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Today signified the first outing for the FLS@Mayfield team. The Create Your Career event, run by the EBP at Lakeside, North Harbour, was a fantastic opportunity to meet and learn from some amazing female leaders in the world of work. The programme consisted of hearing from 2 keynote speakers on different topics with a chance to have small group chats with a number of inspirational women from different sectors of employment. This was then followed by a networking lunch where the girls were expected to interact with girls from other schools who also attended. The whole day was planned around developing the confidence and skills of girls required by employers.
Our first keynote speaker Chrissy Forder from Southern Solutions spoke about resilience, one of the 6Rs at Mayfield, and its importance in developing you as a person. Chrissy herself demonstrated resilience by stepping into the breach at the last minute to do the opening slot at very short notice due to the original speaker being ill. She spoke about being confident, bouncing back from disappointment and being brave enough to try something different to change your situation.
We were then introduced to the 10 inspirational women from various sectors of employment including entertainment, science, technology, medicine, finance, engineering and HR. They introduced themselves and told us a bit about their jobs and their background. They were tasked with giving some advice to their younger selves, something they wished they had known at 15 years old. They gave out some very valuable gems of advice that they hoped would benefit the days participants.
The girls then had a chance to grill each of the inspirational women. Upon arrival all participants were given their name badges and each badge contained a number. This number designated the groups you were in for the discussion workshops. The set up for this was two-fold 1) to speak to the women in more depth and 2) to step out of their comfort zone and be in a group with people that they didn’t know. Initially the FLS members found this a little daunting and were not looking forward to it at all. The girls stepped up without fuss and learnt a lot from this session. They were keen to talk about it when we reconvened for the second keynote speaker who was entrepreneur Keshia Stewart from Teachtech Solutions.
Keshia spoke about the power of networking and the support and friendship that networks can bring and how they can enhance your life. She spoke about professional networks. The joy of working with people and watching each other grow and progress over the years and how the support of each other can help you advance by drawing on their expertise in a give and take relationship. Keisha then spoke about having a personal network, one where you and your friends support each other. Where you can be honest with each other and having that safe place to vent and discuss options. This led very nicely into the networking lunch.
During the lunch, all participants were given a networking bingo card to encourage them to mix and form links with people that they didn’t know. To begin with, the lunch was very quiet as the girls sat in their school groups. It took a couple of brave girls who were prepared to take a risk to go to another group and begin interacting. After that everyone, including those who were very nervous, found their confidence and began to make links with new people.
The comments from the FLS@Mayfield team were ‘I feel much more confident now having tried networking and I’ve made new friends’ ‘Lots of great advice from very inspirational women’ ‘What a great day, I feel inspired to follow my dreams’
All in all, a fabulous day filled with fabulous women giving advice to the fabulous women of tomorrow.
