Schedule
To better accommodate you and your busy schedule, this year's program is spread out over 7 months. The Pathway to the Women Who Build includes 7 individual sessions, held January through July, culminating in the Summertime Networking Reception on July 15, 2021.
Check out the available sessions and networking opportunities!
Sessions
Women, Wine & Power
Take part in a virtual tasting* led by a certified sommelier from a female-owned wine bar! Learn about wine and toast to your success in 2021. Engage in a round table discussion with the Women Who Build Summit planning committee as you Identify and set goals for yourself and kick start the new year.
The 2021 Women Who Build Summit planning committee includes:
- Carolina Cudemus, University of Massachusetts Amherst
- Andrea Baker, CannonDesign
- Denise Berger, AECOM
- Kathy Cowles, KC Architects
- Zoraida Ferguson, Pratt & Whitney
- Caroline Fitzgerald, RMF Engineering
- Petina Killainy, Arcadis
- Anamaria Popescu, Berkeley Research Group
- Dawn Tofil-Monde, Red Thread
We have arranged for Stem Wine Bar, of Portland, Oregon, to provide wine to those who want to participate in the wine tasting. Learn more about this female-owned business!
* Wine samplers purchased after Tuesday, January 12 will not be delivered by the event date. The price for the wine is $65 (includes shipping) and must be signed for by someone over the age of 21 when delivered. Please note that the wine sampler can not be shipped to the following states: Alabama, Alaska, Arkansas, Delaware, Kentucky, Oklahoma, or South Carolina.
Fostering Your Best Self During Unusual Times
Celebrate a month of self-care with mindfulness, stress relief, and yoga. Hear from professionals who will discuss the importance and value of self-care. Take part in small group networking conversations, sharing how you are fostering your best self during unusual times. Sheri Strzelecki, Owner of Centered Soul Space, will create a safe and sacred virtual space to answer any and all questions regarding Mind-Body awareness and how Meditation is an approach that cultivates awareness, inner healing, creation & certainty within oneself.
During the second half of the event, enjoy your choice of a breakout session encompassing meditation, yoga, or nutritional wellness.
- Mind-Body Awareness Through Meditation
Sheri Strzelecki will continue her discussion by performing a guided meditation, providing journal prompts to offer a deeper inquiry within yourself, and offering an open space to share your experience. Following your session you will receive a guided meditation and additional journal prompts in your inbox, along with ways to connect with Sheri.
- Life Style Change and Transformation
Gerard Ruck, Certified Personal Trainer, Nutritionist, Licensed Massage Therapist with Get Fit Now Online LLC, aims to dispel some myths about “dieting” and losing weight. Learn about creating new habits, plus permanent weight loss and maintenance. Essentially, you are creating a Life Style Change!
- Women Who Rest (Yoga Nidra aka: Conscious Sleep)
Join Amy Beuschel Di Lillo, Certified Yoga Therapist and Meditation Teacher for Yoga Nidra, a deeply restorative form of mindfulness meditation that anyone can practice. All you need to do is sit or recline and listen (preferably in a quiet space where you will not be interrupted). Di Lillo will offer seated or reclined postural options.
For a rewarding experience, wear comfortable, non-restrictive clothing. Props for a seated position include a chair with comfortable head rest, a blanket, and a washcloth or eye pillow. Props for a reclined position include a yoga mat or blanket, bolster/body towel, hand towel, and an eye pillow or washcloth. Optional relaxation tools include lavender (or your favorite) essential oil and ambient music without words. Suggested Spotify playlists include Relaxing Guitar and the Ocean by Alex Bett, and Soothing Sanctuary by David and Steve Gordon.
How to Lean In Around a Virtual Conference Space
There are two crucial aspects to presenting your best self in a meeting - successfully getting your point across and projecting yourself professionally. COVID 19 caused us all to conduct business differently, including moving our meetings to a virtual room. Meetings are a key way to get yourself noticed. When you "hold your own" in a meeting, you show that you're confident and engaged, and this can highlight your leadership potential. The rules of engagement are different in a virtual meeting.
Brenda Wensil of Flynn Heath Leadership will walk us through best practices of getting your point across and functioning with confidence in a virtual meeting. How do you make your voice heard in a virtual meeting? How do you read the room when there is no room? What do you do if you are interrupted?
After spending 13 years in front of a LIVE television camera, Donna Adamo will teach us how to level-up our on-camera presence in real time! She will share insider secrets of how to look and sound your best on-camera, from setting the perfect shot, to getting the perfect lighting, to what can really sink you, including how to power through those awkward technical moments.
Visit our Pathway Library to prepare for our virtual discussion of best practices.
Straight Talk From A Powerhouse Panel
In this powerhouse panel, we will learn from women who are luminaries in their fields. Join us to hear their stories, learn from their challenges and get inspired by their visions of the future. The dialogue is sure to be engaging, enlightening and energizing.
The panelists are:
- Tracy Brower, Moderator, Principal, Applied Research + Consulting, Steelcase
- Luciana Burdi, Director of Capital Programs and Environmental Affairs, Massachusetts Port Authority
- Joy Clark, Vice President, Partner, Leggat McCall Properties
- Olivia Gardner, Virtual Design & Construction Manager, Bond Brothers
- Sonia Richards, Director of Capital Projects, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Meet Your Mentor: A Virtual Speed Networking Event
Traditionally, a business mentor is a senior professional who has a much greater breadth of knowledge and provides a confidential sounding board, coaching, and support for working through crucial, and often complex, career decisions. A mentor may be from the same organization as the mentee or may come from a different organization that does the same work.
Peer mentoring involves creating intentional, but informal, relationships between professionals at the same or a similar career level. These business connections are a vital source of information, mentorship, advocacy, and insight that keep you going and can advance your career. The value of peer mentoring is enhanced when the ideas shared come from industry professionals with a diversity of experience like the members of the Construction Institute.
Join our unique virtual networking space where you can have meaningful conversations with and learn from and with your peers. You can walk in and out of discussion rooms centered on career development topics like honing your speaking skills or starting your own business. You can also hang out with a friend and have a conversation around the water cooler or on the beach (yes, we will have a beach). Be a part of CI's virtual networking environment in gather.town.
Facilitated conversations include:
- Identifying your “Reason, Season, and Lifetime” Mentors with Andrea Baker & Carolina Cudemus
Used to describe friendships, this well-known poem can be applied to our mentoring connections. As a mentee you seek out guidance not yet knowing in what category the mentor will fall. As a mentor you can look back and see the relational impacts. Join this roundtable discussion which will identify mentors as Reason, Season, or Lifetime with real world examples shared by participants. Read the poem!
- What Got You Here, Won't Get You There with Petina Killiany & Caroline Fitzgerald
Promotions or shifting gears in your career can lead to some self-uncertainty. Learn from these mentors how they navigated the changes in their career paths.
Resources from this session:
- 7 Things You Should Have Done When You Were Promoted, budstoboss.com
- How to Change Careers From One Industry to Another, ziprecruiter.com, January 23, 2015
- Here's How to Translate Your Skills From One Industry to Another, by Kat Boogaard, themuse.com
- Negotiating Your Next Job, by Hannah Riley Bowles and Bobbi Thomason, the Magazine, Harvard Business Review, January-February 2021
- Research: Becoming a Manager Doesn't Always Feel Like a Step Up, by Nishani Bourmault and Michel Anteby, Harvard Business Review, March 9, 2021
- When You Become a Leader Among Peers, by Kevin Eikenberry, budtoboss.com
- The First 90 Days, by Michael D. Watkins, book cover image
- The First Time Manager, by Loren Belker, Jim McCormick, and Gary Topchik, book cover image
- Welcome to Management, by Ryan Hawk, book cover image
- Build Your Conflict Management Toolbelt with Nancy Greenwald & Kathy Cowles
- Curiosity Will Take You Where You Want to Go! with Laura Cooley & Dawn Monde
- PowerPoint presentation
June 10, 2021
The June event has been cancelled.
July 15, 2021
Summertime Networking Reception
Wickham Park, Manchester, CT
Gather with colleague and network in the sun. Explore Wickham Park's beautiful gardens while mingling with friends. Celebrate the presentation of the 2021 Champions of Change awards. Be a part of the Pathway finale!
Join us next year!
Join us for the 2022 Women Who Build Summit, April 13-14, 2022 at the UMass Amherst campus! Details available in Fall 2021.