WISE/R Symposium West 2024 Sessions

Summit with the WNBA Presidents
This dynamic panel features trailblazing team presidents who will share their inspiring journeys, leadership styles and pivotal career moments. You'll hear about their successes, strategies and challenges. This session promises a lively and in-depth conversation that will leave you inspired and equipped with practical takeaways. Don't miss this chance to learn from the best, understand the complexities of leading a major sports franchise, and celebrate the power of women in sports.

What you'll learn

  • Insights into leadership styles, business operations and innovative practices
  • Lessons on overcoming challenges, the importance of networking and the role of diversity and inclusion
  • Practical takeaways for your own careers and organizations

Panelists: Alisha Valavanis, Alycen McAuley, Carley Knox
Moderator: Holly Rowe


Making Your Plan to Thrive
Pursuing a career in a high-pressure environment like the business of sports requires the resilience of a pro athlete, especially if you're a woman. That means re-training our priorities to put our own wellbeing first now, so we can prevent today's stresses from diminishing tomorrow's quality of life and productivity.

What you'll learn

  • The truth about fertility and family planning options, fibroids and their treatments, and perimenopause
  • Practical guides to aging and health for women who have felt ignored or marginalized by the medical profession
  • How to make sure that caring for others (such as children, parents, or other loved ones) does not come at the expense of caring for yourself

Speaker: Sharon Malone MD
Moderator: Caroline Clarke


Speaking Up for Success
Reaching our career and personal goals often depends on our ability to speak up. But many accomplished professional women struggle to do so, especially in male-dominated spaces like the business of sports. This session is intended to help you understand what gets in the way of speaking up and equip you to make better choices about if, when, and how to speak up.

What you'll learn

  • Understanding the dilemma: the cost-benefit analysis of speaking up or saying nothing
  • Strategizing how to lower the costs and increase the benefits to speaking up
  • Improving your clarity and confidence when you advocate for yourself
  • Modeling behaviors that help others to speak up
  • Regaining balance when the conversation throws you off

Presenter: Lisa Dicker


Executive Presence: The Physical Art of Great Communication

Spoken communication is a physical art. We often hear or say the phrase, "I could have said that better." However, being at a loss for words during communication opportunities has more to do with what your breath and body are doing than what your mind is (or is not) thinking. This interactive workshop will focus specifically on delivery (how you say what you say), offering the opportunity to practice the skills for great communication, no matter what you're communicating.

What you'll learn

  • Kinesthetic tools for being concise, mastering silence, and projecting authority–regardless of your confidence or anxiety level
  • How to focus on delivery (how you say something)
  • How to decipher feedback to make it more actionable

Presenter: Chiara Motley


Finding Simplicity in a Sea of Data
Data analytics has become a critical function in all of our organizations. We acquire/generate massive amounts of insights to help us make more informed decisions — improve fan engagement, grow revenue streams, mitigate risks, etc. Application of insights spills over into our everyday lives too, whether it's plotting how to get more vegetables on your kid's plate or planning some PTO in an overscheduled world. Regardless, it's not about the amount of data you generate or have at hand, it's about staying clear on the problem to solve and identifying the right data to help you do just that — and ONLY that.

What you'll learn

  • Clarifying objectives or problems to solve
  • Mapping metrics or insights that will inform your decisions
  • Sourcing the right data AND the right amount of data
  • Taking action

Speaker: Shelley Pisarra



Agenda, timing, sessions and speakers are subject to change.