Last October, the 20th anniversary of the first MHI conference passed without fanfare as we were occupied moving our programs into a virtual format because of the pandemic. The October 2000 conference, which had as its theme “Women Transforming Culture,” was the first of many that MHI has hosted, together with countless talks and discussion groups dealing with leadership, ethics, and culture. Our mentoring program, developed with the help of many, has become the backbone of our organization, prompting many initiatives including the spring 2021 launch of MHI-CONNECT. At the same time, some of the most significant personal experiences have taken place “behind the scenes” with one-on-one encounters between women as they make connections before and after our events.
Alessa Caridi, founder and owner of JōbuFIT, a workplace wellness program, shared with us one of those moments, which she recounted in an interview for Authority magazine. The anecdote, quoted below with the kind permission of Authority, encapsulates the heart of Murray Hill Institute’s mission: “women helping women.”
…I’ll fast forward to a few months into running my new company. I was networking to do some initial outreach and offer my services to people and companies that might be interested in what I do. I came across a few public speakers and tried to pick their brains; one female in particular told me that I was too forward and that companies would be offput by my confidence. I found this a bit odd because of who I am ̶ growing up dancing on stages all over the world, coming from an educated family that valued strong women and believe that we could achieve anything we set our minds to ̶ but it came from a seasoned public speaker so I thought I’d change my approach a bit to see if something more passive could work. Well, you probably guessed it didn’t work, but this pushed me to attend a talk at Murray Hill Institute, a women’s mentorship organization in NYC, on body language in the workplace because I was really stuck now, I wasn’t getting my message out at all. This talk covered everything: standing, gestures, dressing, how to enter a room full of men, things that shouldn’t be issue anymore but are. Anyway, as soon as this talk ended, I ran up to the speaker and told her about the interaction I had with the public speaker, she laughed at me. And told me I needed to go back to being myself. She even went as far to tell me that the fact that I ran up to her to make sure I was first in line showed that I have the confidence and the right people would be accepting and open to what I am offering as long as I come from a value perspective. To this day this woman is a sounding board for many of my company’s “next steps.”
You can read the full interview here to learn more about Alessa’s career path and how she leveraged her professional ballet training and three years of living in Japan to develop JōbuFIT. She has given back to MHI on multiple occasions, serving on our Junior Board, spearheading events, conducting seminars and, most recently, organizing our April 14 panel discussion on “Starting your Own Business.”