Late last year, four women from different professional backgrounds had a serendipitous meeting. Separately, they’d all been searching for resources and support to help them advance as leaders in their fields.
Unable to find what they were looking for, the women realized that, together, they could develop the programing they sought. And with that, the She Geauxs women leadership conference was born.
“By coming together, the amazing thing is that now we are creating what we want and we are offering it to all of the other women in Baton Rouge,” Dima Ghawi, a Baton Rouge-based international speaker and business consultant, tells Business Report in a feature from the current issue.
The daylong event, entitled “She Geauxs: Inward, Outward and Onward,” will take place Nov. 16 as part of the 2016 Baton Rouge Entrepreneurship Week.
The conference will consist of three rounds of breakout sessions, with a speaker in each session covering a different aspect of the inward, outward and onward theme. Afternoon panel discussions will be geared toward women at specific points in their careers, including early career and women in leadership roles—both in business and community positions.
LSU’s Leadership Development Institute and College of Human Sciences and Education are also involved in developing the event.
The organizers include Kristie Galy, Ph.D. candidate and director of sponsored research at the College of Human Sciences and Education; Rachel Henry, director of professional education and special events at the college; and Tracey Rizzuto, director of the School of Human Resource Education and Workforce Development.
With a diverse collection of talents, from consulting and leadership development to event planning, the organizers hope to deliver an experience that permeates much deeper than a traditional leadership conference.
“In many cases, when I go to women leadership conferences, they are focusing on the issues; so they are sitting and talking about ‘where is my balance?’ or ‘we are not being respected’ or ‘we are not being given opportunities because we are women,’” Ghawi explains. “With this conference, we want to look at the solutions. We know what the issues are. Let’s work together to figure out what we need to do individually and as a community to support the advancement of women.”
Read the full feature. Send your comments to editors@businessreport.com. To register for tickets to the She Geauxs conference, or for companies interested in becoming event partners, visit www.chseproed.com/SheGeauxs2016.
