A Dialogue About Leadership: Spelman College Annual Conference Gets Underway

WABE’s Rose Scott reports on the overall mission of the conference and this year’s theme.

Dr. Jane E. Smith gives credit to one woman for instilling the importance of leadership.

“Her name was Bazoline Usher. She was my grandmother. She served as supervisor of Negro Schools in Segregation and helped to found the girl scouts, black girl scouts, in the state of Georgia.”

Dr. Smith is the executive director for Spelman’s Center for Leadership and Civic Engagement.

As she goes deeper in reflection, the 1968 Spelman College alum, says leadership is an important trait and especially for women.

“And if you don’t have someone or some ones in that role a community suffers, it’s just that simple. And so it’s responsibility of our education system all the way from pre-school to be certain that students understand leadership as a model of behavior, so that those that choose to lead…can lead well.”

And that’s the core concept of the Spelman College Leadership and Women of Color Conference.

Dr. Smith says just trace the history of Spelman to find the origin of leadership.

“Spelman like many historical black colleges was founded for former slaves and for us those former slaves were women. And so we were interested in race and gender from the beginning and we in teaching what we call authentic leadership at Spelman College is still based on that premise.”

This year the theme is on wealth building, entrepreneurship and paying it forward for women of color.

Dr. Smith says that’s on the personal side and professional side, because in the end it must relate to the community.

“How do we mean bring money [into the community], money is a resource that we must have. And whether or not we want to be wealthy individuals, we want a wealthy community and we want a wealthy gender.”

And then, says Dr. Smith, it’s important to make sure others benefit from those successes.

To ensure others has access to this conference Dr. Smith says fifty free registrations are given to community partners.