*Attendees are encouraged to bring a natural hair care product for the COMMA Bookstore Self Care Drive. Donations will be distributed to area shelter programs.
Registration/Check In
Happenings Room
Poem by Anyrah Shaveh
Opening Remarks: Interim Chancellor Donna Fry
Happenings Room
Keynote
Dr. Christine Hammond, Retired President of Mid Michigan College and Founder of the consulting firm, Leadership Perspectives, Inc.
Happenings Room
Telling our Stories
Lunch & Panel Discussion
Anyrah Shaveh
Happenings Room
Reclaiming Your Image
Healing Resilience: Empowering Women to Lead Beyond Sex Trauma and Dating Violence
Speaker: Adeola Osunlowo
Happenings Room
Join Founder of Wombman Unspoken, Holistic Fertility Doula, and Author Adeola for "Healing Resilience," a powerful presentation focused on empowering survivors of sexual or domestic violence with practical healing tools to overcome effects of trauma. Explore strategies and insights for healing from sex trauma and dating violence, reclaiming personal and professional strength. Engage in a supportive community dedicated to growth, empowerment, and building a path toward lasting healing. We'll learn about resources for support and healing modalities such as herbalism, meditation, and affirmations for transformative and sustainable healing.
Job Searching Skills
Speaker: Antonio Riggs
Assistant Director, Office of Student Success
213 UCEN, Center for Gender and Sexuality
Looking for a new career or first job and don't know where to start? Join Antonio Riggs from Student Success Center to learn more on job search strategies and professional job search tools.
How to Network: Leading Yourself to Lead Others
Speakers: Klementina (Tina) Sula & Tracy Kramer
Michigan Room B
Contrary to popular belief, networking is not about who you know. Networking is about who knows you. In order to network strategically, a person needs to know who they are so they can show up as the best version of themselves when engaging with others. In this session, you will learn the definition of networking, an understanding of the networking mindset and the networking process and will begin the journey of understanding your identity and how to leverage it to achieve your goals and purpose.
Barbie is Tired
Speaker: Q Dockery and Stephanie Hare
Michigan Room C
More times than not women in the workplace find themselves taking on more professional and emotional labor than their colleagues, especially who identify as cis-males. Many times this is due to traditional gender roles and misogynist expectations that people still place on women despite various waves of feminist and womanist movements around the world. Due to this, women in the workplace (at all levels) can experience guilt, burn out, isolation, carrying burdens that aren’t theirs, and more. This presentation the presenters will focus on the intersectionality of age, marital status, and gender and how it impacts our experiences and in the professional spaces. Using examples from “The Barbie Movie” as well as storytelling and dialogue from focus groups, participants in this session will be able to share their own experiences and come up with ways to disrupt these patterns both in their own lives and the lives of others around them.
Healthy Boundaries
Speaker: CGS Peer Educators
213 UCEN, Center for Gender and Sexuality
This workshop will cover what healthy boundaries look like, how we can set them with others, and the importance of respecting others boundaries. We will discuss this in the context of all types of relationships we could have
Know Your Rights: Women's Civil Rights Across the U.S. in 2024
Speakers: Kaylie Strayka
Title IX Deputy Investigator
Michigan Room B
Our lives and careers may take us all over, from Anchorage, Alaska to Zephyrhills, Florida. No matter where we go, we need to understand our rights in employment, healthcare, freedom of movement, and safe intimate relationships. In this program, we will review the current legal landscape impacting cisgender and transgender women around the United States. We will discuss which states have the best employment protections for pregnant people and new parents, where the gender pay gap is most pronounced, which regions have the strongest protections for trans women, where abortion is and is not accessible, and which states offer the strongest protections to survivors of intimate partner violence. We will also review Michigan's place in all of these metrics. Participants will leave the session with an understanding of factors to consider before moving or traveling based on their own unique needs within the wide umbrella of womanhood.
Trauma Informed Leadership: How to Revitalize Yourself & Your Teams
Speaker: Lisa Sancrant & Julie Snyder
Michigan Room C
In this session, our focus will be on understanding and addressing the symptoms and impact of Secondary Traumatic Stress (STS) and burnout on ourselves and our teams. Through open and collaborative group discussions, we will explore effective leadership strategies to tackle these pressing issues. Participants will be invited to complete the Professional Quality of Life Measure, a tool designed to assess burnout, secondary trauma, and compassion fatigue. This assessment will help us explore relevant themes, drawing insights from the emerging post COVID-19 counseling literature and grounding our approach in trauma-informed practice. We will also delve into the impact of burnout, secondary trauma, and compassion fatigue, recognizing the importance of addressing these issues proactively. During the session, participants will be encouraged to openly share their coping strategies for managing these challenges, particularly in the context of their leadership roles.
BIPOC Narratives and How To Increases Representation and Affirmation
Speaker: Jazlynne Cathey & Q Dockery
Loving Lounge
With the growing digital age, media is becoming a large part of many individuals' everyday lives. Despite its ever growing prevalence in society, women of color have often found themselves on the back end of seeing themselves not only represented but represented accurately. Until recently WOC had to initially seek out characters and stories that they could relate to even if the characters did not necessarily look like them. This session will focus on this recent change and how WOC and other BIPOC narratives in genres such as comics and media have helped increase representation as well as allowed for the exploration of identity, social issues, culture, archetypes placed on women of color, and more. This session will also explore how creators are initially using storytelling to provide a reflection of the larger society and its issues, particularly for WOC. All levels of knowledge are welcome.
Mindful Walking Groups
Meet walking group leaders in the circle drive of UCEN for a "Mindful Walking" Exercise. Group will be lead through downtown Flint area in preparation for Boss Up Finale at Comma Book Store and Social Hub.
My Beautiful Black Hair
Speaker: St. Claire Detrick-Jules
Comma Bookstore and Social Hub 132 W 2nd St, Flint MI
As of October 2023, twenty-three states have passed the CROWN Act, groundbreaking legislation which bans
discrimination in schools and the workplace of natural Black hair and other Afrocentric hairstyles; Black
students are disproportionately disciplined for wearing Afrocentric hairstyles, and Black employees are 1.5 times
more likely to be sent home from work for their hair. The demonization of Black hair as a marker of
anti-Blackness has forced the Black community into a complex and often traumatic relationship with our hair.
As our education should always extend past the classroom walls, it is crucial for students to engage in
thought-provoking discussions about beauty standards, about gender, about race, about identity, and, of course,
about Black hair, which stands at the intersection of all these topics.