Each year (I think this makes 9:-) I photograph this event I am inspired by both the speaker and the energy in the room as 800+ smart, successful and amazing women come together.  This year in particular resonated with me because the story that Debbie Sterling had to share is similar to where I came from.  She is the inventor and CEO of Goldie Blox, which is a children's multimedia company designed to challenge gender stereotypes by introducing girls to engineering at a young age.  Debbie told her story of how she went to college for engineering and saw how few women pursue that profession so she became obsessed with "disrupting the pink aisle" and created the first ever girl engineer character named Goldie which is how Goldie Blox originated.  As a fellow woman who went to college for engineering, it is so true!  I never knew was engineering was either.  In high school I was good at math and science and heard engineering had a high starting income so that's what I decided to do.  I will say, Purdue had a really amazing women in engineering program to recruit and encourage more women to pursue this field so that's exactly what I did.  Even though I'm not in that field in the traditional sense, the skills I learned to problem solve, project manage, and business tools helped shaped me into the entrepreneur I never knew I could be.  As a mom of 2 little girls now, I want to introduce them to these concepts so they can do anything they want to do! I'll leave you with the quote that was my favorite.  "It's okay to be a princess...you just want her to be able to build her castle, too!" - Debbie Sterling