By Dana DuGan
The Andrus Center Conference on Women and Leadership was held last week in Boise. The annual conference highlights female leaders from a myriad of occupations – from the law, the military and the boardroom, to the arts and high-tech. The keynote speeches, skill-builder workshops and networking sessions are all designed to create better leaders and promote gender balance.
Four-term Idaho governor and former U.S. Secretary of the Interior Cecil D. Andrus established the eponymous center in 1995, and serves as its chairman. Its mission is to “nurture pragmatic, nonpartisan discussion of issues” and encourage “wise use of environmental resources and public lands, proper funding of education for our children and the cultivation of leadership from all segments of our society,” according to the website.
The entire conference, now in its fourth year and held at Boise State University’s Student Union Center, is based on the concept that leadership is a matter of competency, not gender.
Andrus Center president Tracy Andrus, a management consultant, businesswoman and the daughter of Cecil Andrus, has said that men and women must both be part of the “discussion that seeks to improve the underrepresentation of women in our boardrooms, our professions and other leadership positions throughout our country.”
Each speaker at the conference was a woman who had either improved gender equity in their field or broken long-held barriers. Sessions included such topics as Sustainability at Work and Home; Language and Leadership; High Performance Communication and Collaboration; Andrus Book Club; and Building An Authentic Workplace Culture.
Among the noted speakers was Charlotte A. Burrows, commissioner of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission; Lisa Maatz, vice president of Government Relations at the Advocacy American Association of University Women; Aimee Christensen, founder and executive director of Sun Valley Institute for Resilience; endurance athlete Magdalena Boulet; and Betty Anne Waters with The Innocence Project.
Waters gained fame for putting herself through college and law school on a waitress’s earnings in order to free her older brother, Kenny Waters, from prison. Innocent of the crime for which he’d been incarcerated, Waters was imprisoned for 18 years before his sister was able to secure his release from prison. She now lobbies for criminal justice reform and volunteers for The Innocence Project. Waters’ story was made into the 2010 movie, “Conviction,” starring Hilary Swank and directed by Tony Goldwyn. Goldwyn is the stepson of Andrus Center board member Peggy Goldwyn.
“Betty Anne’s personal story was so inspirational that you can have dreams that seem impossible and achieve them and also, knowing her, that she was personally inspiring, would resonate,” Peggy Goldwyn said. “Of course, Tony spent nine years getting the film about her life made – almost half the time it took her to get her brother out of prison. And I believe in The Innocence Project. It is a story for our time.”
The Sun Valley-based Family of Woman Film Festival, which Goldwyn founded and directs, was a sponsor of the 2016 Women and Leadership Conference.
“There’s a thirst for an event of this caliber in our vicinity,” Goldwyn said. “We had over 750 people from a wide area; a complete sellout.”
Goldwyn also facilitated another speaker’s talk at the conference, director and producer Amy Ziering.
Ziering’s film (based on her own book), “The Hunting Ground: The Inside Story of Sexual Assault on American College Campuses,” was screened at the festival and at the 2016 Family of Woman Film Festival. A previous Ziering movie, “The Invisible War” was shown in 2013 at the Family of Woman Film Festival. It explores the ever-increasing incidents of violent sexual assault within the U.S. military.
Not just for women, there were at least three male speakers, and about one male attendee for every 20 women, including former Gov. Andrus.
Next year’s Women and Leadership Conference will be held Sept. 13-14, 2017.