Two years ago, Carrie Kurlander was new to Atlanta when she accepted an invite to attend a function hosted by Womenetics, a local media company that aims to advance professional women in leadership roles.
She didn’t know a soul at the event, but she left understanding that the folks she’d met were “innovators, change agents and passionate do-ers in Atlanta corporations, small business, philanthropy and public service,” said Kurlander, vice president of communications for the Southern Co.
Last year, the Alabama native attended another Womenetics event — its inaugural Global Initiatives conference. Kurlander was so impressed by the speakers, their messages and issues that she plans to attend the second conference called “Global Women’s Initiative: The Ripple Effect.”
This daylong affair Friday at the Intercontinental Hotel in Buckhead will bring together 21 international leaders to discuss ways to advance women and girls worldwide in the areas of economic empowerment, education, literacy, health and human rights. Panelists will discuss and exchange ideas on ways to increase women’s impact globally.
Perhaps their gathering will foster even better solutions.
“We are expecting 500 attendees, and our biggest expectation is that this conference will produce a true ripple effect,” said Ellen Adair Wyche, Womenetics’ director of programming. “We want the attendees to leave inspired to become engaged in these critical issues that impact us here in Atlanta and around the world. Here in Atlanta, we can make a difference.”
In an email, Kurlander rattled off names of some scheduled panelists and speakers: Naomi Tutu, daughter of Archbishop Desmond Tutu and a respected race and gender activist; Cynthia Blandford Nash, honorary consul general of the Republic of Liberia for Georgia; and Mike McCarthy, a CNN executive who oversees the CNN Freedom Project, an initiative that aims to expose the horrors of modern-day slavery and human trafficking.
The power of the experience, of being there, of being encouraged to influence Atlanta and the world, motivates and invigorates, Kurlander told me. Attendees will dare to dream big.
“If I had to sum up my enthusiasm for the Womenetics global women’s initiative, I would say the experience plants seeds of ‘what if’ in us all,” she wrote. “Women who attend the event are interested in making meaningful connections that not only advance their businesses, but [also] help them imagine what their spheres of influence could be.”
Kurlander worked as a publicist in California, as the governor’s press secretary in Alabama, and as an anchor and reporter for television stations in Alabama and Louisiana. She had been the assistant to the president and CEO of Alabama Power, a subsidiary of the Southern Co., before joining the flagship operation in 2003. She was named vice president of communications six years later.
“My CEO always challenges us to be bigger than our bottom line,” she wrote. “When I attended this event last year, it was filled with enthusiastic professionals who are, or want to be, bigger than their bottom lines.”
This year, she expects no less.
About the Author
