Words from Dr Emily Williams Knight
DR EMILY WILLIAMS KNIGHT, MANAGING DIRECTOR OF HIGHER EDUCATION NORTH AMERICA
STUDY GROUP INTERNATIONAL | NORTH AMERICA
As I was asked to be a mentor my first thought was: How am I going to do it? I have no time! But then I stopped for a moment and decided I wanted to help other women succeed and I must use my career achievements to reach back down and pull others up behind me – show them the way and lead them.
Instead of being that woman who thinks: “Now that I am on top the others should struggle to get here as much as I did”, rather help others advance and grow so that their journey is not as difficult as yours was. Mentoring will help you reflect about your own career.
For some reason, women who are at the top of their careers reflect on how difficult it was for them to get there and they want that same challenge to hold true for those that follow. Our job is not to make others take our same journey – our job is to make it easier for them – to use all the lessons and strategies we deployed to clear the roadblocks and to SHARE THEM to the benefit of others. The victory is not in who had it worse, the victory is in building diverse companies where everyone has the same potential to succeed.
Emily ask us all to reach out, look for 10 people in the room and connect with them. “Don’t leave here tonight without making connections – you just never know who you might meet and the impact you can make on their world.”
Lead5050 is much needed because women in senior management positions in higher education are very much under-represented – globally. It is through the power of men and women working together that we can move the needle and to improve the career trajectory for women across the world.