WIM Celebrates Diversity of Club Membership

The Women in Management (WIM) club at Yale SOM supports the development of female leaders, cultivates a diverse community of women, and advances the dialogue about women in business and society.

This year, WIM has brought a number of impressive speakers to campus through its vibrant First Mondays Speakers Series. The club has also hosted professional development workshops, casual conversations with business leaders, and a variety of other events catering to both WIM members and the larger School of Management community. Highlights included:

• Ellen Shuman, vice president and CIO of Carnegie Corporation, gave us the simple yet sage advice to write thank you notes;
  
• Seema Hingorani, head of public equities at the Bureau of asset management in the New York City Office of the Comptroller, encouraged audience members to follow their passions and pick up the phone and call that important contact without hesitation;
  
• Sandra Urie, chairman and CEO of Cambridge Associates, spoke about leading the company through the financial crisis.

All three women spoke about the challenges of building a dynamic and satisfying career, sharing the wisdom of their success with SOM students. Beyond this regular series, WIM also coordinated group golf lessons (a must for new students), hosted a “Perfecting Your Pitch” workshop with Stephen Nickson of Executive Voice, and entertained alumnae and current students at a casual cocktail party in New Haven, among many other events.

WIM’s co-directors, Anthea Tjuanakis '11 and Jan Faraguna '11, focused this year on celebrating the vast diversity of WIM’s membership, which includes all SOM women. In this vein, WIM has co-sponsored events with a variety of other clubs, from Q+ Gay Straight Alliance ("Straight But Not Narrow: Why Taking Diversity Not So Seriously Can Make a Serious Impact") and Media & Entertainment (lunch with Laura Walker, President and CEO of WNYC) to Venture Capital & Private Equity (conversation with Nancy Pfund, a managing partner of DBL Investors — a double-bottom line venture capital firm). Through these events and others, WIM has demonstrated its commitment to the heterogeneity of women in business today.

In fact, inspired by this engagement with diversity, WIM recently conducted a casual census of the women of the Class of 2012. The data provided a lighthearted snapshot of the many backgrounds and interests of SOM women. Among them are former concert musicians (one pianist and two violinists), extreme sport lovers (one of whom has bungee jumped the highest plummet in the Southern Hemisphere), travel writers, and dockhands. For a graphic take on SOM women of the class of 2012, take a look at the slideshow below.



WIM looks forward to welcoming the Class of 2013 women to SOM next fall, knowing that these individuals will bring with them the diverse experiences and knowledge that make SOM truly unique.


Women in Management Club website
club-wim@som.yale.edu