Be the Change You Want to See

Registration is Open!

PCSW’s newest partnership, CT Women: Be The Change You Want to See, is part of a national initiative called Vision2020. The goal of the project is to convene allies and women leaders from across Connecticut with the purpose to advance women’s equality by the year 2020 (the 100th anniversary of women’s right to vote). The project was developed by the Institute for Women’s Health and Leadership at Drexel University College of Medicine with the intention of making equality a national priority through shared leadership among women and men in every state.

Conference:

PCSW is collaborating with Vision2020′s Connecticut delegates Jo Dutcher and Nandini Sharma as well as visionary delegate Carolyn Mazure in launching a CT Women: Be the Change you Want to See conference. The conference will take place on September 15, 2012 at the Legislative Office Building in Hartford. This is an all-day event.

The national project is working to achieve the following five goals by the year 2020:

  1. Increase the number of women in senior leadership positions in American life to reflect the workforce talent pool and demographics.
  2. Achieve pay equity, so that equal pay for equal work will be the norm in the United States.
  3. Educate employers about the value of policies and practices that enable men and women to share fairly their family responsibilities.
  4. Educate new generations of girls and boys to respect their differences and to act on the belief that the nation is at its best when leadership is shared and opportunities are open to all.
  5. Mobilize women to vote, with particular emphasis on a record-setting turnout in 2020, the centennial of the 19th Amendment.

Sponsorships:

Are you interested in having your organization or business be a sponsor of the conference? Contact Michelle to more details at .

About PCSW:

The Permanent Commission on the Status of Women was formed in 1973 under Sec. 46a of the Connecticut General Statutes to study and improve Connecticut women’s economic security, health and safety; to promote consideration of qualified women to leadership positions; and to work toward the elimination of gender discrimination. As a non-partisan arm of the General Assembly the agency monitors, critiques and recommends changes to legislation to inform public policy, and assesses programs and practices in State agencies for their effect on the state’s women. The PCSW serves as a liaison between government and its diverse constituents, and convenes stakeholders, including the business, non-profit and educational communities, local governments, and the media, in order to promote awareness of women’s issues.

About Connecticut’s Vision2020 Delegates:

Jo Dutcher

Dutcher is a Director at Deloitte, the international accounting and consulting firm known for its award-winning Initiative for the Retention and Advancement of Women. She directs succession planning and leadership development for high talent partners serving the firm’s most significant global clients. A strategic imperative of the program is the advancement of women and minorities into these client-facing leadership roles. She developed the highly successful Next Generation partner development curriculum which focuses on developing future generations of leadership for Deloitte.

Fluent in Spanish, Dutcher has extensive experience in managing projects in Latin America and in Europe. Before joining Deloitte, she held financial positions at Continental Grain Company, Exxon International Company and Exxon Corporation. Dutcher is a Board member of the Financial Women’s Association of New York, a leading executive organization for women in finance. An important part of the FWA’s mission is the development of future leaders and enhancing the role of women in finance. Committed to the belief that female role models are critical to women at all points on the career spectrum, as co-chair of Professional Development Dutcher created a new “Learning from Leaders” series in which successful women executives shared with younger professional women the critical turning points and decisions that formed their careers. She has also co-chaired the Scholarship Committee; the FWA has awarded approximately $1.2 million in H.S. graduate, continuing undergraduate and MBA scholarships.

Holding Bachelor and Master’s degrees in Spanish from Manhattanville College and Tufts University, respectively, Dutcher received her MBA in Finance with High Distinction from Babson College. Before beginning her business career she was a language teacher at the high school and college levels. She has lived in Italy and Spain.

Nandini Sharma

Sharma grew up in Calcutta, India attended college and university in Bombay, graduating with a B.A. in Economics from Sophia College and a Master’s in Finance from Bombay University’s Management Program. She worked with HDFC in retail mortgage finance and American Express Bank where she traveled as an auditor to Bangladesh, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Australia, Japan, Singapore, Hong Kong and Thailand.

In 1994, she joined GE Capital India in New Delhi and worked in various positions in risk management before moving to the United States. She worked in Reinsurance and Commercial Finance before her current job in Global Portfolio Data & Analytics for GE Capital Consumer Finance in Stamford, Conn. She lives in Ridgefield, Conn., with her daughter. She also enjoys practicing Ashtanga Yoga, travel & writing.

Carolyn Mazure

Mazure is a Professor of Psychiatry and Psychology, and Associate Dean for Faculty Affairs at Yale School of Medicine. She created and directs Yale’s interdisciplinary research program on health and gender ‐ Women’s Health Research at Yale, which generates new research findings on pressing health concerns for women and focuses on the importance of gender differences in understanding health and disease. Under her leadership, this program has provided health data of practical benefit to the community, built new research collaborations across the nation, and launched new investigators into careers dedicated to studying gender‐specific aspects of health.

Mazure’s own research targets the interplay of stress, depression and addictive behaviors. Her awards for innovations in women’s health research include the Marion Spencer Fay Award from the Institute for Women’s Health and Leadership, the Elizabeth Blackwell Award, the Distinguished Leadership Award for Scholarship from the American Psychological Association, and induction into the Connecticut Women’s Hall of Fame. Mazure has testified to the U.S. Congress on the importance of women’s health research, served on the planning committee for the first White House Conference on Mental Health, and was a Public Health Policy Fellow in the U.S. House of Representatives.