Inaugural MFGS, Inc. Women’s Leadership Summit 2024: Empowerment, Fellowship, and Momentum

Along with two amazing colleagues and friends, we just finished the labor of love that was creating, implementing, delivering, and attending our first MFGS, Inc. Women’s Leadership Summit. With Robert Makheja, our CEO’s forethought and passion to create a cohesive and collaborative work environment, we put together two days of empowerment, leadership training, and StrengthsBuilders session. As I look back on the Summit, I feel we expanded the understanding of empowerment, confidence, leadership, and support. I look forward to the next few months to continue building on the foundation we created on May 8^th and 9^th. Three themes came to mind from participating in the event: empowerment, fellowship, and momentum.

Empowerment

At the outset of planning this event, empowerment came to all our minds — “all” being myself and my very capable and amazing partners in crime, Jackie Schnupp and Cynara Releford. We considered the essence of empowerment — what it is and why it was important in this event and beyond. Specifically, empowerment is “granting of the power, right or authority to perform various acts or duties” (Merriam-Webster Dictionary). I believe empowerment gives the added propulsion to share ideas and new ways of looking at business. I believe empowerment affords any woman the ability to expand their thinking beyond the daily routine and take a look at MFGS, Inc. from a wider lens., I believe the Summit helped every woman participating to reach outside themselves and grow with confidence in themselves and MFGS, Inc. In fact, my greatest hope is the women who participated feel as if they not only make up MFGS, Inc, but they lift everyone in this company to greater heights with their leadership, creativity, interconnectedness across teams, and continued collaboration.

Fellowship

This leads me to the second theme of fellowship and community, which includes this amazing group of women. Fellowship, according to the Merriam-Webster dictionary, is the “community of interest, activity, feeling, or experience, the quality or state of being comradely.” I whole-heartedly believe we truly experienced this fellowship and community at the Summit. It was fantastic to see everyone in-person and experience their incredible personalities and strengths outside the workday. Everyone’s experience, both professionally and personally, brings incredible insights to the group and we walk away from the event with better understanding and increased kindness towards those we work with either daily or periodically. Also, this community creates an interconnectedness and gives us the ability to see all our fellow workers as unique individuals that contributes to the whole. None of us come from a cookie-cutter mold and we bring our collective strengths together when needed to create an incredible amount of support for each other to meet both professional and personal aspirations.

Momentum

My final reflection after this incredible event was the theme of momentum, or “a property of a moving body that determines the length of time required to bring it to rest when under the action of a constant force or moment, strength or force gained by motion or by a series of events.” The strength of all these women who participated in the Summit created this momentum to keep moving forward and expand, even after the event ended. My hope is we keep creating, leading, supporting, and growing on this future-oriented energy. The following statement from StrengthsBuilders’ Valerie Plis kept repeating in my mind and became the genesis of this musing: “This event should not be a one-and-done moment — keep it going hope this musing creates the momentum for others to share their thoughts, ideas, and incredible energy with all of us. The most uplifting and motivating part for me were the conversations, which extended beyond the conference room through the breaks, lunches, and dinners conversations that continue even today, several weeks after the 2-day event.

Final Thoughts

Ultimately, I see these incredible women as part of the essential foundation at MFGS, Inc. and the company not only depends on their professional competence, but also on who they are as a whole. Providing opportunities to grow and expand are not an afterthought, but a necessity. There was so much experience in that room that I know we have only tapped the very edge of the women of MFGS, Inc.’s wisdom, knowledge, and creativity. I challenge each of them to see themselves as the incredibly creative, wise, dynamic, and resilient leaders in every aspect of their lives.