Round table: Women in Leadership

Join us on Wednesday 9 December for a round table event hosted by Dr. Oliver Elliott, our head of research and Editor-in-chief of the inaugural Geneva Business School Magazine. The panel will be discussing the topics raised in the pages of the magazine, centered around the current climate for Women in Leadership, discussing wide-ranging topics related to gender equality in global business and research. All faculty and students speaking contributed an article to the magazine and will take a Q&A session at the end for participants to engage in.

During a virtual round table discussion, moderated by Dr Oliver Elliott, a panel of expert Geneva Business School faculty will explore the issues they wrote about for the magazine:

With women making up the majority of the frontline “soldiers†fighting COVID-19, Daria Gavrilova looks at how perceptions of women have begun to shift, creating new opportunities for female entrepreneurs to succeed. The obstacles, however, remain great. In the United States, investment capital still flows almost exclusively to male-run start-ups (Andrew Wong & Eleanor Manley). Many companies are still reluctant to recognize the value of diverse hiring, using the excuse of “cultural fit†to resist change (Jarya Kotyleng).

To achieve gender equality, the world must help women to be able to make better choices as individuals— individual financial literacy, for instance, can help women liberate women from the trap of dependence on men (Assel Narymbetova). But we must also think about systems of representation, inclusivity, and support. By increasing the number of women at conferences and events, we not only encourage the development of networks that women often lack, but also provide positive role models for the next generation of young women leaders (Victoria Masters). Cassandre Burgess and Biliana Vassileva both look at female mentorship and other strategies that can help women leaders to overcome all-too-common feelings of isolation and imposter syndrome, in different contexts.

This is an event for our students and faculty to come together and discuss the global need for equality in leadership across all sectors and the advantages to be gained by innovating for diversity.

The authors will come together via Google Meet, and the event will be live streamed via YouTube. The moderator will take and queue questions from students and other participants to discuss during at the end of the event.