Women’s Leadership Event
Case Study
The Community Partner:
The community partner we worked with this semester was Beautiful Social. We were put to task to plan and execute the 3rd annual Women In Leadership event. In general, BSocial serves a wide variety of people throughout Saint Joseph's campus, as well as Philadelphia in general. The non-profit organizations that Beautiful Social directly works with help benefit the different communities that each non-profit was created for. Not only does BSocial benefit the organizations that their community partners are dedicated to, but it also serves the students who participate in the course. Students utilize social media to serve as ambassadors for their non-profits, as well as managers working to improve marketing tactics and strategies that the organizations use. Depending on the organization, students will also gain experience with event planning and will facilitate the creation of a successful event throughout the semester. Students that work with B:Social also have a large impact on the community, as well as their partner. Throughout the semester, our group worked on a social media analysis and audit of The Beautiful Social’s existing social media pages, and helped create suggestions on how to improve their pages in the future. We also utilized strategies such as the golden circle, which helped us pinpoint our community partner’s strengths and weaknesses, as well as their goals and purpose.
Challenge:
We were tasked to plan, organize and host the 3rd annual Women In Non-Profit Leadership. This event would feature a panel of Bsocial and Saint Joe's alumni who now hold leadership positions in both nonprofits and other inspiring roles. We wanted to use this event as an opportunity for current students to hear their stories and to network and gain knowledge from them.
One of the first challenges we faced was COVID-19. This made it impossible to hold the event in person, so our solution was holding the event on Zoom, which is a challenge in itself. Zoom is known to have glitches which can cause much concern as to how the event will run smoothly. To reach our goal with these obstacles in mind, we decided to develop a design question that would help us focus on our main objectives. Our design question became: “How can we host a successful virtual alumni panel via Zoom that is 1) engaging to students and 2) discusses timely and relevant issues related to women and leadership?”.
Strategic Thinking:
While being team members and consultants of the Beautiful Social Research Collaborative at Saint Joseph's University, we found that our primary objective focused on women empowerment. This objective was to bring aspiring women with hopes of success in leadership roles upon graduation to an event where they would feel welcomed and appreciated. With the help of women leaders of the Beautiful Social Research Collaborative’s alumni, we hoped to discuss gender-relevant topics such as empowerment, collaboration, diversity, confidence, hiring, bias, strategies, successes, and failures. Once we had established a clear understanding of what we wanted to have implemented during our event, we started to produce content that corresponded with our community partner’s vision. While planning for this event, we wanted to have a sufficient amount of people attend to give women a space to feel comfortable and welcomed and to generate attention to the Beautiful Social Research Collaborative as a whole.
We wanted our event to be as relatable and raw as possible. As a team, we understood the importance of women’s recognition in the workplace, not to mention the anxiety-filled unknown of what to expect in the future. When first creating questions to ask our panelists, our strategy was to curate questions that would inspire and create impactful communication with our audience. We used our Golden Circle as a guide to keeping our message focused and cohesive.
The Women’s Leadership Event’s message is clear; the focal point is in the name itself. While using Simon Sinek’s “Golden Circle” as inspiration, we established our why, what and how of our event. We knew from the start that we were hosting an event to hear women's stories and embrace all the knowledge they have to give. We strategized in making our “why” focused on empowering women, but not only women who work in the corporate world, but more specifically, those who hold leadership positions within nonprofits. We collectively, over the semester, came to the unified understanding that we were going to be able to deliver our message to educate and empower these women by connecting them with students to engage in active conversations about the industry and relevant issues regarding being a woman in a leadership position. With the help of Abbey Piro and Emily McCracken’s relatable, thoughtful responses and a True and False section of the event to connect and engage, our event accomplished our strategic goals of connecting, empowering, and educating women.
Results:
After much planning and hard work throughout the semester, our group successfully hosted the Women in Leadership Event online via Zoom. There were about 35 students and faculty that attended this event. We created an engaging environment and conversation for the attendees that almost felt like an in-person event. We created this environment for the audience by playing Icebreaker BINGO and inviting guests to use the chat to communicate throughout the event. The panelists and the students had a compelling conversation about what it means to be a female leader as well as finding your own two feet in the workplace. We asked the panelists questions. We made sure to ask the panelists a wide variety of questions where the answers would be beneficial for students. We discussed the importance of advocates in the workplace, how to overcome gender discrimination, the importance of female leadership, and how to find yourself in the work force post graduation The answers the panelists gave were truthful and fully encompassed both the struggles and successes they have experienced being a female in the workforce. Some of the questions that were asked were: “Do you think your gender has played a role in your impact in the workplace? How do you define leadership? What is the most challenging part of your job? What advice would you give students unsure of what they want to do post graduation?” We received great feedback from audience members and were told by the panelists that this meeting was one of the best-run Zoom events. Overall, we found that not only is this type of event possible in a Zoom environment, but keeping the audience engaged is the most important part. Since the advice the panelists gave was so helpful and inspiring we went ahead and recorded the event so others could watch whenever they had time. With this video, you can watch everything that happened at our event and see how successful it truly was. You can access the panel here or click the video below.
