WILMINGTON — Hundreds of women gathered together at the Chase Center on the Riverfront in Wilmington Thursday for the New Castle County Chamber of Commerce’s 2024 Women’s Leadership Conference, representing just a small portion of the state’s growing female leadership.
According to the United States Census Bureau, almost 47.5% of the national workforce was comprised of women in 2021 while nearly 50% of Delaware’s workforce was made of the same. While women in Delaware lag a bit behind their male counterparts in top executive roles, coming in at 4,034 top executive spots compared to 5,478, the number of management roles tells a different story.
In the same year, there were 26,560 management roles occupied by men in the First State while women claimed 26,237 management jobs, nearly half of all such roles. These statistics were not further segmented by other gender identities by the Census Bureau.
Female leaders such as NCC Chamber President Yvonne Deadwyler took to several stages over the course of the conference, calling each of the attendees “powerful women” and encouraging them to look to the future with encouragement and gratitude.
“This incredible turnout is a testament to the power of women,” she told the crowd of more than 400 guests from inside the Chase Center.
Dr. Wendy Smith, Dana Johnson Professor of Management at the University of Delaware’s Alfred Lerner College of Business and Economics, said the opportunity to sit alongside other women for this conference “in community, in connection with one another” was something that could help propel other leaders as they grow, learning life lessons from women who have blazed the paths before them.
She joined Samantha Mitchell, founder and president of Black Women in Aviation, and Dr. Kara Odom Walker, chief population health officer of Nemours Children’s Health, for the keynote panel discussion moderated by Women of More, LLC., Founder and CEO Michelle Washington.
Together, they celebrated the opportunity they had to share their experiences, especially in what they called “a safe environment helping women.”
“Everyone of you has a chance to make a difference and we’re seeing that right now,” Walker added during the keynote panel.
An earlier panel featuring Paula Swain, Incyte’s executive vice president of global human resources; Doneene Damon, the immediate past president and chief diversity director of Richards, Layton & Finger; and Zavida Mangaru, vice president of digital enablement at Sallie Mae, moderated by Deadwyler, expressed the same sentiment, highlighting the growing power female leadership now has in Delaware.
“I am in awe of all of you. You’ve each done something to pass down to [someone else],” Swain said during their panel.
Another theme was highlighted by Mangaru who encouraged participants to “have no fear” as they work their way up their career ladder in the First State.
“In any one of my jobs, I didn’t have that guilt, but what I had was a potential and a drive like nobody was going to get in my way,” she said. “I had to have no fear and the reason I did it was because somebody told me I can’t. . . But everytime they did, it gave me the strength to fight harder.”
