Planning an Innovation Women’s Conference

I love taking on initiatives that are able to impact a change in the community. Recently, I joined the Boston Business Women to spearhead diversity. It’s crazy that positions to include more diversity is needed. Nonetheless, it was disheartening to see that there was only two speakers of color. It is now my mission to make a change to the line up and build a more diverse audience.

One of the largest challenges I had to face was educating the women on the planning committee about the fact that their definition of diversity is nonsense. Yes diversity in work background is great; however at the end of the day every woman wants to see themselves in the speakers at a conference. Not being able to see a woman that looks like me already disengaged me. I started to think about why this might have happened….was it because we are in Boston? Do they know that they have literally left out a huge market?

Even with all these questions in mind — I know that my purpose to create the change that I want to see. Being innovative it is important to create a process, be transparent and ask questions to activate volunteers. It has been refreshing to work with such a great team that want to see the diversity. I can’t wait to announce the women of color that will be speaking at Innovation Women Conference for Boston Business Women.