As we close out International Women’s Day, hear from one more of our successful Kelley alumnae as she sat down with a current Kelley student preparing to launch her own career.
Natalie Brown, BS’93, is president of the independent, employee-owned financial services firm Mesirow and a member of its board of directors. Based in Chicago, she spoke with Women in Business President Sika Kodzi, BS’22, who is majoring in business economics and public policy and is a William R. Fry Scholar.
For International Women’s Day, our successful Kelley alumnae sat down virtually one-on-one with Kelley students preparing to launch their own careers.
Hear from Yeşim Güra, MBA’91, an international business consultant, independent board director, and executive coach. She spoke from Brussels with entrepreneur Akua Donkor, MBA’23, CEO of Decokraft.
In recognition of International Women’s Day, our Kelley alumnae are speaking one-on-one with Kelley students preparing to launch their own careers.
Michelle Wu, BS’01, is CIO and executive director for APAC at Ingram Micro, a global leader in technology and supply chain services. Based in Singapore, she spoke with Yan Ge, BS’23, who is majoring in real estate and digital technology management.
When Sophie Lahey first came to the Kelley School of Business, she was not particularly interested in the environment or sustainability. It’s now part of her major and career path—she’s a senior studying sustainable business and public policy analysis.
It started with the need to belong.
“My first semester was a challenge,” Sophie says. “I didn’t find my group right away. I questioned if Kelley was for me, even though I loved all my classes. I joined the Net Impact student club because the members were so welcoming. I wanted to make friends.”
Sophie made many friends—a network of likeminded students who care deeply about the world around them and how they can solve problems to make positive change. She also discovered a passion for preserving the environment for future generations.
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Recent MBA graduates Awa Diaw and Chelsea Trotter are winning awards and changing the face of beauty with Nekawa, a socially conscious, all-natural cosmetic made from refined shea butter from Senegal. Diaw and Trotter successfully presented their business plan during the 2018 Clapp IDEA Competition this spring, winning $15,000 to fund their start-up.
Read more about Diaw and Trotter’s inspiration for Nekawa, and their plans to use their company’s success to help Senegalese women.
A top Kelley student and an aspiring armor specialist in the ROTC, Chiara Fitzgerald pushes herself to excellence. She embodies the tenacity and passion the Kelley School of Business values in its students.
Chiara’s strength stems from her life in Dhahran, Saudi Arabia. After doing a tour of duty in the Middle East while in the Army, Chiara’s father decided to continue working as an engineer in the oil industry. Not only did Chiara grow up in the Middle East during wartime, but she also confronted the disadvantages of being a woman in that region. “Education for women is something that is optional in Saudi Arabia, not expected like it is here,” she explained. “In order to get the education I wanted, I knew I would have to leave.”
At only 15, Chiara left her home and her family for a boarding school education in the U.S. (more…)
Note: Women in Leadership is now offered in two formats—an online business certificate and an in-residence business certificate. Please visit the Kelley School of Business Executive Education certificates website to learn more and to enroll in an upcoming program.
Women leaders face unique expectations, norms, and realities in the business world. Discover strategies to become a more effective leader in an uneven playing field in the Women in Leadership short course hosted by the Kelley School of Business Executive Education program.
In this one-day course, you’ll look at how gender roles influence behavior and evaluation of both men and women. You’ll participate in an open dialogue about managing unspoken perceptions of female leaders. And you’ll learn more effective techniques for leading, persuading, and inspiring others.
This has proved to be a useful—and popular—course. During the course’s first session, Kelley instructors presented to a sold-out class of motivated women leaders and were thrilled by the level of interest and participation in the inaugural class. (more…)
An accomplished student leader at the Kelley School of Business, Caroline Cronin was recognized in Poets and Quants Best and Brightest Business Majors of the Class of 2017. Here, Caroline reflects on the leadership lessons she learned in her four years at Kelley.
For anyone unfamiliar with Drew Dudley’s TED talk on Everyday Leadership, I highly recommend investing the 6 minutes and 14 seconds for a bit (read: a lot) of inspiration. In the talk, Drew introduces the concept of “lollipop moments,” moments in your life when, simply by being yourself, you change someone’s life for the better without even realizing it. In his case, that moment was when he gave a lollipop to a terrified freshman on her first day at college. In my case, I was the recipient of a lollipop moment four years ago when I attended Direct Admit Day at the Kelley School of Business.
I walked into the IU Auditorium, feeling pretty small in a sea of hundreds of prospective students, and I was greeted by the ever-enthusiastic Megan Ray, Associate Director of the Kelley Undergraduate Program, with a warm hug and the biggest smile. This moment, so natural for her, told me that I was wanted, welcomed, and valued at Kelley—and this feeling has only been affirmed over the last four years. Kelley is a place that fosters the growth of servant leaders, an environment for which I will be forever grateful.
My dad always tells me to find the balance between confidence and humility, to know that you are never superior to anyone else in the room, but also that no one in the room is superior to you. I think it took me these last four years at Kelley to really understand what he means. (more…)
Picture yourself working on a team. You’re not the leader by title, but you’re responsible for getting a project done on time and on budget. You can’t do it without the cooperation of others, but you feel like you have little power.
In this common business situation, you must lead by influencing others. This is in contrast to the more traditional view of a leader whose focus is on amassing power. Leading with influence is much more powerful because people want to follow you.
Here are three tips on leading with influence:
Tip 1: Get to know people.
It’s important to understand what motivates the people around you. Get to know people—and not just your manager. Talk to your peers, teammates, the staff, the maintenance crew—everyone in your work world. Ask them out for coffee or lunch. Do they have children? Grandchildren? What are their hobbies? Take a real interest in them as people with lives beyond the office.
Susan Jones had reached the second highest post possible at a Cincinnati advertising agency when she started to feel out of sync with the agency’s direction. So she resigned and started her own innovation firm, Seed Strategy, out of a home office in her barn. Today Seed Strategy, the Growth Acceleration Firm, is one of the nation’s leading new product innovation firms, working with top brands all over the world.
Watch the video from Momentum, a digital magazine from the Kelley School of Business.
Susan Jones: Pursuing a Dream from Kelley School of Business on Vimeo.
