A panel of experts will discuss “Women, Sports and Principled Leadership” at the next Winning With Integrity Symposium at the University of St. Thomas.
The symposium, an annual conversation on topics dealing with sports, ethics and principled leadership, will be held Wednesday, Oct. 26, from 7:30-10 a.m. in the James B. Woulfe Alumni Hall in Anderson Student Center on the university’s St. Paul campus.
The panel will discuss how playing sports can help lay the foundation for leadership by women in business and life, ethical challenges that arise when there is so much pressure to win while remaining true to one’s core values, and the role that sports experience can play in recruiting, developing and retaining women leaders in business.
Panelists are:
- Summer Sanders, sports broadcaster, entrepreneur and winner of four medals at the 1992 Olympic Games in Barcelona
- Lea Olsen, sports analyst and broadcaster with Fox Media Group and a former tri-captain with Gopher basketball
- Ruth Opatz Sinn, St. Thomas’ women’s head basketball coach, Minnesota Ms. Basketball Committee member and Minnesota State Girls Basketball Coaches’ Association Hall of Fame
- Carol Surface, senior vice president and chief human resources officer at Medtronic Inc. and former executive vice president of Best Buy
Summer Sanders
Sanders also will give the symposium’s keynote talk. Introductory remarks will be given by Michelle Rovang, director of the Veritas Institute. Panel moderator will be Dawn Elm, the David A. and Barbara Koch Distinguished Professor of Business Ethics and Leadership at St. Thomas’ Opus College of Business. She is interim president of the Center for Ethical Business Cultures at St. Thomas and is executive director of the Society for Business Ethics.
The symposium is organized and hosted by the Center for Ethical Business Cultures, the Veritas Institute and the Opus College of Business’ Department of Ethics and Business Law, all based at the University of St. Thomas. It is sponsored by Ernst & Young and Financial Executives International, Twin Cities Chapter.
To register and for more information visit this website.
For Ernst & Young, participation in sports is a key to developing women leaders. The company’s global vice chair for public policy, Beth Brooke-Marciniak, leads the firm’s Women Athletes Business Network and argues: “If you are serious about wanting to advance more women into leadership roles, you can’t underestimate the role of sport.” Two statistics indicate the link between athletics and leadership: 94 percent of women in the C-suite played sports and 80 percent of Fortune 500 female executives played sports.
