Wednesday, March 18, 2015 // The Statement
6B

Women in Leadership Lessons 

fosters necessary conversations for young professionals

by Natalie Gadbois, Deputy Statement Editor

T

he statistics are well-worn but still concerning: 
women comprise only 4.6 percent of Fortune 500 
CEOs. Only 9 percent of the top 250 films released 

in 2012 were directed by women. The contentious pay gap 
— argued by many as an effect of environmental choices 
rather than institutionalized sexism — does exist, with 
women making only 77 cents for every dollar their male 
counterparts earn.

It can be a murky world out there for women, particu-

larly those with professional ambitions. However, there 
are resources for young women hoping to move forward 
in their careers. The Business School offers a longstand-
ing club called the Michigan Busi-
ness Women, and, in the past year, 
a chapter of Lean In — the national 
non-profit organization dedicated 
to promoting equality for women — 
was introduced at the University.

For women in the LSA Organi-

zational Studies program, Women 
in Leadership Lessons — otherwise 
known as WiLL —fosters the com-
plex conversations women need 
to have when considering their 
futures.

The 
Organizational 
Studies 

major, a competitive program com-
bining disciplines such as psychol-
ogy, sociology and economics, hosts 
a wide range of students, from those 
pursuing consulting and non-profit 
work to environmentalism, public 
health, and marketing. WiLL was 
founded seven years ago as an OS 
group by professors and students 
who saw a need to support women 
as they began to enter their various 
workforces.

Originally, the club was relatively 

unstructured, focusing on a few 
capstone events a year. Last year 
current LSA senior Jenna Fiore saw 
a new potential in the informal club, 
and she restructured it to build it into a support system 
with weekly meetings alongside the larger events.

“The group was really small and I wanted to revitalize 

it, so I registered it as a formal group on campus, wrote 
a constitution, got a faculty advisor from OS,” Fiore said.

The group is still small — around twenty-one official 

members — but this smaller atmosphere contributes to 
the intimate camaraderie and support found at the weekly 
meetings.

***

It’s 9:00 a.m. on a Tuesday, and girls are shuffling in 

one by one to the Sophia B. Jones room at the Michigan 
Union. Quiet conversation ranges from Spring Break trips 
to upcoming group projects to advice on how to find sum-
mer housing. Fiore begins the meeting with an icebreaker: 
the usual highs and lows of the week and spring break 
highlights, plus one question unique to this organization: 
“Who is your female role model?”

As the ten or girls go around, their answers are varied 

— some say their mothers, others mention public leaders 
like Malala Yousafzai and Michelle Obama, others jok-

ingly cite fictional characters like Julia from “Parenthood” 
— but there is a collective warmth as the conversation 
develops around inspiring women. It’s small, supportive 
gestures like this that show WiLL’s value, something that 
incoming club president Grace Fisher, an LSA junior, was 
initially drawn to.

“We are able to share our experiences in terms of intern-

ships and give each other some recommendations, and 
help each other in a more professional capacity,” Fisher 
said. “But we also are able to have real conversations about 
women in the workforce.”

WiLL holds resume, salary negotiation, and LinkedIn 

workshops and hosts guest speakers addressing their 
paths as women in the workforce — all ways to educate 
members on how to navigate male-dominated spaces suc-
cessfully. However, each week the group also discusses 
the broader social implications for working women by 
reading feminist articles and watching TED talks from 
speakers like Sheryl Sandburg, Chief Operating Officer of 
Facebook and author of “Lean In.” It’s this combination of 
goals — both to assist women in a still unequal world and 
directly address the problematic structures women face 
— that club adviser Sara Soderstrom thinks makes WiLL 
so empowering.

“Some of (WiLL) has been focused on those individual 

skills that women can develop to navigate (the workforce), 
and other parts have been thinking more broadly,” said 
Soderstrom, an assistant professor in OS and Program in 
the Environment. “What are some of the types of changes 
that we would like to see? How can we see them through?”

This multifaceted approach allows the group to be 

positive and supportive while still recognizing the issues 
women face, an aspect that was really important to Fiore.

“It’s easy to see WiLL as ‘Oh, women have all these chal-

lenges in the workforce, you need to discuss how to over-
come them,’ but it’s not really just about that because it’s 
not straightforward like that,” she said. “There are other 
things, regardless of gender, issues that can come up and 
you want to be able to talk about them.”

WiLL is in many ways a focused contribution to the 

increasingly widespread public discussion about women 
in the workforce. Both Fiore and Fisher recognize that the 
environment women face today is vastly different than the 
one women a generation before encountered.

The popularity of movements like Lean In or actress 

Amy Poehler’s “Smart Girls at the 
Party” — an online women’s advo-
cacy forum — show that gender 
inequality is at the foreground of 
the zeitgeist now more than ever. 
Soderstrom reflects this, admitting 
that as an Engineering undergrad-
uate she didn’t fully understand 
the idea of gender inequality and 
misrepresentation.

“I was naïve to a lot of it,” Sod-

erstrom said. “With engineering, 
everything was so much focused 
on ‘how do you solve these prob-
lems?’ There is a right answer and a 
wrong answer … Not as much about 
the social navigation side. So I 
found myself recognizing the num-
bers piece, but not thinking about 
social dynamics side of gender in 
the workplace.”

Soderstrom 
applauded 
the 

actions of the women in WiLL to 
proactively 
educate 
themselves 

about the future they face. Beyond 
the weekly meetings, on March 
31 the organization is also host-
ing a public panel, titled “WiLL 
Presents: Working Women,” that 
will be open to students across all 
majors and disciplines. This panel 

will feature four women from the Ann Arbor area — repre-
senting the Center for Education of Women, the Ann Arbor 
Community Foundation, the Conservation League of Vot-
ers, and the Ann Arbor Google office — as they answer 
questions about their careers, the obstacles they faced and 
the accomplishments they had.

Fiore hopes this event will provide insight for college-

aged women as to what they can expect entering the work-
force, which is why they focused on bringing in a wide 
range of speakers.

“We tried to bring in people with different areas of 

expertise, at different places in their careers,” she said.

Though WiLL is still reserved for OS students, both 

Fisher and Fiore hope that this flagship event will be a use-
ful resource for women on campus as they begin to figure 
out what they want to do with the rest of their lives.

WiLL’s goal is ultimately to empower women to be lead-

ers in whatever path they choose, recognizing current 
obstacles but providing the support and the confidence to 
allow women to jump over them. To get to a place where 
female leadership is not the exception but the norm.

LUNA ARCHEY/DAILY

