Beyond Rubies conference offers two days of entertaining speakers, useful workshops
For more than three decades, eastern Iowa women have counted on two days in March to gain new insights, learn career-boosting skills and have some enlightening fun in the process. On March 17 and 18, 2011 hundreds of women will do that again.
Those are the dates for the 2011 Beyond Rubies Women’s Conferenceomen’s Conference at Kirkwood Community College. Keynote speakers will include a nationally known expert on women’s business start-ups, a live theater performance and a Corridor woman who has discovered freedom from illness as close as her home garden.
Keynote speakers will present in Kirkwood’s Ballantyne Auditorium in Cedar Rapids, with more than 80 workshops and presentations mixed in over the two days of Beyond Rubies. Workshop topics run the gamut of current women’s interests including home finance, interior design, travel, professional networking, gourmet foods and dozens more.
One keynote speaker is nationally known entrepreneur Tory Johnson. A professional broadcaster and communicator, Johnson is a frequent contributor to ABC’s Good Morning America. She grew up in Florida and found an early opportunity for “spark and hustle” by joining her high school’s all-male debate team. That gave her to be the first girl in Florida to win a statewide debate championship. Following network broadcasting jobs at both ABC and NBC, she switched from employee to entrepreneur by founding Women for Hire. Johnson hosts high-caliber career expos around the U.S., attracting talented women and leading employers to build job opportunities. Johnson is currently presenting the Spark & Hustle National Tour, a series of “passion to profit” conferences for current and aspiring small business owners. Johnson will present her ideas and no-nonsense career advice Friday morning, March 18.
Thursday’s Beyond Rubies session will begin with Dr. Jayne Witte of the University of Northern Iowa. In addition to her veteran teaching duties at UNI, Witte is president of Wits About You, a professional development company dedicated to improving the quality of workplace life. She is a professed “workplace drama expert” and believes that people should feel as good about going to work as they do leaving it. Her program, “Shine On! Brilliant Ways to Motivate and Appreciate” will share her ideas about motivating people by demonstrating how you value what people do for you.
The Thursday afternoon keynote session features Dr. Terry Wahls, clinical professor of medicine at The University of Iowa. In 2003 Dr. Wahls was diagnosed with relapsing-remitting multiple sclerosis. Despite receiving the best care possible that year, her disease was reclassified to a more severe form of MS. Due to fatigue and weak muscles, she became dependent on a wheelchair. As an internal medicine physician, Wahls studied medical literature, searching for hope. In 2007, she was able to take a few steps with two canes. Today Wahls is able to bicycle to work and has stopped taking her MS drugs. Her Beyond Rubies program, “Up from the Chair!” relates her descent into disability and her discovery of the interventions that restored walking, biking and mobility to her life.
The final keynote presentation Friday afternoon takes a turn to onstage entertainment, as two veteran actors from the Old Creamery Theatre Company present Talley’s Folly. The romantic comedy is set in rural Missouri during the 1940s. The story follows two unlikely sweethearts as they once and for all settle their feelings for one another. Creamery favorites Deborah Kennedy and Tom Milligan present this crowd-pleasing show, part of the 40th anniversary year for The Old Creamery group.
Conference attendees can also start each day’s activities with a guided fitness walk led by staff of Sisters Health Club. Each walk will take place indoors or outdoors, depending on weather beginning at 8 a.m. on the second floor of Cedar Hall.
Workshop sessions are interspersed throughout both days, with sessions held in Iowa and Cedar Hall classrooms. Attendees may register for either Thursday or Friday at the advance rate of $79 per day, or a two-day rate of just $99. Registrations made after January 21, 2011 are $95 for one-day and $125 for combined conference days. Lunch is provided both days as part of the conference registration. Employers who register four people for the conference will get a fifth registration free of charge.
Beyond Rubies online registration is available at www.kirkwood.edu/rubies Complete information and a conference brochure are available by calling 319-398-1022, or toll-free, 800-332-8833.