When Erin Stanek, a senior vice president at Baird, learned about the Elevate program—a women’s leadership development series created in partnership between TEMPO and Marquette’s executive education program—she immediately signed up to join the first cohort.
“I was thinking it would be a good opportunity for personal and professional development,” Stanek says. “It could give me the tools and the skill set to do more in the community, more on a volunteer basis, and also continue to progress career-wise.”
Stanek, along with around 20 other women, joined the Elevate program from TEMPO’s Emerging Women Leaders group (EWL)—a subgroup of the larger executive women’s organization that caters to mid-career members. Women in the EWL group are a few years away from full TEMPO membership, which requires at least five years in an executive leadership role.
The Elevate cohort came together for two-hour sessions every Friday afternoon over 10 weeks, both on-campus and virtually. Sessions led by Marquette faculty and guest speakers covered topics like finding your leadership identity and tips to prepare for the next step in your career.
The program came together in collaboration between TEMPO and Marquette’s executive education program, which partners with businesses and professional groups to provide expert-led development opportunities from Marquette faculty. Elevate is also a product of Marquette’s Institute for Women’s Leadership, which works to advance women’s leadership both locally and globally.
TEMPO looked to Marquette for a structure that combined academic rigor with practical skill-building to help EWL members level up in their workplaces—and on their journeys to become TEMPO members. The content needed to speak to a diverse group of women coming from a mix of organizations, including nonprofits and corporations.
“[TEMPO] really wanted to make sure that they were getting a good grounding in some basic leadership skills, but also some things that are a little bit more advanced,” says Jim Orheim, program director for executive education. “The idea was to create a program that was going to resonate with everyone and hit on the right kind of topics to help prepare them for bigger leadership roles.”
Sessions were led by Marquette faculty including Dr. Kristie Rogers, a nationally recognized professor of management who teaches negotiation and organizational behavior, and Pamela Koehn, an instructor of practice in the Executive MBA program. Participants also received inspiration from outside of Marquette Business during a session with Professor of English Dr. Leah Flack, who led a story exchange exercise.
“It is always hard to take away a couple hours a day to invest in yourself. But a program like this is designed in a way that holds you accountable to it, and you’re accountable to the other women in the group, and you learn so much from them.”
Erin Stanek, senior vice president at Baird
The Marquette connection was a major draw when recruiting participants to the first cohort, says Jennifer Dirks, president and CEO of TEMPO.
“It’s been a great selling point, not only to provide value for our emerging women leaders, but just having that collaboration and partnering with such an amazing institution as Marquette University,” Dirks says.
The impact for participants is tangible. After the 10-week session ended, Stanek says she carried many of the lessons into her role at Baird.
“There were tidbits from each of the different sessions about how to negotiate, about how to communicate, about how to build credibility with others,” Stanek says. “Those are things that I’m reflecting on and using really daily and weekly.”
For the inaugural program, most of the Friday sessions were virtual to accommodate the busy schedules of the group—many EWL members juggle family lives alongside demanding leadership roles at work.
But after hearing feedback from participants, “we found that people actually prefer in-person because of the networking piece,” Orheim says. “As the cohort began to gel, they really were thriving within the network. And so the more that they were on campus and together in person, the more they were really getting out of the program.”
Stanek says she’s still in touch with women from her cohort.
“We were all in completely different industries, worked for very different types of companies, had different interests, but could still come together to learn similar strategies and share experiences,” she says. “We all learned from each other just as much as we learned from the professors in the program.”
The second Elevate series—which kicked off in September—incorporated more in-person opportunities for the group to connect on campus.
“I would absolutely recommend that anybody who has an opportunity to participate, do it,” Stanek says. “It is always hard to take away a couple hours a day to invest in yourself. But a program like this is designed in a way that holds you accountable to it, and you’re accountable to the other women in the group, and you learn so much from them.”
Dirks says she looks forward to seeing the Elevate program continue to grow and evolve in partnership with Marquette.
“We want to make sure that this continues, not only for this fall session, but for spring session and for the next 30, 40, 50 years,” she says. “It is a great value add for our membership.”
