On April 26th, the Hull College of Business will celebrate over Alumni weekend with (5) classes of graduates of a program that is helping to further growth in CSRA businesses. Here’s more on the benefits of Hull through the eyes of businesswomen.
ABD: You have a program in the College called the Women’s Leadership Academy. When did the Women’s Leadership Academy roughly start, and how has that gone?
HULL: The Women’s Leadership Academy is a program that has been funded and sponsored by the ADP foundation. The original class was in 2019. So, this 2025 class is the sixth cohort. We are actually going to host a reunion later this spring, and we’re going to bring in the previous five classes plus this sixth class to kind of network and reflect on what the Women’s Leadership Academy has done for them.
This is a great program for women in terms of learning about leadership development, coming up with and meeting professional mentors, and just understanding the things that they need to do to start thinking about leadership roles, as opposed to waiting till they’ve started their career, and even maybe mid-career.
ABD: Have you noticed since the program started that maybe this has become more sort of a funnel system into the workforce in the CSRA, like, have you noticed some strides maybe being made?
HULL: Yeah, I think it certainly has led to that. You know, the Women’s Leadership Academy, is cohort-driven. So, they get to know each other very well. When opportunities around the CSRA open up, they know one another. They whether it’s to point out each other’s successes, whether just knowing who to network with and making those connections.
And so, we’re certainly seeing the positive impact in terms of workforce in the CSRA.
This program gets them thinking about it, helps develop those skill sets, and helps make them aware. It’s one of the few that I know of in the country that talks about leadership development while they’re in college, as opposed to leadership programs that are postgraduate.
