Women of Isenberg 2024

On a foggy, crisp, Saturday morning on the UMass Amherst campus, the campus center was teeming with a diverse and inspiring group of businesswomen ready to learn and share experiences, learning to become the best version of themselves, and to walk the path to success. The Women of Isenberg (WOI) Conference is an annual event put on to help students kickstart their careers and begin to make meaningful connections that will support them throughout their future careers. With representatives from big companies like RTX, EY, and TJX, among many others, this conference sets up attendees with support systems that can provide advice on what it takes to be successful and how to be the best version of yourself.

The day consisted of multiple panels and breakout workshops that catered to different goals and trajectories for careers. These discussions included happiness, personal well-being, public speaking, and networking, ensuring a balance between yourself and your work. This conference aims to train women to launch a successful career and keep on an upward trajectory upon graduating from UMass Amherst. The theme for the 2024 conference is “Inspire, innovate, influence, women leading change.”

“You’re never going to have time. You’re going to have to make time,” said keynote speaker Shachar Scott, an alumna of UMass, who has helped to build and scale global brands including Meta Reality Labs, Bumble, Snapchat, and Apple. She spoke on her success and how she started her career. She moved to the U.S. at a very young age and developed a stutter due to not knowing English. Because of this she needed speech therapy and learned that not everyone has access to this type of therapy. She then worked to become the chairwoman on the board of directors for SAY, the Stuttering Association for the Young, a national non-profit organization that empowers, educates, and supports young people who stutter. “Having a disability can make you fearful or it can make you brave, and I chose to be brave,” she said. Scott went on to talk about her myriad successes with big companies, even bringing a prototype of a pair of camera glasses that are able to take a picture of whatever you’re looking at with a simple tap on the frames. 

The Women of Isenberg team worked incredibly hard to make this conference happen, with incredible results this year. “We had over 400 attendees, and post conference I heard nothing but great things,” said Jing Chen, VP of marketing and communications with the WOI team. “Our theme this year was inspire, influence, and innovate, and the conference did just that.”

Alex Richards, president of the WOI student planning team, called the conference a great success: “As the president, I could not be more proud of the work our student planning team did this past year in order to make the 2024 conference the success that it was. I admire all of our attendees, who took time out of their day to seize new opportunities, gain fresh advice and uplift one another. Our speakers, sponsors, alumnae, students, and faculty are the reason our WOI community is so strong and I am beyond grateful to be a part of the community. The connections made at the conference will affect the WOI future in immeasurable ways.”

Click here for a gallery of photos from the event. 

Click here to read more about the 2024 conference, with a video coming soon.