Smith Executive Education: pioneering women's leadership in business
Courageous Female Leadership
How It All Began | Jill Ker Conway, daughter of an Australian sheepherder in the outback, author of the best-selling Road From Coorain and internationally-acclaimed corporate advisor, is a brilliant and determined strategist who was once denied access to a career in the British Foreign Service because of her gender. She eventually earned a Ph. D. in history from Harvard and went on in 1975 to become the first woman president of Smith College. Drawing both on her own personal experience of having her talents under-valued and under-developed because of her gender and on Smith's century of experience in educating women for leadership, early in her tenure President Conway assembled a group of elite corporate leaders as advisors and created Smith's executive education program for women, then called the Smith Management Program.
Smart And Courageous Female Leaders | In 1975, corporate leaders were eager to help Smith College build the first non-business-school executive education program for women for two reasons: (1) because they saw the obvious need and (2) because of Smith's international prominence as a training ground for smart and courageous female leaders. Today, corporate learning officers turn to Smith for the same reasons, but also for the track record of Smith Executive Education graduates and for the willingness of Smith to work with them on customizing programs to meet their needs as part of our approach, not as an expensive add-on.
30 Years Later | More than 30 years later, Conway is still serving on and chairing corporate boards herself, as well as working with the current Smith Executive Education for Women Program to keep the curriculum cutting-edge and strategically sharp. The basic premise of those earliest programs remains the essential strength of today's multi-level programming: rigorous instruction and high expectations, punctuated by strategic networking and peer coaching about the challenges that are still inherent in the system for even the best and brightest women.
Always Thought Leadership | Smith Executive Education faculty come from first-tier business schools and consultancies around the world. Women and international experts are constantly vetted and recruited to deliver on Smith's promise to provide a world-renowned faculty of thought leaders who blend theory and practice for 21st century leaders.
No major organization can afford to be late to the game when it comes to fielding a first-class roster of women leaders. Smith knows the rules, and Smith can help you win.
(photo credit: Final10 Jill Ker Conway, October, 1981. Photographer/creator: unknown. 172)