photo by: Niamh Coomey

Students, faculty and alumni of Bethany College spent Friday evening and Saturday discussing networking and connection during the school’s 10th annual Women and Leadership Symposium.

Students, faculty and alumni of Bethany College gathered Friday and Saturday for a series of talks about “Networking in the 21st Century” at the school’s 10th annual Women and Leadership Symposium.

Alumni, students, staff and faculty gathered in Bethany College’s Commencement Hall Friday night and Saturday for a series of speakers and discussions focused on female empowerment.

“The concept [for the event when it was born] 10 years ago was that Bethany is kind of isolated,” said Bethany alumna and event organizer Scarlett Foster. “So the question was how can we bring alumni here rather than force students to go find alums.”

Foster planned the symposium almost entirely on her own for its first five years. Now, there is a committee that shoulders many of the planning duties, but Foster is still closely involved.

The event started in a time when female students were particularly underrepresented at Bethany College, Foster said. She wanted to create a space for mentorship between women of all ages.

“So it was a brainstorming idea with a friend of mine over a steak and a glass of wine and we pulled it off within three to four months the first time,” Foster said.

Foster said she was incredibly grateful for the network of women willing to come back to Bethany and spend some time connecting with current and past students alike.

Best-selling author, leadership coach and Bethany alumna Beth Benatti Kennedy was the keynote speaker at the weekend’s event, focusing her address on the importance of personal resilience and connection with others.

Benatti Kennedy recently published her book “ReThink Resilience: 99 ways to ReCharge Your Career and Life,” which walks readers through strategies for success. Attendees of the symposium received a copy of Benatti Kennedy’s book.

In her keynote address, she spoke about lessons learned from her late father and the strategies for human connection that she learned from him.

Benatti Kennedy led several exercises focused around networking and connection. One exercise called “who is in your boat” asked attendees to recognize the important connections in their life and take a look at how they maintain them.

“I really hope everyone walks away with a few people in what I call their ‘boat,'” Benatti Kennedy said. “There’s some students here, there’s people in their 70s and 60s and 50s, I hope people connect and stay connected just like the experience that I had.”

Another nugget of wisdom Benatti Kennedy shared with attendees was her “Friday 5,” or taking five minutes to reach out to people and maintain connections at the end of each week.

“I think what often happens is women get so busy and the first thing that happens to fall is connection. Women get so busy with their careers and whether we like it or not, we’re managing so much,” she said. “So it’s one of these things that just have to happen if we want to have a fulfilled career and a fulfilled life.”

Foster emphasized how affirming and validating having a mentorship relationship between two women can be because of the experiences they share, particularly when women are still underrepresented in many fields.

“We need to continually be promoting women into the right positions whether they’re in a corporate position or they’re in academia or they’re in a nonprofit group,” Foster said. “Sometimes you need somebody to help you up the ladder and the best person to do that is another woman.”