| The 2003 LEAGUE Leadership Training Meeting has been postponed. |
|---|
Each year, LEAGUE at AT&T hosts a Professional Development Conference or Leadership Training Meeting. Though it's held in a city in the United States near a local LEAGUE chapter, members from all our chapters help put these events together.
A LEAGUE at AT&T Professional Development Conference offered several workshop tracks and plenary sessions that covered professional development and workplace issues. Other topics may include diversity, other AT&T employees, and people from the community.
For 2002, we changed the purpose slightly to focus on Leadership Skills and Professional Development. In 2003, our focus is Leadership Training. Workshop presenters and speakers may be LEAGUE members, other AT&T employees, and people from the community.
Additionally, each year LEAGUE recruits at least one featured speaker who addresses lesbian, bisexual, gay and transgender issues. That give attendees an opportunity to have some of their questions answered.
Varied locales
From April 30 through May 4, 2003, we'll be at the Hilton Woodbridge in Iselin, New Jersey for a Leadership Training Meeting -- our twelfth Spring gathering.For our eleventh conference -- a Leadership Skills and Professional Development Conference -- 80 of us went to Scottsdale in April 2002. Arizona treated us to "chilly" April weather (for Scottsdale, that is): temperatures in the low 80s and no humidity! We shared the site and some activities and sessions with our Hispanic and Native American brethren at AT&T. Yes, two other AT&T Business Resource Groups -- HISPA (Hispanic Employees of AT&T) and ICAE (Inter-Tribal Council of AT&T Employees) -- held their annual conference at the same time.
Some of the 108 attendees at our tenth Professional Development Conference in June 2001 experienced a bit of deja vu. We had returned to the city of Orlando where LEAGUE – then only four years old – had held its first conference! That's where the similarity ended; we changed the timing slightly and went to a different hotel. Some of our folks went early and enjoyed Disney World's Gay Days, before we all hunkered down to a great learning experience at our conference.
In April 2000, 152 folks joined us at our ninth Professional Development Conference in Philadelphia, the city of brotherly and sisterly love. That conference was special because we celebrated the 25th anniversary of the inclusion of "sexual preference or orientation" in AT&T's Equal Employment Opportunity Policy and AT&T Chairman and CEO Mike Armstrong was our keynote speaker. It was the first time the company's top executive spoke at a LEAGUE conference.
In mid-May 1999, more than 160 hardy souls went to Minneapolis for our eighth Professional Development Conference. In spite of the rain, which never seemed to end (though the sun came out for Sunday's AIDS walk), it was our best conference yet.
In 1998, 180 folks braved the heat and sun of the southwest for our seventh Professional Development Conference, held in Tempe, Arizona (near Phoenix) at the Tempe Mission Palms. In 1997, we celebrated LEAGUE's 10th Anniversary at the sixth Annual Professional Development Conference, which was held at the AT&T Learning Center in Basking Ridge, New Jersey.
We have a vision
Each gathering is unified by an vision statement. In Basking Ridge, for example, it was "LEAGUE: A Proud Past … A Challenging Future." Tempe's theme was "LEAGUE, AT&T and You: Partners in Business." And Minneapolis focused on ":AT&T and LEAGUE: Working Out." Philadelphia was a celebration and a look at the future, too – "Work in Progress: Celebrating 25 Years of Equal Opportunity."Because LEAGUE faces new challenges from the changes at AT&T, the theme of our Tenth conference was "LEAGUE and AT&T: Unified Synergy." As AT&T restructures itself into four companies, last year's conference was designed to help us get ready for those changes as we examined and planned for "LEAGUE and AT&T: Our New Direction." This year, we'll expand that planning and look ahead to take advantage of "LEAGUE and AT&T: The Competitive Edge."
* Safe Space and the Safe Space logo are registered trademarks of EQUAL! at Lucent, licensed to LEAGUE at AT&T.