Women's History Week: Staten Island Businesswomen Become Mentors To Young Females
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NY1 wraps up its series on extraordinary women the station has covered over the years with a women's business group on Staten Island that has grown and evolved and is now working even harder to help females in the workplace. Borough reporter Amanda Farinacci filed the following report.College of Staten Island junior Ruth Arsenec was one of dozens of students who attended the school's second-annual "speed networking" event. For three minutes at a shot, she had the chance to network with some of Staten Island's most successful women.
"The best way to find out information is to deal with a woman who basically has the same outlook on life and has the same challenges that I would face and has already accomplished them," says Arsenec.
The speed networking event is a partnership between the college and the Staten Island Economic Development Corporation's Women's Leadership Council, or WLC.
Back in 2005, the WLC was known as the "Women In Business Group," and over the years it has expanded its cause from simply helping women to include networking, mentoring, and giving back to the community.
"I think we have more of a mission now than we did in 2005. When we started in 2005, we were everywhere, we didn't know where we wanted to go, we didn't know who we wanted to help," says WLC member Chrissy Mazzola. "We wanted to help women, we wanted to do something for women."
The group is set to change yet again this summer, incorporating new members and targeting women who may be struggling in their professional lives.
Part of the group's new mission will focus on helping young women who are just starting out after college, especially given how difficult the economy has made finding a job in recent years.
"We want to give everybody a shot and this community is very small, we all know a lot of the same people and a lot of people are still hiring," says WLC member Pamela Columbia. "So we want to try and guide the people who can't necessarily find jobs as easily into the right direction."
Many of the group's members say they were themselves mentored by women as they were starting out and credit those relationships with helping them succeed.