“She can see, experience and hear stories from other women here,” she said. “We are a minority, but I hope from this she will learn she can follow her dreams too.”

Women’s Initiative for Leadership Development, or WILD, hosted the ninth annual MSU Women’s Leadership Conference from 1:30-7:30 p.m. Sunday at the Union. More than 200 women registered to spend the day engaging in workshops designed to inform women about a variety of topics, including résumé building, time management techniques, networking and cultural awareness.

Nursing junior Danielle Drake said she attended the event hoping to learn how to make an effective and appealing résumé for nursing school, but she knew the conference meant much more.

“I feel like this conference is a powerful movement,” she said. “I feel motivated to better myself — not even just schoolwise, but as a woman.”

This year’s theme was Believe in Your Dreams and Lead the Way.

As women entered the main conference room for the introductory speech, participants were handed pink forms asking them, “What would you do if you knew you would not fail?”

Each woman answered the question based on personal goals and aspirations. WILD committee member Mel Motz then asked her audience to tell their dreams to someone in the crowd they didn’t know.

“It takes a lot of courage to share these with other women,” the psychology sophomore said to the audience.

Gonzalez turned to a neighbor and said, “My dream is to get educated, to get a job and to provide for my three kids.”

The remainder of the conference focused on illustrating to women how they can achieve those dreams.

As the student keynote speaker, social work sophomore Alexa Thompson described her experience as a woman discovering she didn’t need to bat her eyelashes and play the damsel in distress to get where she wanted to go. She found her intelligence and education could take her much further.

“You don’t have to be what society expects you to be,” she said to the audience of women. “Not only are women capable of doing anything, we can be anything.”

Although she hasn’t had much experience public speaking, Thompson said she was motivated to apply and interview to speak at the conference by her passion for women’s rights.

“I’ve never written a speech before, so I wrote it like I was talking to a girlfriend and trying to empower her,” she said. “These are ideas I’ve thought about, and a lot comes from personal experience.”

Throughout the workshops, women were given the opportunity to learn how to deal with ethical situations in the workplace, how to effectively cooperate during team activities and how to build a small business in traditionally male-dominated fields.

WILD president Alison Judson said she hoped participants would take what they learned at the conference and use it in their future.

“When an opportunity is presented to teach or lead a group of people, I hope they aren’t afraid,” the family community services junior said. “I want them to take initiative and pass it on to other women.”