International Sustainability
Expert Simran Sethi Rocks St. Catherine University’s Distinguished Scholar-in-Residence
Series
Minneapolis,
MN…March 14, 2013
Can so
much wisdom and enthusiasm really be packed in such a petite package?
Don’t let
Simran Sethi’s elfin frame fool you. It won’t be long until some clever
cartoonist provides her super-hero avatar.
Thankfully,
Simran Sethi is the emerging role model of female leadership – full stop. And
St. Catherine University, aka St. Kate’s, tucked in the bucolic Mac-Groveland
neighborhood of St. Paul, Minnesota, was just the place for her force to fly
full throttle.
Director of the University’s Leadership Institute, Mary Angela Baker
with Simran Sethi
During a
pre-lecture private reception on Wednesday, March 13, 2013, at the
conclusion of her two-day scholar-in-residency in the University’s School of Business
and Professional Studies, Sethi mingled easily with invited
guests, demurring a handshake with a cheerful, “I apologize, but I’m getting a
cold.” However, the cold’s symptoms were not apparent in either her hearty
acknowledgement of St. Kate’s warm care for her, including kudos to Director of
the University’s Leadership Institute, Mary Angela Baker, nor later in her
one-hour public lecture.
Women’s Leadership: Cooperation
over combativeness
Following
the reception, Sethi disarmed the audience in the University’s packed
O’Shaughnessy Auditorium. With the style and substance that define her career
as a television producer and correspondent, freelance journalist,
communications advisor and educator, Sethi’s speaking style electrifies.
Broadly
speaking Sethi addresses environmental justice – her tool – deep knowledge and
an uncanny ability to tell fact-filled stories about climate change and allied
subjects. During the St. Kate’s lecture, she skillfully wove the highly
personal stories and contributions of internationally renown, outstanding
environmental, mostly female leaders like Judy Wicks, founder of Urban Outfitters,
(of my hometown Philadelphia), and Gro Harlem Bruntland of Norway, former UN
Commissioner and progenitor of the word sustainable, introducing the audience
to the interdisciplinary career possibilities available in environmentalism.
Her topic
was "Women's Work: The Role of Women in Sustainability," and she
fulfilled its promise, highlighting the scientifically known differences
between male and female leadership style. Pointing out that all embryo brains
are female inter-utero until the eight-week gestation when a boy’s brain is
bathed in the testosterone that naturally induces a more combative nature, she
readily rattled off the reasons that female leadership lifts the whole ship.
“Females,”
she underscored, “are engineered towards cooperation and collaboration…focusing
on shared values and relationships, valuing equality overall… Not only do we
excel in right brain activity of creativity and cooperation, but we also access
and integrate the left brain facts and logic resources.” Men are sadly saddled
with the strictures of hierarchical behavior that no longer serve the mandates
that sustainability require: People,
Planet and Pocket(book).
Local leading light in Women’s
Leadership Education
St.
Kate’s is an emerging player in the education of women leaders. Though now
co-ed, its mission, vision and values are firmly focused on educating and
enlightening young women to their place at the world’s table, no longer the
kitchen table. St. Kate’s programs and events are gaining international
attention.
Two days
prior to Sethi’s presentation and reception, I was a guest at yet another
reception, hosted by the Master’s of Organizational Leadership program, for
women political leaders from the African countries of Benin, Burkina Faso, Cote
d'Ivoire, Malawi, Niger, Nigeria, South Africa, Sudan, and Togo, who participated
in a day-long leadership seminar taught by graduate Organizational Leadership
faculty, featuring special guest speakers including Elizabeth Kautz, Mayor of
Burnsville and Verna Cornelia Price, Founder of Power of People Leadership
Institute.
The
African leaders were part of the International Visitor Leadership Program
(IVLP), the U.S. Department of State’s premier professional exchange program.
Through short-term visits to the United States, current and emerging foreign
leaders in a variety of fields experience our country firsthand to cultivate
lasting relationships with their American counterparts. Professional meetings
reflect the participants’ professional interests and support the foreign policy
goals of the United States.
The
Minnesota International Center president, Carol Engebretson Byrne, IVLP
representative, stated, “One of the reasons the State Department hosts emerging
women leaders in Minnesota is because of the work of St. Catherine’s
University.”
