Filmmaker, Olympians Team With Students On Leadership Conference

By John Voket

Last spring, Newtown High School student and athlete Mary Kate Conlan and her mom, Joan, heard about a conference being held at Sacred Heart University to help empower and enhance women’s leadership skills. But because of other commitments on the day of the event, the Conlans were unable to attend.

Then Mary Kate began to envision a similar conference aimed at high school-age women and their parents (especially their mothers) right here in Newtown, so she contacted documentary filmmaker Suzie Galler, president and founder of the Esteemed Woman Foundation, and pitched her idea. That idea became the impetus for next weekend’s Lead Out Loud leadership conference that commences September 10 at 8:35 am at the high school.

“I really wanted to attend the Scared Heart University conference and was upset when I couldn’t go,” Mary Kate told The Bee Wednesday afternoon. “And I started wondering why we couldn’t just have one here.”

With the assistance and cooperation of NHS Athletic Director Greg Simon, several other school administrators, and a core organizing committee consisting of high school students from Newtown and their counterparts at 14 other Southwest Conference schools in the region, the volunteers began working with Ms Galler, putting the program and other logistics together.

They secured State Comptroller Nancy Wyman to open the program, and Ms Galler helped arrange for Paralympic Athlete Aimee Mullins and Olympic gold medalist and soccer star Kristine Lilly to bookend the program as co-keynote presenters. Then the girls set out to populate a day filled with workshops, all designed to provide teenage girls with a powerful look at the qualities that make a leader, offering them inspiration and information from leaders in sports, business, politics, technology, and the arts.

Ms Galler, whose documentary I Am Beautiful focuses on the rich stories women have to tell about coming to terms with their self-image, said she was pleased to be able to work with such a dedicated and sizable committee of young women.

“It was these young women, the students on the core committee, who really came up with many of the ideas for the conference,” Ms Galler said. “They are the ones who were instrumental in making this event happen.”

Joan Conlan credits Ms Galler for taking the idea seriously from the beginning and running with it.

“Her attitude was, ‘if you help bring the women to the conference, I’ll help develop the program.’ This is such a fantastic opportunity for everyone planning to attend because there are so few good role models for our girls today in the world of sports and entertainment,” Ms Conlan said.

Working through her network of contacts at the Esteemed Woman Foundation, and coming off the highly successful Women’s Images Conference at Sacred Heart University, Ms Galler helped the students craft a very busy and comprehensive day full of positive and reinforcing activities and talks.

According to a press release on the event, using sports as a metaphor for leadership, the conference will teach young women that if they use the skills necessary to be a competitive athlete, they will find all they need to become leaders in any field. From learning the rules of the game and how to compete fairly and honestly, to becoming their own coaches, and strong members of the team, the program provides attendees with the opportunity to explore the topic of leadership in an interactive engaging format that encourages open dialogue between speakers and participants.

“It is increasingly clear that young women today have few role models from whom they can gain inspiration as they approach adulthood,” Ms Galler said. “To think that Britney Spears or Jennifer Lopez will be the standard by which our daughters measure themselves is far from reassuring to any parent who envisions a successful future for their daughter.”

Ms Galler, who is a mother herself, believes there is an increasingly urgent need for today’s teens to be exposed to positive, empowering programs that will support them in living up to their full potential.

“Otherwise, we fall into the trap of allowing the mass media to dictate our daughters’ views of the world, themselves, and their very future,” she said.

The conference will be offered to all female high school students with priority registration going to the 15 schools in the Southwest Athletic Conference. “Our goal is to reach out to a diverse group of girls from all ages and backgrounds and to provide take home materials that will encourage the girls to continue their leadership training on their own,” said Ms Galler. Besides getting the word out to students through school and conference channels, the event is being promoted by Ms Galler on her organization’s website, www.esteemedwoman.org, WOMAN magazine, and STAR 99.9-FM.

Lead Out Loud is being sponsored by Wachovia Bank in Newtown, and lunch for the hundreds of expected attendees is being donated by My Place Restaurant.

Workshops being offered during the conference include: Be Your Own Coach, Do You Have TEAM Spirit? (Trustworthy, Equal, Aware, Motivated), Competition is Not a Four Letter Word — Neither is Failure, Finding Common Ground with Nonviolent Communication, and Stressed Out Girls being led by author Dr Roni Cohen Sandler.

Sessions for parents only will include: Stressed Out Girls — Helping Them Thrive in the Age of Pressure, also led by Dr Cohen Sandler, Raising Healthy Daughters led by Ruth Ann Lobo, mother of UConn and WNBA star Rebecca Lobo, and Finding Common Ground with Nonviolent Communication.

A series of afternoon Round Table Discussions will tackle the prospect of  Leveling the Playing Field — Real Women In The Real World.

Participating workshop panelists come from a variety of fields from sports to science to academia, and include Debbie Murphy, retired vice president, IBM Corporation; Janis Hadley, EdD, president of  Housatonic Community College; Coreen Nakamoto, senior designer at Gap Kids and Baby; State Senator Toni Harp; Jordan Gawinski, national ice dancing champion; and Jodi Hadley, senior vice president at ESPN.

For further information interested parents or students are asked to call The Esteemed Woman Foundation at 938-8833 or email contact@esteemedwoman.com