Young Women's Leadership Forum

Today was an interesting day. It's a Saturday but I got up at 6:25am to go to Richmond to volunteer as a mentor for the Young Women's Leadership Forum sponsored by my company. It was an inspiring day. Since my role was to be a mentor, I sat at a table with 5 girls ranging from 10th grade to 12th grade. We talked about what their plans were for the summer all the way through what they want to do in the future. It was very eye opening to hear about what some of these girls have already accomplished or want to accomplish. For example, one wants to put off her first year of college to live in Italy for a year. I would have never thought that possible when I was graduating from high school. Certainly, all the girls at the conference hadn't had these types of experiences. The key note speaker was a person named Liz Murrary. As a little background, she had a movie made about her life and it aired on Lifetime. You can read more about her here and here. The main theme of her message is that each day we need to listen to what she called the "what if" voice in the back of our heads. That is, what if I did what would really make me happy today (that is if you're not happy with what you're doing now). Her message was that life is about choices (I know, we've all heard that one) but she made the point that it's about all types, not just the big ones. I don't want to bore you with the entire story of her life. With that background, you'd understand better about what's so inspiring. So, I'll just say, try to see the Lifetime movie. In the afternoon, the girls went to workshops about leadership, budgeting and finding their paths. The mentors went to a networking session, a discussion about differences in communication between genders and a feedback session. All in all, it was a great day.