WestStar will host the 21st annual Working Women’s Conference on Friday, Feb. 15, 2019.
Each year a committee of West Tennessee women who are involved in the WestStar leadership program get together and plan the annual Working Women’s Conference.
This conference serves as a time for working women to come together to hear guest lecturers speak and to network in their community.
The event is open to women of all ages who wish to attend. At the event, in addition to hearing guest speakers, audience members will receive lunch and a “goody” bag from sponsors of the event.
This year’s theme is baseball and the women on the planning committee have coordinated to have Joan Cronan, author and women’s athletic director emeritus for UTK, as the keynote speaker.
Joyanne Gansereit, the coordinator of programs for the Ned Ray McWherter Institute at UTM and committee member for the Working Women’s Conference, is excited to hear Cronan’s presentation.
“She definitely fits the working women’s mold. It will be interesting to see how she balanced home life and being a women’s athletic director at the same time,” Gansereit said.
Other speakers for the event include the vice president of West Tennessee Healthcare, the assistant to the head coach for the University of Kentucky Women’s Basketball and the CHOICES program coordinator of the Southwest Tennessee Development District.
Dr. Teresa Collard, associate professor of Communications, and Dr. Lisa LeBleu, associate professor of Family and Consumer Sciences Education, will perform their fan-favorite comedy duet during the Working Women’s Conference as they have in years past.
Each year at the end of the conference, the ladies in attendance are polled on their likes and dislikes from the event and their feedback goes into planning future events.
The Working Women’s Conference began in 1997 when the WestStar Class of that year was tasked with creating a new event. They decided that something West Tennessee could benefit from was having one specific day to allow women from all 21 counties of West Tennessee to come together to network and educated each other.
Since that time, the popularity of the conference has grown and it now reaches roughly 300 women at the ticketed event.
Registration for the 21st annual Working Women’s Conference will close on Monday, Feb. 11. Tickets are $40 and can be purchased online at secure.touchnet.com/C21608_ustores/web/classic/product_detail.jsp?PRODUCTID=263&SINGLESTORE=true.
