Attendees gather at the Power of Blue networking reception sponsored by AALRR.
Katherine Castleberry sings to “9 to 5” during the “Visualize to Realize” session.
Planning Committee Chair Mary Cox
Keynote Mike Walsh
Mary Cox with a group from ACSA Region 2.
Keynote Irene Salter
Miriam Worth shares stories with a partner during Irene Salter’s keynote.
Maria Thompson
Cherina Betters, left, with Denise Wickham.
2024 Exemplary Woman in Education Award recipient Cherina Betters.
Panel of current and former female ACSA leaders.
Cherina Betters shows the speeding ticket she got on the way to the conference.
A session at the 2024 Women in School Leadership Forum.
A session at the 2024 Women in School Leadership Forum.
Renae Bryant snaps a selfie with attendees in her #Ed Branding session.
Donya Ball
Working on vision boards during the “Visualize to Realize” session.
Amy Alzina
Angela Van
Heidi Baker
Attendees wave pom-poms at the “Visualize to Realize” session.
Attendees wave pom-poms at the “Visualize to Realize” session.
Yolanda Valdez
“Visualize to Realize” session attendees.
Principal Ashley Meese (Butte COE) shows her vision board.
Planning committee for the 2024 Women in School Leadership Forum.
Attendees at The Power of Blue! Networking reception.
Julie Vitale in her session on leadership through the lyrics of Pink.
Keynote Shelley Jones-Holt
Attendees link arms with their “sisters” during Shelley Jones-Holt’s presentation.
Attendees in the closing session.
Women share their authentic selves at conference
September 30, 2024
They were unapologetic about being who they are. They gained more confidence in job interviewing skills. They belted out the words to the “Golden Girls” theme song. They shared the advice they wished they knew at the beginning of their careers.
This is just some of what authentic female leaders did at the 2024 Women in School Leadership Forum.
More than 230 school leaders from throughout the state brought their whole selves to Carlsbad for the conference Sept. 18-20, which was titled, “Empower and Elevate: Authentic Women Leaders in a Changing World.”
For three days, female leaders learned strategies for leading change in their schools and advancing their careers from women who have been there, done that.
Authenticity was a key theme at this year’s conference, as presenters expressed their unique leadership styles and stories.
Planning Committee Chair Mary Cox welcomed attendees Wednesday by sharing her experience during the deadly Nov. 8, 2018 Camp Fire, which made half of her student body and staff homeless overnight.
“I was super scared. I was incredibly overwhelmed. But I was supposed to be a leader,” said Cox, superintendent of CORE Butte Charter.
She asked attendees at the conference to “embrace each other for who we are as leaders and humans — not who we think we are supposed to be.”
“That morning on Nov. 9, all I could do is be me,” Cox said. “I cried. I broke down. I asked for help. And then I gathered my team and we took action.”
Irene Salter, a former school superintendent and neuroscientist who works as a leadership coach, also spoke about authenticity. She taught attendees how to “look inside” to define their leadership, instead of looking to other high-profile female leaders.
“When we look outside, it feels like we’re playing dress up. Like we’re armoring up in Spanx. Or we’re trying to be something we’re not,” she said.
Salter guided attendees on how to define their leadership through stories. Attendees shared stories with each other about times they felt authentic and turning points in their lives.
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During a luncheon on Thursday, ACSA celebrated Cherina Betters as its 2024 Exemplary Woman in Education. The chief of Equity and Access with San Bernardino County Superintendent of Schools, Betters spoke about the importance of remaining authentic as women leaders.
“Can we stop conforming?” she asked, as the crowd cheered in response. “Can we walk in here with our big hair? Can we walk in here with our big shoes?”
Betters then had attendees repeat: “I am woman. I belong.”
“We’re going to stop hustling for our worth,” she said. “Our worth is going to be good enough because we’re in the space, and we’re not going to continue looking at each other as competition, as if the pie is so small.”
Betters, who revealed she received a speeding ticket on the way to the conference, thanked those who believed in her as a Black female leader.
“I don’t know if there’s words that are bigger than thank you,” she said.
In a panel discussion moderated by ACSA Senior Director of Diversity, Equity & Inclusion and Professional Learning Tracie Noriega, former ACSA presidents Holly Edds (2018-19) and Linda Kaminski (2019-20) and current Vice President Rene Rickard shared their experiences in ACSA as well as career and life advice.
Rickard implored women to lift each other up: “This is not a zero sum game. For you to be successful does not mean that I have to fail.” She stressed that women reach out and ask for support from each other.
Kaminski shared her answer to the work-life balance question that she’s gotten several times over the years. “My answer has always been, no — I don’t have work-life balance. I’m happy the way I am.” The panelists reflected that each woman will define what balance looks like for her.
Edds reminded attendees of the example women leaders are setting: “Our girls are watching. They see what we’re doing,” she said. “Our female teachers and our principals, all the way up — they’re watching.”
Keynote presenter Mike Walsh, co-founder and CEO of Beacon Results, and former president of the California School Boards Association, spoke about Americans’ pessimistic outlook on the future and their belief that educators are the ones to fix it.
He recommended leaders take risks and innovate, knowing that their students are waiting on them.
“If you will take the opportunity to risk bravely for those students who need it the most, then ladies and gentlemen we have an opportunity to finally change the trajectory, to change the world,” he said. “The problem is we have to go first.”
In his remarks, ACSA President Rafael Plascencia called on attendees to prioritize their mental health, citing statistics that 85 percent of principals suffer from job-related stresses. He asked attendees to pull out their phones and set aside time for themselves.
“Find 10 minutes in your calendar each day,” he said. “Set an alarm and when it goes off, shut everything down. ... For those 10 minutes, just focus on you.”
Attendees also had the opportunity to take part in mock interviews where they could practice and get feedback on job interviewing skills. Melissa Bennett, assistant principal from Kern HSD, said she is usually unsure of how she did after a job interview.
“I leave every time second-guessing myself,” she said. “This feedback was everything that I wanted. ... It was very valuable — I loved it.”
“We’re going to stop hustling for our worth. Our worth is going to be good enough because we’re in the space, and we’re not going to continue looking at each other as competition, as if the pie is so small.”
— Cherina Betters, ACSA's 2024 Exemplary Woman in Education
In her closing keynote on Friday, Shelley Jones-Holt shared strategies for creating sisterhood and made the case for why female friendships are essential to success.
“Women with friendship networks tend to be more productive for business,” said Jones-Holt, founder/CEO of Leadership Legacy Consulting and a former superintendent. “It’s actually something that can contribute to more efficacy and efficiency in the work that we do with children and staff.”
She ended her session by asking attendees to lock arms with a “sister” next to them as the “Golden Girls” theme song played. “One of these ladies is going to be the one to get you your next job,” she said.
Kesha Lovett, a manager with Solano County Office of Education, was attending her first Women in School Leadership Forum.
“I am really looking at ways to expand how I am as a leader, and what better way than to learn from other women who are in leadership,” she said.
She said presenters kept attendees active, engaged and laughing.
“[I appreciated] the professionalism but also the approachability of the speakers and the presenters,” Lovett said. “Everybody’s just has been so welcoming — it’s an amazing feeling.”
5 things we learned at the Women in School Leadership Forum
1. Change is hard: Lori Emmington and Kim Moore from Folsom-Cordova USD provided strategies for change leadership. They shared that the brain interprets change as a threat, creating a biological reason that staff resist change. Using “if/then” statements and helping staff understand the “why” for change can help ease transitions. “You have to appeal to both the head and the heart,” Emmington said.
2. Our identities are assets: In a session on “Multiple Jeopardy,” Jennifer Smith and Margaret Abrahamson described how the various facets of a person’s identity can have a multiplicative effect on the discrimination they experience. They led attendees through an activity to gain a deeper sense of all of the assets tied to our identities. “If you’re multi-anything ... often those perceptions are shaped by others instead of ourselves,” Smith said. “We need to notice that, because it needs to be shaped by ourselves.”
3. It’s not you: In her session, Maria Thompson provided strategies for surviving a transition to working in the district office, an experience she describes as going from “Queen of your Fiefdom” to “Who Dat?” Thompson said you might not know what to say in cabinet, how to work with your CBO, or how to deal with competitive colleagues. “Sometimes those transitions can be tough, and it has nothing to do with you,” she said. “As females sometimes we tend to internalize and think that it’s us.”
4. Watch your self-talk: Oceanside USD Superintendent Julie Vitale gave a presentation that weaves her leadership story with the music of Pink. Vitale used the lyrics of songs like “A Million Dreams” and “Wild Hearts Can’t Be Broken” to illustrate lessons learned from her experience as a gay educator. When it was suggested that Vitale start applying for superintendent positions, her low self-esteem got in the way. “Who’s going to hire a gay superintendent?” she remembers thinking. “The self talk in my head was so horrible.... And so I worked through my self talk. Me and Pink — we worked through it together,” Vitale said before playing the song, “Don’t Let Me Get Me.”
5. Have a vision: In “Visualize to Realize: Vision Boards for Women in Leadership” leaders Amy Alzina, Donya Ball, Heidi Baker, Angela Van and Yolanda Valdez each shared inspirational knowledge from one aspect of life, from fitness to finance, and from self-talk to self-improvement. As they did, attendees used stickers, magazine cutouts and markers to create their own vision boards and jotted down inspirational quotes from each of the speakers.