed business to the firm,” recalls Mr. Bleier, who was also a Tex McCrary employee.

Mr. Safire shared the plan with Mr. Lang after the two men worked together on a 1956 reception hosted at the Waldorf-Astoria (Mr. Lang was assistant banquet manager) for Princess Grace and Prince Rainier by the Overseas Press Club (Mr. Safire handled the PR).

Valeche Studio

The Wednesday 10, shown at a 1960s banquet with their dates, began meeting 52 years ago.

They each invited friends and acquaintances. Over time, Mr. Lang says, the group helped him to understand the motivations and concerns of powerful men who worked in New York City’s core industries—the type of men who were his customers. “Through the Wednesday 10, you begin to understand the world,” says Mr. Lang, 85. “I knew about restaurants but not about Wall Street or show business.”

To begin the meetings, each man gave an update on his life. Impending marriages and expected babies were nodded to, but the thrust of the discussion centered on career development. “It was a professional support system,” says Mr. Meyer, 82. By the end of each meeting, he had a snapshot of what was going on in the realms of law, media, art, finance, real estate, public service and cancer research. “It was like reading a newspaper cover to cover,” he says.

Distinguished Guests

For the first 15 years or so, the men invited one guest per meeting to brief them on the issues of the day and answer questions. As the members’ careers got traction, the profile of the people to whom they had access grew. Over the years, the roster included CBS

News’s Mike Wallace, Public Theater founder Joseph Papp, former New York City Mayor John Lindsay, accused Soviet spy Alger Hiss and Roy Cohn, who was a prosecutor during the espionage trial of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg and an aide to Senator Joseph McCarthy during his anti-Communism hearings.

On Friday, Nov. 19, 1971, the group traveled to Washington, D.C., for a black-tie dinner at Blair House. The highlights included a speech on domestic policy delivered by Donald Rumsfeld, who was a Cabinet-level counselor to President Richard Nixon. (Mr. Safire was by then a White House speechwriter.) “I rarely got into black tie, but Bill said it was important,” Mr. Rumsfeld says.

Once Mr. Safire moved to Washington, D.C., the group scaled back the frequency of its meetings to twice a year and stopped inviting guests so the members could spend their time together reconnecting. At one gathering last year, though, the group gave special dispensation to a doctor of gerontology.

“I don’t know why someone thought that was appropriate for this group,” says Mr. Bleier, 79.

‘Daddy’s Ideas’

The men had hoped their sons would create an adjunct group that would one day assume the Wednesday 10 mantle but none took the initiative. “Daddy’s ideas are not the ones children tend to take on,” says Mr. Menschel.

Mr. Safire’s is the club’s eighth death, according to Mr. Bleier. A few decades ago, one member dropped out—Bill Adler, a former publishing entrepreneur. “It was getting to be a very self-admiring group, and it lost appeal for me,” says Mr. Adler, who also says that the idea for the club was his, not Mr. Safire’s. The rest of the membership disputes that contention.

At the apartment of Jenifer and George Lang last Wednesday, the men sat around a large rectangular table set with china, flowers and printed menus. (Mrs. Lang cooked the entire meal but disappeared at dinner time.) The formal discussion began when member Robert K. Lifton, the former president of the American Jewish Congress, was asked to address the peace process in the Middle East. “I see nothing changing in the next five years” unless the interested parties change their patterns of conduct, Mr. Lifton said, after giving his impressions on Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, whom he has known for 20 years. The situation in Afghanistan? “Quagmire,” Mr. Lifton said.

“I’d like to hear a little about the economy from our financial guru,” said the photographer Mr. Newman, in reference to Mr. Menschel.

“The question is, what is going to get 15 million people back to work,” Mr. Menschel said. “It won’t be big companies. It’s going to be driven by the ‘mom and pop economy’ and that takes a long time.”

During the economic discussion, Mr. Menschel had to weather some Goldman Sachs-bashing. Dr. Lacher called one of Mr. Menschel’s colleagues a “bozo.” Stanley Bartels, a banker who made his career at smaller establishments, called Goldman a “monster,” and Mr. Menschel rolled his eyes.

Most of the meal was spent discussing Mr. Safire and the group he built. James Rosenfield, former president of CBS Television Network, looked around the table and gave in to a moment of wistful congratulations. “Each of us started from zero with a common denominator—we were ambitious and hard-working,” he said. “And I look around and there isn’t a single guy in the group who wasn’t a winner in his own world.”

“This group is amazing in its longevity,” added Dr. Lacher.

The brandy had been served, so Mr. Menschel said, “Let’s drink to that.”

Write to Katherine Rosman at katherine.rosman@wsj.com