Women's Leadership Council
Women's Leadership Council newsletter
Summer 2013 Newsletter

› Council News:

Announcement of New Executive Committee Members

Congratulations to our new Executive Committee members, selected at October 2012’s Women’s Leadership Council meeting. The new Executive Committee members are:

  • Patricia Ralph Fowler ’81, Membership Committee Co-Chair
  • Sharon Curhan M.D. ’83, P’10, Mentoring Committee Co-Chair
  • Marcia J. Dunn M.D. ’82, Programming Committee Co-Chair
  • Jennifer Williams Murphy ’86, Programming Committee Co-Chair
  • Shelley Fidler ’68, P’09, Council Co-Chair

› Events:

The Women’s Leadership Council supports summer interns! On August 6th at Lazard Freres in New York, Lisa Vertucci ’82, Executive Coach, presented a talk on Strategies for Future Success: Managing your Summer Internship to an audience of students and recent graduates from a range of internship experiences. Attendees engaged in terrific conversation about "creating one's brand" and "networking" and participated in exercises to reinforce valuable lessons on effective communication.

Many thanks to Adina Young ’82 for hosting the event and coordinating with Lisa as speaker and to Chandra Metzler ’95, Marcia Dunn ’82 and Nancy Neff ’76, ’06, P ’14 for their support and coordination with CareerLAB and Alumni Relations.

There were several regional events hosted by Council members during the past year. Marcia Dunn ’82 hosted a cocktail reception with President Christina Paxson in New York City, while Donna C.E. Williamson ’74 partnered with Anne Loucks ’87 to host Dean of the College Katherine Bergeron ADE’05 in Chicago. Judith Hushon ’67, P’93 hosted the first MAKERS event with a reception and screening in Naples, FL. See the full list of Council events here, and thanks to all the women who hosted and attended.

› Class of 2017:

Students from all 50 states and 83 nations comprise the Class of 2017. Read more about the newest Brunonians.

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Leaders

President Christina H. Paxson

After completing her first year as President, Christina H. Paxson, Brown’s 19th President, shares a few highlights from the past year in a letter to the Brown Community.

Brown Women in Comedy

From screenwriting to stand-up, women have been closing the gender gap in comedy. The Pembroke Center Associates and the Women’s Leadership Council teamed up to present the Commencement Forum "A Sense of Humor: Brown Women in Comedy" on Saturday, May 25th during Reunion/Commencement weekend. Lauren Corrao ’83, P’16 moderated a panel of Brown alumnae who are earning a living by making people laugh. Marin Hinkle ’88, Stage, Television and Film actor; Tara Schuster ’08, Writer, Performer, and Producer at Comedy Central; and Suzanne Whang SCM’86, Television Host, Actor, Writer, and Stand-Up Comedian, discussed their experiences in the comedy business.

MAKERS Project

On June 24th, more than 100 members of the Brown community gathered at the HBO Theater in New York City to watch segments from the groundbreaking documentary MAKERS: Women Who Make America. The documentary, produced by Betsy West ’73, features one of the largest and most dynamic collection of women’s stories ever assembled, including Brown’s 18th President, Ruth Simmons ADE’02 hon. LHD’12 hon., Social Entrepreneur Nancy Lublin ’93, and Human Rights Advocate Malika Saada Saar ’92. Learn more about this pioneering documentary.

We are grateful to Women’s Leadership Council Members Chandra Metzler ’95 and Dana Zucker ’90 along with fellow New York alumnae Bernadette Aulestia ’94, Sue Ding ’10, Jacqui Hogans ’03 and Barbara Weinreich ’80 for making this screening possible.

Mentors

Member Spotlight

New Council Co-Chair Shelley Fidler ’68, P’09 shares her experience at Brown as a student, alumna and mentor.

Women’s Launch Pad

Planning is underway for the Women’s Launch Pad (WLP) mentoring program for academic year ’14 in which 150 mentoring pairs will be supported. Please SAVE the DATE of Thursday, October 17th for the program training and kickoff dinner. Barbara Tannenbaum PhD, P’10, Senior Lecturer in Theatre, Speech & Dance, will be the keynote presenter.

A sincere thank you to all the mentors, current and past! The success of the WLP is in large part because of the fabulous alumnae volunteers who serve as mentors to senior class women. Many of these relationships are transformative for students because of their mentor’s dedication of time and willingness to offer guidance about life after Brown and to act as a sounding board for all kinds of decisions they are confronted with during their senior year. Here are three former mentees telling it like it is!

Lastly, in early May at the WLP year-end celebration, the University community, mentees and their mentors and guests gathered to hear a panel of former WLP mentees discuss their experiences (good and bad) after graduating, including navigating job searches and transitions, using what they learned at Brown in professional environments, working and traveling abroad, and living in the "Big City." Thank you to our panelists:

Carly Arison ’12
Associate, Locus Analytics

Allison Ehrich Bernstein ’09
Executive Communications Specialist, Accion

Amy Goins ’07
Law clerk to the Honorable Gilbert V. Indeglia,
Associate Justice, Rhode Island Supreme Court

Aimee Juan ’10
Researcher, Boston Children’s Hospital

Ralanda Nelson ’12
Recruiter, Two Sigma

Philanthropists

Liz Sherman’s Pembroke Center Challenge

Women’s Leadership Council member and Pembroke Center Associates Council member Liz Sherman ’77, P’06, P’09 issued a $1 million challenge to members of the Brown community to support new research initiatives at the Pembroke Center for Teaching and Research on Women. The Pembroke Challenge was a success, having raised more than $1.5 million in support of new enterprises, including seed grants for collaborative interdisciplinary research. The first round of seed grants were announced in early January and feature fascinating faculty research.