Essence McGill Arzu
Increased demand and efforts to diversify the Greater Boston Chamber of Commerce Women’s Leadership Program have led to a doubling of participants this year, and the addition of a second instance of the class.
Started in 2010, the Women’s Leadership Program is a year-long program designed to help participants enhance their leadership skills and become engaged in Boston’s civic and business communities. The program is conducted in collaboration with the Simmons College School of Management.
Greater Boston Chamber of Commerce President and CEO Paul Guzzi said the program has been successful at working to foster a new generation of female leaders for the Greater Boston community.
The women’s program is one of three leadership programs run by the chamber. The other two are the Boston Leadership Program and the Executive Leadership Program.
While all have done well, chamber Executive Vice President Katy O’Neil said the response to the Women’s Leadership Program left the chamber with little choice but to double the number of participants for the 2014-15 program, which just kicked off at the end of September.
The program features seminars, workshops, roundtables and other events focused on personal leadership development, negotiation, skill building and networking. The events run from September until June, and typically there is one per month.
For the past four years, the program has typically had about 50 participants, but this year will serve 114 women.
O’Neil points out that the program could have even more. As it is, the chamber had to whittle down to the current number from about 150 candidates nominated.
“For the last four years we have had about 50 to 60 women a year, but we were getting nominations of over 100 without even really marketing and promotion,” O’Neil said. “It was our sense if we were turning away so many women, there really was demand in this area.”
While there are still more women interested in the program, O’Neil said that the chamber felt the program had to be capped for this year. Organizers are concerned that if there are too many women in each class it could impact the effectiveness of the program. For now, running two simultaneous classes will have to do.
“We want to make sure the women in the group get to know each other and develop their network,” O’Neil said.
The program features women from a variety of professional sectors, including business, government and nonprofit.
The chamber has also made efforts to diversify the pool of women. According to O’Neil, all the participants benefit from the exposure to women from different backgrounds, educations and heritage.
She said that engaging communities of color is on the forefront of the chamber’s efforts with everything it does, but particularly in its leadership program.
“It is a major priority for us,” she added.
In Boston, a majority minority city, O’Neil acknowledged, it is crucial the chamber’s efforts reflect the city it is serving. She said that the chamber has had the most success engaging communities of color through its outreach to women and with programs like the Women’s Leadership Program.
“I have been really excited about the amount of diversity I see within the program,” she said. She estimates that the program is about 20 percent diverse.
“We think the more diverse the group is, the better their experience is, so we are definitely promoting that and doing all that we can to make sure it is diverse,” she added.
Alina Savu, who works in advisory services for PricewaterhouseCoopers and took part in the program last year, said one of her favorite parts of the program was the networking opportunity and meeting so many different women.
“Being part of this program made me realize most of the networking I do is within my industry…. This program goes across industries and it was really interesting to meet women from different fields,” Savu said. “It was neat to be able to learn about the different development paths in those organizations and learn lessons about personal and professional growth from different industries.”
She added, “The program is very diverse professionally, but also culturally, which adds another aspect to it, and I enjoyed exposure to those different perspective as well.”
Savu also said she values the peer group she was in during the program, which gave her several close program participants with whom she could share career issues and problems.
“I was lucky in that the two peers I had were very engaged,” said Savu. “I felt like I could really open up and get to the heart of the issue, and I got some great advice from my peers.”
She said she has already recommended the program to others and would highly recommend it to anyone.
With over 300 women already having graduated from the program—and over 100 more after this year—the chamber is starting to increase its reach through it.
O’Neil said the feedback from those who have been through the program has been great and many are interested in some of the chamber’s other leadership programs.
“They say they do not want it to end. They want to continue. They want to do more with the chamber and they want to do more to connect,” she added.
The chamber is also making every effort to keep the young women leaders involved. “We are working hard now on alumni engagement and helping these women to stay connected,” O’Neil said.
Many alumni have also continued to meet and network with other women they met in the program, creating LinkedIn groups and holding after work or lunch events.
“These meetings and networking opportunities are going on outside the arena of the chamber, and that is exactly what we want to happen,” O’Neil added.
