Brenau University continued Women’s History Month celebrations with the Women’s Leadership Colloquium on March 24, which drew more than 250 attendees in person and virtually from around the world.
The annual event, now in its ninth year, is hosted by Debra Dobkins, Ph.D., interim vice president of student services and dean of The Women’s College at Brenau. The event celebrates the GOLD Program’s “D” year, which focuses on diversity and global perspectives.
“March is Women’s History Month, which is a really exciting time to honor, to recognize and to celebrate the achievements of women around the world,” Dobkins said. “The national theme for this year’s Women’s History Month is ‘Celebrating Women Who Tell Our Stories’ and if you were at the Women’s Leadership Colloquium, you know that we spent an afternoon hearing and sharing our stories. Through that communal sharing of experience, we find great power and we can draw on the strengths and talents of all women.”
The event featured a keynote from Rhonda Clark, vice president of engineering services for Amazon. In the question and answer session at the end of the event, Clark said attendees will find the best examples of leadership within themselves.
“You have to figure out your leadership style yourself,” Clark said. “What I finally figured out is they need to see me as me. The other pieces will come together over time, but first figuring out who I am and how I want to be is most important up front.”
Clark has worked for Amazon since 2021, and previously worked for UPS. At UPS, she served most recently as president of corporate buildings and systems engineering and led many sustainability efforts with the organization.
The event also included two Brenau alumnae, Clarissa Esguerra, WC ’03, as the Alumni Association Endowed speaker, and Melissa Currin Heard, WC ’92, as the featured speaker.
In sharing her personal philosophy about leadership, Heard, also a Brenau trustee, said that she prefers to lead from the back of the pack.
“I think people get leadership confused with bossing and it’s not,” Heard said. “Leaders really lead from the back. If you’re in a wolf pack, you’re in the back. You’re the one who’s the guard dog watching everybody up front making sure nobody gets left behind. In my experience, if you’re the female leader up front, nobody’s following you. They’re just watching to see what you do. So I want to be in the back.”
Heard is the president and owner of Success Consulting and Mediation, Inc. Heard has also worked with the Justice Center of Atlanta and in 2019 received the Chief Justice Harold G. Clarke Award in recognition of her contributions to the field of alternative dispute resolution in Georgia.
Esguerra, who talked about her experiences as a child of immigrant parents, noted that it was only years after she had graduated from Brenau that she realized the impact the school had upon her.
“I didn’t realize the kind of foundation I was receiving at Brenau,” Esguerra said. “I found my voice here, and there’s just something about being in a space with women who are supporting you and you feel so safe. It was so foundational.”
Esguerra is the curator of costume and textiles for the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. In 2022, she co-curated Lee Alexander McQueen: Mind, Mythos, Muse, which is currently touring internationally.
The 10th annual Women’s Leadership Colloquium will be held on Friday, March 15, 2024.
