Women’s Leadership Symposium Supports Women in the Workplace

by Maura Wolf, Faculty for the MA in Leadership | May 28, 2019

This spring has been full of activity related to the leadership development of women. One event, the Women’s Leadership Symposium held at SMC on May 9, brought senior- and mid-level leaders from companies throughout the East Bay and San Francisco area together for an evening of conversation, education, and inspiration. It featured a panel led by Catrice Monson, senior vice president at CBS, and included Reesa Staten from Robert Half, Sirisha Dasu from VMware, and Nicole Robinson, one of the primary authors of Women in the Workplace, a report produced by McKinsey & Company.

“The conversation about supporting women at the mid-level in companies is alive and dynamic,” announced Lise Edwards ’79, MC of the event, a Saint Mary’s College alum and senior advisor to the new Women’s Corporate Leadership Program. She added that the “College is playing a key role by launching this conversation and inviting companies to the table to support and be involved with it.”

In the Leadership Program, we have found that there’s a real hunger among women in the corporate world for access to better tools and education that help them develop their sense of power, leadership, and purpose.

All this was discussed with a room filled with corporate leaders, community members, and faculty from the School of Economics and Business (SEBA) and the Kalmanovitz School of Education (KSOE). Doug Paxton, faculty member in the MA in Leadership, played a key role in the activities leading up to the night, modeling true gender partnership in this initiative. He has been a strong advocate for conversations about women’s leadership that enable the learning from the Masters in Leadership Program to influence new Executive Education programs that SEBA will begin to offer this year.

SEBA Interim Dean Yung-Jae Lee pronounced this “a true collaboration between the two schools.” Keep your eyes out for more to come. To get on the Women’s Leadership mailing list, send your name and email to mpw2@stmarys-ca.edu.