Shellee Smith, executive director for the USC Annenberg Center for Third Space Thinking, moderated an amazing panel of successful professionals at USC Marshal’s International Women’s Day Celebration which took place at the Tudor Center on March 5.  The event was jam-packed with speakers, panels, and workshops all centered around empowering women to lead and lift up their voices to be heard. The theme of this year’s celebration- An equal world is an enabled world. USC’s President, Carol L. Folt kicked off the event with a touching  address where she encouraged women to “never be limited by other people’s limited imaginations.” 

Smith led a panel discussion of four accomplished women including Vani Lewerke of Lewerke Consulting; Sally Canario, senior director of logistics and supply chain at Performance Team; Nikki Modi, a product manager at Edward Life Sciences; and Jenny Dare Paulin, manager of corporate & growth strategy at Ernst & Young. The panel, “How to Actively Cultivate Self-Awareness, Leadership, and Resiliency to Support Your Personal and Professional Journey,” touched on a range of topics and many of the speakers’ responses to these questions related to the five attributes of Third Space Thinking. Most notably, a large part of developing leadership skills has to do with developing empathy or actively listening to understand your team’s needs and seeing things from their perspective. 

The panelists gave blossoming professionals advice on being authentic as a woman in the workforce and how that is often the key ingredient to professional success. When it came to the topic of resilience, the panelists talked about stepping up to the challenge, but still maintaining boundaries when necessary. One of the panelists shared her insightful mantra of “I can do anything, but not everything”. Overall, these women gave important pieces of advice that Shellee Smith facilitated by asking all the right questions.

All of these women have paved the way for others through their accomplishments and are dedicated to giving back by sharing their experiences so that other women may learn from them.