Women's Future Leadership Forum - A Day of Inspiration

Dec. 14, 2010 - PRLog -- On December 10, a panel of female New Jersey executives, inspired by example in sharing their personal success stories with fifty promising high school-aged girls from Morristown, Newark, Bloomfield, Linden and Rahway.  Junior Achievement of New Jersey (JANJ) selected these girls because of their achievements in school and their participation in the Junior Achievement High School Heroes Program, where they serve as JA volunteer role models at their local elementary schools.  

The panelists for the event represented a wide range of women in leadership roles, including:  Pamela J. Craig, chief financial officer of Accenture and member of JANJ State Board of Governors; Patricia M. Barksdale, vice president, Global Wealth Management, Merrill Lynch; Bellaria Jaramillo, CFP®, managing director for Wealth Financial Group, an office of MetLife; Michelle Lee, regional president, Northeast Community Banking, Wachovia, a Wells Fargo Company; and Trisha Rozas, chief information officer, Guy Carpenter.  Led by panel moderator Nellie Borrero, global director, Inclusion & Diversity, Accenture, panelists shared their experience in overcoming their greatest challenges and failures, how they stay connected to the community while achieving success and provided insight on the relevance of networking and finding people who mentored and coached them so they could achieve their goals.

Following the panel discussions, fifty women of diverse professional backgrounds were each paired with a student and spent valuable one-on-one time together discussing their personal success stories along with skills like how to give a 'personal' elevator pitch.  Along with their mentors, the students participated in personal finance breakout sessions sponsored by Accenture (also the event Sponsor),The Provident Bank Foundation, Infineum USA L.P, ConocoPhillips Bayway Refinery, Cogen Technologies Linden Venture L.P. and DuPont and The Emily C. Specchio Foundation.  In small groups the students played JA's Balance, Break Even, or Broke Game where they examined the concept of budgeting and learned how their daily chores affect their ability to save for the future.

“We had a great group of students, and I was extremely impressed with their questions and how they engaged, ” said Pamela Craig, event chair and chief financial officer at Accenture.  “JANJ cares deeply about helping students, and that dedication reflects Accenture’s commitment to its corporate citizenship initiative, Skills to Succeed, which helps people develop skills that enable them to get a job or build a business."

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About Junior Achievement® (JA)

Junior Achievement is the world's largest organization dedicated to inspiring and preparing young people to succeed in a global economy. Through a dedicated volunteer network, Junior Achievement provides in-school and after-school programs for students which focus on three key content areas: work readiness, entrepreneurship, and financial literacy. Today, 126 individual area operations reach more than four million students in the United States, with an additional 5.7 million students served by operations in 122 other countries worldwide. For more information, visit www.ja.org. Locally, Junior Achievement of NJ (www.janj.org) will impact 39,000 students this school year.