Skip to navigation | Skip to main content | Skip to footer
Menu
Search the University of Manchester siteSearch Menu StaffNet

WATCH: Inspiring young women for International Women’s Day

21 Mar 2016

Alliance Manchester Business School event brings together local school students and business community

Alliance Manchester Business School celebrated International Women’s Day with a conference that brought together a group of young women to get their creativity flowing.

Levenshulme High School for Girls and Whalley Range High School for Girls took part in interactive workshops with academics and representatives from the business school, whilst gaining invaluable advice and insight through inspirational life stories from influential local business women, as part of an ongoing Business Class partnership with Business in the Community.

Guest speakers included Shalni Arora, CEO of Savannah Wisdom; Gayle Morgan from Laing O’Rouke; Professor Kay Marshall, Head of Pharmacy at the University of Manchester; Syreeta Spence from Accenture and Sonia Ginty from QBag.

They kick-started the day by imparting knowledge gained from their life experiences, providing take-away advice to the young women. The panel was facilitated by Alliance MBS alumna Clarie-Marie Boggiano.

Students spent the remainder of the afternoon in interactive employability workshops with Alliance MBS staff and Women in Business Club members, covering themes including creative problem solving, influence and persuasion, and personal branding and communications. The sessions provided practical advice in an engaging setting and judging by the energy and enthusiasm in each workshop, there was no doubt a spark of aspiration ignited in the students.

Students were given the platform to truly think outside the box, alongside the opportunity to look forward to what they can achieve in the future through ideas cultivated in the creative problem solving and influence and persuasion workshops.  The personal branding and communications workshop then allowed the students to put these ideas into action, providing the young women with the opportunity to practice how they would present ideas in all situations.

You can watch a film about the event:

The day was drawn to a close with reflections from Professor Fiona Devine, Head of Alliance Manchester Business School, and Sandra Cox, a partner from the event sponsor, KPMG LLP.