Name: The Audacity to Lead Everywhere: Moving beyond traditional roles and preparing for leadership across the entire organization
Start: 2026-09-23T15:00:00-0700
End: 2026-09-23T16:15:00-0700

The Audacity to Lead Everywhere: Moving beyond traditional roles and preparing for leadership across the entire organization

Wednesday September 23, 2026 3:00pm - 4:15pm PDT

Palm 3 [Lobby Level]

What happens when women stop staying in their assigned lanes and start leading everywhere?

This interactive and inspiring session challenges women leaders to move beyond traditional career paths, seek experiences across the entire organization, and step confidently into spaces where women have historically been underrepresented, including business services, human resources, CTE, operations, and secondary leadership. Through candid stories, practical strategies, humor, and research, four accomplished education leaders will explore how to overcome professional pigeonholing, bias, workplace politics, impostor syndrome, and the pressure to continually prove your worth.

Participants will leave ready to broaden their leadership portfolios, strengthen their networks, advocate for one another, and protect the wellness that makes sustained leadership possible. Bring your ambition, your wisdom, and your willingness to take the next bold step because you were not meant to lead in only one lane.

Speakers

Dr. Maria Thompson

Director, Human Resources, Rowland USD

Maria Betancourt Thompson, Ed.D., is a distinguished expert in transformational leadership, instructional equity, and school culture. Her journey from homelessness and trauma due to domestic abuse and family mental illness has profoundly shaped her mission. Maria's "True North" is... Read More →