Guest blogger Ama Pomaa Boateng is the founder and CEO of the Ghanaian High-tech Women (GHW), a non-profit organization which seeks to help women apply IT skills in the management of their businesses to facilitate the achievement of growth and technological advancement of women.
The Fortune Most Powerful Women Summit 2009 was an exhilarating three days filled with innovative and creative ideas to better position women in business.
Over four hundred prominent women leaders in business, philanthropy, government, education, and the arts assembled in San Diego, California to take part in plenary sessions, breakout sessions, and a special showcase of materials and presentations from ExxonMobil, SHRM, Women & Co, Deloitte, Herman Miller and many more. The program was built around five pillars: leadership, innovation, finance and the economy, global connections, and the common good.
I was honored to be a speaker on a global connections session, where I was able to talk about my lessons learned from my time spent with the Case Foundation and Jean Case, my experiences and achievements, and how they all are beginning to chart my future challenges, potential role as a leader, and how I need to provide a web of support, encouragement, and example. It was also a forum for me to share and pass on a couple of the key lessons I learned from Jean Case:
- I must nurture, guide, and teach and reach down to girls and young women and show them a path paved with encouragement.
- The Case Foundation’s belief in “investing in people and ideas that can change the world” has given me a brilliant opportunity to pay it forward by setting up a business incubation program for women social entrepreneurs in Ghana to come up with sustainable and scalable social innovations that would solve various social problems in my country.
Most impressive at the conference were all of the amazing women who I carefully listened to. Here are a few key pieces of wisdom that apply not only to business, but also to life, that I've taken away with me:
The reason violence against women is a weapon of war is because it's a way to break the spirit of a society.
Prepare, don't repair.
Get your passport stamped. Don't go to France. We know what France is. Go to Vietnam, go to India.
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