Sisterhood Reigns At ​“Women’s Power” Panel

Pick your battles.

That was one of the takeaways from a spirited, and often inspiring, discussion among a powerhouse slate of women’s power panelists at the Big Connect Business Expo in the College Room at the Omni New Haven hotel. 

The panel discussion took place at the Temple Street hotel on Thursday. The broader business-boosting event was hosted and organized by the Greater New Haven Chamber of Commerce. (Click here to read a full rundown of the event’s agenda, panels, and participants.)

Among the topics of the ​“Women’s Power Panel” was the pitfalls of showing emotion, particularly anger, in the workplace.

“Anger in a man can be powerful,” said moderator Laura Hutchinson, the co-anchor of WTNH News 8’s Good Morning Connecticut. ​“This is a man who’s a leader and he’s mad and this is a power positive moment in his life, whereas if a woman gets mad, we’re overly emotional.”

“We’re out of control,” said panelist Leander Dolphin, managing partner at Shipman & Goodwin, one of a handful of Black women leading large law firms in the country. 

“Our personal life is taking over or something’s wrong at home,” said Kymbel Branch, manager of career development at Workforce Alliance and American Job Center.

“Emotional is still a term for women that is carelessly thrown around,” said Kit Ingui, managing director of Long Wharf Theater.

Dolphin discussed the trope of the angry Black woman. ​“It certainly was an impediment for me when I was starting out,” she said. ​“I did find that whenever I was angry or upset, the reaction on the other side was outsized.”

Over time, ​“what I came to was I can be angry, I can be disappointed, but I had to be effective,” she said. ​“You can’t be perceived as the person who’s always angry.” 

Branch, who’s served at Workforce Alliance for over 30 years, agreed. 

“You have to be mindful of what it is you’re trying to accomplish. Do you want to be right or do you want to get this thing done?” she asked. ​“There are times you have to pull back.” 

Audience member Tahnesha Bonner, director of Programs & Residential Support at Parents’ Foundation for Transitional Living in New Haven, had another take.

“You can show up, you can be yourself, but you have to be yourself just enough where they are still comfortable with you until you’re at a point where it doesn’t matter,” she said.

The discussion shifted to the challenge of breaking down stereotypes.

“Some of them start from a young age, like what careers boys and girls can go into, what toys they can play with,” Hutchinson said.

Audience member Libby Protzman, who’s with Winning Ways CT, shared a pivotal experience when she was five.

“I joined the Girl Scouts and we were getting badges for selling cookies and doing crafts, and my brother who was a Cub Scout was getting badges for public speaking and how to build a fire,” she said.

“I know they’ve come a long way, but that wasn’t too long ago,” she said.

Hutchinson talked about being labeled as the token blonde woman on a news team. 

“It made me feel that I wasn’t deserving, that I was just fitting into a mold,” she said. 

Audience member Bobbi Brown, communications & development director at Workforce Alliance, recounted her experience being stereotyped as a millennial while serving as vice chair on a board.

“The chairman stepped down, and it was time for me to replace him, and it was like, ​‘You don’t know enough, you haven’t been here long enough to do that,’” she said.

“I’m a millennial and so ​‘I’m too young, I’m lazy, I’m inconsistent,’ and I’m none of those,” she said. ​“I’m one of those young people who does the extra work not for the recognition but because I love the work, so don’t box me in.”

Dolphin shared a coping strategy she’s developed as a Black woman in a primarily white field.

“Any room I go into, whether it’s court or the office or anywhere with clients, I’m likely the only Black person, Black woman, and I can’t spend a lot of time thinking about why the other person might have an issue with me,” she said.

“I can’t worry about that because I have my job to do, and do it well,” she said.

Branch sounded a similar refrain. 

“I am a Black woman who is of a certain size, and a Black woman who has a deep voice and a strong voice, a voice that has a tendency to make my statements emphatic, not necessarily angry, but sometimes it’s perceived as that,” she said.

She then quoted her grandmother. ​“What other people think of you is not your business, it’s their business, and that’s on them,” she said, to rousing applause.

In fact, despite highlighting the reality of ​“all those extra costs that women have to bear in the workplace,” as Dolphin put it, it was largely an uplifting, and edifying event, one that reprised a tale of overcoming obstacles. 

Ingui recalled the advice of an actor who appeared at career day at her high school.

“All the theater kids were in the auditorium, and he came in and told everyone in the room, ​‘there’s no point in working in theater, maybe 10 of you will have success,’” she said. ​“That lit a fire under me, it made me think I’m going to do this, I might not be an actor, but I’m going to transform theater.”

She’s well on her way, it seems. Her current role at Long Wharf has allowed her, she said, ​“to create a culture that allows working mothers to live their life and be a mom and still be fully present at work.” 

Dolphin recounted moving from St. Lucia to Brooklyn at the age of eight.

“I had a heavy French accent and I was named Leander,” she said, to laughter. ​“So I was picked on quite a bit.”

That was when she took to listening to 1010 WINS to develop an American accent. ​“I did it so effectively, I couldn’t get it back if I tried,” she said. ​“I sometimes regret that.”

That said, ​“I’m glad that I’m in a role where I feel like I’m on the inside, I’m at the table, I can make decisions, I can make things better for other people, and I make sure I use that every day,” she said. 

One way, she said, is as a mentor, a model that is gaining momentum in a lot of companies, according to Kristin Bures, who was representing KeyBank.

“Find somebody in the company who can help you and utilize them,” Bures said. ​“It may not be someone who looks like you and in fact it probably won’t, but relationship building in an organization is key.”

“I’m inspired,” said one audience member at the close of the panel. ​“This made me feel like I can do anything.”