International Women’s Day 2012
By Maria Shpokayte
Last week on Thursday, March 8th, 2012, graduate student club Zicklin Women in Business (ZWIB) hosted their 3rd annual International Women’s Day event at Baruch College. For the third time in the past three years, a panel of distinguished guests and a large group of graduate students gathered at Baruch College’s Newman Library, Room 750, to address the ever so insightful and inspiring topics pertaining to women’s ways of leadership. In fact this year’s speaker panel was dedicated fully to this particular theme: “Women’s Ways of Leadership”.
International Women’s Day has been observed since the early 1900’s. Every year, on the 8th of March, thousands of events are held throughout the world to inspire women and celebrate achievements. ZWIB celebrates and connects women, and it was a perfect day to join students and panelists in a leadership discussion.
To start the event, Tina Dong, President of ZWIB, welcomed everyone with an enlightening speech about women and how far we have come since the 1900s. Following Tina’s speech, students and guests were fortunate to hear from Dean Elliot himself, who gave an inspiring speech at the podium before introducing the audience to the day’s moderator – Pei-Sze Cheng, an award-winning reporter from News4 New York, WNBC-TV.
Pei-Sze Cheng took the stage to moderate the speaker panel portion of the event. ZWIB had an incredible panel of high-caliber women this year: Denise L. Pease – Regional Administrator, Northeast and Caribbean Region, U.S. General Services Administration, Linda Gharib – SVP, Consumer Marketing Digital, Citi, Mary Dean – VP, New York Life Insurance, Megan Kane – Managing Director, Credit Suisse, Stacey Ryan-Cornelius – Sr. Partner, Worldwide Controller, Ogilvy & Mather Worldwide, and Sunita Singh Maclaren – Founder and CEO, WorldWise, LLC.
The event proceeded with a short introduction of the speakers and continued with questions on Women’s Ways of Leadership: “ We believe you started your career at entry level at some point in your life. As a female, what would you say is your most important asset/contribution to your career that helped you succeed and got you to where you are today?” Questions such as this one were asked during the panel discussion. Our panelists were fully engaged and energized, even funny at times! Stacy Ryan-Cornelius told a story about how she tried to explain to her boss about needing to be with her family at times and that she “didn’t have a wife” like most men at her firm because she was the wife!
Students heard valuable advice on career, leadership, and women’s ways of leading in today’s business world. It was delightful to hear Linda Gharib take a different take on career switching: “I was working at a law firm and I wanted to switch to digital. I knew that to do that I would have to take a step back. MBA helps you switch gears. The position I got was with much less responsibility, but I didn’t see it as a position with less responsibility. I saw it as an opportunity to get training.”
Following the informative, insightful, and inspiring panel discussion, students had a chance to ask more questions during a Q&A session. To end the event, Moheeta Tamrakar, ZWIB’s VP of Marketing, delivered a closing speech by thanking the audience and the ZWIB group. Afterwards, students had a chance to network with the panelists and fellow classmates. If you missed this incredible event, take a look at some YouTube videos on ZWIB’s YouTube page
http://www.youtube.com/user/ZicklinWIB
ZWIB is committed to creating a long-term network for the Zicklin community. We actively connect our 500+ members with distinguished alumni and professionals. We host discussions on important topics such as successful negotiation techniques, the use of emotional intelligence, and the breaking of the corporate glass ceiling. For more updated information about ZWIB, please visit our website or add us on Facebook and LinkedIn to take a look at our future events. Follow us on twitter @zicklinWIB.
The Graduate Baruchian 