WM International Women's Day (SOLD OUT)

SOLD OUT

West Michigan women are coming together on International Women's Day to celebrate our region as a great place to have a career and be supported by companies that support women. This year’s hosts are Amway, Inforum, Meijer and Wolverine Worldwide.

WOMEN IN ACTION: Building Confidence, Empowering Self and Others

We would like to:

• Help women see West Michigan as a great place to have a career and be supported by companies that support women
• Bring men into the conversation
• Help attendees walk away feeling inspired and equipped with the right tools to achieve their goals, both personal and professional
   

KEYNOTES:

Becoming Workplace Allies: 7 Keys to Powerful Cross-Gender Communication
This fun yet practical presentation will accelerate your communication skills across gender. You will discover ways to reframe your cross-gender communication for highly effective results. Men and women have been socialized differently thus they communicate differently. Join Lenora to learn how to put power into your presence.

This session uncovers the unconscious biases that men and women tend to hold toward each other, how it impacts workplace results and then how to defuse the effect of these biases. This insightful session will help you recognize male/female communication differences without judging them as wrong. You will discover your own communication strengths and determine how to build upon them.

Those who invest their efforts fully in this session will be able:
•    Identify the three most prominent male and female communication tendencies
•    Resist the urge to rely on past biases regarding gender difference
•    Explore the 3 habits that hinder effective cross-gender communication
•    Add power to presence when communicating

Speaker: Lenora Billings-Harris is an international consultant on diversity and business issues and author of The Diversity Advantage: A Guide to Making Diversity Work. She has been included as one of 100 global thought leaders on diversity and inclusion by the Society of Human Resource Management and was named by Diversity Woman magazine as of the 20 top influential diversity leaders in the U.S.

Success by Design: Designing a Life That Works For You

Deliberately designing a life that works for you begins with articulating your vision of success and then strategically moving forward to make that vision a reality.  This talk will explore the need for women to develop and integrate their professional and personal paths and goals in a self-empowered way that recognizes and neutralizes internal blind spots and external challenges.  

Speaker: Arin Reeves is president of Nextions, a Chicago-based research and advisory firm on leadership and inclusion. Arin is the author of The Next IQ: The Next Generation of Intelligence for 21st Century Leaders, which focuses on unconscious bias, and One Size Never Fits All: Business Development Strategies Tailored for Women (And Most Men).

Brand and Deliver: Creating and Communicating Professional Value

Every day we turn to trusted brands to feed, clothe and caffeinate us through our workdays. But we often overlook the impact “branding” can have on our own careers, either enhancing or undermining our value, influence and income. Corporate communication strategist Christina McKenna shares secrets to building a powerful professional brand and empowers audience members  to “brand and deliver” their way to greater opportunity, recognition and rewards.

Speaker: Founder and President of Bluestone Executive Communications, Christina McKenna is the voice whispering in the ear of some of America’s most powerful corporate and community leaders, helping them get the words right when it matters most. Whether they’re facing a roomful of reporters, accepting honors or delivering the speech of a lifetime, McKenna coaches clients to connect with audiences with authenticity, empathy and shared human experience. Her firm’s client list includes General Motors, McCann WorldGroup, Masco Corp, La-Z-Boy, Magna International, Detroit Public Schools, Continental, Valeo, Visteon, Shinola, ZF and dozens of other business, government and nonprofit organizations across North America and beyond. A career communicator, McKenna previously spent 12 years as a TV reporter in Boston and Seattle and served as a fulltime professor of journalism and ethics at Suffolk University in Boston before overseeing corporate communication for a Fortune 500 company. McKenna is a frequent public speaker and regularly writes about public speaking and corporate communication in the blog “Let’s Be Clear.”

BREAKOUT SESSIONS (Attendees will rank the sessions in order of preference with 1 being their 1st choice.)

#1 Perfectionism: The Silent Killer of “Making It To The Top”

The quest for perfection is sabotaging our energy, effectiveness, careers, and lives. As we move up the ladder, the impact of that sabotage gets even more difficult to manage and has even deeper impact on our teams. In this interactive session, we’ll look at why we feel the need to be perfect in all of our roles, why perfection-related challenges like self-doubt, fear of judgement, and fear of failure are so pervasive, how it all is sabotaging us, and what we can do about it.

Speaker: Kyla Ledlow is the CEO and founder of Engage and Retain LLC. The company’s mission is to guide companies in laying a solid foundation for sustainable high performance and great leadership.

#2 Enhance Your Presence

What is Presence? What are the key elements and how do you develop your presence? Jennifer Maxson, Practice Group Leader, at Varnum Consulting will share with you the three main factors that contribute to presence: Confidence, Communication and Emotional Maturity.  This interactive session will include information, tips and practice to help you Enhance your Presence.

Speaker: Jennifer Maxson serves as Relationship Manager and Practice Group Leader for Varnum Consulting. She also is the lead coach for executive level presentations and sales training.

#3 S.T.O.P. Four Steps to Courageous Conversations

Building on the keynote session with Lenora, what do you do when cross-gender communications go sideways due to style differences or you suspect unconscious bias or micro-inequities have crept into the conversation?  The biggest barrier to giving feedback in these situations is the fear most people have when it comes to speaking up in a respectful way to encourage others to interrupt bias or stop insensitive or inappropriate behavior. One of the major reasons people do not speak up more often when they experience unconscious bias or inappropriate behav¬ior is because they do not know how to speak up when they have to interact with the offender on a regular basis. If the offender is your manager speaking up may seem too dangerous. If the offender is a colleague in your department, well it is easier just to be silent. Or is it? That silence perpetuates inappro¬priate behavior.

Lenora’s four-step process called S.T.O.P. for giving feedback to interrupt unconscious bias or micro-inequities is easy to understand and is produces successfully results. Join her for this highly interactive session to learn a technique that can be used at work, home, and even with children.

Speaker:  Leonora Billings-Harris is an international consultant on diversity and business issues and author of The Diversity Advantage: A Guide to Making Diversity Work. She has been included as one of 100 global thought leaders on diversity and inclusion by the Society of Human Resource Management and was named by Diversity Woman magazine as of the 20 top influential diversity leaders in the U.S.

#4 Maximizing mentor and sponsor relationships to fast track your career!

Building professional relationships can be challenging.  How do you find advocates to help you reach the next level?  Learn tips to increase your networking knowledge as you listen to a panel of experts talk about mentoring and sponsoring.

Panelists:

Terry Barclay, President & CEO, Inforum
Brian Kraus, VP Ada Operations, Amway 
Terry Ledbetter, SVP & CIO, Meijer
Jennifer Miller, Associate General Counsel, Wolverine
Arin Reeves, President, Nextions

Presenting Sponsors
 

Diamond Sponsor
 

Platinum Sponsor
 

Gold Sponsors
 

Silver Sponsors
 

Bronze Sponsor
 

Student Table Sponsor