2025 Women in Industry Forum- “A fantastic event”ji

David Gordon Posted On June 8, 2025

2025 Women in Industry Forum Last week our friend, Desiree Grace, newly appointed VP Sales & Customer Service, Americas, for Mersen, attended the NAED Women in Industry Forum and offered to share feedback on the conference with ElectricalTrends readers.

“NAED’s Women in Industry Forum, themed “Strength in Connection,” drew over 1100 women, including 600 first-timers. The content and speakers added to the strength of the event.

The event started out by recognizing this year’s Trailblazer, Laurie Gross, President of Gross Electric, who shared her story during a “fireside chat” with this year’s event chair, Lindsey Cernik, Culture and Engagement Consultant, Border States. Laurie was engaging, motivating, and, frankly, demonstrated independent thinking and a sense of humor.

Carla Harris at 2025 NAED Women in Industry Forum Carla Harris kicked off day one as the Keynote Speaker and she was one tough act to follow. Carla is a Managing Director and Senior Client Advisory at Morgan Stanley, as well as an award-winning gospel singer. She shared her pearls of wisdom about maximizing your success at work, including perceptions, leadership, navigating work challenges and bringing your authentic self to work.

Wes Smith, NAED CEO, and Tammy Livers, President of World Electric, shared their wisdom about the future of the electrical industry, including trends, challenges, and innovations to monitor. Tammy shared some interesting industry indicators to monitor, such as the Architectural Billing Index.

Debra Phillips, President and CEO of NEMA, discussed policy, technology, and trends, ranging from the microgrid, the workforce and the scary permitting process to get new power generation. She was joined by Jana Gerber, Schneider’s North American Microgrid President, for a fascinating discussion about the future of energy.

Courtesy of Kathy Jo Van

After lunch, attendees had options for sessions by job segment. Industry experts such as Deni Miller, ABB, Kerry Tingley, Eaton, and Dana Pascarella, WESCO, among others, shared their expertise on subjects as diverse as Sales, Human Resources, Finance, Marketing, Operations, Engineering, IT and Purchasing. If all the presenters had excellent action items and book recommendations like Deni Miller, everyone was a winner. These sessions provided roundtable, application of learning experiences, as well as networking opportunities.

Day two kicked off with Erica Dhawan sharing not only EQ (Emotional Quotient) but CI (Connectional Intelligence), along with a fun dose of Bollywood. Everyone learned how to up their communication game to break down silos and impact both the top-line and the bottom-line for their organizations.

Charlotte Karp, Director at Bank of America, shared key market trends, regulatory changes, and M&A insights. We all walked away with more knowledge about the evolving landscape of mergers and acquisitions.

Additional panel discussions offered options ranging from Blazing Trails and Leadership, Talent Acquisition, Mentors, Sponsors and Coaches and M&A Strategies. The session with Deb Huttenberg, Mersen, Jennifer Bihlmeier Helias, Signify, and Becky Jacoby, Executive Coach, moderated by Stacy Lacer, Panduit, was excellent, offering useful information on the differences between mentors, sponsors, and coaches, as well as lessons learned and best practices.

Deb Huttenburg Desiree Grace - Women in Industry Forum One could then choose to learn about Modern Leadership Skills, Project Management, Storytelling, Strategy and Critical Thinking, Financial Planning, P&L and Emotionally Empowered Leadership. All sessions earned rave reviews from the attendees, who found value and applicable ideas to take back to their organizations.

Liz Bohannon closed out the day with an enlightening discussion about building connections and collaboration within your organization.

A Cirque De Soleil inspired evening ended the forum with dynamic performers and another chance to network. It was a fun and festive way to end the forum.

Key takeaways? This year’s forum, like last year, featured male support by Wes Smith, Paul Kennedy, Jason Seger, and other respected leaders in the electrical industry. The speaker line-up was among the most substantive and useful of recent forums. The topics offered were all applicable to the attendees and the companies sponsoring their attendance. Whether you sponsored the event, or sponsored sending members of your team, you are sure to see a ROI on the time and money. Even repeat attendees walked away with new ideas, applicable skills, lessons learned, and a wider network. It truly was an event that built strength through connection.”

Observations

Thank you, Desiree, for this first-hand account of the conference. From your feedback, and what I saw from attendee LinkedIn postings, it was an excellent conference with much energy (as depicted in the faces of attendees in the pictures shared.) Click here if you’d like to see NAED’s photos from the forum.

Desiree mentioned that Deni Miller had book recommendations, so I asked her “which books.” Desiree shared that she is ordering:

Expect to Win, Carla Harris
Digital Body Language, Erica Dhawan
You’re Not Listening, Kate Murphy
Smart Brevity: The Power of Saying More with Less, Jim VandeHei, Mike Allen, Roy Schwartz

She also recommends viewing Carla Harris’ TedTalks. Here’s a link to one of them.

From randomly looking at attendee LinkedIn postings:

The role of committees
- It appears that there is a Women in Industry committee that may have driven the agenda, speakers and perhaps much of the social agenda. Whatever role they played, “we” want to hire them to guide the regionals and national!
- There apparently was also a Social Media committee. Maybe others. The key point is that they are getting member involvement … and from people who WANT to be involved. Congratulations to those people for volunteering, giving back, sharing your expertise, and benefiting others in the industry. Years ago, NAED had regional committees. Perhaps time to revisit the past?
Lots of sponsors and seemingly all of the sponsors had a speaker or were on a panel.
- Electri-Flex sponsored a charity event, to benefit local Autistic youth and the local police department of greater Orlando.
There appeared to be strong channel support, with some reps even attending. I have no sense of the number of companies that were represented but, as Desiree said, 1100 people, including 600 first timers. This follows 1100 attending last year.
- The number of first-timers was interesting, indicating that some companies may have some sort of selection / nomination process to expose different people regularly to “more” in the industry” and probably others are offering / selecting / rotating participation to provide a learning experience or based upon topics. Unfortunately, from a company viewpoint, not all who want to go can go at the same time.
From one LinkedIn post there was reference to 200 women from Eaton. I noted, from LinkedIn, strong representation from Rexel, Sonepar, CED, Siemens, Schneider Electric and ABB. Some with reportedly 50 women attending. WESCO and Crescent had good representation. (Others may have, but this is what showed up in my LinkedIn feed.)