While gender equality has vastly improved within the past hundred years, men still dominate almost every field; in fact, New Jersey’s congressional delegation did not include a single woman until last year. Moreover, according to the Census Bureau’s 2009 American Community Survey, women comprise only 24% of workers in STEM careers. To mediate this disparity, the Alliance for Young Social Entrepreneurs, a student club at Ridge High School, conducted its second annual Women’s Leadership Summit on March 5^th, 2016.

Aiming to empower young women in Bernards Township, the conference focused on various women leaders in business and government: retired Associate Justice of the New Jersey Supreme Court, the Honorable Helen Hoens; Assemblywoman Nancy Muñoz; Senior Director of Investor Relations for Johnson & Johnson, Lesley Falvo; CFO and head of IT and Legal at Skyline Steel LLC, Judith Gorog-Petit; lobbyist Lori Abrams; and CEO of Sweet Loren’s, Loren Brill.

The aforementioned array of impressive speakers discussed the unique stories behind breaking their chains of societal standards. For instance, the Honorable Helen Hoens elucidated balancing duties as a Justice of the New Jersey Supreme Court and as a mother of an autistic son, and Assemblywoman Nancy Muñoz exposed her story of overcoming stereotypes with her decision to run for office in place of her late husband.

During a short interview with Ridge Devil’s Advocate, Luca Jobaggy ‘16, President of Alliance for Young Social Entrepreneurs and founder of the Women’s Leadership Summit at Ridge High School, explained more about the second annual Women’s Leadership Summit.

Lucy Choi (Devil’s Advocate reporter): Organizing the Summit must have been a lot of work; how did the Alliance for Young Social Entrepreneurs manage to organize and plan it?

Luca Jobaggy: Planning involved a lot of emails to potential and confirmed speakers, fundraising both at school and in the community at large, promotional activities such as speaking to reporters and creating posters and promo videos, and coordinating our activities with the school administration.

LC: Why did you decide to create a Women’s Leadership Summit at Ridge? Did you have a specific goal in mind?

LJ: I decided to organize the Summit after realizing that my peers and I lacked strong female models in virtually every field. The Summit aimed to bring together accomplished women to address this role model shortage and to inspire a generation of future female leaders, and I think we thoroughly succeeded in our goal.

Luca Jobaggy attained her goal of inspiring a generation of future female leaders, as several attendees of the Summit enthusiastically expressed.

One attendee, Brian McCormick ’16, described the Summit as “really inspirational, with each of the speakers really offering unique stories that were both remarkably interesting as well as helpful. I especially liked Honorable Helen Hoens’ stories, which she vividly told during the presentation and afterwards when we were talking. I could see that she was incredibly passionate about… seeing opportunities, even in hardship.”

In order to defeat monstrous male domination of so many fields, female leaders like the Honorable Helen Hoens must inspire young girls—the future female workforce—to obliterate societal standards and stereotypes unfairly targeting women. Without events such as the Summit to provide female role models, girls may continue to abandon their dreams because of pervasive societal pressures.

As Judith Gorog-Petit asserted at the Women’s Leadership Summit, “the world is your oyster;” anyone has the capability to do anything.