Around 50 students tuned in via Zoom on Nov. 8 to hear a distinguished panel of women working in the business sector talk about overcoming the hardships they have experienced in their respective industries.
The panel was organized by Carleton’s Women in Business club, along with the Sprott Finance Students’ Association and the Sprott Students’ Management Association.
The four panelists addressed practices such as name-blind hiring and the importance of choosing a workplace that best reflects your values as an employee. They also provided experience-based knowledge on professionalism in the business sector and how to overcome discrimination in the workplace.
Rebecca Renfroe, accounting professor at the Sprott School of Business and panelist at the event, said she recieved some harsh advice from her father when she was a child.
“You’re going to have to work twice as hard and you’re gonna have to have twice as many good ideas just to be heard because you’re a woman,” Renfroe said. “It sucks but that’s the way it is. So deal with it and go be that woman.”
“My hope is that my daughters will not have to work twice as hard,” Renfroe added, as the panel discussed the challenges of being working mothers.
Panelist Jade Wrubel, branch financial manager for Penske Truck Leasing, said working while being a single mother at 19 meant she had to work harder to overcome structural obstacles.
“I have two small daughters and I know it can be hard going into a male-dominated industry. That’s something that, if my girls ever wanted to do that, I didn’t want anything to hold them back,” Wrubel said.
Taissa Cronin, a second-year management student who attended the event, asked panelists about racial and gender equality in the workplace.
“As a white woman, I am afforded certain privileges that my counterparts won’t be,” Cronin said. “As we are stepping into positions of power, how does our responsibility to then lift up others come in?”
Renfroe addressed the question by mentioning that there are two types of people in the field.
“There are those that feel that ‘I had it so hard and therefore, so should you because you have to pay your dues’ and then there are those people who say, ‘I did that so you don’t have to,’” Renfroe said.
The event was well received by those in attendance.
“It was refreshing and reassuring to hear from people who have the same thoughts and fears that I do, but who are succeeding despite them in the same field that I want to go into,” Cronin said.
There were calls for Sprott to organize similar future panels that aid students in understanding the challenges that they may face during their careers and how to overcome them.
Featured graphic by Sara Mizannojehdehi.
