November 3-4, 2005
Microsoft, Redmond, WA

The focus of this workshop was on understanding women and leadership, particularly how women can make themselves more effective leaders. Participants left with a greater self-awareness, new ideas, and information on steps they could take to advance their leadership performance to the next level.

The speaker, Joan Fiore, Ph.D., has spent 25 years helping senior leaders improve their capacity through her coaching, teaching, and group facilitation. In addition to having been a faculty member at the medical schools of both the University of Washington and Emory University, she was a Director at the Leadership Institute of Seattle. She has consulted, coached and designed leadership development experiences for Microsoft, Alcoa and other Fortune 500 Companies. In particular, she has coached educators, engineers, CEOs and senior executives.

For this workshop, Dr. Fiore presented theory, tools and challenging questions for thinking broadly about what it takes to be an excellent leader. Participants spent the majority of time working in a variety of experiential groups where they learned from each other and gained insight into themselves as leaders. The experiential groups were led by five professional leadership facilitators, experienced in improving the leadership capabilities of others.

This was a unique opportunity for women to deepen their conceptual learning about leadership by working with other women technology leaders in carefully designed exercises. Participants learned about their own personal strengths and weaknesses, how to determine what they want in the next stages of their careers, and got information on resources that may help them realize these goals.

Part of the Anita Borg Institute’s TechLeaders program, this was the fourth in a series of Senior Women’s Leadership Workshops. This event was hosted and sponsored by Microsoft.

This workshop brought together powerful women from industry, government and academia with major influence on technology . We focused on building critical skills for success in leadership roles and provided a venue where women leaders could meet to share ideas, tactics, strategies and learn together. We provided an opportunity to expand and deepen relationships with other senior women in the technical community.

Takeaways- new thoughts about leadership, women in leadership, yourself as a leader
- greater self-awareness about your strengths and challenges
- ideas on next steps to improve your leadership
- expanded network

Location
The event was held at Microsoft in Redmond, Washington.

Agenda
Thursday, November 3
12:00 Pre-Meeting Lunch (informal)
1:00 Welcome
1:15 Joan Fiore: Talk: “Becoming the Best Leader You can be: What will it take?”
Break out groups: self-reflection on effective leadership, table discussions
3:15 Break
3:45 Work in dyads: self-reflection on your leadership - successes and failures
4:15 Large group exercise - ‘card exercise’
5:30 Debrief
6:00 End
6:30 Reception
7:00 Dinner

Friday, November 4
8:30 Continental breakfast
9:00 Welcome back
9:15 ‘Open Space’ process with facilitated groups, applying concepts to the discussion to present to whole group; includes break; report backs
12:00 Lunch
1:00 Continue ‘Open Space’ process
2:00 Creating change: Joan Fiore. “Moving Your Leadership Skills Forward: What will it take?”
3:00 Break
3:15 Self-reflection on next steps
3:45 Wrap Up and Evaluations
4:00 End

The Co-chairs
Dr. Jennifer Chayes, Research Area Manager for Mathematics and Theoretical Computer Science, Microsoft Research

Dr. Maria Klawe, Dean of Engineering and Applied Science, Princeton University

Participants

• Tricia Baker, Manager of Business Development, Cisco Systems
• Delan Beah, Director, Microsoft China
• Sheryl D Bealkowski, General Manager, Global Accounts Americas, Microsoft Corporation
• Kathryn Begley, BEA
• Elizabeth Belding, Associate Professor, UC Santa Barbara
• Linda Bernardi, CEO & President, ConnecTerra
• Suzanne Brainard, University of Washington
• Rose Ann Cattolico, Professor, University of Washington
• Jennifer Chayes, Math/Physics Professor, Microsoft Research
• Lili Cheng, Group Manager, Win Client Core Mgmt, Microsoft
• Cristina Conati, Associate Professor, University of British Columbia
• Raissa D’Souza, Department of Computational Science and Engineering, UC Davis
• Ruth Davis Peters, Professor of Computer Engineering and Associate Dean, Santa Clara University
• Brenda Dietrich, Head of the Mathematics Department, IBM
• Michelle Duffy, Sr. Manager, Distributed Systems Engineering, Amazon
• Kathleen Fisher, Senior Researcher, AT&T
• Karen Goldberg, Professor Of Chemistry, University Of Washington
• Jill Goldschneider, Director of Research, Insightful Corporation
• Cindy Goral, Vice President of Programs and Operations, Anita Borg Institute for Women and Technology
• Sheryl Grace, Associate Professor, Boston University
• Kimberly Hargraves, Senior Privacy Strategist, Corporate Privacy Group, Microsoft Corporation
• Rosanna Ho, General Manager, Microsoft Corporation
• Jill Huchital, Director, Google
• Mona L. Hudak, Sr. Engineering Program Manager, Cisco Systems
• Jeannette Jarvis, Security Systems Product Manager, Boeing
• Elizabeth Jessup, Associate Professor, University of Colorado
• Anna Rochelle Karlin, Professor of Computer Sciences, University of Washington
• Valerie King, Professor of Computer Science, University of Victoria
• Maria Klawe, Dean of Engineering and Applied Science, Princeton University
• Rachel Kuske, Associate Professor of Math, Minnesota Center for Industrial Mathematics
• Marsha M Linehan PhD, Professor, Dept. of Psychology, Director of Behavior Research & Therapy Clinics, University Of Washington
• Rosemary Lowden, Department Head, Computing Infrastructure Support, Lawrence Berkeley Labs
• Karon MacLean, Associate Professor, University of British Columbia
• Eva Manolis, Amazon
• Lizbeth Martin, Dean of Science, Notre Dame de Namur University
• Ursula Martin, Professor, University of Cambridge
• Margaret Martonosi, Professor of EE & Associate Dean of Academic Affairs, Princeton University
• Hiromi Matsui, Director of Diversity and Recruitment, Faculty of Applied Sciences, Simon Fraser University
• Joanna McGrenere, Assistant Professor, University of British Columbia
• Carol B Muller, Founder and Executive Director, MentorNet
• Gail Murphy, Associate Professor, University of British Columbia
• Nuria Oliver, Researcher, Microsoft
• Anabelle Pinto, Director of Marketing, Worldwide Gender Diversity, Cisco Systems
• Diana Pressley, Director, Boeing
• Neerja Raman, Director, Imaging Systems Lab, HP Labs
• Dana Randall, Professor of Computer Science, Georgia Institute of Technology
• Debra Richardson, Dean, School of Information and Computer Science, University of California, Irvine
• Eve Riskin, Associate Dean for Organizational Infrastructure, Director of the Center for Institutional Change, Professor of EE, University of Washington College of Engineering
• Margo Seltzer, Herchel Smith Professor, Harvard University
• Micaela Serra, Professor, University of Victoria
• Dagmar Shannon, Director, Microsoft
• Gerri Sinclair, Chair, Canadian Telecom Policy Review
• Margaret-Anne Storey, Associate Professor, British Columbia Advanced Systems Institute
• Lynn Terwoerds, Senior Security Strategist, Microsoft
• Belle Wei Dean, College of Engineering, San Jose State University
• Dominique A Weis, Canadian Research Chair Tier I, Pacific Centre for Isotope and Geochemical Research
• Telle Whitney, President & CEO, Anita Borg Institute for Women and Technology
• Jeannette F Wilson, Manager, Office of Retention & Development, Corporate Diversity, Intel Corporation
• Suze Woolf, Director, Microsoft
• Katherine Yelick, Professor, UC Berkeley & LBNL
• Joyce Yen, Program/Research Manager, University of Washington
• Jeanne Yuen, Director, Intel Software Quality, Intel Corporation
• Ellen Zegura, Professor & Associate Dean, Division Chair, College of Computing, Georgia Tech