CASA invites you to the upcoming Workshop: "Empowerment and Career Sponsorship as the keys to diversifying leadership in tech".
Summary: The format of the workshop includes reflective discussions among participants on empowerment and development of strong sponsor relationships as well as collaborative solution ideation for identified challenges.
Intended Purpose: By exploring the experiences of professionals with diverse backgrounds, participants will be able to identify similarities, techniques and best practices that can be used for their own development and empowerment journeys.
When: 14 November 1PM-3PM
Where: RUB, MC 4-112
This workshop will be structured into 2 parts:
Part I: Dr. Allen will share details from her doctoral research on the various types of interdisciplinary career support including: the differences between mentorship and sponsorship as well as the construct of empowerment in relation to women leaders.
Additionally, participants will be informed of behaviors which support or hinder empowerment as determined through literature review, document review and interviews with women who have experienced effective career sponsorship and elevated to senior leadership roles.
Participants will be informed of strategies, actions and behaviors which support or hinder empowerment in the workplace based upon recent research. Additionally, the impact of empowerment on individual and company success.
Part II: Participants will engage in reflective discussions and identify strategies to a navigate challenges regarding empowerment which often impact female leaders differently than their male counterparts.
We will engage in small group discussions that will last approximately 20 minutes each.
Discussion 1 will focus on the Development of the Sponsorship Relationship including ways to secure a career sponsor or deepen an existing sponsor relationship.
Discussion 2- Empowerment Development – Attendees will discuss structural empowerment or psychological empowerment based upon the research presented by Kanter (1977). The components of empowerment theory and sponsor attributes will be mounted for workshop participants to reference. During the group discussion, participants will discuss challenges experienced in the specific development area and collaborate to identify potential solutions.
Participants will also leverage the ideation session to identify actions to include in their individual personal empowerment plans. Participants will be given time to reflect on the group discussions and begin documenting goals, action steps and needed resources in their individual empowerment plan templates. The workshop will share insights on the impact of mentorship and sponsorship as well as the construct of empowerment in relation to diverse practitioners in tech and overall culture.
After this session, attendees will:
• Be able to identify similarities, trends and best practices that can be used for their own development and empowerment journeys.
• Be given access to a tool to help identify their current levels of structural empowerment, network composition and sponsor engagement
• Initiate individual personal empowerment plans (via a provided template) to memorialize actions and next steps for their personal development
Speaker Bio:
Dr. Diana B. Allen is a sought after speaker engaged to provide insight on the topics of leadership and tech. Dr. Allen has been a featured presenter for multiple conferences, podcasts, and companies globally. She holds an earned doctorate in organizational leadership, MBA in Management and Bachelor of Business Administration in Computer Based Information Systems. She has extensive subject matter expertise in the cybersecurity industry and is currently leading efforts focused on cloud adoption and risk management at Google. She also has experience in Consulting with Fortune 100 companies.
Dr. Allen is passionate about the holistic development of others and has experience coaching, mentoring, and growing aspiring professionals in STEM related fields. Additionally, she has hands- on experience creating and facilitating programs and courses focused on enhancing professional skills and personal leadership development.
General note: In case of using gender-assigning attributes we include all those who consider themselves in this gender regardless of their own biological sex.