Forté works to #AccelerateAction in changing the balance of power in the workplace

The Forté Foundation is an impactful member of the IWD GIVING ecosystem. Through more women leading, Forté is changing the balance of power in the workplace.

Forté is an organization that strives to Accelerate Action by changing the balance of power in the workplace. Through providing access to business education, professional development, and a strong community, Forté helps launch women into fulfilling, significant careers. 

Forté's community of motivated and inspiring women is transforming leadership in every field that business touches. Members from diverse backgrounds, industries, and career stages are uniting to shake up the status quo.

In celebration of International Women’s Day, Forté is offering a free virtual International Women's Day (IWD) conference that is designed to ignite ambition and amplify impact. Under the theme Accelerate Action, Forté is rallying to challenge biases, disrupt the status quo, and build a future where gender equality isn’t just a goal - it’s reality.

Tackling pressing challenges for women in business

Forté's IWD event brings together top industry leaders to tackle the most pressing challenges facing women in business today, providing attendees with actionable strategies to advance their career, break barriers, and create meaningful change.

The conference provides a great chance to connect, learn, and grow alongside other ambitious professional women ready to lead, inspire, and break barriers. The conference provides an empowering experience filled with insightful speakers, networking opportunities, and game-changing career advice.

"Unlock opportunities, gain expert insights, connect with inspiring women from diverse industries, and be a part of a powerful movement advocating for gender equality. Let's come together and take bold steps toward a future where every woman is valued and celebrated for her unique contributions. This is more than just a conference, this is a celebration of sisterhood and solidarity - a space where ambition meets empowerment," says Forté.

Fabulous conference sessions

The Forté's IWD 2025 conference provides valuable insights from sessions on:

• Sponsorship & Strategic Networking – Build trust, expand your influence, and unlock new career opportunities.
• Authentic Self-Promotion & Owning Your Value – Learn how to advocate for yourself with confidence.
• Managing Up & Influencing Without Authority – Navigate workplace dynamics and drive impact at any level.
• Allyship & Gender Collaboration – Foster inclusivity and break down systemic barriers together.
• Reinvention in the Age of AI – Stay ahead of the curve in an evolving digital landscape.
• Mind & Body Alignment – Prioritize well-being to sustain long-term success.
• Addressing the ‘Broken Rung’ in Leadership – Tackle barriers that hinder women’s advancement.

Brilliant speaker, conversations with impact

Speakers

• Amy Orlov - Director, Professional Programs at Forté
• Lamiaa Laurène Daif - Worldwide Growth Strategy Leader at Apple, Executive Coach, & TEDx speaker
• Wendy Dukes - Director, MBA Programs at Forté
• Kelly Ling - Founder of Stork & Spark
• Michelle Bozeman - Founder & CEO of TBW Enterprises, LLC
• Rosalind Chow - Associate Professor of Organizational Behavior at Tepper School of Business at Carnegie Mellon University
• Cydnee DeToy - Career Coach for Millennial Women
• Melody Wilding - Author, Human Behavior Professor & Executive Coach
• Catherine Neiner - Career Development Coach & Consultant
• Colleen Stuart - Associate Professor and Co-Director of the Gender & Work Initiative
• David Smith - Associate Professor and Co-Director of the Gender & Work Initiative

Amy Orlov, Director, Professional Programs at Forté welcomes before Rosalind Chow, Associate Professor of Organizational Behavior from Tepper School of Business at Carnegie Mellon University delivers her insightful keynote address.

As sponsorship is critical to career advancement., in her soon-to-be-published book, The Doors You Can Open: A New Way to Network, Build Trust, and Use Your Influence to Create a More Inclusive Workplace, Dr. Rosalind Chow explores how beyond traditional networking and mentorship, sponsorship is key to how others perceive your talent, abilities, and potential. In this session, Dr. Chow deconstructs what sponsorship is, how it works, and why being a sponsor is the key to finding sponsors.  

Cydnee DeToy, Career Coach for Millennial Women, discusses authentic self-promotion and why you should ditch the cringe, own your value, and create opportunities.

Professional women walk a fraught and narrow tightrope of self-promotion. You've heard it all before -- on one side, you have your well-meaning mentors and advice columns cautioning you not to be too aggressive. On the other side, you have the research that shows your work won't speak for itself and you have to self-advocate. As a result, talking about your results feels clunky, and perhaps you default to staying quiet, doing great work and hoping that your work does speak for itself. In this session, career coach Cydnee DeToy will teach you how to own your value, sharing the proven framework and simple strategies that she's used with almost 100 clients. By the end of 30 minutes, you'll have your exact words you need to share your value and be ready to do it in a way that feels confident and 100% authentic. 

Melody Wilding, author of Human Behavior Professor & Executive Coach, discusses managing up and having influence without authority to get the recognition and respect deserved. Managing up is a learnable skill set that helps you teach others how to treat you. In her talk, Melody provides a practical playbook for navigating relationships with higher-ups to get ideas heard, work noticed, and one's career advanced. You may lack formal authority, but with these skills, you can get what you need from the people in charge and take control of your own work experience, even in the face of conflicting priorities, competing demands, and tight budgets.

Wendy Dukes, Director, MBA Programs at Forté, discusses managing invisible labor in the workplace. Have you ever done something at work that no one noticed, but it still made everything run smoothly? That’s invisible labor! Wendy dives into the often-overlooked tasks that keep workplaces going — like managing small details, keeping team morale high, or being the colleague who always cuts and passes out the cake during an employee celebration. When "other duties as assigned.” work can add up (oftentimes without credit or promotion), so beng aware of how to mitigate invisible efforts is key.

David Smith, Associate Professor and Co-Director of the Gender & Work Initiative and Colleen Stuart, Associate Professor and Co-Director of the Gender & Work Initiative discuss the power of allyship and gender collaboration. Based on their research, David Smith and Colleen Stuart make the business case for male engagement in gender equality, while integrating why it is good for both men and women in our organizations. Using social science evidence, they explore the possible challenges of cross-gender professional relationships. Using their own research, some humor, and organizational best practices, they provide the “how-to” for men, women, and organizational leaders who want to be intentional allies, leveraging mentorship, sponsorship, and workplace partnership to create a sustainable, diverse, and more successful workforce. They operationalize allyship and offer rich examples of what best-in-class allyship looks like. Men should walk away with better motivation and a roadmap for getting started as an ally. Women, and people of all genders, should see the value of collaborating with allies. Organizational leaders will have a clearer sense of how to call out better ally behavior in male employees, and how to create a culture of allyship.

Pregnancy in the workplace presents unique challenges and opportunities. As such, Kelly Ling, founder of Stork & Spark, discusses parental leave as a career growth lever and discusses experiences of pregnancy at work from multiple perspectives. Uncover hidden anxieties, discover proactive solutions that foster career growth, and learn how to build a truly supportive environment for expectant parents and their stakeholders.

Lamiaa Laurène Daif, Worldwide Growth Strategy Leader at Apple, Executive Coach, & TEDx speaker discusses what your body knows that your mind actually ignores. What happens when you've checked all the boxes of success, but your body is screaming for change? Join Lamiaa reveals how an autoimmune disease became her wake-up call to reinvent success on her own terms. Lamiaa discusses why some high-achieving women may often feel empty despite "having it all” and she focuses on why your body holds the key to authentic leadership and impact, as well as highlighting the secret to creating success without sacrificing wellbeing. For professional women who sense there's more to success than just achieving, Lamiaa reveals how to bridge the gap between external success and internal fulfillment. Learn how to create a life where success energizes rather than depletes you.

Michelle Bozeman, Founder and CEO, TBW Enterprises LLC, focuses on reinventing ourselves in the age of AI. Recent waves of layoffs and reduced commitment to DEI are disproportionately impacting women, exacerbating gender disparities, and potentially reversing the progress of inclusion efforts. Michelle focuses on how to rethink a tech career in the age of AI through recognizing unique gifts and taking ownership of the career journey.

Catherine Neiner, Career Development Coach & Consultant speaks about fixing the broken rung. Organizations that value the progression of women put a majority of focus on breaking the glass ceiling. But what needs to be done is to fix the “broken rung.” That is usually at the point of first promotion to management. Research shows that more men than women get that first promotion. And then, as the funnel to upper management narrows, fewer women are in the pipeline. This phenomenon is often a result of childbearing colliding with one's career at just that time. The financial costs of losing or slowing down women are enormous to an organization. The effect of repairing the broken rung packs a wallop in an organization’s bottom line and its reputation as true to its values proposition. Catherie discusses reasons the rung breaks where it does and the subsequent financial and cultural consequences, the variety of tools that an organization can use to fix the broken rung, and the positive impact, both financial and cultural, on the organization when there is no broken rung anymore.

Accelerating action to inspire enduring change

The Forté Foundation strives to inspire enduring change in universities, business schools, and the workplace, where everyone has the opportunity to be the type of leader and role model to which they aspire. Forté also provides enthusiastic support throughout the entire career journey, from undergrad to business leadership, by helping individuals leverage its resources, its community, and its programs. 

Cultivating a strong community

Forté cultivates a strong, supportive community where all feel comfortable networking and learning from each other. Recognizing and embracing the challenges that exist, Forté strives to create real change and is confident that it will achieve its goals. Forté commits to continuing its work until it achieves parity in business schools, the workplace, corner offices, and corporate boardrooms.

Forté's alliance links talented women, influential companies, leading universities and business schools, and pioneering donors. Together these important players commit to advancing women in business. Through Forté, women can explore the endless career options available through business - from healthcare to hospitality - and learn universally valuable skills to accelerate their careers and thrive as leaders.

Giving women access to infrastructure

Forté also gives women equal access to an infrastructure - business education, role models, professional networks, leadership training - that empowers them to rethink what’s possible. Forté's kit of practical tools can change their career trajectories and earning power. 

Supporting women's education

Thanks to Forté Fellowships, more than 16,000 women have earned or are pursuing MBAs to grow their credibility, capability, and confidence - along with their salaries. Forté's subsidized career prep programs and skill-building workshops help women at all stages boost their business acumen.

Forté donors are a force for change

Business leaders give to Forté because they all want women to have a voice at the table. Pioneering donors provide key experiences that help women reach the highest ranks of leadership, including:

• Free Forté memberships
• Travel stipends for young women to participate in leadership events
• Career Ready Certificate college program for undergraduate women to accelerate their careers
• A subsidized MBA prep program to build the strongest MBA applications for women
• Introductions to top b-schools and the Forté Fellowship scholarship program
• Supporting women entrepreneurs through Forté's Power Pitch competition

Donations to The Forté Foundation help challenge the status quo, helps increase the number of more women leading, and changes the balance of power in the workplace. Such generosity helps women re-imagine what they can achieve and provides practical tools for leadership success. Plus, donations help lift women up with financial support. Support a woman's path to leadership today - donate to Forté.