Chronicle of NYC Conference Scene

There is something special about sitting in a room with 600 women in the heart of Manhattan. 

In the audience of Mogul X in NYC this weekend, I slowly started to realize that I felt different than I normally do.  Normally I'm in a completely male-dominated room, measuring my words carefully, taking care to appear to belong. I'm not sure if I've really ever noticed it before - perhaps this inkling of self-awareness is the first signs of my short-lived attempt at daily meditation finally shining through (more on this in a later post). In any event, I recognized it, so I've decided to explore it a bit here.

Lately, I've been doing a lot of soul searching. My decision to quit my job and attend Columbia Business School at 31 was a little daring, and completing my program last week without a decided career course strikes many as downright crazy, or lazy.  But, having worked 10 years already, I've chosen to take the time and evaluate what my career has been, and what I want it to be.  Not what I am expected to want, or do, but what I actually want.  What have I liked so far? What have I disliked? Though my roles have been varied and challenging, there is one common thread, I was never surrounded by more women than men. Often I was the only woman in the room, and also often the youngest as well. I once even had a boss tell me that for my age and my gender, I was doing a good job. Let that sink in for a moment.

This week, my career exploration brought me to two distinctly different experiences; I attended a conference of 99% women, and I attended a conference of 99% men.

At the "regular" (read: supposedly co-ed) conference earlier this week, during the entire morning session, from 8am-12pm, of the 20+ presenters and speakers to grace the stage, there was precisely one woman.  Well, to be fair, women made two other appearances -- as the voice in a demo video played by one male presenter, and by another male presenter describing how he got the idea for his startup while watching the movie Her. He was apparently inspired by Scarlett Johansson's voice -- but after mentioning it several times he then clarified "To be clear, Scarlett Johansson was pregnant when I launched this company, so she certainly wasn't actually involved" to male chuckles in the crowd.  As if this dipshit could get ScarJo to voice over his AI?

I don't know if I'm more disturbed by the implication that clearly women can't work while pregnant, not even in a voice over capacity, or by the fact that he had done a bit of research and knew that she was pregnant at the time. What year is this? Who organized this conference to not realize the complete underrepresentation of women? Why can men still feel it's ok to question a woman's ability to work?

Needless to say, I found the conference extremely stifling, so after making one acquaintance in the audience (another woman who shared my sentiments about the speakers), I decided to leave.

The women's conference could not have felt more different.  People actually wanted to talk to one another. It wasn't a mechanical, A/S/L personal information exchange to root out if the other person was valuable enough to get a business card from to ask a favor later. It was so much more genuine, learning what drew people to what they are doing with their lives, why they like it, what they want to do next. It was so much more welcoming!

I don't know if I would classify myself as a feminist - although my recent watching of the Handmaid's Tale and reading of a similarly eerie book "Vox" by Christina Dalcher certainly have made me a bit more sensitive about it.

But I am starting to realize there are differences in how men and women operate, collaborate, and run companies. Being with these incredibly passionate women, it began to dawn on me that you could actually align your values with your work, you could actually pick something you really care about and work at a company that cares about that too.  And you could do it with people who embrace the full meaning of being a woman.

A quote that has stuck with me was from Abigail Disney's keynote address at the Columbia University's She Opened the Door women's conference this past February. (She was completely badass by the way, I encourage everyone to watch her documentary Pray the Devil Back to Hell.) She talked about how a lot of women at the top of organizations today got there by acting like men (which in my experience is true in a lot of instances). How women keep checking their woman parts at the door of the Board Room. She left us with a powerful question I haven't forgotten.  What could be possible if women brought their entire selves with them to work? What could be achieve, and what could we have prevented?

This feeling that I had at the conference, this "unlocking" emotion I experienced, was maybe the first time I've really experienced being my full self while contemplating what career I want.  And I realized I want to be my entire self at work, and I want to love it.  I want to work in an environment where I can feel that powerful and complete acceptance all the time. And I want other women to experience it too and then decide for themselves which they prefer.