Tri - I | Women's Leadership Conference

The 22nd Annual Women's Leadership Conference (WLC) Kicks off Women's History Month.

Leading Beyond the Binary

This annual conference highlights women's leadership and provides opportunities to network, develop skills, find solutions and grow ideas from a multitude of perspectives. The WLC is a one-day, tri-institutional event coordinated and implemented by organizers across the Auraria Campus. The 2018 conference is intended to address the relationship between gender and leadership, specifically taking on the challenge of leading as a member of a historically marginalized gender identity group. The goal is to use this theme to interrogate and extend assumptions about both "gender" and "leadership."

• How can we challenge norms about what constitutes "effective leadership"?
• What kinds of leadership are less visible in our culture, and how might we amplify them?
• How do gender equity concerns and norms for gender identity and expression impact leaders of all genders?

This event is free to students, faculty, staff, and community members!

Register Today!

Featured Speakers | Faith Spotted Eagle & Bianca Williams

Faith Spotted Eagle lives on Ihanktonwan Dakota Territory in Southeastern South Dakota. She is a fluent speaker of the Dakota Language. In the western world, Faith earned a master's degree in guidance and counseling at the University of South Dakota. She has been a high school counselor/teacher/principal in addition to a variety of positions in a varied educational setting. She worked with the Coalition of Indian Controlled School Boards in Denver, which played an important role in returning native control of schools. In the Dakota/Native world, she has been active in teaching the Dakota language in language nest settings. As Chair of the Ihanktonwan Treaty Committee, she helped bring forth the International Treaty to Protect the Sacred against the KXL Pipeline and the Tar Sands. She received one Electoral College vote for the U.S. President in the 2016 election. 

Bianca Williams is an associate professor of anthropology at The Graduate Center, CUNY. She earned both her B.A. and Ph.D. in Cultural Anthropology at Duke University and graduated with a Graduate Certificate in African & African American Studies. The investigative thread that binds Williams' research, teaching and service is the question "How do Black women develop strategies for enduring and resisting the effects of racism and sexism, while attempting to maintain emotional wellness?"

She helped to co-found Black Lives Matter 5280, the Denver chapter of the national queer and feminist network fighting for Black liberation. She wrote The Pursuit of Happiness: Black Women, Diasporic Dreams, and the Politics of Emotional Transnationalism. She has published in the journals Souls and Cultural Anthropology and on the blogs Savage Minds and Anthropoliteia.

Featured Performers |  Scatter Their Own

These performers are a Native Rock Group from the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation and proud members of the Oglala Lakota Sioux Tribe

Please join us to celebrate Women's History Month. This leadership conference is free for students.