Our {YWiB SFU} Stories…2011-2012 Recap

Throughout this dynamic YWiB SFU 2011-12 term, we have created many new stories. This last post of the year is to reflect upon positive new visions we have set forth through the YWiB SFU experience. Below is a collection of blog posts from our very own members and guest speakers to recap this term’s memories. {Launch Party} We started our year with great success at the Shoot for the Stars Launch Party. YWiB SFU was recognized recently at the Beedie School of Business, BASS Awards, by winning the Event of the Year! Angela Jung of Yellowrainbootz participated and broadcasted our event on her very own channel.

Check out her broadcast at yellowrainbootz.com/2011/09/ywib-sfu-launch-party.html.

{Wine & Dine Social} The Wine & Dine Social was the first of many events that were held and it was the premier event where members got to mingle and meet each other for the very first time. Over some great wine and food pairings presented by Katelynne Katona, our expert Sommelier for the night, and Browns Social House, members had a fun and relaxing evening networking with each other. Winnie Ko, one of our members, blogged about this event, calling it “Fine, Fresh, and Fierce”.

Read more of what she had to say about the event at winnieheart.wordpress.com/2011/10/27/fine-fresh-fierce-we-got-it-on-lock.

{My Social Network} My Social Network brought together a fine panel of the Lower Mainland’s social media gurus: Rick Chung, an independent broadcast journalist, Beverly Pomeroy, the CEO of Global Currents, and Grace Lanuza from Mosaic Experiential Marketing. They talked about building and maintaing a personal and professional brand and facilitating relationships online.

Visit Rick Chung’s website to see what he has to say about personal branding online: www.rickchung.com/2011/11/young-women-in-business-ywib-sfu.html www.rickchung.com/2011/10/build-personal-brand-online.html.

{Graduate} The Graduate workshop brought together a group of stellar speakers: Maureen McKinnon, owner of McKinnon Consulting Group, Catherine Rocheleau, CEO of Ignite Leadership International, and Chelle Morgan, author of the fashion blog, Discovering Elegance to provide our members with job seeking expertise and style tips to give their prospective employers the first impression that they are looking for. Catherine Rocheleau has written an article on how to ignite a great first impression by starting with some SPARK, which can be found on her blog. Chelle Morgan shares her experience as a speaker at the event on her blog site.

{The Pursuit of Happiness} The Pursuit of Happiness workshop featured Gina Chong of Butter Studios, Monika Hibbs of The Doctor’s Closet, and Loretta Cella from The Passion Foundation, women who spoke of how to pursue ones’ passion for a career. Our member Megan te Boekhurst  shared some of the knowledge that she received from the event. From Loretta’s speech, a tip she learned is that “people who flourish in life find three to five positives in every challenge they face.” Elizabeth Rosalyn The also learned from Loretta that “the pursuit of happiness is a life-long journey, which you can make worthwhile by approaching life's opportunities with a winning combination of vulnerability, confidence, and positivity.”

Read more about the tips Megan Te Boekhurst learned on her blog at meganteboekhorst.com/2012/02/19/the-pursuit-of-happiness-a-workshop-on-passion-presented-by-ywibsfu.

More of what Elizabeth gained from the speakers can be found on her blog at onceuponadreamer.blogspot.ca/2012/02/pursuit-of-happiness.html.

{International Women’s Day}

"I know I'm doing what I love because when I'm doing it, time doesn't exist." - Anna Rice on following your dreams

The International Women’s Day YWiB SFU conference brought together an elite panel of strong and empowering women leaders from the industry. Speakers shared their stories regarding personal experiences as a woman in their industry and how to stay true to yourself in today's world. It was an inspirational day for those who attended the event. Michaela Klassen, from the IWD 2012 Organizing Committee - Marketing & Communications, has collected a series of quotes from Twitter of the special day on Storify.com.

And last, we would like share the experiences from our programs: SOUL Mentorship, Project GIVE, and Philanthropy.

{SOUL Mentorship} The SOUL Mentorship Program (Supporting Our University Leaders) has successfully paired 32 mentees this year with highly esteemed professionals.  Mentees were involved in monthly meetings, job shadowing, resume and cover letter building, mock interviews, and discussions on how to get the most out of higher education. SOUL has also been featured on the front page of the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences web page.

The article can be found here: fass.sfu.ca/ywib. 

{Project GIVE}

The Project GIVE Program (Generating Innovative Visions of Entrepreneurship) has provided the YWiB SFU members with the opportunity at creating their own social entrepreneurship projects through seminars and mentor sessions. This year we had teams creating projects ranging from the Community Box harnessing the idea of collaborative consumption, S.C.R.A.P. making sustainable creations through recycled art projects, to Mothers Helping Mothers exchanging volunteering hours for free childcare.

In particular, two of the Project GIVE participants, Emily Louie and Janice Jonathan founded Prudence Co-operative. The Prudence Co-operative works with existing pre-employment and resource centers for recovering women in the Lower Mainland to provide opportunities for women who face barriers to employment. They have been awarded runner-up in the recent SFU Student Entrepreneur of the Year competition, the team plans to continue the growth and success of the Prudence Co-operative.

To find out more about the Prudence Co-operative, visit their blog at prudencecommunity.wordpress.com.

{Philanthropy- Holiday Smile Drive with GVCSS} The Philanthropy program, a new addition to YWIB SFU, has made a big impact in the community. During the 2011/2012 holiday season, our members participated in the Holiday Smile Drive with Greater Vancouver Community Service Society (GVCSS) in collecting toothbrushes and toothpastes for the Care Package Drive.  We would like to thank our team of compassionate YWiB SFU girls who volunteered to assemble and deliver 400 Care Packages and our generous donors who dropped toothbrushes and toothpastes at our collection boxes, thus making the Vancouver Downtown Eastside a little brighter!

To read more about this project, see the cover story that Greater Vancouver Community Services Society wrote about us in their Winter 2011 newsletter:  gvcss.bc.ca/docs/nl_winter_2011.pdf?LanguageID=EN-US.

VP of Mentor Relations: Jennifer Ganapathy’s Project SEPIA story…

Our very own VP of Mentor Relations Jennifer Ganapathy went on a trip to India to launch Project SEPIA which seeks to provide social dialogue opportunities amongst low-income female workers, specifically domestic workers. Being part of YWiB SFU as a co-VP for the SOUL mentorship program, Jennifer has been able to build up a supportive professional network. It has provided her with the confidence to approach individuals and organizations from a variety of sectors such as non-profit, policy and business to raise funds and create a strong foundation for Project SEPIA. We would like to share her story as it is inspiring that Jennifer has compassionately sought after her vision to help low-income female workers in India.

I recently got a chance to return to Bangalore, India, after my original co-op term in 2010, to work on a series of deliberative dialogue projects with low-income female workers in urban areas. The deliberative dialogues use a participatory consultative format to build the capacity of the women, particularly domestic workers, to learn more constructive and powerful ways to approach problems. I was fortunate to find an excellent facilitator in Brinda Adige of Global Concerns India. She is currently working with trafficking and rural domestic workers issues, and has had the kind of experiences that have enabled her to quickly build trust and cohesiveness among the women participating in the program.

I was most amazed to see these women jump right in to the process; they really “got” what we were trying to do. They opened themselves up immediately, talking about some of the most difficult issues in their lives, such as domestic violence and sexual harassment. In these communities, physical abuse is an epidemic, and in some groups, we saw 100% of the women experiencing violence in their lives. I could literally feel the energy in the room change when Brinda began speaking about the format of the dialogues. Once she started going around the room one by one and engaging with each of the women, they would look at her intently, paying attention, and yet they were also relaxed and laughing. It was almost exactly what I had envisioned for these groups.

What really draws me to work with these women is their incredible honesty and authenticity in the face of overwhelmingly difficult circumstances. It makes my world feel bigger to be around them. I think they wonder why I come all the way over from my safe and comfortable country to help them, but really, they expand my world and my life, hopefully as much as I have expanded theirs.

We are currently working on fundraising for the next 12 months of this project. We would like to further develop these programs where the participants can be trained to become facilitators in their own communities. This was my ideal vision for the dialogues process, as empowering the women to become facilitators themselves will build leadership, independent thinking and community problem-solving skills.

This is a guest post by Jennifer Ganapathy and her Project SEPIA blog site can be found at projectsepia.wordpress.com.

SOUL Mentorship Program can benefit Social Science students

Do you love your classes and the knowledge gained from your degree, but feel unsure of how to apply what you’ve learned in the classroom to the real world? Would you like to build up your networking skills and meet more people with successful careers in your field? Would you like to get an insider’s perspective on the industry you’ve chosen?

The SOUL (Supporting Our University Leaders) Mentorship Program offers female students an opportunity to be connected with dynamic, engaging leaders in their communities in order to learn, be inspired, and explore their interests. SOUL is a program unique to Young Women in Business (YWiB) SFU. Started by Kunny Ma and Stephanie Wong in 2009, SOUL began as a mentorship program for aspiring young female students. Through personal recommendations, they were able to find highly esteemed SFU alumni willing to give back to the SFU community, and with the desire to encourage, challenge and support mentees to grow and develop personally and professionally. This program started in the Faculty of Business, and expanded to the School of Communication the following year with co-VPs Helen Xie and Patricia Zhou.

For the 2011-2012 term, co-VPs of Mentor Relations, Jennifer Ganapathy and Kristen Ryan, have strived to reach out to Social Science students so they can reap the benefits that YWiB SFU has to offer. This year, SOUL mentees are from the departments of Political Science, International Studies, Gender Studies, English, Criminology, History, Psychology, World Literature, and Dialogue, Development & Sustainability.  All of these students have been paired with mentors in fields such as government, education, non-profit, international development, and policy institutes.

Meghan Gilgunn, who received her Master of Arts in Social Anthropology and is currently working with the federal government, is a SOUL mentor to a Criminology student. “I wanted to get involved in the SOUL Mentorship Program to demonstrate that a social science degree can be valuable outside of academia. My undergraduate and graduate education in Anthropology has been integral to my success in each of the three different positions I've held with the Federal Government. I want students who are passionate about social science to know that with an openness to possibility and some perseverance, they will be able to apply their learning in meaningful, interesting careers.” Through being paired with SOUL mentors such as Gilgunn, Social Science students will be given an opportunity to learn from an SFU alumni with years of experience in their area of study, learn the steps they need to take to be competitive in their industry, and gain an understanding of the real-world applications of their degrees.

For the following year, YWiB SFU hopes to reach out to even more diverse faculties within SFU such as Engineering, Applied Sciences, Health Sciences and others, as they would like all female students to benefit from the professional workshops, events, and opportunities YWiB SFU has to offer.

Applications will be accepted in September of this year for the YWiB SFU 2012-2013 SOUL Mentorship Program. Please refer back to our website for regular updates.

For more detail on this article, please refer to www.fass.sfu.ca/ywib. Want to find out more information about our SOUL Mentorship Program, please refer to www.ywib.ca/sfu/soul-mentorship.

International Women's Day Highlights

Thank you for attending International Women's Day and we hope you had an unforgettable experience connecting with empowering women in business and being inspired for your future careers. We would like to give a big thanks to our Gold Sponsor Butter Studios and Butter Photobooth for supporting the IWD Conference and creating this wonderful video highlighting the event vimeo.com/38344037.

For those who would like to find out more about the conference, here is a link to YWiB SFU IWD 2011 conference video to highlight our previous years' effort: www.youtube.com/watch?v=-8mBLdxx5U4   You can also proceed to our IWD page to see a recap of our speakers' bio: http://www.ywib.ca/sfu/iwd 

International Women's Day 2012 YWiB SFU Conference

ywib sfu ywib sfu ywib sfu ywib sfu ywib sfu Last year, YWiB’s SFU chapter had the pleasure of hosting their first annual International Women’s Day conference. The sold-out event was a truly inspirational day, featuring amazing speakers, a great panel session and plenty of new connections and friendships. YWiB SFU will once again be hosting their signature event, but this year everything is bigger and better!

Following this year’s theme, “Connecting Girls, Inspiring Futures,” the event will be focused on making connections between people and experiences. While most of us are, in fact, “Young Women in Business,” the event is relevant to girls from any industry and faculty. Our keynote speakers will discuss challenges that all women face, such as over-coming adversity and achieving your dreams. The panel will discuss a variety of questions regarding the unique challenges women face in today’s world and ways to overcome them. This year’s event will also feature entertainment and an expo showcasing entrepreneurs, startups, and nonprofit organizations dedicated to women’s rights and advancement.

For one of our keynote speakers, Anna Rice, the battle for women’s equality continues to be a top priority. As a member of the Canadian National Badminton Team, Anna has been an advocate for women's equality in badminton for all of her career. One of the main highlights comes from her fight for equal salaries amongst female and male badminton players; it isn't easy to represent yourself in a world of athleticism dominated by the male superiority. From the number of male athletes compared to females, to the average salaries between both genders, there are inequalities that still exist in the athletic world today. It used to be that the females would play shorter games than the male players, and that was the justification for the unequal salaries. However, when the rules changes and games became equal lengths, Anna took it upon herself to fight for equal salaries.

Ultimately, this event will give students and professionals alike the opportunity to connect with other like-minded, motivated individuals who are interested in bettering the situation for women everywhere. For more information about the International Women’s Day conference, check out ywib.ca/sfu/iwd. Tickets go on sale Monday, February 20. Be sure to follow @YWiBSFU #IWDsfu on Twitter for more conference updates!

Introducing Miss YWIB SFU

Welcome to Miss YWiB SFU, a newly established blog that intends to provide updates on YWiB SFU’s latest events and initiatives, professional advice and insights, and other valuable information and resources to the YWiB SFU community.

Who is Miss YWiB SFU, you may ask? She embodies the unique voices and strong opinions of the dynamic, ambitious, inspiring, and encouraging young professional women who make up YWiB SFU! Therefore, Miss YWiB SFU encourages all executives and members to contribute to the blog!

Take advantage of this Miss YWIB SFU platform to present your ideas and insights on what motivates you and what moves you. Read an enlightening piece of literature (i.e., books, articles, blogs) that you think other members would also benefit from? Write a recommendation! Attended an invigorating event, workshop, or conference? Submit a recap! Had a life-changing experience through an internship, exchange, or volunteer opportunity? Tell us all about it! You can even write a blog post on a topic that you are passionate about, such as the importance of social entrepreneurship, health and wellness, and the arts. This is your chance to add to your personal development and enrichment while connecting with other members of the phenomenal YWiB SFU community.

One of the first steps to building your story is by sharing your story!

What would you like to see in Miss YWiB SFU? Post your ideas in the comments!