Page 29 - BusinessWest March, 21, 2022

Women in Business
Reimagine the
Possibilities
Bay Path’s Women’s Leadership Conference Makes Its Return April 1
IBy George O’Brien
n many respects, the Bay Path University Women’s Leadership Conference that will unfold on April 1 at the MassMutual Center is the same one that was put together for early spring 2020 and then canceled by COVID-19 —
and then canceled again amid a surge in early 2021. Indeed, most all the speakers, including keynoter Tyra Banks, the model and media maven, are the same
as those originally scheduled probably 30 months ago. But the day-long event, expected to bring more than
1,300 people to downtown Springfield, simply can’t be the same as the one blueprinted back in 2019, said Sandra Doran, the school’s sixth president, who took the helm just a few months after the 2020 event was canceled.
And that’s because the world has changed so much in the interim, she told BusinessWest, and the confer- ence needs to reflect that.
“Before the pandemic, people talked about being adaptive, they talked about thinking outside the box; the pandemic has changed the way people think about all those things,” said Doran, adding that the changed landscape, and the response to it, is reflected in the new theme for the conference: Reimagine. “What was considered adaptive two years ago is now considered
Sandra Doran, president of Bay Path University
routine today. This concept of really being prepared, with a plan A and a plan B ... in the past, we might have had a couple of different strategies; now we have 10 dif- ferent strategies because we know people’s needs are changing, the needs of employers are changing.”
Karen Woods, assistant vice president of Brand Strategy, Marketing, and Integrated Communications at Bay Path, agreed.
The original theme was ‘Own Your Now,’ she
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