Women's Leadership Council Report

Once again, this year the women leading the charge on the 7th annual Women’s leadership Council meeting at Channel Focus created a truly memorable day. The advisory board led by Theresa Caragol, Sandra Cheek and Heather Margolis had promised some unique innovations at this year’s event.

Probably the most important innovation was the speed mentoring, a terrific illustration of how women in the industry can come together to really help one another. In 4 x 15 minute sessions over 20 of the industry’s most powerful women Channel leaders gave their time to help all the other women at the event in one on one mentoring sessions. “I could not believe the response” said Rod Baptie, CEO of the event organizers “every single woman I asked to help said yes, this demonstrates the power working collectively this group can deliver”.

In addition to the speed networking there were 3 panels focused on issues directly affecting women running Channels in the major companies in the IT/Telecom industries and 2 round table sessions.

As Minish Lesparence said, “It was a fabulous event well organized, I am further empowered as I move forward.  The panel discussions were terrific.”  Overall, the delegates gave the event the remarkable score of 9.5 out of 10.

And most importantly the Women’s Leadership Council is having an impact! At the full Channel Focus Conference over 55% of the attendees were women.

So where do we go now? The group has created a yellow flag team, this is women who are prepared to give their time to council members needing immediate assistance with their career. The group is building a link to Boelan Girl,  a charity working to encourage girls to consider technology as a career option in elementary and middle school. To learn more go to https://booleangirl.org/  and there is a special offer for Baptie members to purchase STEM kits using the baptie code: baptie19.

So with new members joining the advisory board, new capabilities being delivered online,  we’ll leave the final comment to the long-time chair of the group Theresa Caragol, “We started 7 years ago with 8 attendees and a 2 hour meeting. This year we had over 110 attendees, and an incredibly engaged and empowered group of women.   This year was amazing, and I know the advisory board and participants are determined to make next year even better… watch this space.