The Positively Powerful Women’s Morning, an event in the style of the popular TED talks that was held on the LSU campus today in conjunction with Baton Rouge Entrepreneurship Week, could be the launching point for an even larger women-focused event in Baton Rouge next year.
“We want to expand this event into the Louisiana Women’s Leadership Conference coming in July of 2015,” says Melinda Stallings, the creator of the Positively Powerful Women’s Morning.
Stallings, who is the founder of Melinda Stallings International and a business development consultant for LSU, says she is working in conjunction with Visit Baton Rouge to find the best venue for the new conference concept and hopes the success of the Positively Powerful Women’s Morning will provide some momentum.
Throughout the morning, Stallings and two other nationally recognized public relations professionals shared their advice for how to promote positivity in the workplace and in all aspects of daily life.
“Life doesn’t have to be hard,” says Stallings. “We can choose to live in the negativity that is making our life hard or, instead, we can shift to the positive.”
Sandy Lawrence, founder of Houston-based Perceptive Public Relations, discussed how to gain positive publicity, presenting the audience with the “5 Tips to Unlock the Publicity Vault and Get Noticed by the Media.”
Lawrence, now 71 years old, has been named No. 17 on Houston’s list of the Top 100 Social Media Power Influencers and attributes her success to building relationships of integrity.
“I’ve paid my dues to build relationships,” Lawrence says. “Genuine relationships full of integrity; those are the relationships that build publicity.”
Building genuine relationships requires building your own “powerful personal presence” to successfully form such relationships, says Sandra Dee Robinson, media trainer and founder of Charisma on Camera.
“If you don’t know who you are, you can’t move people to action,” Robinson says.
Women from LSU’s Public Relations Student Society of America helped host the Positively Powerful Women’s Morning, and a portion of the proceeds will go to The Red Shoes, a local nonprofit center offering women opportunities for spiritual enrichment and personal growth through book and film studies, weekend retreats, and workshops. —Gabrielle Braud
