Butler Center to launch Lead by Example speaker series on Sept. 17

The Susan Bulkeley Butler Center for Leadership Excellence is inviting faculty, staff and students to the first session of its new speaker series, Lead by Example, featuring Roslyn Carter Artis, president of Benedict College. Artis' talk will focus on "Leadership Language: Articulating Purpose, Preparation, and Possibility."

The Lead by Example series will feature speakers who model and provide insights about "how to be" in order for women to gain acceptance to move into and succeed in leadership positions.

Time and again, observers have said, women -- particularly women of color -- leaders are not well-regarded, or they lose credibility because they are perceived as crazy, too demanding, too serious, too opportunistic and so on. The issue of trying to gain credibility as a leader is complicated, but such credibility is necessary to be a leader. In order to gain credibility, women of color, and sometimes women, are compelled to behave in specific and constrained ways. In fact, the reality that there are widely shared beliefs about how women, specifically women of color, must present themselves to gain acceptance as leaders can limit what women can do and how they can lead. Suggesting how to lead may feed into stereotypes of what women of color are expected to conform to.

The series will feature women leaders who will consider key questions such as, What communication strategies, qualities or features, or ways of interacting make women, particularly women of color, persuasive, credible, successful and well-regarded?

This session is scheduled for 3-4:30 p.m. Sept. 17 in Purdue Memorial Union 's East and West Faculty Lounges and will be offered both in person and through live streaming. All attendees must adhere to Protect Purdue Guidelines.

Registration is available online. For more information, contact butlercenter@purdue.edu.