Getting Down to Business: New Foster MBAs at the 2024 Forte Conference
Fourteen incoming MBAs from Foster’s Class of 2024 traveled to Los Angeles in June to join a community of MBA women from highly ranked MBA programs around the country and hear keynote speakers discuss ways to navigate the business world, the future of work and ways to develop tools for leading in an increasingly diverse workforce. At the Forte Conference students also learned about industry sectors where MBAs work like consulting, technology, healthcare and marketing.
Colette Vogel, MBA Career Management, with women from the incoming MBA Class of 2024 at the Forte Conference, June 8-11, in Los Angeles, California
Foster is a proud sponsor of the Forté Foundation, a community of motivated and inspiring women whose mission is to launch women into fulfilling and significant careers through access to business education, professional development and a network of accomplished professional women. Forte empowers women to change their career trajectories, their earning power, and their lives.
Colette Vogel, Senior Associate Director, MBA career management, has moderated panels at the Forte Conference for four years running and this time moderated a panel on building a global business career with expatriate business leaders from multinational companies. She has found the Forte Conference transformative for many MBA Foster women as they develop career goals that inspire and gain confidence through inspiring stories from professional women describing their career paths, how they balanced work and life, and the confidence they gained along the way.
For those MBA women unable to travel to LA, Forte introduced a virtual leadership development program, MBA Takeoff that includes reflection exercises designed to support MBA women in negotiations, communications, and goal-setting, it provides the space and community to digest these topics and revisit them throughout an MBA’s first year. Participating in the program includes access to the Women Lead webinar series, a leadership development series through Franklin-Covey. Additional webinar topics included job searching as an international non-US MBA Student, Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion in the classroom. Over 30 incoming MBA women at Foster have enrolled in MBA Takeoff.
In addition to the self-guided learning and the MBA Takeoff community, Foster’s career management team offered incoming Foster MBA women online sessions in May and June exploring topics that included online presence, positioning yourself as a great intern candidate and crafting your resume and Linked In profile. Leslie Meagley, in MBA Career Management led these onboarding efforts.
Together, Foster and Forté are firmly focused on supporting women in their career advancement and providing women access to the tools and resources to build careers with impact and thrive in business.
– Colette Vogel, Mentor Program Director
