East Bay Women’s Conference returning March 5 to Walnut Creek
By Lou Fancher
Returning March 5 to the Lesher Center for the Arts for the second year after 17 at the San Ramon Marriott, the 19th annual East Bay Women’s Conference is all about stories. Blazing to life under the thematic masthead, “HerStory in the Making,” the one-day conference (walnut-creek.com/ebwc2024) offers keynote speakers, master class sessions, a panel featuring four local women business leaders; access to exhibitors and an on-site bookstore; and opportunities for networking and spontaneous interactions, including a continental breakfast, high-end box lunch, end-of-day light bites and a wine reception. One of this year’s keynote speakers is entrepreneur and artist Allison Massari, the chief executive officer of musician Pharrell Williams’ Black Ambition Opportunity Fund. Other keynote speakers are author Felecia Hatcher and storyteller, comedian and author Kelly Swanson. Master of Ceremonies Joy Ofodu will bring her celebrated voice to the occasion. Shawn Filardi, the programs and events director for the Walnut Creek Chamber of Commerce and Visitors Bureau, which is presenting the East Bay Women’s Conference (EBWC) in association with Kaiser Permanente, said the event involves “harnessing the power of women” in business and leadership positions and curating the topics addressed according to high standards that engage the audience. “It’s important to the EBWC committee to include meaty business topics each year,” she said. “The audience is diverse in age, profession and where they are in their careers. “This year’s ‘Success Leaves Clues’ leadership panel is just that: four successful women business leaders from diverse backgrounds who share their experiences, lessons learned and best practices on how they got to the top of their professions. The Bay Area is ripe with successful, amazing women. We want our Bay Area audience to know them.” Filardi noted that an event of this size — the Lesher Center allows 785 participants versus the previous maximum of 568 in San Ramon — doesn’t “just happen.” Planning for 2025 will commence mere days after this year’s conference wraps up, as the team of volunteers, committee members and chamber staff begin vetting speakers and vendors and organizing entertainment, catering and registration processes, among other activities. Conference sponsors, many onboard since its inception in 2006, are critical for bringing the event to the community, Filardi said. Each year, the primary task for the committee is identifying and forecasting the topics that will become most relevant in 12 months’ time. This year, the post-COVID-19-pandemic atmosphere and concerns about mental health dominated and led the committee to spotlight the topic. A 2023 health panel featuring three prominent Bay Area doctors continued to generate interest; causing the physicians to participate in the Chamber’s subsequent virtual question-and-answer sessions that were made available to the general public. “Although none of this year’s keynotes were chosen specifically to address a mental health component, the audience will take away lessons on self-mastery, confidence, resilience, fearlessness, overcoming challenges, stepping into your genius and embracing uniqueness: all essential to fostering good mental health,” Filardi said. Essential to public speaking is authenticity, said keynote speaker Swanson. She said centering a message in a story, not data, is key to being seen and heard and for strategic purposes when selling a product, brand or service. Her master class on the art and business of persuasion and connective storytelling is meant to offer a blueprint and tools to empower people working in any industry. “One event happens, and thousands of people walk away with thousands of stories,” Swanson said. “Life is the story we write with the data. Whoever has the microphone creates the story. That gives me a renewed sense of power. We may not write the data, but we write the story.” To describe strategic storytelling, Swanson uses the analogy of an instrument. If you haven’t learned how to play it, mistakes — and awful sounds — happen. She said in today’s environment that values authenticity above all else, selling a brand or service requires first telling and selling your story, not the company’s. “Let’s say you’re selling me a widget and you have four minutes. I’d say sell the story: I need to buy you first. Tell me how you’ll use it personally. You have to know what I value too, so your story has to take into account what my story is, as well as yours.” Swanson often uses humor as a pathway to defuse opposition and a positive defense mechanism to demonstrate choosing joy when life is anything but funny. “I was a shy kid in a scary world,” she said. “A lot of my humor is self-deprecating, and people ask me why I shame myself. I say, ‘No, even though I don’t (always) love where I’ve been or am, I’ve loved myself every step of the way.’ “I use humor on the stage because we lower our arms, share experiences. When I was a little kid and looked in the mirror and didn’t like it, I stepped through it to an imaginary town, with imaginary characters. What I was experiencing was the power we have to write the story we live in.” In addition to a hectic schedule that has Swanson flying around the country as an in-demand motivational speaker, she created her one-woman show, “Who Hijacked My Fairy Tale?” Based on her book with the same title, the production is in theaters around the country and the subject of her keynote address at the conference. In 2024 Swanson is launching her second theater show, “A Tribute to Prides Hollow.” As expected, she discussed the new show by telling its story. “When COVID hit, in my invented, imaginary town, people got weary and discouraged. A coin they passed around asked, ‘What would you do if you were brave?’ They tell stories of the small, brave things they did. I decided bringing these people forward into the light was my answer.” A negative voice that she said told her the idea “was trash and weird” was a voice she jettisoned. “When I finally let that go, accepted and fed my story and pushed my middle finger up to the voice, that made me brave. I decided it’s OK to do things differently.” |