On International Women’s Day, UF will host a conference to inspire future women leaders.
The UF Distance and Continuing Education Department will host its second annual Inspiring Women Leaders Conference on March 7-8 at the UF Hilton Conference Center, said Laurel Brown, the assistant director of professional development at the department.
The two-day conference will feature three keynote speakers for attendees to gain professional development and engage with women leaders from across the country, Brown said.
There will also be facilitators and breakout session speakers that will talk about the underlying theme: what it means to lead like a woman, Brown said. They’ll talk about leading with strengths which affect leverage, diversity and inclusion.
“The key to all of this is to show women of all ages of their career that leadership is something that we all kind of have within us and something that we all can do,” Brown said.
It costs about $50,000 to put on the conference. To attend, the conference costs $300 for the general public, $250 for university faculty members and $100 for students, Brown said.
Although the conference’s target audience is women, men are invited to attend as well, she said.
“We had a handful of men attend last year,” Brown said. “We have a male keynote speaker and a handful of male facilitators.”
This year, one of the breakout session speakers is Antonio Farias, UF’s chief diversity officer.
Farias will speak with Naz Erenguc, an associate of admissions for the UF Warrington MBA program. They both wanted to make it a gender equitable experience, he said.
“Part of my role is to take not all of the oxygen in the room,” he said.
Farias said he hopes attendees will gain knowledge that will lead them to take action.
“For me, the goal is to put enough golden nuggets out there that people can say ‘OK, that resonates with me,’” Farias said.
