A capacity audience hears the keynote presentation from Lynn M. Torossian, president and CEO of Henry Ford West Bloomfield Hospital, at Friday's Young Women's Leadership Conference.
LTU photo / Matt Roush.

A packed house of 300 middle and high school girls heard a message of empowerment and inspiration Friday at the second annual Young Women’s Leadership Conference, organized by Lawrence Technological University’s College of Business and Information Technology.

Keynote speaker Lynn M. Torossian, president and CEO of Henry Ford West Bloomfield Hospital, offered attendees plenty of ideas on embarking on successful careers. Among them:

• Have self-confidence. If you don’t believe in yourself, why should anyone else?
• Dream big and believe you can. Having big dreams tends to fade as we get older, Torossian said, and it shouldn’t.
• Stand up for your beliefs and stand up for yourself. Courage, she said, isn’t the absence of fear – it’s the ability to move forward in the face of fear.
• Support other women – they need you, and you need them. She told attendees to mentor and sponsor other women and give them direct feedback.
• Be yourself. Be authentic.

Torossian repeatedly recalled her “seventh-grade self,” a girl who forced her school district to allow her to try out for the boys’ basketball team because there wasn’t a girls’ team, going all the way to the school board. The school hastily arranged an intramural program for girls, but guess what, Torossian said: “I didn’t want to play basketball. I wanted to make a point.”

Torossian now leads a 191-bed, $360 million hospital that opened in 2009, and is active in many professional and community organizations.

After Torossian’s presentation, a panel of women executives offered attendees advice on networking, career preparation, and success on the job in the face of bias against women in leadership. The event wrapped up Friday afternoon with breakout sessions and leadership development exercises.

Lawrence Tech officials said that besides the capacity audience, more than 100 young women were on a waiting list to attend the event.