Reporter: Abby Weiss
@AWeissCourant
On Monday December 12, the Women in the Workforce club will be hosting a luncheon in the Wagner Room during all three lunches. Each semester, the club invites a female speaker to talk about their career path and how they broke gender barriers.
Senior Tessa Piontkowski has been organizing these luncheons every semester since her freshman year. After reading the book Lean In in Ms. D’Acosta’s honors freshman English class and co-winning the Willbourn Fellowship off her project Women in the Workforce Wednesday, Tessa has been advocating for gender diversity and more female representation in the workforce.
Tessa feels that as the club holds more luncheons, they have more of an effect. “At our last luncheon, we had over 100 students come and a handful of faculty,” she said. “It was really really great to see everyone come out and support the luncheons and to hear these women talk about their their academic, professional, and personal choices.”
Tessa describes the luncheon as being interactive with speakers which is very beneficial because of the amount of experience these women have had. “What I’ve noticed is that speakers, they’ve been interviewed a lot themselves, so they’ve been used to sharing their experiences, especially Kathy Giusti, her story is so inspirational and personal so you know that she’s going to have some wonderful insights to share with us,” she said.
Kathy Giusti, who will be speaking Monday afternoon, is the CEO of Multiple Myeloma Research Foundation, an organization she started with her twin sister three years after being diagnosed with the disease. It has raised over 330 million dollars since then and has gotten FDA approval for 10 new drugs. “We have so much to learn from her extraordinary story because it’s an incurable blood cancer and that fact that she was able to overcome it and help so many people. It’s an outstanding story and very inspirational,” Tessa said.
Ms. Giusti, a member of the New Canaan community and Harvard Business School alumni, has earned many achievements throughout her career. She has been featured in the New York Times and honored by the White House as an Open Science Champion of change. Ms. Giusti has also been on the Times Top 100 of list of influential people, ranked number 19 of the Fortune magazine’s world’s 50 greatest leaders, and has been given the lifetime achievement award from the New Canaan-Darien magazine. Her research has increased the pace at which life-saving treatments are given to patients and is innovating a solution to the precision of medicine.
At the luncheon, all students will learn about the significance of females in the workforce and to never be afraid to follow your own path. “In an industry where women have been underrepresented, the fact that they’ve just been able to come out and break these glass ceilings is incredible,” Tessa said. “And to be able to hear their stories has been so rewarding for me and for people at NCHS to hear about it too, and learn from it, and get something more than a free lunch out of it, that’s the best part.”
You can RSVP with Tessa Piontkowski or the College and Career Center by Friday in order to go to the luncheon on Monday and hear about one of our community member’s path to success.
