The Women’s Leadership Program at Cal State Fullerton’s College of Business and Economics will host a seminar on March 8 in honor of International Women’s Day. Register for the event today.
Designed to prepare students and alumni to address the challenges and opportunities that today’s women face in the workforce, the event will be headlined by keynote speaker Jennifer McCollum, former CEO of leadership development firm Linkage Inc. and author of the 2023 bestseller “In Her Own Voice: A Woman’s Rise to CEO.”
“For the last 23 years, I’ve been building, growing and managing businesses in the leadership space, particularly focused on advancing and accelerating women leaders,” said McCollum. “I believe that while we have made progress as women leaders, we are not making progress fast enough.”
McCollum noted her experiences as the “only”: the only woman, the only leader in the room. She had to overcome these stereotypes as she launched her career in the 1990s and 2000s.
In recent years, with the #MeToo movement and COVID-19 pandemic, awareness has grown of the challenges that women face.
While many of these challenges are external biases, also significant are internal self-limitations that can inhibit women from reaching their full potential unless they make a concerted effort to rise higher.
“The purpose of my book was to create more awareness of what women leaders themselves can do and what organizations can do to support them,” said McCollum.
“We were tracking what was happening both with the impact of COVID-19 on women and other underrepresented populations and the rise and surge of the social justice movement. This helped us better understand with greater sensitivity the impact of women in the workforce and women who had been pushed out of the workforce due to the pandemic.”
Today, McCollum is concerned that the fall of diversity, equity and inclusion efforts is negatively impacting the move toward gender equity that grew out of the pandemic.
Read more about McCollum’s mission of empowerment and what awaits attendees at the International Women’s Day seminar.