Event Recap | IaWia Annual Meeting
On Tuesday, September 19th, 26 individuals gathered at RDG Planning & Design to attended Iowa Women in Architecture’s Annual Business Meeting. The board presented what we’ve done over the past twelve months, what we’re planning on doing in the upcoming twelve months and gave a brief refresher on our Best Practice Report that you can see here. Some great networking happened in between all of the presentations and long with voting for the new Vice Chair and Director of Accounts and announcement of our Leadership Social Series that will begin in October.
We also had Dr. Lindsay Hastings from University of Nebraska – Lincoln who serves as the Clifton Professor in Mentoring Research and the Director of Nebraska Human Resources Institute, a leadership development organization that pairs outstanding college student leaders with outstanding K – 12 student leaders in one-to-one leadership mentoring relationships.
Her presentation From “Glass Ceiling” to “Leadership Labyrinth”: Developing the Next Generation of Female Leaders spoke to leadership styles, hard numbers of ratios between men and women in the workforce (over half of the individuals to receive Bachelor, Master and Ph.D. degrees are female and yes we only hold 4% of the CEO positions ta Fortune 500 companies, 16% of board positions at Fortune 500 Companies, and only 20% of Government seats.) Data shows gender and leadership aren’t that different between men and women, gender doesn’t affect effective leadership skills and that women are actually slightly better at transformative leadership; overall, between men and women, there are no noticeable differences in leadership styles. The biggest differences come into play with self-promotion and unconscious biases that exist for everyone.
Dr. Hastings also spoke on leadership and what we can do to help changes already taking place in society and our culture. The Nebraska Human Resources Institute is a huge advocate of mentorship and some critical take aways were:
Align talent between mentor and mentee
Interest should be aligned as well – the best mentorship typically starts with friendship/comradery
Consistency is key
She also mentioned that failure to connect between a mentor and mentee is not always a bad thing – mentorship should be constantly re-evaluated and benefiting both parties to be worthwhile.
Her last piece of the night spoke of the power of female friendship/colleagueship. These relationships give unique energy and encourages us to work harder; that unique energy yields a perspective to love others as ourselves; and it encourage us to be involved in a free marketplace of ideas with civility.
She left us with the statement “What you love for in people is what you find – you look for positives, you find positives; you look for negatives, you find negatives.
What's Next?:
The breakfasts will be focused around the Athena Core10 leadership series- Oct, Jan, Mar, May and July.
Tours of Iowa Events Center Hotel (Feb), Kum & Go headquarters (June with panel discussion)
Member Socials in April and August
Speakers in June and November
Membership Drive – starting soon
iaWia Merchandise!!!
Policies and Procedures Manual – for faster board or committee member transitions
More remote viewing and Educ/Programming and Social events in other regions
BPR Case Studies – need nominations for case studies, firm surveys, apply for AIA National Award
Highlights 2017:
Presenting the BPR on a national and regional level (AIA National , N Dakota and Chicago)
Informal breakfast socials – both in DSM and Iowa City/Cedar Rapids
AIA National Young Architect Award winner- founder Danielle Hermann
Updated Bylaws, established a reserves policy, updated committee descriptions and new corporate membership benefits structure.
Last year: 53 members, 21 corporate members, mailing list has grown to 318
