On the spring evening of Wednesday, March 6th, SMU hosted the 58th Annual Women’s Symposium in the Hughes-Trigg Ballroom. The symposium was organized by SMU CORE students who brought the acclaimed author and Restorative Writing Teacher Alex Elle to speak during the event.
SMU CORE students are under the umbrella of the Women & LGBT Center at SMU. They are responsible each year for organizing the women’s symposium including planning the symposium, coordinating awards, and reaching out to the keynote speaker according to Nathan Faust, director of the Women and LGBT Center.
Nestled into the symposium schedule was an eye-catching element before the main event: the Networking Session. Like any good college student, the word networking caught my attention. What opportunities would the Women’s Symposium Networking Session offer, who would be presenting to attendees, and would the interest of the SMU community be piqued?
After speaking with members of CORE who were mingling outside the ballroom, I learned it was the first session they had ever hosted before a symposium. In the words of CORE member Saifiyah Zaki, the organization “wanted to do something interactive beforehand.”
Zaki’s fellow CORE member Avery Hines added to this notion.
“This is important just because we’re highlighting the work and achievement of women in fields that can be male-dominated so I think it’s really cool to highlight that,” Hines said.
The networking session embodied the power of female leadership and business acumen. Female representatives from the companies Vogel and Enterprise Mobility had tables set up outside the ballroom and students, faculty members, and the public mingled together asking questions and, of course, networking.
Stefani Hoffman, an Enterprise Mobility employee, was eager to share the opportunities Enterprise Mobility offers employees and women specifically. When asked about her greatest struggles and successes as a woman in the business world, she admitted that her experience was no easy feat.
“I had this idea in mind of like, I want to move up and I want to be really aggressive with my career and continue to move up the ladder,” Hoffman began. “Then when I had my son, it was like ‘Oh, I kinda have to take this step just to breathe and kinda figure out what it was that I wanted to do.’”
However, her struggle was overcome with the help of her all-female talent acquisition team who, in Hoffman’s words, were “really able to help me through that.” Now Hoffman is a Level Three employee, a considerable achievement, which she earned in four years when it normally takes seven to 10.
“That’s probably my biggest success,” Hoffman admits. Her story exemplifies how this networking event is meant to inspire and educate attendees.
Among the crowd circling the networking area was Rylea Wertzberger, who recently completed her Master’s degree in higher education at SMU and now works as a coordinator for leadership programs at the university.
When asked what her advice might be for undergraduate students transitioning to the workforce she advised them to “network, get to know people, talk to your professors [and] talk to your classmates.”
The CORE students imagined and created an empowering, educational, impactful space that blended the undergraduate and post-graduate business worlds.
The networking event is a means for helping women build their network, bolster their confidence, and seek a genuine community from these spaces, according to Hines.
CORE should consider its first-ever networking session a success as it left attendees feeling inspired and empowered to see SMU invest in its students’ futures.
