#ChooseToChallenge.
From challenge comes change.
These powerful themes resonate as we celebrate International Women’s Day (IWD) this month—a global movement that can trace its beginnings to the early 1900s.
“A challenged world is an alert world,” the organizers of IWD 2021 say on their website. “Individually, we’re all responsible for our own thoughts and actions—all day, every day. We can choose to challenge and call out gender bias and inequality. We can all choose to seek out and celebrate women’s achievements. Collectively, we can all help create an inclusive world. From challenge comes changes, so let’s all choose to challenge.”
I was struck by that statement while interviewing Sarah Kelley Freeman (MPI Tennessee Chapter) and Angessa Lynn Hughmanick (MPI Greater New York Chapter) for my report this month on the MPI Women community, a vital collaboration between MPI and a key segment of our membership (about 70 percent of our members are women).
“We all have the opportunity and privilege to redefine who we are, what we do and how we do it.”
The two are co-chairs of the MPI Women Advisory Board this year and are adamantly committed to setting a course to ensure that women continue to garner a much-needed focus during the pandemic.
“We are living during a historically significant time and we have the power to write the next empowering chapter for our fellow women,” Lynn Hughmanick says.
“We all have the opportunity and privilege to redefine who we are, what we do and how we do it,” Freeman adds.
With staggering job loss in the meeting and event industry as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, a key initiative for the committee is providing access to educational tools like classes, webinars, certifications and materials for those who are either looking for a new job or need to expand their skillset.
It’s an ambitious and appropriate agenda when you consider that, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, employment in leisure and hospitality fell by 498,000 in December.
The Center for American Progress, an independent nonpartisan policy institute, studied labor department statistics and found that over the course of the first 10 months of the pandemic, women—particularly women of color—have lost more jobs than men, as industries dominated by women have been hit the hardest.
Members of the MPI Women community, launched in 2019, enjoy specialized education designed to help them fulfill their career potential and that is focused on actionable next steps women and their allies can take to raise awareness and help close the leadership and pay gaps that currently exist.
The MPI Women community Fulfill your potential with one of the largest networks of meeting professionals.
Other priorities for 2021 include discussions on how to juggle home, life, work and health balance and the uncertainty of how the pandemic has changed and will continue to change the way we work.
This is clearly a group that has chosen to challenge the status quo. A group that our industry and MPI needs now.
Let it be noted that MPI Women is just one of nine communities that address the needs of members in specific areas—including Association Professionals, which we will profile in April. Learn more about MPI communities.
“We want to be transparent, authentic and empathetic now more than ever, in our personal lives, but also professionally,” Freeman says. “Bringing all three of those attributes to the table in the professional world has not always been seen as a positive, but after 2020 that is what people need, and the kind of person you want to work with. I think it has allowed us to be ourselves and have more open conversations without the fear of judgement.”
I join Freeman and Lynn Hughmanick in supporting the MPI Women community. I #ChooseToChallenge. Won’t you?
Until next time…
Rich Luna
Editor in Chief
rluna@mpiweb.org
