Summary of the meetings

HI everyone,
First of all we would like to thank everyone who came along to our event! For those who did not make it this time, we welcome you to the next event. Here is a short summary of the points we discussed last week.
  • Networking
    • We would like to have a networking event once a month in Viikki, to start, and if there is interest to host these events also on the Meilahti campus,  meetings could be alternating once a month on each campus.
    • There should be a theme for each meeting, or an invited speaker.
    • Mingling should also be encouraged in various ways to promote integration and networking.
  • Mentoring
    • Eija Jokitalo has already contacted people in HR to ask for support and training for a mentoring initiative. We will follow up on this and update you at the next networking event.
    • There is a need for different types of mentoring, both peer support and across institute mentoring. Different programs could exist.
    • We should contact HiLife to see if there would be some sort of support for this initiative.
  • Seminar series
    • One way to highlight female role models is to encourage female speakers in the Monday seminar series.
    • We will discuss this with Ville Paavilainen to suggest that an entire term could be dedicated to women scientists. (We discussed it with Ville and he is happy to promote women scientists and encouraged us to send in more suggestions. He will also dedicate one slot per term for women scientists, we just need to come up with a good name to promote it.)
  • Platform
    • We will explore the option of setting up a blog space for this.
    • We will create a mailing list where updates, interesting events and such can be posted. (Done.)
Here is a suggested schedule for the upcoming monthly networking events for now:
First Thursday of the month at 2pm (location to be confirmed):
  • 2.3
  • 6.4
  • 4.5
Please suggest potential speakers for these events. We would also ask those who are interested in helping to organise any aspect of this endeavour to let us know. We would very much appreciate the help.
With best wishes,
Kira & Johanna

Invitation

Dear Colleague,

We would like to invite you for coffee, at a networking session with other women scientists from the Institute of Biotechnology on Thursday January 12th at 2-3pm in the BI lounge. We would like to raise awareness of the mentoring needs of women in science.

We have contemplated for some time and decided that it would be benificial to have some additional peer support and mentoring for women to help them proceed in their scientific careers. Therefore, we would like to bring together female researchers from different stages of their careers within the life sciences field. We would like to start with the BI and if successful and supported, extend this in the future to bring together women from Viikki and Meilahti campuses.

We hope you will join us to discuss and develop this initiative and network. Also, feel free to distribute this invitation to your colleagues. All ideas, comments and suggestions are welcome! Please let us know by Monday January 9 if you will be able to attend.

With best Christmas wishes,

Johanna and Kira