WOC2017 Executive Session Descriptions

Listen to this article

Concurrent Executive Sessions — 1:15 p.m. – 2:15 p.m.

Innovation Strategies (Business Track)

Executive Session Speaker: Alpa Inamdar

Room: North

In this session, we will discuss how innovating leaders can transform the culture of a company with the support and guidance of a multilayered group of advisors.

Takeaways will include:

• Leading through change
• Leadership and vision
• Organizational, cultural, and technological transformations
• Selecting your core group of advisors

Choosing STEM (STEM Track)

Executive Session Speaker: Dharma E. Cortés, Ph.D.

Room: West

Dr. Cortés will share her trajectory as a multidisciplinary and bilingual social scientist, and lessons learned from the multiple business sectors she has been a part of–academia, public health, and technology. She will also highlight the importance of mentoring and empowering young women and men of color along the way. Dr. Cortés will describe how philanthropy and real life experiences have influenced her leadership approach.   

Takeaways will include:

• Mapping the trajectory of your career
• Embracing science as a career
• Developing your leadership approach
• Staying relevant in STEM

Concurrent Executive Sessions — 2:15 p.m. – 3:15 p.m.

Stepping into Greatness (Business Track)

Executive Session Speaker: Donna Bonaparte

Room: North

Are you prepared to step into a role where you can be your “best self”? How are you leveraging your assets, including your diversity? Regardless of where you are in your career or life, we all seek to thrive, achieve optimal success, and ultimately, “step into greatness.” To achieve this, we must examine our strengths, our passions, and opportunities, then map them to the right role, responsibilities, and the right environments.

Takeaways will include:

• The necessary action steps for the journey
• How to define yourself: Are you an innovator, an influencer, or a collaborator?
• Valuable insights which can propel you further
• How to be aware of what derails or accelerates your achievements

If you have ever wrestled with these and other questions, this session will help you begin the process of identifying your vision, your goals, your assets, and your “best.”

Humanity in STE(A)M (STEM Track)

Executive Session Speaker: Meena Kothandaraman

Room: West

We are in an age where technology garners attention. It is a way of life, an extension of the human body, and integral to day to day aspects. In creating new offerings, across product, service, and space—where does the human element stand? How is it considered in this complex web of data, technology, science, and metrics?

Takeaways will include:

• Ensuring we are not just driven by numbers. Human stories have a presence in any experience that brings together data, technology, science, and metrics.

• Empowering people in organizations to think human. We have inverted the shape of the organization from top-down to bottom-up, but we have not equipped people to think about what it means to service people in a human way.