NAED 2018 Women in Industry Conference Delivers Record Attendance

NAED held its 2018 Women in Industry (WII) conference the last week in June and it was one of the most talked about conference that I have heard about in a while.  I received feedback from a number of clients and friends who attended and saw numerous comments and photos on LinkedIn that I decided to reach out to some attendees to have them share their experience.

This conference, which started a little over 10 years ago as a small group of women, has blossomed into a major event that “goes on the calendar” as a “must attend” for many in the industry.  And this year, some companies had a significant number of attendees.  Whether coordinated or not, CED, Sonepar and Eaton all had 30 or more attend (and this was probably the most CED people to attend a non-CED event to ever assemble in one place!)

Carrie Schwabacher from Topaz shared:

The stats:

• 325 women attended (This is a record breaker)
• 200 first time attendees, 125 returning attendees
• 142 distribution attendees
• 142 manufacturer attendees
• 41 Allied partners

Unusual that we had the same number of distributors & manufacturers

Some came in force

• Eaton – 38 attendees
• CED – 27 attendees (ET – Others counted higher, however, given the various profit center names as well as USESI and Walters Wholesale participation, the number was about 421)
• Sonepar – 18 attendees (ET – according to Tammy Livers at Sonepar the number was 28 but again, all don’t register with the Sonepar name)
• (ET Note:  All of these companies had at least 3 attendees: Siemens, Rockwell, Graybar, Border States, Square D by Schneider Electric, ABB, Atkore, GE Industrial, Rab Lighting, Rexel, Crescent, Omni Cable, Allied Electronics, Emerson, IDEA, Infor and Mayer Electric.)

We started off in Charleston with much fewer attendees, and now we have grown to 325.  I have met some truly amazing women at the conferences over the past eleven years.  (I have attended every single one and would not miss it for the world!).  We have had many inspiring speakers and sessions where we could apply what we learn to our business.  The networking is fantastic.  These women have become, my friends, mentors, confidants and business partners.  We all look out for each other, introduce each other to key people in the industry, help each other network and make connections, cheer each other on, and pick each other up when our careers don’t go as planned, or when life throws us a curve ball.   I learned very early, while attending this conference that these women had many of the same experiences that I had in the industry.  We are all open and share, not only our experiences, but also how we overcame adversity and triumphed over it and stretched out a hand to help others reach their goals.

Haylie Blaise, CED Resenhouse Electric’s Community Engagement Specialist, shared “The NAED WII conference held another great year! The exposure to other women leaders not only inspires me to be a better version of myself everyday but to motivate and encourage other women beside me. I walked away with a new life motto “It’s okay to be afraid, jump anyway!”

Haylie went on further with her key takeaways on this LinkedIn posting:

To even begin to start describing my short three days there is difficult. With great keynote speakers, conversational breakouts, and introspection, it’s hard to wrap it all up in one email. It’s a pretty special feeling being in a room with 325 women laughing and sharing the same agenda and goal for the week.

I wanted to share with you some main points that I took home, check them out!

“Confidence and resilience live in the same space” – Grace Killelea

This seems like a no-brainer, but it struck a new chord for me. For many years I had this idea that fear could never coexist with confidence and that it paired with perfection. At the end of this session I left with a new outlook on this word. To be a confident person or leader doesn’t mean you’re perfect, it doesn’t mean your nerves will always be silent. It means you do it anyway. You do the thing that might possibly terrify you and you stare it in the face. Confidence doesn’t pair with perfection but it does pair with resilience. I had to look up the definition of this word to really understand what Grace meant. The definition of resilience is, “the capacity to recover quickly from difficulties; toughness”. Sometimes ideas, products, solutions, and services don’t always work and you have to know and believe, that’s okay! Steve Jobs once said “The greatest artists like Dylan, Picasso, and Newton risked failure. And if we want to be great, we’ve got to risk it to.” I want to tie all of this back to our culture here at Rensenhouse. Confident employees are successful employees. Without it, new ideas aren’t shared, celebrations aren’t had, and business doesn’t continue to grow. I believe talking about our accomplishments is a great thing but also knowing and recognizing the areas where we have failed is just as beneficial. This is when the resilience kicks in and we do great work tomorrow! I believe this is something we are good at. At this office I have seen only a smaller portion of our grit and I’m proud to work with a team that has confidence and resilience.

Support Group vs. Network Group.

Confident people have a tribe. I’ve learned you need to have a support group. This looks a lot like your friends and family. These are the people you go to with whatever worries/concerns you may have. You also need a network group. These are the people in your network that you share information, advice, and are empowered by and also empower. Both groups make an impact in an individual’s life. Being at the forum for the second year was another week of connecting with my network group and learning from each of them. These aren’t people I will see but maybe once a year, but you have to make that time count.

Speak Up!

You can’t amplify silence. This goes back to my old definition and thinking process I had with the word confidence. I’ve thought many times that it was only best to speak up and throw ideas out when I thought they were perfectly planned out and brilliant (in my mind). In my career and time here at Rensenhouse I have been told no and I have felt that giant blow of shame and embarrassment, but over the last year and a half I have recognized and learned IT’S OKAY! Speaking up and giving those ideas are the only way you continue to grow and better yourself. I’ve learned that every “no” isn’t a failure but a stepping stone to a better idea.

Own It.

We all fail, we’re human. If you screw up, own it. I’ve heard many people say and I’ve even caught myself with excuses, blaming circumstances, others, etc. Sometimes things don’t work in our favor and sometimes it can be because of something else or someone else, but when it’s not… own it. We must remember that how we deal and interpret our failures with either move us forward or it will move us backwards. Own it, learn from it, better it.

What are my blind spots?

We all got ‘em. These may be some of the areas in your life that you think you are doing really well in until someone shows you… they aren’t. We all have our own blind spots and we all need help in identifying them. This was a big takeaway for me. “Real feedback can be painful and surprising.” This year I am going to work on getting this feedback, to help shape and better my future and career. This can easily tie back to having a network group in helping you see these.

Every year I leave with new ideas, aspirations, empowerment, and

goals for my professional and personal life. I am beyond grateful to work for a company that values this and allows me to attend the forum.

And CED, typically a “shy” company, was a conference sponsor and sponsored a morning yoga class, complete with a logoed yoga mat!

From Tammy Livers at Sonepar:

The WII conference was a great success.  Sonepar sent 28 female leaders from across 9 of our Operating Companies and Sonepar USA.  I am proud of the commitment Sonepar has to diversity in the workforce as well as a commitment to the development of early career talent through educational conferences such and the NAED WII.  CED and Eaton also had very large consistencies.  I believe that over half the women were first year attendees.  I think that is fabulous, but I also think it is important that the topics evolve so we get the veterans coming back.  Part of the magic of this conference is the mentoring and sponsorship connections you can make which means we need to attract women from all functions and at all levels.

This is my 10th conference, I missed the first two years, and it is something I look forward to each year.  Over that ten years I have met some of my closest friends and gained many mentors.  I have served on the WII committee early on and have done many speeches and classes for the large conference and the smaller boot camps.

I have watched the conference evolve from a networking group with the intention of providing a venue to connect and network to a professional conference where networking is still core to the mission but education on topics such as leadership, confidence, priority setting, and public speaking have taken center stage.

I believe that there is a natural evolution that this group will need to consider as the group gets larger and more diverse.  They need to attract senior female leaders with viable topics and they also need to figure out what role men should play in the conference.  We have seen male participation over the last several years and I believe it has been helpful.

As far as the content this year, the speakers were excellent and the topics such as personal brand and image in relation to your influencing skills and confidence resonated with the audience.  The state of the industry panel with Dave Maxwell, Molly Murphy and George was the best NAED panel I have seen at any conference, I hope they taped it!  The panel was prepared, honest and very forthright in their responses.

I believe the NAED WII set the bar in wholesaling for creating a female resource group, now the challenge is to raise it. (ET Note:  NAED was the first association to begin running a Women in Industry conference which has now been modeled by many other industries.  The initiative was conceived by a small group of women who brought the idea to NAED.)

Tammy mentioned the panel.  Molly Murphy, VP US Sales, Electrical Sector at Eaton, Electrical Sector, posted her observations on LinkedIn:

I joined two panelists for a discussion on The Future of Industry, which was moderated by Eaton’s own Desiree C. Grace, vice president of channel development and operations, Utility. My fellow panelists were George Vorwick (President and CEO, United Electric and Chair of NAED) and David Maxwell (Senior Vice President, Graybar).

We had a fantastic dialogue, and here are my top three takeaways—the first two are industry-focused and the third can truly apply to anyone, anywhere, in any company and in any industry.

1. Manufacturers and distributors must be more aligned than ever through the disruption of eCommerce. It’s not always easy, but staying connected with each other will help us understand the nature of work being done within our large and complex ecosystem. This will allow us to reduce duplicate efforts and accelerate growth. There are many new tools and methods of collaboration that we can explore and embrace on this front.
2. We need to open our aperture! Our industry will benefit from a more inclusive approach as we look for ideas to evolve our approach to business. When I use the word ‘inclusive,’ I’m talking about all forms of inclusion, from diversity of gender, background, experiences, to diversity of field and industry. If we’re willing to look outside our industry and normal comfort zone, we can unlock fresh thinking that will enable us to move in new directions.
3. It’s time to shift the focus from work-life balance to work-life integration. The idea of seeking a healthy integration of work and personal life (instead of a perfect balance) resonated strongly with the panelists and audience. Changing your focus from balance to integration allows you to flex and evolve your approach as you continue to grow in your career. 

One additional highlight from the conference was having the chance to connect with a number of Eaton employees in attendance. During one of our networking sessions, we all found each other to take this group selfie!

By all accounts a very successful conference and perhaps NAED’s most successful “niche” conference (although no longer a niche!)

What drove the increase in attendance?  The agenda? Good economy? Women asking / planning to attend? Companies utilizing the program as part of their development programs? A convergence of these? The net impact is a conference that adds value to individuals and their companies.  A smart investment for all.

And when I’ve had women in the industry ask me if they should attend the Women in Industry conference or AdVenture or another NAED conference, the answer has always been the Women in Industry conference for the reasons that our three contributors shared … the networking and camaraderie.

If you attended, how was the experience for you?