You may have seen our GLOW (Growing Leaders with Opportunities and Willpower) posts, or our many events and online content, but you may not realise who we are or where we came from?
Founded in 2019, GLOW begun as an unincorporated association where our team of amazing volunteers wanted to inspire, educate, support, and give individuals the courage to be a next-generation leader in their chosen industry with diversity and equality in mind. We wanted to help give opportunities to the growing leaders of the future! The idea to do this all started with one event.
After her experiences at a Business Leaders of the Future panel event where out of the five panelists there were four men and only one woman, to which the woman rarely spoke, and noticing in multiple University classes that a lot of the case studies were based on male entrepreneurs From this our founder, Catherine, researched to find out that only 32% of UK businesses are currently owned by women and in the top 100 UK companies, CEOs are more likely to be called Stephen than they are to be a woman.
She believed that if young women saw more female role models doing what they wanted to do and being examples of who they wanted to be, it would encourage them to believe they could do the same and that they could start a business or become a board-level executive. She therefore built an event with two powerful panels of female entrepreneurs and business leaders, which was funded by the University of Sussex Business School where Catherine pitched the idea to the Dean and Deputy Dean of Engagement.
On the 29th March 2019, over 100 people attending the event and the atmosphere was incredible. The inspiration, the stories, the networking, the impact we had on so many people that night was truly unbelievable. We provided an opportunity for for many individuals to be inspired and to believe they could be a future leader.
From there, Women In Business developed into GLOW, which stands for Growing Leaders with Opportunities and Willpower. With GLOW's fantastic team of volunteers, they have created so many resources and opportunities for young people to be inspired, such as: a podcast; a social media series; a research study and journal; and skills sessions.
Watch this space to see where this adventure will go and how you can benefit from what we do! If you have an idea, would like to join us or would like to partner on a potential project, then please send us an email at: Glow.GrowingLeaders@gmail.com!