Lehigh Hosts Women in Business Conference

In her talk titled “The Power of You: Creating and Defining Your Path,” Friedman said she hoped to convey that the best opportunity for success comes from shifting your focus from money to ensuring that you never stop learning and leading. By taking the skills you’ve perfected and applying them to something new and challenging, she said, you’ll be surprised to find the variety of ways to adapt those experiences to new situations. Friedman said it’s never too late to take risks, regardless of where one might be in life’s journey.

The conference also included three panel discussions and three interactive workshops.

Employees from EY—Linh Pham, staff, tax technology & transformation; Sofia Khobot, senior manager, business consulting; and Stephanie Pugh, FSO assurance, audit staff—presented the first workshop, “Vision Boards: Looking Back to See Ahead.”

The other two workshops were “Communication Styles in the Workplace,” led by Chelsea Cawley, campus recruiting manager at PwC, and “Learning to Tell Your Story,” presented by Lisa Getzler, executive director at Lehigh’s Baker Institute for Entrepreneurship, Creativity and Innovation.

The three panels were:

• “The Perfect Pitch: Expanding Your Long Term Network” moderated by Michelle Washington, professor of practice in the Department of Management at Lehigh’s College of Business. The panelists were Lisa Kent, founder and president of The Luminations Group; Sandra Denton ’83, vice president of channels and partnerships at Pipefy; Debra Walker, senior consultant at The Luminations Group; Jennifer Long ’93, founder and chief executive officer at AEquitas; and Suneeta Prasad ’90, former managing director at GE and GE Capital.
• “From Failure to Confidence, Resiliency, and Authenticity” moderated by Chiquita Griffin, associate director, undergraduate programs in Lehigh’s College of Business. On the panel were Jennifer D. Miller ’82, director and portfolio manager of the International Equity strategy for MAI Capital Management; Marley Bautista ’06, account lead at Summit2Sea Consulting, LLC; Nidhi Goel ’87, ’22P, ’24P, operations executive director at Morgan Stanley; Djenné Dickens ’18, marketing coordinator at the American Society for Nephrology; and Peyton Stein ’19, analyst on the real estate finance and valuations at Blackstone.
• “Building Your Personal Brand,” moderated by Mary Senior ’88, ’90G, founder and principal consultant of MCB Enterprises. Panelists included Jessica Rivera-Rincón ’18, risk strategic analytics associate at JP Morgan Chase; Danielle Fox ’19, associate on the corporate sales team at Standard Chartered Bank; Sue Osborne ’92G, managing director at Northwest Investment Management; Rena Zhu ’19, analyst on the funding team at Morgan Stanley; and McCall Ward ’14, director of media at VaynerMedia.

Attendees were given an hour to network with the conference company sponsors, which included EY, LodeStar Software Solutions, PwC, Deloitte, Epic and The Luminations Group. Lehigh’s Center for Gender Equity and The Baker Institute for Entrepreneurship, Creativity and Innovation also sponsored the conference.