Women's conference aims to further careers

Young professionals and future leaders gathered Sunday afternoon on the second floor of the Union as they attended a conference dedicated to showing women of the Lansing area ways to further their careers.

The seventh annual MSU Women’s Leadership Conference brought in about 200 women to learn how to become better leaders and seize the opportunities in front of them, said Jodi Roberto Hancock, the conference’s adviser and an educational program coordinator at the MSU Women’s Resource Center.

Hancock said she wanted people at the conference to leave “with a new sense of purpose and (to be) inspired and really motivated, setting a new goal.”

The conference hosted 19 separate seminars throughout the day, which featured topics including personal finances, budgeting, domestic abuse, social media, life after college, innovation and how to land the job of your dreams.

Each seminar was designed to promote women to be more motivated with their careers, said Katie Judson, an international relations and economics senior and co-chair of the MSU Women’s Initiative for Leadership Development, or WILD, which hosted the
event.

“I would say we are not in lack of women leadership, but you could always have more,” Judson said. “This is a chance to come out to a workshop and learn something new.”

Criminal justice sophomore Crystal Richards said she attended the conference to learn more about budgeting and personal finances, which she said would help with student life. Richards said she was aware of a lot of the topics presented at the seminars, but she said it still was worth the time.

“Even though I know about those types of things, it doesn’t hurt to learn more,” she said.

The conference’s theme, The Courage to Lead, the Power to Make a Difference, was chosen by WILD’s conference committee because courage is one of the most important qualities of successful people, Hancock said.

“We really like the idea of courage and power and how a lot of women have the power to do things, but maybe lack the courage to make those changes,” she said. “(We’re) helping (women) find the strength and the voice and the confidence within themselves to realize the power that they do have.”