The Importance of Building Your Own Brand
Over 35 women from the Rhine Neckar region gathered together on International Women’s Day on March 8th to listen to a presentation from Regina Mehler, founder and CEO of the Women Speaker Foundation based in Munich. She has executive marketing experience in the IT and communications fields for over twenty years, and is the author of the book The Phoenix Effect.
The late morning event started off with about 45 minutes of networking and then introductions delivered by HIP Steering Committee Head Cheryl Sweeney and HIP Founder Shuchi Sharma. Shuchi told the story of the founding of the HIP Women’s Forum and mentioned the famous quote by Madeleine Albright, “There is a special place in hell for women who don’t help other women.” Both touched on the uniqueness of the day and the opportunity for the group to be able to get together to support each other.
Shuchi then introduced Regina who spoke without slides (to everyone’s appreciation!) and discussed her background, how she came up with the title for her book (from a poll from friends and colleagues), her experiences in becoming a keynote speaker, and finding other women and helping them to stand out as speakers with expertise in their fields.
With the Women Speaker Foundation she has created a dynamic pool of women from which large and small companies can find ideal speakers for their events, conferences and meetings. She reiterated that, through this journey, she has stuck to the idea that if we come across something we don’t like, we need to mention it and talk about it, and that has guided her to mission to get more women in speaking engagements and influencing positions in companies.
Her 5 points for building your own brand are:
- Say yes
- Define your expert level
- Do your own marketing
- Practice
- Network
Throughout her talk, she took questions from the audience and encouraged dialogue from attendees. Topics like social media branding, importance of your clothing and style in presenting your self, and building a sound support group all came up during the one and a half hour presentation.
The women attending thoroughly enjoyed the speech and appreciated Regina’s approachable manner, sound advice and powerful message. Networking and chatting resumed after the presentation.
Date: Sunday, March 8, 2015
Location: Conference Room at the ADAC, Heidelberg, through the generous sponsorship of the Deutsche Bank
See the gallery below for photos from the event. Should you be interested in having a high resolution version of any of the photos, please contact HIP Steering Committee Member Christine Funke.