This virtual event gives small business owners the chance to hear directly from procurement officers about opportunities to work with them.
05/29/2025
12:00pm - 1:00pm
Virtual
Join us for an exclusive networking event at the Museum of Fine Arts and enjoy self-guided tours of John Wilson and Van Gogh, showcasing the deep bond of family, friendship, and community.
06/05/2025
5:30pm - 8:30pm
Museum of Fine Arts
The Transportation First Series offers a platform to discuss the challenges faced by our region, with the input of experts and changemakers.
06/12/2025
2:45pm - 4:30pm
Hybrid | Greater Boston Chamber of Commerce
This program is in redevelopment. Click this page for DEI resources.
Our Women’s Leadership Program enables you to take your leadership to the next level by arming you with the most in-demand leadership toolkit.
Our Boston’s Future Leaders (BFL) program provides emerging leaders with a socially conscious and civically engaged leadership toolkit, as well as the opportunity to apply their knowledge through experiential assignments.
Join us on June 12 for a highly interactive virtual workshop with Strategic Career & Leadership Coach Carole-Ann Penney.
City Awake empowers young professionals in a variety of ways that encourages these rising leaders to stay invested in the region’s future success.
We are developing an ecosystem of corporations and partners with the influence and buying power to transform economic inclusion for minority business enterprises (MBEs).
Small businesses are the backbone of the Boston economy. Learn more about the resources available through the Chamber.
BIMA (the Boston Interactive Media Association) serves a vibrant community of like-minded professionals from agencies, brands, publishers, and ad-tech companies with business interests in the New England market.
For over 30 years, the Chamber’s Women’s Network has connected female professionals of all background and career levels. Today, our Women’s Network is the largest in New England, strengthening the professional networks of women each year.
The Massachusetts Apprentice Network convenes employers, training providers, and talent sources interested in developing and implementing apprenticeship programs in occupations across industries and statewide in fields such as tech, advanced manufacturing, healthcare, financial services, and more.
Explore our mission and values to better understand how we are leading the business community forward.
Our member directory is your resource to discover, connect, and engage with Boston’s businesses from every industry and sector.
Though women make up more than 50% of the modern workforce, it is well-documented that they are under-represented in leadership positions. The Chamber and our members are all in to support women and their employers.
The Women’s Leadership Program, presented in partnership with Simmons University, empowers women leaders with the skills and a network they need to excel in their own careers and to create conditions for other women to thrive. To date, we’ve graduated almost 1,000 women from across industries, sectors, and roles.
And women’s leadership is not just a matter of inclusion. According to Chamber member McKinsey, gender diversity is correlated with both profitability and value creation, with top-quartile companies on executive-level gender diversity having a 21% likelihood of outperforming their fourth-quartile industry peers. The Boston business community simply cannot afford to underinvest in women as leaders.
In my experience managing the Women’s Leadership Program, and from my conversations with program participants, alumni, and partners, this program can have a huge impact on the trajectory of participants’ careers and in their self-perception of their leadership attributes. If you are considering nominating yourself or a colleague, there are three major outcomes that you can expect at the completion of the program.
Throughout the program learn from renowned faculty members at Simmons University, including Mary Shapiro and Dr. Stacy Blake-Beard. Curriculum focuses on the skills they need to excel at their current jobs, to position themselves for advancement, and to create the conditions for other women to thrive. These skills include identifying and owning your leadership and communication style, building and maintaining a strategic network, self-advocacy, team management, and negotiations.
Alumni from the program reported being able to immediately apply these skills for their own self-advocacy and to advance their employer’s goals. In fact, 69% of the class of 2018-2019 reported that they expanded their job responsibilities since starting the program, and 34% reported earning a promotion.
This year, the majority of curriculum will be delivered virtually, maximizing the flexibility and accessiblity of the program in uncertain times.
Women’s leadership program helped me to refine my skills as a leader and helped me to advocate for myself and what I deserve. – Jen Crawford, Smith, Costello & Crawford
Research shows that women are less likely to receive both mentorship and sponsorship at work, crucial determining factors for how likely they are to be promoted or given meaningful work. Through the Women’s Leadership Program, participants have access to leading women through the Chamber’s Women’s Network Advisory Board, the Women’s Leadership Program alumni network, and programming featuring some of the city’s renowned male and female leaders.
To address the mentoring gap, we have added small group discussions led by alumni and members of the Women’s Network Advisory Board and a Candid Conversations discussion where participants can get advice and perspective on some of the topics that matter most to women in the workforce, such as effective communication, self-advocacy, giving and receiving feedback, and building inclusive teams. In addition, participants will go behind-the-scenes of a woman-led business and hear leadership lessons from the organization’s senior executives.
Learning, collaborating, and networking with powerful, instrumental women is liberating. – Winnie Lamour, UHM Properties LLC
In addition to learning from leaders in the city, the Women’s Leadership Program also heavily emphasizes peer to peer learning. Research from Harvard Business Review reveals that for women to achieve executive positions with the highest levels of authority and pay, they need an inner circle of close female contacts. Our program facilitates these close, career-long relationships through small group exercises throughout the program, and by pairing each participant into a peer mentor group of 4-5 other women based on similar professional development goals. With that peer group, each participant will design and implement an Individual Action Project at their organization, directly applying lessons learned from Women’s Leadership Program to the organization that supported their participation.
I met a lot of smart capable women that I am proud to know. – Eleanor Malloy, John Hancock
The importance of programming that allows women the time and space to invest in their own skills and network has never been clearer. If you are interested in nominating yourself or another amazing woman in your life to the program, please learn more and submit a nomination before August 31, 2020.
Alyson is the Chamber’s Senior Leadership Initiatives Manager. In her role she oversees the development and management of the Women’s Leadership Program. She just earned an MBA in Social Impact and Leadership and Organizational Transformation at Boston University’s Questrom School of Business.
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