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UW-Madison Students Attend Global Leadership Conference
Alison Patz and Caryn Voskuil talk with attendees from Sudan and Palestine
Caryn Voskuil and former UPI Washington bureau chief Helen Thomas
By Caryn Voskuil
Class of 2009
In March, I and three other women had the awesome opportunity to represent the University of Wisconsin-Madison at the “Women as Global Leaders 2008” conference in Dubai, United Arab Emirates. More than 1,000 women from 85 countries gathered at the Madinat Jumeirah resort for this conference, which took an academic approach to learning leadership. Sitting with emerging female leaders from all over the world at this conference will stand out as the single greatest memory of my undergraduate career.
Now in its third year, this international student conference is organized by Zayed University, one of the premier institutions in the Middle East dedicated to the education of women. I believe the conference succeeded in building bridges and uniting female students, and most importantly it provided a forum for women to dialogue with each other on issues ranging from social injustice to religion to news coverage.
This year’s conference examined the learning side of leadership, and how that may involve imitation of role models of our day. We were able to put that lesson to work by attending sessions led by journalist Helen Thomas; actress Jane Fonda; Sarah Ferguson, Duchess of York; Carol Bellamy, the former head of UNICEF and current CEO of World Learning; and Anousheh Ansari, the first female private space explorer and chairman and co-founder of Prodea Systems.
I was fortunate to attend a theatre show with women I met from Saudi Arabia, Palestine, and Sudan. As we sat together on the desert freezing in the dead of night, we seemed to have everything in common. We discussed how much we shared as female students with a love for international experiences despite how different our colleges and pasts were. Before this conference, I could only have dreamt about serving, meeting, and growing alongside women from all over the world, and am afraid that while I was given a taste of what it looks like, I am hungrier than ever to communicate cross culturally and experience events from another perspective. I can still remember the hope and excitement that I felt while I was there, and I continue to carry on conversations I started with several women while in Dubai.
Although the trip had many highlights, I will never forget meeting Helen Thomas, the former White House bureau chief for United Press International and the only female reporter to have covered every U.S. president since John F. Kennedy. I talked to her about studying journalism at UW-Madison, and she was thrilled to talk about university life because she had a personal connection to UW. Her personable nature was unique and made me understand why she was such a credit to the field of journalism. She’s an example of a woman I aspire to be like.
My UW travel companions were Tola Ewers, a doctoral student in educational leadership and policy analysis; Erica Healey, an MBA student in the Wisconsin School of Business real estate program; and Alison Patz, a master of international public affairs candidate who currently is studying Arabic in Cairo. Each of us brought our own unique perspective and expectations to the conference, but we each came home impressed and equipped with a new way of looking at the Middle East. We experienced the thrill of interacting with women leaders from abroad, and I know my mind has been enriched with new ideas and ways of thinking.
Now when I think of the Middle East I think of the faces of the women I met at this conference and wonder where the journey of life will take us, and how and if we might meet again. Opportunities like this are once in a lifetime, and I feel very fortunate to be a student able to view the world in a new way. I am thankful to CIBER and the Don Leidel Scholarship Fund for supporting the internationalization of students in this way and sponsoring our participation in this conference.