Encouraging women to become leaders in business, community and politics is the main goal of the plethora of programs that the Women’s Leadership Institute offers, says managing director, Lesley Berryhill, who joined the Institute in May of this year.
A lot of what Berryhill does with the Institute is similar event planning work like she did at the River City Company for 10 years while working with one of the founders of Women’s Leadership Institute, Ann Coulter.
Berryhill says she gets to meet a lot of the women in the Institute that she has known through River City and various committee work as well as meeting new women who are leaders of the community. “I’m getting to go through these things with a lot of new members, and I say [to them], ‘I’m a new member too,’” Berryhill says. The Women’s Leadership Institute is well known for their open-to-the-public leadership luncheon series, held four times during the year. Their next event of this kind, on September 28, is titled “Getting to Yes,” and will feature a panel to help women learn about negotiating.
The Institute also has many other programs the women of the community should be aware of, Berryhill says. Their annual leadership address, which also doubles as their only annual fundraiser, features a noted guest speaker. Previous speakers include Sheila Bair and Gloria Steinem.
The Institute also has a member’s only quarterly leadership series where members read a leadership-based book and meet for a discussion. September 19th is the next leadership series event, and the book to be discussed is “Who Moved My Cheese?” Another event open to the public is the Women Know: Finance series, which started its first session of six last week. This series focuses on personal finance and the need of women to take a more active leadership role in their own finances.
“They may be great at running their organization but then when they get home, it’s all handed to their husband and they know nothing,” Berryhill says. “[If] something happens with death, divorce or retirement, they need to have a handle of what’s going on.”
The first session of this series was on budgeting, and there will also be sessions on wealth building, investing, and taxes. Originally sold as a series, the Institute has opened limited spots for individual sessions.
Berryhill says the series isn’t just focused on people going through a life-altering situation, but are useful for women of any age. She says this series is one she is very excited to be a part of because, at her age and with a young child, the topics in the sessions are relevant to what she wants to know about saving for her son’s college and balancing a budget for her family. The women mentoring women program of the Institute, starting on August 26, is also a program that will benefit women of any age. This application required eight-part program is designed to help women develop mentoring skills to apply to other women. In its fourth year, the program helps women to shift focus from being competitive against one another to helping other women around them. The program is full for this year, and a waiting list has been set up for next year.
Where the organization is really set apart is in their monthly networking events, Berryhill says.
“I’ve been in all kinds of organizations in town, and networking events for this group are so good because they are not just meeting at a bar or restaurant. They are really thinking about women in leadership roles but still wanting to have a networking fun event,” she says. For example, their June networking was at 2 Northshore, where the group visited four women-owned businesses. The group moved to each place, each owner of the business got up and told their story of how they started, and there was the socializing of networking, but it focused on women of all generations starting their own businesses.
“We can come up with great ideas for speakers for a program, but we want to make sure that the program has a focus on leadership,” Berryhill says. “We want to make our group different from anyone else that could be bringing in someone.”
Although the aim of getting women involved in politics hasn’t been pushed as much as getting women involved in community and business, the organization is now focusing more on this aspect and setting up education around this idea, Berryhill says.
The Women’s Leadership Institute has 185 members and is gaining members every week.
“We keep getting bigger, which is great because part of what I want to do is grow our membership … and increase the public’s knowledge of this organization because I think the programming is so quality,” Berryhill says.
Visit www.cwli.org Web site for membership information and a list of Institute programs and events.