Personal Narrative: My Engagement Interviewees

This semester, we learned specific ways to build our leadership capabilities by reading “How Remarkable Women Lead” by Joanna Barsh and Susie Cranston, researching Boston women leaders, interviewing a present day woman leader, and reading a group book. Throughout all of these resources and research, common themes of how to be a successful leader emerged. Not only did I learn more about leadership in general, but I also found ways to improve my own leadership without going too much out of my comfort zone. The important lessons of leading with perseverance, framing, and an activist's mindset thoroughly influenced my identity as a leader and gave me new tactics to grow as a person.

When interviewing a leader in an organization in order to discover their leadership style one must ask critical questions. I had the opportunity to interview Casey Aguirre who is a Team Manager at the Salem Call Center for T-Mobile. Casey has been with T-Mobile for over 11 years. In this interview we discussed her leadership style, the steps she took to become a leader, her biggest challenges, and her greatest achievements among other things. While interviewing Casey I kept in mind the connection between women in leadership and the cultural disadvantages and advantages that women in leadership

The interview was scheduled a month in advance and the interview questions were shared with the leader ahead of time (see Appendix). This allowed the leader to think about how she wanted to answer the questions. When the leader was asked to participate in the interview she was humbled by the request and enthusiastically agreed to take part. The interview questions were geared towards understanding leader’s leadership style and attributes as it relates to the leadership theories and the LEADS framework. The interview was conducted in leader’s office, lasted approximately 45 minutes and recorded with leader’s consent. The atmosphere during the interview was relaxed, the leader was open to answering the questions and the answers seemed

Having a diverse panel of women from different ethnic, economic, political and social walks of life, each honoree shared how she made a mark in her field and gave audience members advice on how to be successful and overcome

Gender inequality has had a huge impact on american history. Women have struggled to advance in numbers in the business world for various reasons including gender discrimination. The International Labor Organization (ILO)

Promoting women’s equality in the workplace has been a central focus throughout my professional life. As a journeywoman carpenter (prior to my current academic career), I volunteered as a project leader for the Oregon Tradeswomen Inc., OTI (http://www.tradeswomen.net/) in Portland, Oregon. In this role, I taught women in OTI’s apprentice program introductory skills that allowed them to enroll in various trade union training programs throughout the Pacific Northwest. The goal of this work was simple, to increase the number of women in careers that were predominately male-dominated. At every stage of my academic career, I’ve made a concerted effort to mentor female students, and took great joy in watching them succeed. I believe that serving

This topic is not only relevant for the future and success of women and minority leaders, but also for the growth of organizations as well. Organizations would benefit by embracing women and minority leaders and taking into consideration the fact that their contributions can be valuable. In addition, women and minorities can also benefit from understanding why being a successful leader has become difficult. Only through fully understanding their obstacles can they fully be able to achieve greatness as leaders.

2017 Women in Leadership Conference has opened my eyes and my heart to a wonderful world of opportunities. These successful and inspirational speakers; Dr. Wendy Murphy and Bentina Terry, along with the list of phenomenal of panelist really stood out with ear piercing words like be myself and be confident in what I know. Having mentors would be one key to my success that I learned and can begin today. Mentors provide support, motivation, understanding, and guidance. The one last thing to drive it home was Bentina Terry outstanding and unforgettable lecture. I will never forget her words of Boundless instead, of fearless, who’s going to stop me, and never jump if I don’t have wings. The needed learning tools given in this

Our society is constantly working to become one that is completely acceptable of all people, no matter where they come from or who they are. However, as our society becomes more socially and politically aware of the discrimination that can be unfairly bestowed upon people, are the workplaces of America following suit in that level of awareness? Unfortunately, many studies prove that the American workplace is not one that is equally accepting, especially when it comes to gender. While we have truly come so far in the past century with the acceptance of women in the workplace, it seems as if we haven’t come far enough. There is still evidence of sexism in the workplace and a gender wage

On November 14th, I attended the Panel of Powerful Women presentation. This panel consisted of women sharing their experiences the their field of work and study and how their subject position affected these experiences.Many women shared stories of discrimination in the workplace, such as one women who spoke about her experience running for office in her small town. She faced a lot of challenges because going into it she didn't know how corrupt the system truly was and that there essentially was no path for her to succeed since she was the first black woman to run for office. Another spoke about how her family background inspired her to get an education. Her parents were immigrants with five young kids and her mother was adamant that all her

In fact, progress for women and minorities in terms of both pay and power has stalled or regressed at many of the nation's biggest companies. This inequality shapes perceptions about who can or should be a leader.” (Hymowitz, 2008) This statement shows applicable reasoning as to why it is necessary to have equal pay between women and men in the workplace. When a company decides they are going to pay someone less money solely based off their gender without regards to their experience, it is discrimination and therefore the company is no longer an equal opportunity employer. Such practices need to be banned so our nation can truly say that we are all equal. Women need to form an alliance to prevent such discrimination from occurring and force our government to prohibit inequality in companies.

In today’s society it is easy to overlook much of the discrimination that people in our society receive. Now ask yourself why? Why do we go through our life seeing and hearing of discrimination but we don’t try and put a stop to it? People have grown accustomed to how people are treated. Today, many women worldwide still get discriminated on. A perfect example of how and when women get discriminated on is in the workplace. The pay gap problem between genders has been an ongoing issues for many years and is going to continue be an ongoing issue for years to come.

As the author points out, the figures on women in leadership is staggering in disparity. The article takes time to focus on identifying and highlighting reasons what makes a successful leader. Having an opportunity to attend a leadership meeting, in which we discussed improving inclusion at my company, this article presented many of the same reasons that as a company we tried to understand, “Why do we not have more women in leadership?” This article really underscores that in order for a business to survive and grow or for that matter, any organization to flourish you need to find individuals that embody the above-mentioned leadership traits not just seniority.

The concept of gender denotes the distinction between culturally driven and created roles of masculinity and femininity. These specific and normalized attitudes and behaviors transcend and effect how differently men and women live their lives. Based on society’s continual re-enforcement of such gender stereotypes, we see an on-going dilemma of gender inequality. Though some may argue that men experience gender inequality, this seems to exist on a much more invasive level for women. As of recently, the awareness of gender inequality in the workplace has increased. With the fight for equal pay and equal respect, society is already making strides towards the equality of women. With that being said, one aspect of gender inequality that seems

More and more women are rising to the leadership challenge, even in some of the most male-dominated industries. The increase in the number of women attending college, the increasing number of women in the workplace or starting their own business has demonstrated to men who own businesses that women can be both managers and mothers, thus showing their male counterpart that women can in fact "do it all".