MS Women's conference

This week I was fortunate enough to attend the Fourth Annual Microsoft Women's conference. The conference begun on Monday night with an awards dinner and ended with a day full of inspirational speakers (Bill Gates, Steve Ballmer and Cynthia Pratt included). In the 3 days the conference took place, all women were encouraged to attend the multitude of sessions (everything from "BrainStyles" to "Speaking with Power and Authority").

During the awards dinner I was fortunate enough to have shared a table with seven insightful women and one very powerful man. I was initially shocked to see who the man sitting across from me happened to be, Co-President Kevin Johnson. The humorous part of the night was the networking exercises we perfomed in our table, and in particular the networking card I took home with Kevin Johnson's name and alias.

The highlight of the conference was the lecture given by Prime Minister and Minister of National Security of the Bahamas, Cynthia Pratt. She shared her incredible story with the audience and was able to captivate the room with her genuineness and determination. She was one of sixteen children who spent much of her youth begging for her next meal. Somewhere along her journey she found the will and the talent to become a gold medalist and get herself out of the poverty. After her incredible speech she spent a long time getting to know her audience. Her heart and story was the highlight of the conference.