Women’s Leadership and Professional Development Conference: WOW!

  • Article

I spent much of the past three days at the 2007 Women's Leadership and Development Conference at Microsoft campus in Redmond, and it was amazing! Attendees were calling it a rock show because of the obvious power and excitement in the air. This was the fifth Women's Conference, which has increased in size every year and is the one of the larger intra-company women's conferences in the US. I’m not sure of the final numbers, but it sure felt like the expected 4,500 employees all turned up. Full marks to the small planning and implementation team and 100 volunteer planners that organized outstanding food, parking and transportation, world-class speakers, email rooms, bulletin boards, and something for everyone.

My advice to you: if you’re a woman at Microsoft you MUST attend this event regularly (check out the internal web site). If you are a technical woman working anywhere else, or considering a career in technology, you MUST join Microsoft. I believe that Microsoft is the best place for a woman to realize her full potential and change the world. Over 3 days I met the most inspiring, remarkable women!

The goals of the conference are to provide personal and professional development, enrichment and networking opportunities focused on women at Microsoft. This year had over 73 hours of top-notch content, with 50% of the sessions by external speakers from professional skills trainers to bestselling authors, corporate CEOs and university professors.

The women attending were representative of the wide range of roles at Microsoft: executives, managers, and individual contributors in roles ranging from technical to marketing to operations to legal, finance and HR. Microsoft's population is consistent with the technology industry average with women accounting for approximately 25% of our workforce, but it sure looked like more at the event!

We started on Wednesday with a panel discussion featuring five female Microsoft Corporate Vice-Presidents talking about the 2007 Conference theme of Connect for Success, then launched into the sessions, which were 1- 1½ hours long. Five sessions ran concurrently in the wonderful Microsoft conference center that was jammed to the gills with women eager to make new connections and share experiences. The session sizes were 150, 350, 500, 600 and 1000 people and if you didn’t have a pre-registration ticket for that session you stood in a long line of waitlisted attendees to grab a seat on the floor if space was available.

So what did we learn? Check out some of the great sessions and speakers:

· Breaking Through: Getting Past the Stuck Points in Your Life, Barbara Stanney

· Building Strategic Leadership Networks, Audrey Murrel

· Working with You is Killing Me, Katherine Crowley & Kathi Elster

· Invisible Power: Create your world instead of showing up in someone else's! Pat Kirkland

· With the Family in Mind, Valerie Morris

· Fit to Live: The 5 Point Plan to be Lean Strong & Fearless For Life, Dr. Pamela Peeke, Author (Life Skills)

· Claiming the Future / Microsoft Culture Evolution, Norm Tonino and Alexis Fink

· How to Destroy Your Own Career, John Hanson, Sr. Training and Development Program Mgr., Microsoft

· A Networking System for Professional Success, Dana Manciagli, General Manager, Microsoft

· Creating a Culture of Courage™: The New Leadership Challenge, Cindy Solomon, Author

· Developing Leadership Style, Dr. Julianne Malveaux

· Thinking On your Feet, Valerie Morris, Former CNN Business Anchor

· New Leadership, Jason Zions

· Negotiation and Influencing Skills, Colleen Hunter-Gale

· Fierce Conversations: The Underlying Principals, Marlaina Williams, former Microsoft employee

· The Power of Being a Technical Woman, Michele Freed

· Negotiation Skills for Women, Jeanette Nyden

· The Power of Positive Confrontation, Barbara Pachter

· The Princessa - Machiavelli for Women, Harriet Rubin

· Rising Off The Sticky Floor - The Sky Is The Limit, Rebecca Shambaugh

· Diversity at Microsoft Panel Opener: Melinda Huff, Stafford Mays, Susan Gordon, Adrienne Hall, Sheila Gulati, Lauren Gardner, Alain Peracca

· Nice Girls Don’t Get Rich - 75 Avoidable Mistakes Women Make with Money, Lois Frankel

· Interpersonal Communications and Influence, Nikki Kloeppel

· Get Over It and Get On With It, Libby Gill

· Technical Women at Microsoft Panel, Martina Hiemstra, Tara Prakriya, Pam Lahound, Dana Huang, Anu Arora

· Writing for Responsiveness, Kim Shaw, Linda Apsley, Kelly Sagoian

· Lessons Learned During Our 20+Year Journey Panel, Sharon Decker, Cyndee Kraiger, Sally Nguyen, Sandra Jacobsen, Lori Longthorne

· Creative Conflict Management, Mitch Shepard

· Finding Balance at Microsoft Panel, Sue Grinius-Hill, Dawn Larsen, Sarah Fields, Donna Hamilton, Lori Brownell