The Women & Careers Conference was a very worthwhile event. Dr. Jeane Caveness, the Asst. Dean of Students, is the director of this annual event and her planning and vision came together in a very empowering program. The speakers ( professional women) spoke about their professions and how they were able to make the leap from college to career. The keynote speaker was a regional VP for Kohl's. She believes that it is important to have a great mentor and be open to take different paths than originally thought you would take. She traced her career from travel/tourism to working an insurance company, Target and now Kohls. One of my favorite speakers was an environmental attorney who formed her own consulting group. She said that internships are very important and that one of her internships was working on the campaign of Barbara Boxer. Another speaker said that she tried to find a career that best fit her personality and attributes. She became the women's basketball coach at Cypress College. Another speaker spoke about her path to becoming Exec. Producer of Fox weekend radio. She said that she started temping and tried to become the person that the company needed/wanted and it worked into a career. All of the speakers recommended John Wooden's Pyramid of Success.
Though this was a very empowering and very informative conference I thought it was interesting that some of the speakers spoke about how they are perceived, as women, in their careers. One speaker said that she has to give marketing presentations to mostly male executives. She said that the men became more interested in what she had to say because she is prepared, knowledge and confident. This gave me the feeling that in the professional world men are still the default model that women are compared to. At the break I asked the environmental attorney if that is her perception. She said that over time she has seen that this is less the case, but, this may be because of her reputation in the field and her years of experience. She does believe that the comparisons of women as women to men in the same field still does exist.
I have now finished with my service learning project. I am doing my research into the Women's Resource Center to gain all of the historical information I can. I hope that my search is rewarding.
I am so glad that I became connected with the WRC. Wish I had discovered it sooner.
That sounds like a great - though exhausting - event. It is interesting that people spoke about the importance of internships in their careers. When we flew home from SF on Sunday, there were two USC students sitting in the row behind us. Benjamin was enthralled with Dora the Explorer so I was eavesdropping on the USC discussion. What a different experience they have! They both talked about the internships that they did last summer and the new ones they were doing this summer. It was really eye opening. I think these service learning classes at CSULB are one way that our students can get that internship experience even though they can't afford to work for free (or have their dad get them an internship) in the summer.
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