Some Leaders are Born Women
3/28/2008
Responding to an alarming and growing shortage of leadership in non-profit organizations, the nonprofit Women’s Leadership Caucus will bring its seminar series, Some Leaders are Born Women, to the University of Mount Saint Vincent on April 1, 2008. Led by Cindy Dougherty, former president of the National Benevolent Association, the series will be presented at several universities across the country this spring. It will bring young women, with an expressed interest in the nonprofit sector, together with demonstrated leaders in the field.
Some Leaders are Born Women prepares young women for nonprofit leadership by providing them with tools they need to tackle the challenges common to all leadership positions and those specific to women leading nonprofit institutions.
The series will include leadership building exercises, sessions on the basic skills necessary to oversee nonprofit institutions’ operations, and a discussion of issues facing women leaders in the mission-driven nonprofit sector. Corporate and non-profit female executives will present and interact with the participants on all levels.
According to Dougherty, “It is naïve to let young women heading into leadership positions think that gender doesn’t matter in leadership issues…it does, so we are about the business of equipping them with a ‘women’s leadership tool kit’ before they hit the road to the top.”
The day-long event at the College of Mount St. Vincent takes place in Smith Hall from 8:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m. Six other institutions will be participating in this program throughout the year, including Syracuse University, St. Francis College, Fordham University, Southern Vermont College, the Borough of Manhattan Community College and the University of Michigan.
The workshop, which is filled to capacity, requires no fees and was underwritten by corporate sponsorship. The mission of the Nonprofit Women’s Leadership Caucus is, says Dougherty, “to put experience in touch with fresh talent and create a pool of gifted and prepared young women, bent on and ready for non-profit leadership.”