The Women’s Center and ohiowomen hosted an open house focusing on women and entrepreneurship.
The Ohio University Women’s Center was bustling with celebration for its first open house in collaboration with ohiowomen, formerly Women in Philanthropy.
The event had a large turnout and was a warm welcome for M. Geneva Murray, the new director for the Women’s Center.
“I’m really grateful that I’ve had this opportunity to meet so many wonderful people,” Murray said. “It has really been a heartwarming welcome to Ohio University, and I just couldn’t be more excited to be here.”
Additionally, it was the first time Murray got to meet President Roderick McDavis, First Lady Deborah McDavis and Jenny Hall-Jones, the interim vice president for Student Affairs and dean of students.
“I wanted to support the Women’s Center, and I hadn’t actually met Dr. Geneva Murray, so this was my opportunity to meet her and say hi,” Hall-Jones said.
Hall-Jones added that she was surprised at the turnout for the event because students had a different mindset when she attended OU.
“I don’t feel like when I was a student I was really thinking about women’s empowerment and what we needed to do as leaders,” Hall-Jones said. “So to see so many undergraduates connect with the Women’s Center and then also women leaders on campus — it’s a really important aspect of what we can provide.”
Lauren McCullough, an employee at the OU •Innovation Center, said this was also an opportunity to celebrate •Global Entrepreneurship Week.
“I work with entrepreneurs, and I am a woman, so specifically (I came to the open house) just because, you know, it’s global entrepreneurship week,” McCullough said. “I tried to support how I could and … an event that promotes the success of women entrepreneurs is obviously near and dear.”
McCullough was also interested to hear the plight of the speaker •René Banglesdorf and how she became an entrepreneur.
“It’s interesting as a woman entrepreneur to hear other’s plights of (being a female entrepreneur),” McCullough said. “To really have a firsthand experience of what you’ve gone through and what issues you might address as you come to what institutional barriers we have to fight up against and then also what it means to just be an entrepreneur, gender-independent.”
Banglesdorf spoke of just that and one of her biggest challenges: believing in herself. She also gave advice on how to be a “servant leader” in the workplace and how women should strive to be “smarter and better looking” than their male counterparts.
{{tncms-asset app="editorial" id="7d1c3838-8d59-11e5-a5b7-6ba9dc076157"}}
Banglesdorf also recalled when she was a student at OU and her involvement on campus including writing for The Post and being the founding vice president for Delta Zeta.
This event also allowed women to become more familiar with the presence of the Women’s Center on campus, according to Sarah Jenkins, the program coordinator for the Women’s Center.
“It was a really great opportunity to connect women to the Women’s Center who wouldn’t normally think to come to the Women’s Center,” Jenkins said. “It was so wonderful for us to be able to work together with ohiowomen … which is this up-and-coming group on campus and it’s so obvious … that we are going to have overlapping missions.”
The event broadened awareness for the organizations and even the empowerment of women on campus.
“I really hope that it will get people to come back in the future and check us out again, so I’m really excited about it,” Jenkins said.
@mmhicks19
