The Albright Reporter: Empowering Women

On a winter day in the late 1980s, Karen Evans found herself battling two young boys, raw sewage and a ticking clock.

At the time Evans, now director of Albright’s Career Development Center, was the training and development coordinator in the retail division of Meridian Bank in Reading. She commuted from Oxford, Chester County, and dropped off her two pajama-clad sons at the babysitter’s house on her way to work.

One morning her babysitter’s septic tank backed up.

Evans had to gingerly step over raw sewage while carrying 5-year-old Chris into the sitter’s house.

Then Matthew, 2, locked the doors to the car when it was his turn. Evans begged him to open the door so she could drop him off and
drive to work.

Evans put up with that commute for a year before moving to Reading.

At first glance this is just a tidbit about a woman struggling to juggle the demands of work and family. But, as Evans said Sept. 26 during the first Women’s Leadership Conference at Albright, it also shows how hard it can be for women to be community leaders while balancing society’s expectations.

Or, in the words of conference keynote speaker DonnaLyn Giegerich’85: “You can have it all. You can do it all. Just not necessarily on the same day.”

Despite many steps toward equality between the genders, Evans and Andrea Chapdelaine, Ph.D., Albright’s provost and vice president for academic affairs, thought a lot of female students needed good mentors and a self-confidence boost.

As a first-generation college graduate, Chapdelaine can relate to people who feel as if they don’t belong in a leadership position. But she says anyone invited to the table does belong – and should act like it.

Evans says male students who come to the Career Development Center tend to magnify their job qualifications, while women tend to downplay their accomplishments.

“Take a young athlete who’s male,” she says. “He very quickly can say, ‘I do this. I do this.’

“And I’ll say, ‘How are your grades?’ He’ll say, ‘They’re really good. I have a C-plus average.’ ”

That’s different from the typical woman.

“She’ll say, ‘I really should do more. I’m only chair of this,
vice president of this,’ ” Evans says. “I see this consistently,
and I don’t know where it’s coming from.”

Plus, she was floored upon learning that, according to the National Association of Colleges and Employers, women’s starting salaries average 77 percent of men’s in the same lines of work.

Evans and Chapdelaine put together the conference by reaching out to female Albright graduates in leadership positions and other powerful women in and around Reading. Seventeen agreed to speak, and none charged a fee.

About 140 women, mostly Albright students and recent graduates, came to hear panel discussions about networking effectively, finding time for yourself, branding yourself in the age of Facebook and LinkedIn, and a range of other subjects.

Chapdelaine says admission to the event, which she hopes will take place in future years, was originally targeted at 80 but had to be cut off at 140 registrants.

Presenter Ashley Eisenhower ’06, marketing and communications director for the TriCounty Chamber of Commerce in Pottstown, says meeting other successful Albright women was empowering for her, and she also enjoyed reaching out to women at her alma mater. “Women learn from one another in a different way from men,” Eisenhower says.

Presenter Holly Landau, chief executive officer and president of Landau Leadership, Shillington, says she would like to think there’s no need for a women’s leadership conference. But the need exists because most women don’t have access to the culture that creates rules in the corporate world. And she says women often try to sabotage each other’s success because it seems like there are only a few slots available for female leaders. “There’s plenty of room for all of us to be successful, and it’s a shame that women wouldn’t all want to propel each other,” Landau says.

Women have an easier time climbing the leadership ladder in female-dominated fields, says Karen Rightmire ’69, retired president of the United Way of Berks County and a current member of several boards of directors in Berks. She adds that in many fields, females have an advantage because women are seen not as self-serving, but as wanting the right thing for everyone.

Sarah Bruno ’11, who helped organize the conference, was glad to see presenters young and old, and from all sorts of professional backgrounds. As a student heavily involved in campus life, the most important thing she heard was the importance of women taking time for themselves.

“Pretty much every woman here said, ‘If you don’t take care of yourself, you can’t help other people,’” Bruno says. “It’s just nice to know you can take a moment.”