Member Nominations
The Membership Committee is committed to achieving a membership that reflects the diversity of the top female leadership in our region. As one of our ongoing tasks we review the profile of the current membership including length of membership, non-renewal trends, ages of members, race & ethnicity, industry, and geography. Through this process the Committee identifies priorities for recruitment.
In recent years the Committee has focused its recruitment efforts on:
- Women of color who are at the top of their field.
- Industries that are under-represented in our membership: Technology, Life Science, Entrepreneurship, and the Arts.
We are committed to ensuring that our members are truly at the top of their field.
As a result, the Committee took a fresh look at our New Member Profile. With the Board’s endorsement, we have clarified the criteria for membership and developed industry guidelines. We encourage all members to use the linked profile as a guidepost when recommending women leaders for membership.
We are committed to ensuring that the new members will be engaged and active in the Forum.
To do this, we have shifted to an interview process. The Membership Committee will personally meet in advance with each candidate selected for the pipeline. The goal of the interview is to get to know her as a leader and a person, promote the benefits of membership and assess her interest in joining.
Our goal is to ensure that IWF/MA members reflect the full diversity of the member profile.
Our process:
- Develop the pool of candidates by reaching out to the membership for your ideas.
- We ask you to think first and foremost about the above gap categories because these are the Committee’s priorities. However, please send us all your recommendations. In addition, the Committee has broken into working groups against each of these categories and is searching the state for top candidates.
- Narrowing the pool: The Committee will consider all the candidates that are surfaced and will identify those who will move forward to the interview process.
- Interviewing the candidates: The Committee members will each be assigned candidates for interviews.
- Choosing the final slate: Once all of the interviews have been conducted, the Committee will choose the final slate of candidates to be recommended to the Board for membership.
Nominating a Candidate:
Thank you for looking to your networks to identify potential Forum members. In nominating new members, we ask that you consider the priorities above in addition to the criteria in the below Member Profile. While we are focusing on the above categories, we understand that there are outstanding candidates who may not fall into one of these groups. Do not hesitate to forward those names as well. While your candidate may not receive an invitation to join the Forum this year, we will keep her name in our records for consideration in the next nomination cycle. For this reason, we recommend that you do not discuss IWF/MA membership with your candidate.
As you may know, it is our goal to admit only one woman per company. Please note, you may use the online directory where you can search by member name, company, industry, etc.
If you have any questions, do not hesitate to reach out to Lauren Grymek at laurengrymek@masswomensforum.org.
As always, thank you for your commitment to a vibrant and engaged IWF/MA.
With warm regards,
Wendy Foster & Rosalind Gorin
Co-chairs, Membership Committee
