Women in Work Conference on Confidence - Speakers
November 5, 2019
Kelly Roberts.
Kelly Roberts studied at The The University of Hull where during her final year became the Vice President of an
Urban culture society, organizing events within the University and across the local
community relating to the promotion of cultural diversity through performing
arts. Following her graduation in 2013, from The University of Hull with a
degree in Creative Writing with Media and Sociology, she then volunteered for
an award-winning start-up bakery business 'Delissima Cakes' managing the
business's social media and advertising content. Kelly then began working as a
business development manager within the Print Industry before Joining
Enterprise rent a car as a Graduate management trainee in 2015.
Loren Kelly
Loren Kelly is a Career Coach for
students and young professionals with over 10 years of experience. Loren helps
people get clear on a career path and pursue their future and/or first job with
confidence.
‘’I am most passionate about
helping students navigate the many uncertainties of career and university
decisions to ensure long-term happiness and success.’’
Meryl Shirley
Meryl Shirley runs Women Growing a Business, a
Lincolnshire based organization supporting women and business and female
entrepreneurs which started earlier this year. Prior to this Meryl has worked
in several business startup companies.
Next event held by Women Growing a Business on
the 12th of November. Amy Wallis
a Lincoln University graduate and recent winner of a Lincolnshire business
award is speaking. https://www.facebook.com/events/457966981479449/
Calista Craig
Calista Craig is a third-year
Advertising and Marketing student at the University of Lincoln. Calista just
completed a professional practice year at E.ON UK within the Route to Market
department.
‘’My experience at E.ON allowed
me to gain significant confidence, not only in my work ability but also my
personal self. I have discovered the importance of confidence is putting
yourself outside your comfort zone and being open to experiencing new things.’’
Georgia Preece
Georgia Preece is a research artist, poet, and
activist based in the East Midlands. Her artistic practice revolves around
themes of political, social and environmental unrest, with her current body of
work centering itself around the concept of revolution, resistance and
rebellion as a form of practice. Preece is a practicing artist and poet,
studying Fine Art at masters level at the University of Lincoln, whilst working
as a production assistant for Frequency Festival and as a sub-editor and
writer for Radical Art Review.
Girl Wash Your Face
November 4, 2019
Hi Ladies,
Hope you all enjoyed the first book review and feel fully engaged with
the science behind confidence and now are all ‘thinking less and taking action’
while also being ‘authentic’.[1] This
month I have chosen a book with a lot less figures and science experiments,
whoop! This month’s book is ‘Girl, Wash Your Face’ by Rachel Hollis.[2] I
read this book while on holiday and I have to say I felt totally motivated
after. Hollis writes in such a fun but informative way and makes all her advice
feel personal to you. Not only does she cover how to be successful in your
career but also spends a lot of time on personal life as well. After all you
have to feel comfortable in both areas to full reach all your goals.
Hollis starts off by explaining, ‘This book is about a bunch of hurtful
lies and one important truth. The truth? You, and only you, are ultimately
responsible for who you become and how happy you are. That’s the takeaway’.[3] I
feel happiness is the most important factor when trying to reach your goals as
unless we are happy we will feel unmotivated to put in all the effort needed to
reach our dreams. That’s why I loved reading this book so much!
The chapter that spoke to me the most personally, was Chapter Two; ‘The
Lie: I’ll Start Tomorrow’ This review will focus mainly on this chapter as I
feel it was the most motivating for me.[4] Within
the chapter Hollis uses an anecdote of a night she went out with a friends an
‘impromptu happy hour that turned into an impromptu dinner and ended up going
later than any of us anticipated.’[5]
Something I’m sure many of us have experience (although I’m sure Hollis has
never ended up in Keller). However, I’m sure none of us have then gone home
after an event like this and worked out, I know I definitely haven’t. Hollis
did this and explains how she ‘put the evidence of that workout on snapchat’.[6]
She then recalls a convocation between her and her friend that snapped her back
after seeing the post;
Friend: ‘You worked out after that dinner?’
Hollis: ‘Yes because I planned on doing it and didn’t want to cancel’
F: ‘Couldn’t you just postpone until tomorrow’
H: ‘No because I made a promise to myself, and I don’t break them ever’[7]
When I first read this exchange I honestly agreed with her friend.
Surely after a big meal and drinks it was okay to put off a workout? I mean what’s
one day or one missed workout do? I mean even as I’m writing this review I’m putting
off YouTube workout I fancied trying. However, once Hollis explained her
reasoning I was totally on board. Hollis points out ‘what if you had a friend who
constantly flaked on you? What if every other time you made plans she decided
not to show up? What if she gave the excuses like “I really want to see you,
but this TV show I’m watching is just so good”?’[8]
Then I got it. If you had someone who let you down contently you would
be annoyed with them and maybe even go as far to think they are a bad friend.
So if I wouldn’t expect my friends to treat me like that, why would I treat
myself like that? This is Hollis point. It can also be explained by saying that
we wouldn’t contently flake on our friends so why would we treat ourselves any
less than what we would treat our friends. Basically a promise made to yourself
is just as important as a promise one person makes to another, this really
spoke to me.
Although Hollis uses this point to motivate herself to do her workouts,
this concept can also be applied to any part of life and definitely to the
goals you are trying to reach by being part of this society. That email to a
potential employer? Adding to and editing your CV? If you have made a promise
to yourself to do something, you owe it to yourself to put it first and not let
yourself down. To summarise the message, I took from this chapter was to treat
yourself how you would treat other people, if not better when it comes to
improving yourself and your career.
Throughout the book Hollis touches on many other examples like this and
has many other motivating lessons from careers to marriage and family life, but
I personally this is the one that spoke to me the most and I don’t want to
spoil the whole book for you all as I highly recommend reading it.
Overall, this book inspired me to see the importance of being proactive
but also to indulge in self-care and doing small things to change my life for
the better. I felt the book gave me a pleasant wakeup call on how to put myself
first and allow my own goals to be achieved but in a way that isn’t selfish.
Although most of the book tends to focus on lifestyle rather than employment
and industry I do feel that this book enables inspiration to allow the reader
to set goals to achieve in all areas of their lives, both proactively but also at
their own pace.
See you all soon for the next book review ladies! Xoxo
[1] Katty Kay and Claire Shipman, ‘The Confidence Code’, Harper Collins Publishers, (New York,
2014), Page 202
Women in Finance- The Charter and a Step in the Right Direction
November 1, 2019
Jobs in the financial sector,
specifically high-up executive roles, have historically been dominated by men
and… still are today. BUT, steps are being made to break down this ‘norm’! The
Women in Finance Charter (see here), launched by the Government back
in 2016, is domestically leading the way on such change.
The initiative kicked off after an
eye-opening collaborative investigation between the Government and former
Virgin Money CEO, Jayne-Anne Gadhia on the representation of women in senior
managerial roles within the financial sector. The review revealed that only a
poor 14% of Executive Committees comprised of women –VERY disappointing! However,
action was taken and Her Majesty’s Treasury (where I spent the academic year
2018/19 undertaking a work placement) launched the Women in Finance
Charter.
For my placement year I was based in
the Financial Stability Department, working with the Macroprudential and
International Standards Branch. My role involved me liaising with externals
from the likes of the Bank of England and the Financial Conduct Authority. Even
though I started work a few years into the Charter being launched, I was
sceptical about how many women I would come across in the workplace – yes there
may be more at high-level but what about working level?
Well, I was pleasantly surprised. Of
course, if Government are to start such a campaign then they need to be a good
role model, and they sure are. In regard to working level staff (so those at my
level eg the Economists, Analysts and Policy Leads) I experienced a close to
fair gender balance at HMT, the Bank, and the FCA. And for high-level, so
Branch, Team and Department Managers, I did not call out any wild ratios. Yes,
things could still be improved but it was a very promising picture to look
at!
There are now over 330 firms across
financial services signed up to the commitments of the charter. When an
organisation signs up then they are pledging to promote gender diversity by:
- Having one member of the senior executive team
who is responsible and accountable for gender diversity and inclusion;
- Setting internal targets for gender diversity
in senior management;
- Publishing progress annually against these
targets in reports on their website;
- Having an intention to ensure the pay of the
senior executive team is linked to delivery against these internal targets
on gender diversity.
If you would like to find out more
about The Charter, such as who has signed up, HMT’s commitment and more
information on The Charter guidance, then please click here and check out the GOV.UK website.
Similarly, if you are passionate about anything discussed in this post and want to participate in more conversations surrounding women in finance come along to our next event!
Women in Work and the Economics Society are holding a joint discussion on the Women in Finance Charter on Wednesday the 13th of November 5pm in MB1019. More information can be found via the event page on facebook.
Women in Work and the Economics Society are holding a joint discussion on the Women in Finance Charter on Wednesday the 13th of November 5pm in MB1019. More information can be found via the event page on facebook.
Lydia Gallyer-Barnett 3rd year Business Economics.
The Confidence Code
October 21, 2019
Hi Ladies,
As you all probably know our aim at ‘Women in Work’ is to encourage strong,
confident women to learn the skills to reach their career goals and stride
above any limitations they may face while doing so. While our conferences and
events allow convocations and networking opportunities to take place, we also
want a strong social media presence to keep empowering you all every day during
this academic year. One segment of this is our blog, each month, along with
other posts, we aim to produce a book review for books aimed at all the great
things we stand for as a society. We hope these reviews will inspire you to
take a look at these books and others to motivate you to achieve all your goals
whether they be academic or not.
So this academic year we are kicking things off with a review of ‘The
Confidence Code’ by Katty Kay and Claire Shipman.[1]
I’ve decided to start with this book as it tries to explore the science behind
confidence and uses examples of successful woman and science experiments to try
and get to the bottom of the mystery surrounding confidence and have we can
fully achieve it. Spoiler alert: it seems to be all down to our perceptions of
ourselves rather than science, however, like confidence, self-esteem is also
rather hard to just achieve. For this reason, I really liked all the background
research and personal antidotes throughout the book as I feel reading real
examples motivates us and shows us that anyone can achieve a strong self-esteem
and therefore grasp the elusive skill of confidence.
The book starts out by saying, ‘Life on confidence can be a remarkable
thing’.[2] This
introduction highlights how worthwhile working on confidence can be in the long
term and all the amazing things having a bit of confidence can achieve. They
support these claims by giving examples of strong women such as Malala
Yousafzai, who had the confidence to keep fighting for her rights for her
education.
The book then goes on to look at a different aspect of confidence. First
by analysing current science experiments on the topic of brain activity and
confidence and comparing these to strong influential women to come to
conclusions on how confidence can be achieved and developed.
Quite a lot of the points made throughout the book compare female brains
and personalities to that of men. Personally, I did not enjoy all these
comparison as it seemed to play into conventional stereotypes of women.
Furthermore, I feel that both women and men struggle with confidence so
these simple and general comparisons aren’t needed to motivate the women
reading this book. However, the book does allow a glimpse into society and the
intergradient ideas about the genders which a lot of industries and careers
have and this gives the reader a lot more motivation to fight these
stereotypes.
Overall, I feel it is important to recognise how society is conditioned
to believe these between men and women so we can fight it and break glass
ceilings. However, this book spends a whole chapter comparing men and women
with included stats and figures, and personally I feel this is not needed, I
feel that as a society self-motivation without comparison is much better for
confidence and that when trying to better yourself and your future the only
person you should compare yourself to is yourself.
Later on, the book moves away from these comparisons, thankfully, and
focuses on the building blocks to build confidence ‘the confidence cousins’.[3] These
are… ‘self-esteem, optimism, self-compassion and self-efficacy’.[4] I
liked this section of the book as the authors go into details about each
‘confidence cousin’ and how having a grasps on all of these aspects can build
your own confidence easily and successfully.[5] They
concluded this chapter with the quite ‘Confidence is the stuff that turns thoughts
into actions’.[6]
I loved this quote as it is exactly why we are such confidence campaigners here
at Women in Work – we don’t just want you to have dreams we want to be able to
support you in gaining the skills and confidence to go out and achieve them.
Another significant chapter, which builds on this, is Chapter Six, this
chapter focuses on how to ‘make your thoughts an ally’.[7] It
enforces the importance of positive thinking and goes into detail on how
confidence is more than just working on yourself but also learning how to
included others in your confidence so they too can build theirs. [8] The
chapter focuses on skills such as ‘being grateful, thinking small and the
balance of power in a convocation’ to make you seem effortlessly confident and
help others feel comfortable and secure around you.[9]
In conclusion I feel this this book is more factual then it is
motivating but there are elements within that do give women, looking to build
their confidence, a point in the right direction and the building blocks to do
so. So if you are looking for a starting point in developing your confidence
yourself this book summarises the context of confidence perfectly and gives a
lot of real world examples to how their methods and tips work within different
industries. This book has a focus on women working within the STEM and business
industry too so it is helpful for researching breaking glass ceilings in those
areas.
Anyway ladies, I hope you all enjoyed this first book review – if any of
you do read the book feel free to message us and tell us what you think, cannot
wait for all the exciting things we have coming up this year!
XOXO
[1] Katty Kay and Claire Shipman, ‘The Confidence Code’, Harper
Collins Publishers, (New York, 2014).
Amy and Sacha Lincoln Advertising Graduates and Their Brand Gen.u.ine Cosmetics.
October 14, 2019
Amy and Sacha are advertising
graduates, creative partners, and co-founders of their own brand, Gen.u.ine
cosmetics. Gen.u.ine is believed to be the world’s first gender neutral make-up
brand specifically designed for chemotherapy patients. It has just been
shortlisted on the D&AD Future Impact ‘Ones To Watch’ list. The girls have
also been noted on Badass Gals list of influential creative women 2019. The two graduated in September 2019 and are
currently looking for creative placements in London whilst running Gen.u.ine.
They met like all great
friends do, starring across the room at each other with a preconceived dislike
for one another. It was only until 4 months after they had been studying on the
same course, Creative Advertising, that they got to work together on a brief
for the Motor Neurone Disease Association that they realised they actually
quite liked each other. Like turned to love as they got to know how similar
they are, despite being from opposite ends of the country. Both hate cooking.
Both love swimming. Both love crime documentaries.
Differences and similarities
played a huge part in choosing each other as creative partners. In the wild
world of advertising, you have to choose a partner. A work wife for life. One
is the art director and the other a copywriter. In simple terms, one of them is
better at creating the image and the other is better at crafting the words to
go with it. However, their brains work together to create an advert for each
brief.
Over the 3 year course, they
have received briefs for many brands, including PureGym, Hyundai, and Supreme.
In their final year, they started a brief titled ‘Famous & Effective’ and
were given just over a month to become famous in the advertising industry. They
had complete free range over the brief, and whist some people worked on
promoting themselves to make them famous, Amy & Sacha started to develop Gen.u.ine
cosmetics. Their initial aim was to become known in the industry for doing
good, helping people, and making a tangible societal impact.
Every idea has to be inspired
by something. This may be by surroundings, events or in some cases, people. For
Gen.u.ine it was Amy’s nan, Margaret Palmer, who inspired the initial idea.
Margaret suffered from bowl cancer for just over two years. She loved make-up, amazing
colours, and had fashion to go with it to match her big personality. When she
started chemotherapy her skin drastically changed. It became dry and at risk of
infection. This is when Amy and her mother realised that the chemicals in Margaret’s
high street make-up had disastrous effects on her skin. They had no choice but
to get rid of her make-up. This left her feeling low in confidence and not able
to be herself. This meant Margaret had to test very expensive make-up through a
tiring and disheartening ‘trial and error’ process. During her treatment, all
she wanted was to feel like herself. Unfortunately, Margaret passed away before
she was able to use any of the Gen.u.ine products, but for many others, when
they start to lose their sense of self, Gen.u.ine is there to step in, pick
them up, and help them through. With the great support of co-founder, Sacha, who
respected Margaret’s memory every step of the way, they we’re able to develop Gen.u.ine
from a university idea to a worldwide reality. You may think it ambitious for
two twenty-one year old women to start a business in an area which has not been
highly researched, but if we had never taken up the challenge, we would never
had the chance to help so many people restore their identity. The ‘Gen.u.ine’ range currently consists of three
shades of eyebrow pomade, three shades of liquid lip tint, a cheek tint, and an
eyeshadow palette with nine individual shades. Each product is dedicated to
someone who has an experience with cancer, the first eyebrow pomade being named
after Margaret.
Amy and Sacha, only wish is
that Margaret was still with them to celebrate Gen.u.ine’s achievements. They
are breaking into the London advertising scene bit by bit, and started gaining
experience during the summer of their second year at Lincoln. The pair secured
work experience at one of the best advertising agencies in the world, Grey
London. Having spent two weeks in the studio, working on live briefs, a fire
was lit under them and they have relentlessly pursued a career in advertising
ever since.
They have had ‘book crits’
(portfolio reviews) at over 20 agencies in London, including the BBC, McCann,
and Adam&Eve. The relationships they have built with senior creatives at
each agency have been the most valuable to them. Networking is a huge part of
becoming successful, and if it’s in a field you truly love, it can be really
fun and incredibly rewarding! Although getting a job in any profession is very
competitive, you just have to keep going with the grit and determination that
inspired you in the first place. Remembering your original motivation can push
you through the hard days and make the success even sweeter.
It’s great to see more and
more women entering the advertising industry, with many awards being created
specifically to champion successful, hard working women. Women in Work is a
great platform for girls on all courses at Lincoln to start networking and
getting support from other likeminded women going through the same steps. You
never know, you might even meet your business partner!
Amy & Sacha’s biggest
piece of advice, as cringey as it sounds, is to be yourself. Never change
yourself to fit into a class, industry or profession. Your personality will
shine through and people will respect you for it in the long run. As hard as it
is to not be sucked into certain preconceptions of what you’re expected to be,
look like, and dress, stick to your guns. Don’t doubt your own originality.
Trust your instincts on people, yourself, and your own ideas. Listen to
yourself and be honest with your opinions. University is a great place to
explore and experiment, to learn who you are and develop, but you don’t have to
have everything figured out all at once! It’s ok to learn! All the best of luck
to everyone involved in Women in Work and have a great year.
Insta: gen.u.ine.cosmetics
Website:
amyandsacha.carbonmade.com
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