First Lady Andrea Conte hosts Peabody discussion of women in leadership

Posted 11/11/2009

Peabody Leadership, Policy and Organizations graduate students demonstrated their own leadership in responding to a recent class assignment. Seeking to organize a panel of women leaders in Nashville, they contacted Tennessee’s First Lady Andrea Conte seeking her participation. Not only did Conte accept, she offered to host the event in the new Conservation Hall at the Governor’s Residence on S. Curtiswood Lane in Nashville.

“We are studying both historical and modern leadership theories and issues,” Amanda Havard, one of the project’s team members said. “Our group was studying women in leadership, and we wanted to find leaders in all kinds of different fields. We accomplished that goal – our panelists were all leaders in their field and they are all women.”

The Nov. 2 event was the first formal event in Conservation Hall.

“It is fitting that the first event held in this hall is an education event, as education is one of the main reasons why we built this facility,” Conte said. “Thank you for being the first—that’s leadership.”

The students are enrolled in Pearl Sims’ graduate leadership class.

“Having the students learn from our First Lady and such a distinguished panel, especially since we were the inaugural group in the governor's new conference space, was a wonderful experience,” Sims, lecturer in Leadership, Policy and Organizations, said. “The students appreciated gleaning wisdom from women who were willing to explore with them the possibilities and the difficulties of leadership in a complex world.”

In addition to Conte, the panelists included Dale Farran, professor of education and of psychology; Sharon Shields, professor of the practice of health promotion and education; Pat Pierce, director of Vanderbilt’s Opportunity Development Center from 1981 to 2007; and Pam Lewis, president and CEO of Nashville-based public relations and marketing firm PLA Media.

Topics discussed were barriers the panelists found in their careers as women and how they overcame them, ongoing issues in the workplace that women face and how they personally handle those challenges, and what they see as ongoing professional challenges for women. Advocacy and communication were common themes of the discussion.

Contact: Melanie Moran, (615) 322-NEWS
melanie.moran@vanderbilt.edu

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