The Seed was Planted...
by Carol Hansen Grey
The idea for the Feminine Face of Leadership Conference came in May 2001 after spending a delightful afternoon at the home of Sherry Anderson and her husband Paul Ray. While Victor and Ray were deep in discussion about Cultural Creatives at the kitchen table, Sherry and I curled up on the couch to discuss women's issues. She mesmerized me with her many stories about the women she had interviewed in preparation for her book, The Feminine Face of God.
On our way home I was musing about our conversation and the importance of women taking action in the world. It came to me that a WOVA event could actually be a catalyst for creating positive change in every spoke of WOVA's Wheel of Transformation (each spoke represents a sector of society connected by Spirit at the center). What if we sponsored a conference where the WOVA membership voted prior to the event on 3 spokes that they would like to focus on? And, what if those attending the conference chose beforehand which spoke they wished to participate in? And, what if the entire conference were a process whereby the participants, who were separated into three different spokes and using spiritual principles were to come up with the BEST idea for positive change in their particular spoke? And, what if the three ideas generated by at the conference were then acted upon by a group of people who participated a Global Action Forum that would actually manifest the idea?
The inspiration filled my very soul. The next day I contacted members of our WOVA Board and ran the idea past them. They thought it was great and we immediately set the ball in motion to produce a Feminine Face of Leadership Conference. The date that was chosen was 02-02-02 (actually it began on 02-01-02 and ended on 02-03-02).
I sent out a questionnaire to the WOVA membership to see if there was support for such a conference and the idea was overwhelmingly embraced. I then sent out another questionnaire asking members to vote on which spokes they would like to focus on. The three that were chosen were: Spirituality, Community, and Health & Healing.
I pulled a team together to design the conference, recruited Lynn Bieber and Beata Lewis to facilitate, recruited other participants to serve as spoke facilitators, asked Kimberly Pfeil to design a logo and invited Sherry Anderson to be our keynote speaker.
It took 9 months to birth the event from inception to delivery (May 2001 - February 2002). Sixty-seven women attended ranging in age from 14 - 83. During the three days of the event, we all felt like we were going through labor pains that became so intense that some participants bailed out. Yet on the third day, the babies were delivered and everyone was overjoyed with the co-creative ideas that we had birthed.
The Feminine Face of Leadership Event, held at the Headlands Institute in Marin County, CA, was definitely a catalytic event.