D.C. Women’s Center hosts annual leadership conference

This week, Women of Washington takes time out to discuss a unique D.C. institution — The Women’s Center. The Center is having its 29th Annual Leadership Conference on April 11.

“The mission of The Women’s Center is to provide mental health counseling, support and education to help people live healthy, stable and productive lives,” said Meg Artley, director of development and communications for the Center.

Women of Washington hosts Gigi Schumm and Aileen Black sat down with Sally Turner, president and board chair of the Women’s Center, and Meg Artley, the Center’s director of development and communications.

Shortly after its inception in 1974, the founders of The Women’s Center “discovered that they really needed to offer very specific support and advocacy for women who were going through domestic violence and sexual assault, so the mental health counseling program really grew from there,” Artley said. “Since then, we have grown to be the only regional provider of services to people who are going through those two traumas, and we now offer an enormously broad spectrum of services.”

In addition to the day-to-day services provided at two locations in Vienna, Virginia, and Northwest D.C., The Women’s Center hosts an annual conference for women to develop leadership skills. This year, Claire Shipman, senior correspondent with ABC News, will be talking about her book “The Confidence Code” and how women can learn to be more confident.

“There are two big things that affect our confidence,” said Shipman, of her research in confidence. “One of them is a fear of failure. … Failure is part of the process of success, and I think that women have to get more comfortable with that failure and risk taking,”

“The other thing is rumination,” she continued. “One of the interesting things we found was that women ruminate more than men do. … Thinking is a great habit, overthinking not so much. It can really kill confidence, because the confidence we’re talking about is really linked to action.”

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