Some weeks ago, I took a day off to attend an event that, in my opinion, was worth it: lead today, shape tomorrow.

The event was organized by female founders, a community that aims to empower, connect and support women, together with UNIQA Ventures, aaia and speedinvest.

Events such as this one are a great arena to meet women interested in career, leadership positions, making contacts, and so on. The topics and speakers were also very appealing: from Ali Mahlodji (check out one of his projects: https://www.whatchado.com/en/, a great site for career orientation) to several panels and think tanks about women & money, health, elevator pitches, etc. I was especially interested in a workshop about design thinking organized by IBM.

I started the day at the breakfast lounge, where I met women who shared with me their experiences as entrepreneurs. I have a great deal of respect for people who follow their passion and create their own companies. Their are brave, self confident and very inspiring.

After the breakfast, I went to the kick-off event, a panel about women and health, and listened to some brilliant speakers like Mahlodji.

I also attended a seminar on women and their relationship to money. The facts we were presented with were really an eye-opening experience. I couldn’t imagine how much gender affects financial education, investment decisions, and risk aversion, among others. While men feel more comfortable with taking small (or sometimes big) risks when it comes to money, women tend to be more cautious and look for security (which is not necessarily bad, but also prevents us sometimes from gaining a profit).

After the lunch break, I took part at the IBM workshop about design thinking. Although it was a bit long (3 hours) I liked it very much. I had the chance to talk to the presenters and asked them things I always wanted to know, like why don’t they interview real people instead of defining personas (apparently, they use both for their research). At the workshop, we were given a persona and tried to design a creative solution to meet his needs, which we had previously identified based on his role, age, job, family and other facts. So much fun!