While having coffee with Anthony Davidson, the dean of the business school at Manhattanville College in early 2014, Kathy Meany discussed the topic that she had built her career on: the professional development of women.
Meany pointed out to Davidson that women were still on unequal footing with men in the business world, but they were in a unique position to make changes. Just over a year later, the result of that conversation will be fully realized this month when Manhattanville opens the Women”™s Leadership Institute, which is sponsored by the business school.
“Women still face issues in managing personal and career goals in the corporate environment,” said Meany, who launched her own company, Phoenix Learning Solutions LLC, after a long career in corporate training.
- Kathy Meany
Meany, who is the institute”™s director, said “Because women often take on a nurturing role, they can be unsure of how to act effectively in positions of power at work.”
Literature on the institute provided by Meany said that the vision is to “provide any woman with the skills and resources to succeed, and a place where women collaborate to define, create and expand leadership opportunities by taking ownership and developing executive presence.”
A community initiative by design, the institute will target working professional women from both entrepreneurship and corporate environments with the aim of helping them build professional skills aimed at advancing their careers. The institute”™s programming will kick off with an open house Jan. 29 that will feature a networking session and guest speakers.
“The guest speakers are all quite accomplished women,” Meany told the Business Journal. The speakers, she said, “want the focus to be on the institute, and so we aren”™t advertising the speakers at their request.”
On April 14, the institute will host a panel discussion, and on June 3 it will host a daylong women”™s conference featuring workshops, speakers, a panel discussion and networking activities all aimed at improving business-related skills for women. Meany said that women”™s business careers often suffer from a combination of stereotyping and skill deficiencies. Those skill deficiencies are something Meany hopes the workshops at the institute will help to correct.
“The workshops will all be centered around professional development and helping to build skills such as personal branding, executive presence, negotiation and financial business acumen. Many times, women aren”™t exposed to these topics,” Meany said, who used communications as one example. “It”™s not that we want to think or talk like a man; we have to. But a woman can speak the same sentence a man does, and it has a totally different meaning.”
The institute plans to start an academic certificate program in the third quarter of this year and a mentoring program that will pair professional women with experienced female business leaders in late 2015.
According to a report released by the American Association of University Women in September, an American woman working full time makes 78 cents for every dollar made by a man. This pay gap extends to every state and nearly every profession, though it differs from state to state and field to field.
Fifty-one years after President John F. Kennedy signed the Equal Pay Act of 1963, an amendment to the Fair Labor Standards Act intended to abolish gender-based wage disparity, Meany hopes that the Women”™s Leadership Institute will continue to narrow the gender pay gap.
“While we”™ve been somewhat successful, it”™s still a struggle,” Meany said. “Even though women are now very well-educated and salaries have improved, it”™s still not ”˜apples-to-apples.”™”
Would be helpful if links were provided to register for the April and June events. No mention is given on how to sign up for these.