Team building activity, Acid River, aimed at testing participants’ abilities to prioritize, organize, and mobilize around a challenge.

“Women on the Move: Advancing Authentic Leaders” brought together experts on leadership and women rising in their organizations.

Organized by Florida International University’s Center for Leadership and run by the College of Business Administration’s Office of Executive and Professional Education (EPE), the event covered five critical competency areas: leading self, strategic focus, managing operations, leading teams, and connecting with others.

“As high-achieving women move up the ranks of their organizations, they realize the need to take responsibility for their own leadership development,” said Joyce J. Elam, executive dean of the college, academic director of the center, and presenter on the “leading self” topic. “We designed the program to help them discover their strengths as leaders and to provide a framework for discussing the unique challenges and choices women leaders face.”

Participants experience immediate impact.

“The energy I came back with was visible to everyone, and I realized things about myself and my behavior that I’ve already begun to change.”

—Ana Briz (BS ’91), administrative vice president, Endpoint Systems Services, Visa, Inc.

Denise Gaffor, HR Director for GeoCare/SFETCA, leads her team in a group activity, geared towards utilizing individual competencies and making the best of limited resources.

“The energy I came back with was visible to everyone, and I realized things about myself and my behavior that I’ve already begun to change,” said Ana Briz (BS ’91), administrative vice president, Endpoint Systems Services, Visa, Inc.

Cindy E. Cahill, regional retail banking manager/senior vice president, Visa, Inc., said she learned, among other insights, that, “my negotiation style was that of a problem solver. I definitely applied those skill sets more consciously after the program.”

According to Mayra Beers, the center’s executive director and chief of staff, office of the president, “With this new program, the center has created a unique space for women leaders to learn new ways of thinking about and achieving career success. We look forward to the next conference of ‘Women on the Move.’”

Leaders in theory and practice share their knowledge.

Dr. Nathan Hiller, assistant professor of industrial and organizational psychology (FIU) explains five-point leadership competency model to participants.

The framework drew upon research by Nathan Hiller, assistant professor, Psychology Department, and a center fellow. After an exhaustive review of existing studies on leadership, he developed a tool that aligns with others in the field, but is uniquely the university’s.

“We identified 53 competencies that logically clustered around the five ‘meta competencies’ that we used as the basis for the conference,” said Hiller, who introduced the model and presented at the strategic focus session.

Other presenters at the conference, which took place November 5-8, 2007, at the Hyatt Regency Bonaventure, Weston, Florida, included Dana Farrow, professor, Department of Management and International Business and center fellow; Kimberly Taylor, associate professor, Department of Marketing; and acclaimed author, lecturer, and center fellow Nance Guilmartin.