Last Thursday I attended the Massachusetts Conference for Women with my mum, over 7000 women were there…wow! My mum works for EMC and they were a sponsor for the event and she had an extra space open, and invited me to come…actually not really invited…because usually with an invitation you’re allowed to reject right? Lol, I had just got home from school that Tuesday, and after a long week of finals and a tedious semester I honestly just wanted to spend a couple days just bumming it, but since I couldn’t say no I woke up at the crack of dawn to accompany my mother. Don’t get me wrong, I’m definitely an advocate for networking and meeting new people. However, I’m more into attending entrepreneurial conferences, mixers, start-up weekend type of events, ect. However, my mum is always telling me to keep an open mind “you never know who you’ll meet at these conferences,” which is true.

Even though I didn’t meet a billionaire venture capitalist interested in investing in my idea, I still enjoyed myself at the conference. I attended the young women’s program where I heard Marion Jones speak about her public fall from grace and her journey and path to recovery; she was really inspiring. She talked about the importance of rebuilding trust one step at a time. She was a former champion track and field star that voluntarily returned 5 Olympic medals after admitting she was using performance-enhancing drugs. I looked up to her when I was younger, and I remember writing a paper about her when I was in either elementary or middle school. So It was cool getting to see her in person and hear her talk about the events surrounding her career.

Another event that I attended was the small biz/entrepreneurship session. It was titled “The Spark Tank: Pitch to the Pros” I got excited for that session; it’s definitely my type of event.

They allowed everyone at the session to put their business cards in a bag, and they were going to choose at random who would be able to pitch; due to time constraints only about 10 people were able to pitch.

It was mainly a workshop to help women refine their pitches, no money was at stake, just feedback from the judges, which included Lida Orzeck co-founder of Hanky Panky, Tory Johnson founder and CEO of Women for Hire, and Johanna Myers McChesney co-founder of Isis Parenting Inc.

I was probably the youngest one in the room, but that didn’t faze me, I still really wanted to pitch, but I didn’t get chosen, and I really wanted to pitch because I know I would have blown everyone away! I still had fun at the event nonetheless .