Last Friday, I had the opportunity to attend the St. Louis Business Journal Women’s Conference in downtown St. Louis, Missouri. I attended the conference with several other female leaders in the School of Adult and Online Education at Maryville University. The conference was an excellent opportunity for me to network with other professionals in the area and learn about other companies and businesses.
I began the morning attending the keynote session titled “A View from the Boardroom: How Great Leaders Lead” by Patricia Sellers, editor at large for Fortune Magazine. During this session, Sellers talked about the common traits of outstanding leaders and explored stories of prominent people in industry. She provided valuable advice, but the most prominent idea I took from the session was the concept of “leaning in,” embracing opportunities and pushing forward.
Next, I attended a break-out session titled “Building Success Through Social Media” by Courtney Frank, Fusion Marketing, and Danielle Grubbs, AVALA Marketing Group. It was great watching this session because the women speaking were relatively young, very similar to my own age. Frank and Grubbs discussed the necessity of embracing social media in this new information-age market, and provided several tips on integrating social media into a business marketing strategy. I thought this session was interesting because the girls discussed the importance of data in figuring out the best tool to use for marketing.
The luncheon keynote was another great session: “Overview of Women’s Leadership Today in Business in the US: Opportunities and Solutions for Women in their Careers” by Tiffany Dufu of the White House Project. Dufu provided an inspiring speech, essentially a call to action for women to embrace leadership within industry.
The final break-out session that I attended was by far the session that resonated most with me. The session was titled “Coffee Lunch Coffee: A Practical Field Guide to Master Networking” by Alana Muller. The session was great and provided information that I plan to integrate into my professional life in the future. Muller emphasized the importance of not only establishing connections, but cultivating relationships with those individuals. And once a relationship is established with an individual, reaching out to other individuals that that individual recommends… creating a giant network of connections. This session was very hands-on, and I even established connections with several other women in the room. At the completion of the session, Muller provided a copy of her book covering the topic in which I am very excited to begin reading.
It was a long, exhausting day, but I am very grateful for the opportunity. Not only did I establish new connections at the conference and learn valuable lessons, but it was also a great opportunity to get to know my team better (not to mention a great first experience in downtown St. Louis!).