COMING SOON
General Sessions
Understanding Multiculturism
This assembly will establish ONA’s platform of multiculturalism through exploring and celebrating the diverse histories and heritages of women in America while enhancing their overall well-being. With a goal of improving cultural awareness, we will discover how much ALL women (regardless of race, ethnicity, or culture) have in common! This forum will generate meaningful dialogue, providing helpful information for building stronger connections among participants. Understanding Multiculturalism will empower attendees to network in support of cross-community enrichment opportunities.
We recognize and celebrate multicultural women at the Opal Network Alliance
We recognize and celebrate multicultural women at the Opal Network Alliance
We recognize and celebrate multicultural women at the Opal Network Alliance
Writing Your Book!
Let’s face it ... you have a story to tell. Whether it is autobiographical or fiction, business or personal discovery, inspirational or topical, it’s time to share your experience and ideas. During this ONA forum, our presenter will provide essentials for taking your work from manuscript to marketplace. You’ll find answers to questions regarding writing tips, manuscript format, editing, getting published, and distribution channels. Be sure to attend this presentation and create the right checklist for taking your work from concept to reality.
Know (and Understand) Your Legal Rights!
How many times have you been met with concerns regarding your legal rights? This session will review changes to Federal and State regulations and engage in critical discussion about litigation and legal protection for issues regarding: credit card debt; prenuptial agreements; dissolving business partnerships; establishing a (living) will; law enforcement encounters; and a variety of other topics. This session is not a substitute for getting legal assistance. It simply serves as a portal for providing a general overview and understanding of different areas of law and your legal rights. This is an important forum for every American citizen.
Business Development and Growth
Entrepreneurship
Are you thinking of starting a business? Do you have the passion, drive, and knowledge it requires? What resources are available to help ensure YOUR success? Here, you will learn how to implement starting and sustaining a business and interweave these tools in your development plans. We’ll help you to analyze the feasibility of your business idea, and engage you in strategic planning and marketing in order to help your concept gain brand awareness. This session will give you some essential tools to get you thinking like the CEO you’re destined to become!
Succeed Money
Now that you have the inspiration to cultivate your dreams of entrepreneurship, you’re more than likely able to define objectives for your new business. It would seem that things are starting to fall into place. Yet, there is still a major hurdle to overcome: “Where’s your operating capital?” More importantly, “what must be done to acquire it?” During ONA’s Succeed Money symposium, we will examine the readiness of your start-up or existing business. The presentation will assist you in building a platform for understanding seven essential elements required for qualifying and uncovering financial resources that could enable your business to reach its fullest potential. Are you really ready to execute your vision? Be sure to attend this session and find out.
The Power of Good Networking
Networking: one of the most essential components for business sustenance and growth. A commitment to continually participating in this vital activity can foster the type of connectedness that is the platform for every successful organization.
This plenary session will examine the concept of effective “networking,” as it pertains to the success of the multicultural business and individual. Emphasis will be placed on three important tools to grow your network: Professionalism, Commitment, and Follow-up. We will evaluate benefits of developing and maintaining professional networking associations that can ensure a lifetime of GREAT rewards. Our presenters will assist you in identifying resources that will leverage your business potential. Further, this session strives to enable ONA attendees to live their dreams for reaching success to the fullest. Let’s go!
Social Media: The Mecca for Modernists
This session is designed for professionals who are looking to enhance their effectiveness in business, identity, or purpose. It showcases the most proven technologies in social media while fostering greater understanding for the need to create interactive market awareness for growth campaigns. Some of the benefits to attendees include learning how to:
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Connect: Utilizing various forms of online tools to engage your associates and clients
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Discover: People, places, organizations, and resources to empower your journey for success
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Inform: Share ideas, values, goals, news, and relevance to your cause
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Transform: Clients and followers from awareness to buy-in
Truly … this is a “can’t miss” forum for all who desire a stronger online presence.
Public Speaking: Getting Heard!
What makes a great presentation? Do you know what is needed in order to give the kind of presentation that will take your business to the next level? The objective of this session is to provide insights into why and how developing speaking, training, and consulting for your business or cause will enhance your personal and professional acumen in every way. This is ideal for:
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Individuals who desire to become speakers but aren’t sure how to begin
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Professionals who are in positions that require speaking and/or training
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Anyone seeking tips on how to make their presentations more interactive
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Those wishing to enhance their oral communications skills
This will be a great occasion to smile often while learning the “tricks of the trade!”
Best Practices for Business Etiquette
The dedicated business executive appreciates the opportunity to project professionalism during business-related interactions. Whether being introduced, attending dinner, meetings, or simply showing gratitude at the end of a conversation, participants in this session will learn best practices for conducting or participating in their business dealings, regardless of the setting.
We’ll run the whole gamut of gaffes: from the egregious to the, trivial, and even ones you didn’t know existed. So improve your professional savoir-faire by joining this symposium, and enhance your verbal & nonverbal communication skills. This last sentence shifts the focus – this session emphasizes professional etiquette, not social niceties.
Promote!
Case 1: You’re excited about starting your new company, but you’re not totally sure of how to begin or establish sales
Case 2: You’ve had your business for a while, but sales are basically stagnant
In the 1989 film, Field of Dreams, an Iowa corn farmer hears a voice telling him, (paraphrased): “If you build it, they will come.” Yet, most individuals who’ve embarked on the audacious journey toward business success have found that this statement is not totally accurate. Your specific market is often saturated with similarly-themed competitors and well-funded advertising campaigns. Consistently promoting your business through technological advancements and online-social media, coupled with an unpredictable economy, can weigh heavily on efforts toward securing stable entrepreneurial achievement.
This ONA session will assist you in pinpointing techniques to get your brand in front of its potential customers. Further, it will emphasize the importance of marketing, public relations, and networking for businesses, as well as understanding how to utilize these interconnected strategies.
Attendees will learn procedures for foundational marketing and establish the best practices in company promotion. If you’re planning on moving your business “beyond survival to thrive,” then this session is for you!
Business Growth by Giving
Although the financial separation of haves and have-nots is rapidly increasing, simultaneously, there are tremendous opportunities for businesses (large or small, new or old) to act as trustees throughout their communities, regions, and countries. The potential to address urban blight, hunger, educational enrichment, and mentorships cannot be undervalued.
This session was created to inspire companies to engage in endeavors that will improve the wellbeing of those most important to our existence: our future employees and/or customers. Ultimately, this symposium will assist its attendees in identifying, then becoming proactive in supporting and developing people and communities who are in need.
Careers
A Career Calling
Do you enjoy creative strategies that generate solutions? Do you enjoy participating in hands-on, science-based projects? If so, you may want to consider a career in the disciplines of STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics).
This empowering ONA session was created to encourage women, who remain highly underrepresented in this field, to evaluate the tremendous need that exists within the special interest areas in STEM. Having a sound education in the areas of STEM may lead to careers in petroleum, software development, mining, network security, forensic accounting, electrical engineering and more.
Realizing that many industries around the globe lack these essential professionals, our presenters will uncover: the latest labor statistics; ways to broaden opportunities through networking; tips for accessing programs for professional development & growth. Further, we’ll show how a career in this area may help anyone to become an asset to any organization.
We recognize and celebrate multicultural women at the Opal Network Alliance
We recognize and celebrate multicultural women at the Opal Network Alliance
Overcoming Gender Inequities
Although women are making steady gains in income and management, they represent 3% of CEOs at publicly traded US companies. This disparity highlights a clear need for gender-balanced enrichment in the corporate arena.
Even with many inclusion programs, books, lectures, and corporate trainings designed to eradicate the “glass ceiling,” women of multi-ethnic backgrounds still face the deeper challenge of attaining and navigating upper echelons of business leadership. Meanwhile, males continue to enjoy higher salaries and more prominent positions over women who are equally qualified for the same appointments.
This session will examine the challenge of gender bias and its accompanying malfeasance; provide methods for handling this impasse, and offer resources for assistance. Further, presenters will aid ONA participants in performing self-evaluations to guide decision-making on staying the course, moving to another company, or starting their own business.
Professional Development
Reinventing Yourself
Are you happy with your job, business, or career path? Are your fundamental skills comprehensive and competitive enough for today’s economy? Perhaps you need a professional self-evaluation to chart new goals and determine which tools you need to make an effective employment change? Today’s woman is reinventing herself and fast becoming an invaluable commodity in every industry. This session will help you create a better vision for your future, as the presenter guides you through innovative thinking and actions to help you achieve your dreams.
Focus
Just think of how much more enriched your life would be if you were to enhance your ability to focus. What could you accomplish? Achieving any worthwhile objective can be extremely challenging, given the need for multitasking in our personal, social, and business roles. With increasing needs for greater productivity, we are all often left to ponder the question, “how in the world am I going to get this done?”
This ONA session serves to help us discover better ways to use our time wisely, while diminishing the distractions and life noise that can inhibit our ability to attain our goals. It will assist in developing techniques essential for better concentration regardless of surroundings, mindsets, and time constraints, in order to yield the best version of oneself for greater achievement.
Time Management: Prioritize and Execute Your Plans
What do you want to accomplish? And when will you find the time?
Many of us aspire to realize our hoped-for intentions; yet, uncovering the time to complete many of these achievable tasks often eludes us. Becoming more successful at work, earning an additional degree, obtaining fulfillment in our homes or personal lives and simply balancing them all, can be overwhelming. How do we consistently motivate and discipline ourselves to structure our time and our responsibilities to enhance our effectiveness?
Are you living at your optimum? Do you have a strategy to maximize your productivity? This session will help you to develop a personal system that will empower you to identify and prioritize your activities, enhance your productivity, and govern your work/life balance to live your goals.
Leadership: Wisdom to Thrive
ONA’s Leadership forum has a goal to strengthen the knowledge base for those who bear the charge of providing good direction to others. Moreover, businesses and communities are in need of leadership that is skilled, experienced, and confident to guide solid decision making in order to thrive.
Leaders who readily enlist support of their contemporaries to reach a common goal demonstrate the masterful characteristics that differentiate them from others. We will explore the qualities of humility, listening, values, knowledge, responsibility, participation, commitment, integrity, communication, passion, purpose, strategy, and determination as essential to creating good leaders who can bring value to their company or cause.
In essence, we will demonstrate how the best people, who are at the helm of their organizations, lead by example.
Creating Sales for Long-Term Business Success
Now that your business is up and running, you begin to ask yourself, “How do I generate the revenue that is essential to my company’s ability to thrive?” This ONA session will inspire, motivate, and inform attendees of the protocols for closing deals, while suggesting ways to create connections for building long-lasting, productive business relationships. You’ll discover methods for soft selling and guerrilla marketing while gaining tips for the importance of focus on the features, functions, and benefits of your goods, products, or services in order to enhance your sales endeavors.
Health
Good Nutrition & Fitness: Power for Performance
This presentation can best be described as “Expect the Unexpected!” For years, we’ve heard the often heralded statement, “You are what you eat.” This is often followed by the old adage, “You can’t exercise your way out of poor nutrition.” Both statements are very true, yet, the obvious realization in this regard is that most of us do not understand how our bodies process the food we consume. Should we eat white potatoes or sweet potatoes, whole grains vs. multi-grains? What are the human physiological effects of added hormones, steroids, and antibiotics in animal bi-product consumption? What are the consequences of drinking fruit juices from concentrate, eating genetically modified products, and fish?
Cultural Health Awareness
When it comes to having good health, there are many disparities and challenges encountered by women of various ethnicities, yet there is a lack in knowledge of how these issues affect us. Further, healthcare tends to differ for most demographics. ONA has chosen to highlight some of the most common culturally-related health crises in order to encourage your review of family medical history, awareness of ethnic health markers, and reinforce the need for more frequent preventative check-ups. Ultimately, this session will give ONA’s attendees an up-to-date look at health trends and provide information to help spur a lifetime of wellness.
Mental Health Alert
We are wives, partners, mothers, single parents, students, and more than half of the workforce. Even so, there is still the need for women to become even more grounded in order to handle our multiple roles.. How do we accomplish these things when the stressors from our significant responsibilities become too challenging to maintain a healthy balance work, life, and home? Experiencing long-term or undetected stressors on a job or in a relationship can impair the ability to cope, possibly heightening depression, anxiety, insomnia, and in some instances, suicidal tendencies.
This session identifies at key indicators in recognizing triggers that cause anxiety. ONA’s goal is demonstrate how an honest self evaluation may assist you in putting problems into perspective and determining when to get help. We will also discuss the effects of psychological trauma due to factors resulting from memories of childhood abuse or neglect, violence, and the long-term effects of drug and alcohol abuse.
ONA’s “Mental Health Alert” will also provide insight that may enable you to recognize when friends or family members are in crisis, and in need of intervention.
Sexual Awareness: Clear & Concise
This session will provide an unparalleled approach to exploring healthy attitudes about our sexuality. A broad list of topics will include: identifying risk factors, establishing healthy boundaries, and promoting greater sexual responsibility.
For Him
Although today’s active women work to maintain a healthy lifestyle, many of the men in their circles may lack the knowledge, or even the drive, to do the same. Heart disease, prostate cancer, sleep apnea, hypertension, diabetes—these are but some of the many challenges that can often lead to early mortality in men. This ONA session will support its attendees in evaluating the health issues of their male counterparts and in proactively communicating meaningful resources and advice on appropriate medical treatment. This session will challenge apathy and motivate women to support their men in taking their health seriously.
Uncovering Truths about Cancer in Multicultural Communities
Millions of dollars are raised for cancer research annually. Yet, there remain prevailing disparities in educating and providing equitable treatment to all who are diagnosed with this disease. Startling statistics have shown that multicultural women are more likely to be diagnosed with advanced stage cancers, leading to higher mortality rates.
This ONA session will address areas of needed improvement for cross-cultural cancer care by highlighting data specific to research what does this mean?, including genetic markers, for many types of cancers. It will highlight the importance of becoming proactive by recognizing body changes, and stress the need to obtain check-ups to improve opportunities for early detection. We will also stress the importance of being aware of the impact that diet and exercise may have in the prevention for cancer prevention.
Achievement
Strategies for Fiscal Fitness & Growth!
With today’s economic trends, it can be challenging for anyone to stay afloat financially. This session will demonstrate the use of strategies that may enable ONA’s participants to establish or enhance a financial platform for continual life sustainment long after your career is finished. It includes lessons on exploring better ways to save, approaching investments, identifying and benefitting from better insurance, consolidating debt, and credit management.
Get Organized!
Have you ever considered how much revenue you've lost in business due to disorganization? Ever consider how much frustration and unnecessary stress you've added to the lives of you and your loved ones because you don't "have it together?"
This session was created to help ONA attendees clarify priorities, define objectives, and create practices that will maximize productivity. It will demonstrate methods for de-cluttering your lifestyle, getting organized, and improving the quality of business, community, and importantly, relational endeavors. ONA’s Get Organized discussion will provide blueprints for how to use good building blocks that are essential for becoming more effective.
Create Your Platform for Achievement
Henry Ford once stated: “Whether you think you can or you can’t … you’re right.”
In this ONA colloquium, we’ll highlight commonalities amongst people who achieve consistent successes and the particular mindset they adopt that empowers them to make things happen. We’ll emphasize ways for developing attitudes for resilience, and energize your convictions for whatever you desire to accomplish. Importantly, you will learn that in order to become a success, you must never give up by maintaining an attitude of diligence!
Interpersonal
Being Better at Being You
What is the true meaning of good Self-Esteem? Does your life genuinely reflect it?
Confidence is a mind-set many individuals believe they possess and use each day. But, how can we honestly evaluate our belief in who we really are to better understand our true self-worth? This session will insert greater self-awareness in your life by identifying:
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How we feel about ourselves
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Diagnosing its cause and effects
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Tools to accept of our responsibilities
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Ways to improve the way we feel about ourselves
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Guarding our emotional safety
Knowing what matters most is how we see ourselves, this discussion will also uncover practices and resources that can keep you strong and in-line on your trek to achieving improved self-esteem and while raising your self-worth.
Parenting: Fidelity for a Lifelong Connection
As parents, we want nothing but the very best for our children. From the moment they’re born, we often make plans for their future that include goals we feel they should pursue.
But, what happens when our children take a different course and their actions do not comply with our values, choice of peers, lifestyle, and beliefs for good living?
Do any of these sound familiar? “My daughter sneaks out of the house at night.” “My child doesn’t seem to have or make friends.” “I think my son may be involved in drugs.”
ONA’s parenting session will review resources and interventions that may be used when children deviate from good decision-making; while encouraging the best practices that keep our young ones on target for success. We will assist you in opening pathways for enhanced communication through methods of reasoning, and adjusting values, while utilizing techniques and support for standing firm on what is in their best interest. Importantly, we will discuss how and when to choose your battles.
Domestic Violence
The goal of this session is to offer instruction that unveils the reality and myths surrounding abuse. Dialogue will uncover critical benchmarks for understanding abusive patterns in relationships, and speak to what can be done to help avoid and /or improve the health and safety of victims of violence whether physical, mental, or emotional.
Building a Better Relationship
Which essential components are needed to make a great relationship? How do you share your inner-most thoughts and feelings without revealing too much too soon? How do you deepen bonds of trust? This topic will be presented by a relationship professional who will demonstrate how to foster closeness, resolve conflicts effectively, and seek out common ground while utilizing the correct building blocks for a more harmonious relationship and/or marriage. In conclusion of this discussion, you’ll leave empowered with tips that will enable you to broaden your understanding for an enhanced love connection.
Faith, Inspiration, and Relaxation: Tips to Get More!
This selectable seminar provides an integrated approach at examining gratitude, purpose, and the practice of faith in a non-judgmental setting. It will encourage you to consider ideas that may increase opportunities to practice your faith in greater ways.
If you’ve experienced challenges in business, personal relationships, loss of loved ones, or a need for a greater peace and understanding, this breakout session is for you! ONA’s Faith, Inspiration, and Relaxation seminar will give colorful anecdotes, as well as ideas to bolster opportunities for anyone looking to better their best.
Pathways to Overcome Grief or Depression
Let’s face it … we are all challenged by life’s hardships. It can become difficult to be encouraged, stay positive, or pray when your heart feels indescribably wounded. This selectable ONA session was designed to provide healthy coping skills and support for anyone who has been emotionally challenged due to such circumstances as separation/divorce; loss of a loved one; loss of career or income; or sometimes living life itself, etc.
Because everyone’s life’s circumstances are unique, the degree of grief and time to heal will be peculiar to each individual. Yet, when ongoing sadness is ignored, its accompanying effects can hurt families, hinder relationships, careers, and limit you from being your very best.
Attendees of this session will learn from ONA’s expert counselors how to create steps to develop a process to begin or strengthen recovery. They will also focus on ways to learn from situations you haven’t any control over, while accepting the ways you can handle them.
Tools to Build Confidence
"So often, we avoid taking risks for fear of failure. This lack of assertiveness or spontaneity often stems from low confidence. Left unchecked, insecurity can become the prevailing element in a person's decision making, and can negatively affect one's ability to establish and achieve goals. It can further hamper action by creating debilitating anxiety.
If you are interested in deepening your confidence and overcoming anxiety, this ONA session is for you. Subject matter experts will guide participants by introducing tools that help build courage and inspire self-confidence. These strategies can assist in entrepreneurship, career development, interpersonal relationships, and day-to-day experiences. Collaboratively, you will identify the mental roadblocks that stand between you, and you reaching your full potential. As Wayne Gretzgy famously said, “You miss 100% of the shots you don’t take.”
Better Decision Making
Have you established a protocol for evaluating and determining how to make the best decisions? Asking yourself whether to leave or to stay, to accept or decline, to act or postpone and, what’s more, whether each alternative will yield short-term success, or just long-term failure should be a regular practice. Indeed, important decisions that are not considered thoroughly could leave a person with lasting regrets.
This symposium will help ONA attendees create a rubric for evaluating potential benefits and drawbacks to decisions they may have to make. It will assist in helping you develop a clear strategy for achieving optimal results through evaluating your motives, the nature of the problem, and risk vs. reward for different courses of action.
Conference content subject to change without notice.