Simmons College conference focuses on building women’s leadership

Actress Rita Moreno spoke at the 35th annual Simmons College leadership conference held on April 24. Other speakers included former astronaut Dr. Mae Jemison and Hillary Rodham Clinton.

Approximately 3,500 business and professional women turned out for Simmons College’s 35th annual leadership conference to hear an impressive array of speakers, including former Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton.

The theme of the conference, held at the at the Seaport World Trade Center, was “jumping the curve,” a term traced back to Irish philosopher and management futurist Charles Handy, who used the term to describe how companies need to continually reinvent themselves during times of prosperity to continue to be successful.

The message of recreating oneself during good times was further detailed in the various sessions from such dynamic speakers as entrepreneur Zainab Salbi, actress Rita Moreno, former astronaut Dr. Mae Jemison in addition to Clinton. Their messages of being your authentic self, realizing that it’s okay to be vulnerable, and taking risks even if it means failure, was woven throughout their talks.

The opening keynote was delivered by Denise Morrison, the first woman to be named president and CEO of the Campbell Soup Company and who is among just 22 women to lead a Fortune 500 company, spoke on the topic of “Fostering Innovation.”

Zainab Salbi, founder and former CEO of the organization Women for Women International, led a workshop, “Signature Dialogue: The Other Side of War,” in which she discussed how she initially wanted to help these “other women” in such countries as Bosnia, Afghanistan, Rwanda and Syria to tell their stories because she believed she didn’t have her own story to tell.

However, after speaking to women such as a 52-year-old woman in Africa and hearing about her account of being raped, tortured, having her home destroyed, and being left for homeless, Salbi embarked on her own journey of self-discovery. She said she wept for hours after hearing this woman’s story, and realized that she “had been the prison guard of her own fears,” and began to open up and share her vulnerability with these “other women.” After this, she said, she began to see the possibility of change.

The message of empowerment and hope continued with the afternoon keynote delivered by Rita Moreno. The legendary actress, who is only a handful of actors in Hollywood to win an Emmy, Grammy, Oscar and Tony, talked about her childhood in Puerto Rico, coming to the United States with her mother in 1936, and how her mother sacrificed for Rita’s dream of acting by working as a sweatshop seamstress.

At the age of 16, Moreno was signed to a seven-year contract with MGM where she played “dusky maidens.” Even though she was dropped by MGM halfway through her contract, one of the things that kept her believing in her dream was that “hope is an essential part of my DNA.”

The stunning eighty-two-year-old gave a heartfelt and funny performance about her successes and struggles in Hollywood, from her breakout role as “Anita” in “West Side Story” to taking a risk and joining the cast of the children’s television show “Electric Company” — where she was joined by Bill Cosby, Irene Cara and Morgan Freeman — to just completing a pilot written and produced by Amy Poehler.

Moreno, who thrilled the audience with her stories and anecdotes, left the audience with a nugget that “the greatest sin is in your forgetting yourself, on who you can be.”

Continuing this theme of “daring to make a difference” was Dr. Mae Jemison, the first African-American woman to travel in space when she went into orbit aboard the Space Shuttle Endeavor in 1992. Jemison, who served six years as a NASA astronaut, is also a successful entrepreneur and passionate crusader for science education and literacy.

Her highly engaging afternoon session “Signature Dialogue: Exploring the Frontiers of Science and Human Potential” tied in perfectly to the theme of “jumping the curve.”

She began by asking the question “What difference does it make if you have a place at the table and you act just like everyone else, you mind your table manners?”

As a response to this question, she posed the scenarios of “what difference would it have made …” to her own experiences growing up in Chicago; working in developing countries overseas; and using her experience as an astronaut?”

“Make sure that you bring your experience to bear in positions to the solutions; to the questions that you ask, while you’re at the table,” she said.

Dr. Jemison touched upon her background in science and creativity and why it’s important for people to be included in these endeavors that they’re taking on in the future. Her discussion seemed daunting at first, but she broke the ice by describing herself as “a way over 40-year-old African American woman, who is an engineer, a wanna-be dancer, a medical doctor, an astronaut, a college professor, a struggling business owner, a board member of Fortune 500 companies, a lover of chocolates and cherries, a short-term pessimist, a long-term optimist, a lover of cats and someone who hates to wash dishes.” With much laughter from the audience at her bold description of herself, she smoothly segued into how she imagined being in space as a little girl and learning how not to limit herself as a child or as an adult.

The day ended with the delivery of the closing keynote by former Secretary of State and former U.S. Senator from New York Hillary Rodham Clinton. She opened with saying that “advancing the rights and full participation of women and girls here and around the world is unfinished business.”

Clinton continued this message by laying out statistics on how “more than one hundred countries still have on the book laws that limit women’s rights” and that “women hold less that 21 percent of seats in parliament around the world.”

She tied it all together by encouraging the women in the audience to “focus on what we can do for women and girls here at home,” and the many ways that we can improve women’s and girls’ rights — from raising the minimum wage to investing in early childhood development. Clinton ended by challenging the audience to “dare to compete,” and that “women themselves have to develop their confidence to pursue opportunities.”