Women’s summit to urge pursuit of excellence

The Power of Excellence is the theme of the 14th Women’s Summit at Bryant University on March 10, a daylong event that organizers say is designed to provide women with inspiring but practical advice on how to achieve excellence in their own professional and private lives. About 1,000 women are expected to attend.
Kati Machtley, director and key organizer of the summit, pointed to a quote by Aristotle to explain why the concept of excellence remains important today. “We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence then is not an art but a habit.”
Excellence is a powerful habit that women can embrace to benefit their daily lives, particularly if they love what they do, Machtley said. “If you’re passionate about what you’re doing, you’re going to want to do a good job,” she said. “Excellence in your work reflects on you and provides great value to your organization.”
Discussing the obstacles they have overcome in pursuit of personal excellence will be three nationally known business leaders, who will address the summit at different times during the day:
• Linda Alvarado is president and CEO of Alvarado Construction Inc. in Denver, one of the fastest-growing companies in the country, and the first Hispanic female owner of a Major League Baseball franchise, the Colorado Rockies. “She’ll be talking about her experiences, how and why she started her business,” Machtley said, “and what she had to do to survive as a minority woman in these male-dominated fields.”
• Joan Lunden, who spent almost two decades as host of “Good Morning America,” is an entrepreneur and best-selling author of eight books, as well as the mother of seven children. Lunden will talk about “how she basically reinvented herself” as an entrepreneur after leaving the popular ABC morning show, Machtley said. • Alison Levine “had a Wall Street career, overcame a life-threatening heart condition and then led an all-women expedition to Mt. Everest,” Machtley said. Levine teaches leadership at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point and is president of her own consulting firm, Daredevil Strategies.
Machtley, the wife of Bryant President Ron Machtley, has achieved recognition in her own right for the work she has done to create and organize the annual women’s summit over the last 14 years. But the summit actually involves the entire university, she said, including staff members such as the grounds crew and public-safety officers, as well as three co-chairs, several subcommittees, five student interns and more than 100 volunteers. “This is a whole Bryant University community effort,” she said. “Everybody on campus is involved on the day of the summit.”
Carol C. Malysz, vice president of the Boston-based executive employment firm New Directions Inc. and former director of the Center for Women & Enterprise in Providence, said the summit is important to women because it provides “inspiration and advice” that cannot be found anywhere else. “Most of the women who attend leave the summit very inspired and with hands-on practical advice on ways they can move their careers and their lives ahead,” she said.
The fact that the summit is sold out every year (and Machtley expects this year’s event to be sold out by the end of February) shows there is a significant need among women “for information, resources, networking and role models,” Malysz said. “If a woman has a vision for herself and she sees someone else who has achieved that vision, that’s very inspiring.”
Malysz will present a work session on Living a Life of Excellence: Creating Your Personal Life Portfolio at the summit. Noting that New Directions specializes in the preparation of personal-life portfolios for its clients, Malysz said the idea is similar to a financial portfolio, but with “different parts of your life” delineated such as career, family, leisure interests and financial needs. “Setting priorities, allocating time for each part of your portfolio, that’s where the challenge comes in, she said. “How do you implement it? It’s a very dynamic process.”
Regarding the workshops, Machtley said time allows for only 20 on the day of the summit, but “we could have had 30 easily” because a call for proposals in August resulted in “many more [submissions] than we could accept.”
Other workshop highlights Machtley noted include:
• Developing Excellence Within Your Team, offered by women managers from Amica Insurance, the YMCA of Providence and Citizens Bank, who Machtley said will talk about “how to enhance the contributions of your employees and how to foster teamwork and trust.”
• The Female Vision: What Women See Matters to Organizations, based on the book “The Female Vision” by Julie Johnson and Sally Helgesen.
Johnson, an executive coach, will join Anne Szostak, of the Providence consulting firm Szostak Partners LLC, to discuss the general way that “women notice things differently than men,” Machtley said. “That’s why it is so important to have women in leadership positions,” she added, “because often they see things that others don’t.”
• View from the Top: Leading Change will feature three “high-profile, high-powered women leaders” in Rhode Island, Machtley said, namely state General Treasurer Gina M. Raimondo, Greater Providence Chamber of Commerce President Laurie White and Cheryl W. Snead, president and CEO of Banneker Industries in North Smithfield. •