Rising Athenas, Male Allies, and the Power of Gender Partnership

The Utah Women & Leadership Project invites you to join us for our fourth Spring Women’s Leadership Forum.

The authors of the Harvard Business Review books Athena Rising and Good Guys will make the business case for male engagement in gender equality, showing why men are often absent from gender equity work and why genuine equity is good for both men and women. Using social science evidence and their extensive interviews with women (and the men they nominated), they will explore the possible challenges of cross-gender professional relationships. Using their research and organizational best practices, they will provide the “how to” for men, women, and organizational leaders who want to be intentional, inclusive, and excellent allies, leveraging mentorship, sponsorship, and workplace partnership to create a more diverse workforce.

Sponsors: Jon M. Huntsman School of Business at Utah State University, the Utah Education Network (UEN), & Utah Public Radio (UPR)

Speakers

David Smith, PhD, is co-author of the forthcoming book, Good Guys: How Men Can Be Better Allies for Women in the Workplace and Associate Professor of Sociology in the College of Leadership and Ethics at the U.S. Naval War College. A former Navy pilot, Dr. Smith led diverse organizations of women and men culminating in command of a squadron in combat and flew more than 3,000 hours over 30 years including combat missions in Iraq and Afghanistan. As a sociologist trained in military sociology and social psychology, he focuses his research in gender, work, and family issues including gender bias in performance evaluations, dual career families, military families, women in the military, and retention of women. He is the co-author of Athena Rising: How and Why Men Should Mentor Women and numerous journal articles and book chapters that focus on gender and the workplace. Learn more about David at: davidgsmithphd.com

W. Brad Johnson is Professor of psychology in the Department of Leadership, Ethics and Law at the United States Naval Academy, and a Clinical Faculty Associate in the Graduate School of Education at Johns Hopkins University. A clinical psychologist and former officer in the Navy’s Medical Service Corps, Dr. Johnson served as a psychologist at Bethesda Naval Hospital and the Medical Clinic at Pearl Harbor where he was the division head for psychology. He is a recipient of the Johns Hopkins University Teaching Excellence Award, and has received distinguished mentor awards from the National Institutes of Health and the American Psychological Association. Dr. Johnson is the author of numerous publications including 130 journal articles and book chapters, and 14 books, in the areas of mentoring, cross-gender relationships at work, and counseling. His most recent books include: Athena Rising: How and Why Men Should Mentor Women, The Elements of Mentoring (3rd edition), On Being a Mentor (2nd edition), and in 2020, Good Guys: How Men Can be Better Allies for Women in the Workplace.