Women’s Leadership Program Kick-Off Event

On Wednesday night, October 2nd, the founding team of the Women’s Leadership Program: Women Mentoring Women celebrated the commencement of the program that it has been so deeply invested in for the last 10 months. After working with an executive team to construct a formal business plan for this initiative, the founding members finalized the activities, expectations, and goals of the program in order to make it as successful as possible for the participants, mentees and mentors alike. The activities were selectively chosen to be flexible enough for the women to discuss anything that may trouble them in the workforce, to maximize their opportunities for networking, and to embellish on the objectives of their mission statement:

“Prepare the women of Seton’s Hall’s Leadership Development Honors Program for highly successful careers by empowering and educating them about the unique experiences that women face throughout their lives.”

Empowerment and education are the central focuses of this program’s vision for its participants’ development. Like all development, there are steps before achieving the certain desired result and those steps are embodied in the program’s activities. The three major ones are as follows: networking events, such as the Fall Kick-Off Event and Spring Banquet, that encourage women mentees to connect with other women executive mentors that are not their own to expand on opportunities; one-on-one mentoring, which serves as the emphasis of the program, where students are paired with executive mentors based on survey answers to accurately match preferences and mutual goals; and a panel discussion in the spring which will be an open forum to ask female and male executives alike any questions concerning the workforce, expanding on different viewpoints.

The founding team’s ideas were once already proposed to the Leadership Advisory Council last spring, but the presentation on October 2nd to the program’s participants was different. Mentors met mentees. Participants received binders with the guidelines of the program, mentor-mentee agreement, and program timeline. All the work culminated into this night, but it was also the springboard into what everybody would partake in in the near future.

To set the tone for the journey ahead, the founding team invited Rosalie Mandel, partner at Rothstein Kass in Roseland, NJ, to speak to all who attended at the Fall Kick-off Event. As a precursor to her advice, Mrs. Mandel reiterated her history in the workforce to us: how she molded herself into a confident woman who was faced with many social and work-based challenges throughout her career; how she set very high goals for herself and is achieving them every day; how she turned work-life balance into an “integration” instead of two separate entities; and how she clamored for a change in her company so that it incorporated a women’s program among all else so that the power at the top is equal in gender. Mrs. Mandel’s speech focused mainly on the confidence that the women need to face their lives in the direction that want it to. Confidence is the foundation of getting to where a person wants to be and how to achieve any goal that is important to the person. Although those were just a few highlights of a phenomenal speech, her words struck a chord with every person in the audience and instilled the excitement and passion everyone needed in order to start strong with this program.

After her speech, all the attendees enjoyed dinner and networking. The event lasted from 6 o’clock PM until 8:30 PM. It turned out to be a huge success for the founding team and the rest of the participants. Michael Reuter and Dean Joyce Stawser also said a few congratulatory words that depicted the utmost faith in the success of the Women’s Leadership Program.

As of now, the Women’s Leadership Program is exclusive only to the Sophomore and Senior classes of the Leadership Development Honors Program. One of the founding team’s long-term goals is to spread this Women’s Leadership Program to the remainder of the Stillman School’s student body and eventually all of Seton Hall University, so that each woman increases her chances of ensuring a career of fulfillment and ample opportunities.

Congratulations to all the women in the program! We look forward to hearing about the progress being made and hope that all your endeavors are filled with much success and happiness!

If you wish to read more about the Women’s Leadership Program Fall Kick-off Event, link the link below:

http://www.shu.edu/news/article/463795#.Ultfv1Csim5

The Women’s Leadership Program founding team. (From Left to Right) Alison Kruse, Rowena Klein, Sheena Shah, Dhara Patel, and Noel Girgenti.
Photo courtesy of Mike Reuter

Michael Reuter posing with speaker Rosalie Mandel
Photo courtesy of Mike Reuter

• ← Noel Girgenti’s First Group Mentoring Session – Group 8, Session 1
• National Society for Collegiate Scholars Inducts Michael Reuter →