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Founded by Diane Nishigaya MacGillivray, the Women Who Empower network has held over 100 events in 20 cities and awarded over $1.32 million in funding to entrepreneurs since 2014.
Women Who Empower — an initiative that supports members of the Northeastern University community through entrepreneurship funding, networking and events around the world — marked its 10th anniversary with a day of celebration across the Boston campus.
The slate of events included a ribbon-cutting and a celebratory luncheon, culminating in the evening with the 10th annual Women Who Empower Summit.
The program for the summit included a series of fireside chats with leaders in the arts, business and philanthropy, followed by a ceremony for the organization’s 2023 and 2024 Innovator Awards honoring trailblazing members of the Northeastern community with financial grants to pursue their endeavors.
“We are celebrating 10 years of connection, 10 years of community, and 10 years of creating something that is truly unique and special for our university, for our students and for our alumni,” said Diane Nishigaya MacGillivray, Northeastern’s senior vice president for university advancement and the founder of Women Who Empower, in her remarks opening the summit.
“When we launched this initiative a decade ago, I wasn’t thinking that we were building something that was going to go around the world, do programs in 20 cities, more than 100 of them, engaging more than 5,000 people.”
MacGillivray spoke of the wide array of women she has encountered through Women Who Empower’s first decade — and the surprising ways the initiative’s events and network have inspired them.
“I’ve met women in my own generation who’ve been in steady careers their whole lives, who have told me that these programs have given them the courage to start their own ventures” she said. “Every one of these encounters has touched me deeply, and it is no exaggeration to say that this community is one of the most important things for me at Northeastern. It continues to fuel and fulfill me beyond measure.”
The evening’s speakers included Christy Cashman, an actress and screenwriter whose debut novel, “The Truth About Horses,” came out to critical acclaim in 2023; Sandy Edgerley, founder and president of luxury real estate development firm Hexagon properties and an active philanthropist in the education and social service nonprofit sphere; and Sheila Lirio Marcelo, a tech entrepreneur who founded Care.com and the newly launched Ohai.ai, which leverages generative AI to help families with things like home management and scheduling.
In each of their conversations, the three women shared their personal and professional journeys — all of which were wildly different, but similarly eventful.
Talking with Jill Bornstein, an executive coach and 2024 Women Who Empower Innovator judge, Cashman described her multi-career path to becoming a novelist — and how stints on both sides of the camera in Hollywood pushed her to find her own voice as a fiction writer.
“A lot of the challenges and insecurities that I found in that world of not really feeling like I fit in were helpful to me,” she said. “It brings you back to your high school or middle school days when you didn’t feel like you fit in. That’s where I continue to try to find — to write from that part that doesn’t quite fit in.”
In conversation with 2024 Innovator Award winner Kadesh Simms Conroy, Edgerley talked about climbing a path from an immigrant family to Harvard and a high-powered real estate career, then transitioning into a new phase as a mother of four and nonprofit entrepreneur. Her latest venture, the ‘Quin House, aims to open the experience of a modern “social club” to people of all ages, ethnicities and interests.
“The advantage of being an entrepreneur is that you start with a blank piece of paper,” she told the audience. “You’re not necessarily encumbered by the past; you can sort of create something brand new.”
Marcelo, a tech entrepreneur, became a young mother in college and spoke about the challenges and lessons from balancing those demands with her early career. Her entrepreneurial ventures, from Care.com to Ohai.ai, have been devoted to reducing the mental load for families, and she encouraged the audience to think about authenticity, even as they were pushing to climb and succeed.
“My goal is to help others not just do more, but be more,” she said in her conversation with Melissa LaCasse, a 2024 Innovator honoree and 2022 graduate of Northeastern’s Roux Institute Founder Residency Program. “I encourage you to be true to your values and focus on how you see yourself and others.”
After the speaker portion of the program, the two most recent cohorts of Women Who Empower Innovator Awards were recognized — 61 honorees in total. 2024 marks the fourth time the awards have been given out.
“We evaluate the candidates on their leadership, innovation, authenticity and community building,” said Betsy Ludwig, Northeastern’s executive director of entrepreneurship. “This award is to the individual, not necessarily to their venture. We give these awards because we believe in them as lifelong innovators, entrepreneurs and leaders.”
“Every single person that we’ve honored over these past four years is individually remarkable, impressive and inspiring,” MacGillivray added. “But the thing I like best about our innovators is they are so much more than a collection of individuals. They support one another, they learn from one another, they invest in one another. While the process is a competition, it is not a zero-sum game. If we could inject even a little bit of that spirit into the world today, what could we accomplish?”