First annual ‘Empowering Women Series’ to be hosted at Nessmith-Lane Conference Center

Bailey Adcock and Atiya Williamson

Spring semester is bringing many new events to the Georgia Southern University campus, including the first ever Empowering Women Series.

The three-part series will be held at the Nessmith-Lane Conference Center on-campus with each session priced at $49.00 each.

The Empowering Women Series features three sessions focusing on the health and wellness of the mind, body and soul.

“We got together with a couple of speakers that said they had been to prior empowerment engagements that did not hit the mark. They wanted to bring to the community a better viewpoint, a life-coaching series to the women of our community,” Mary Thaler, the Empowerment Series coordinator, said.

The first session, Soul, is scheduled for Thursday, Feb. 25, 2016 starting at 6 p.m. It will feature a number of vendors that will contribute to theme of that evening along with special guest speaker Jill Johns, a breast cancer survivor, entrepreneur and laugh yoga teacher.

“All women can benefit from personal knowledge gained in our daily lives, in our business lives, in our life balance in general,” Thaler said.

This series, open to all women and are welcomed to attend. GSU has not seen a program quite like this.

“This is the first annual program that we’re doing to target women and we do plan on doing more in the future. Also this is a good opportunity to speak to more women and to find out the type of programs they want us to offer down the line,” Shandice Stallworth, marketing assistant for the Division of Continuing Education, said.

Thaler and Stallworth believe that this will be a great opportunity for other women-led organizations on campus to attend together, as a sort of bonding experience, to strengthen their relationships and network with each other.

As an attempt to be more present on social media, and more oriented to the modern woman, they have chosen to use #empowerme to represent the series.

Stallworth explained that this hashtag was chosen because the series aims to teach women how to embrace their inner power.

“As women, we usually have so much going on sometimes we forget the importance of taking care of ourselves. So in order to shine light on that, don’t forget your mind, don’t forget your body, don’t forget yourself. You are able to operate better in your academic life,” Stallworth said. “It makes you a much better you.”

The following two sessions, Mind and Body, will be held in the Nessmith-Lane Conference Center on April 14, 2016 and June 23, 2016 from 6 p.m. to 8:30 p.m.

There is currently a discount available for anyone who registers for all three sessions at the Empowering Women Series website.