Event Recap: 2024 Wonder Women Networking Evening

Empowerment Through Connection

Written by Julianne Kim, WWNE Event Coordinator

The annual Wonder Women Networking Evening, hosted by SCWIST and Science World, took place on March 5, uniting remarkable women in STEM for an evening filled with engaging conversations and meaningful connections.

For over 30 years, the Wonder Women Networking Evening (WWNE) has remained a cornerstone event for SCWIST. WWNE offers an opportunity for students in higher education, those in the early stages of their careers, or individuals considering a career change to engage with accomplished mentors in STEM known as “Wonder Women”. These mentors are experts in their fields and generously volunteer to share their experiences, expertise, and advice with attendees.

WWNE was held virtually again this year for the fourth time. Although the event has been hosted online since 2020, we are still dedicated to creating the best virtual networking event possible for our participants. The WWNE team strives to improve the event each year and greatly appreciates the helpful feedback received after every event. This was especially true this year, as we moved the event to a new platform, Whova.

Just a few of our amazing Wonder Women from 2024 WWNE!

Hosting the event on Whova instead of Zoom wasn’t the only change implemented this year. We wanted to accomplish two goals for 2024 WWNE: give the attendees more freedom during networking, and give a spotlight to every Wonder Woman as individuals. To accomplish these goals, we made changes to the structure of the event as well. Instead of assigning attendees to networking rooms, we let them choose who they wanted to connect with based on the Wonder Women profiles available on Whova. Instead of having two Wonder Women per networking room, we gave a networking roundtable to each of our mentors. The attendees and Wonder Women had 1 hour and 15 minutes to connect during the roundtable networking session, and 25 minutes during the speed networking session that followed.

We were delighted to see some familiar faces this year amongst both our Wonder Women and attendees. We of course also always welcome newcomers to WWNE and were amazed by our participants’ diverse range of backgrounds, perspectives, and stories. We had participants joining from all over Canada and a few outside of the country as well.

Big thanks to our event partner, Science World and everyone on the WWNE team for making this event happen:

• Science World, for letting us broadcast from their studio and for being our long-time partner for WWNE
• Keely Wallace, Strategic Partnership Coordinator
• Danniele Livengood, WWNE Event Support and Host
• Sandy Eix, WWNE Event Support and Science World representative
• Julianne Kim, WWNE Coordinator

To close out this recap, here is what our attendees and Wonder Women had to say about this year’s WWNE:

Attendees

“This was my first networking event I was blown away by all of these incredible
wonder women. I definitely highly recommend the event to extend your network.”
– Hannah, Attendee

“I am so grateful for coming across SCWIST and being a part of it. There are amazing women here who genuinely want to give their time and wisdom to help other women grow! I love the connections I have made in this platform!”
– Attendee (anonymous)

“This was my first official networking session and I had a great time, and learned a lot. I also had the opportunity to network with people in the career path that I’m most interested in. Definitely will be attending lots more SCWIST events.”
– Attendee (anonymous)

Wonder Women

Thank you so much SCWIST for the extraordinary work every one of you did to manage the planning and execution of the Wonder Woman Event with such aplomb. Your work made it possible for the speakers and audience members to have an incredible, indelible experience. Without your work behind the scenes, this program would not have been possible, and without the high quality of your work, we would not have achieved this level of excellence. Looking forward to connecting and meeting for future events.”
– Wonder Woman (anonymous)

“What an amazing event! Thank you for including me and it was nice meeting new people.”
– Khatera Hazin, Wonder Woman

“Thank you for a wonderful event! I had a great time with all of the amazing women I met.”
– Stephanie Geoffrion, Wonder Woman

Thank you so much to the Wonder Women and attendees who came to our event, we hope you had a great time and got to create some genuine connections. See you next year!

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