Hundreds of women attend Cleveland leadership conference

CLEVELAND, OH (WOIO) - Wednesday is the fourth annual Women’s Leadership Conference of Northeast Ohio.

The conference, which was founded by Robin Doerschuk, aims to connect like-minded women in order to support and educate them on issues that impact women in the workplace.

“To create a sense of community and talk about what we’ve done really well, what areas we’ve struggled wtih, espeically with the ‘me too’ movement right now,” said Doerschuk. “It’s so important that women know how to pivot when something like that happens, when you have a community backing you, and today is all about that.”

Char Hood, who came to the conference, said she was particularly struck by the conversations about how to ask for what you want at work.

“Myself being a woman and also being a woman of color, you do feel like you get pigeonholed, and so I think that has been a challenge for me,” said Hood. “That has been a focus here at the women’s conference, is to get information from women who have been there.”

The conference isn’t just for women, though. Steve Ligus has been here before, and he said this year is no different.

“I work in an environment that’s mainly surrounded by women, and my team is completely female. For me, this is pretty natural,” said Ligus. “When we’re in an environment like this, I think that’s why it’s a challenge to men. We need more of you here to understand exactly what’s happening in the workplace.”

The conference has already outgrown previous venues it occupied in previous years. Next year, founders aim to have more than 600 people attend.

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