Business Women Leaders Academy

The program was created in 2017. This year we launch 4^th edition of the Academy: for the first time at international level.

Academy of Businesswomen Leaders is an iterative process of building personal maturity in young women through marketing, communication, image-building matters integrated with personal and professional growth. Our aim is to educate young women (up to 27 years old) in the following areas:

• Social and professional competences,
• Gender-oriented capacities,
• Knowledge and attitudes that will guide them into adulthood.

This educational, mentoring program embodies the mission of Leslaw A. Paga Foundation:   Creating a school of life for young people who have courage to change the world for better

The project is consistent with the aims of the Foundation, which has been a place for the development, inspiration and education of the future leaders for 18 years.

• We aim to start the change for better at individual level through comprehensive self-development of each young woman who decides to participate in the Academy. This is why the foundation of the program is based on knowledge, skills, attitude.

  • A participant builds practical solutions for herself in the fields of image-building, communication, management, creating the unique personal value to offer in the market. 
  • She acquires knowledge in the area of self-management, team management, change management process, design thinking, negotiations, mediations, resolving conflicts and decision-making process.
  • The participant gets an opportunity to shape her worldview, to build her self-esteem and to identify change limiting beliefs in confrontation with diversity.

  The program is oriented to timeliness and practical approach, which corresponds with the common profile of the Foundation Alumni – women who nurture their independence, self-reliance, who are bold and ready to undertake challenges instead of following the beaten track.

  After participating in the program, women are ready to act as leaders who shape the work environment and can successfully perform in managerial positions. This way the Foundation not only shows real opportunities for professional, personal and financial development, but also creates attitudes based on values.

We strive for openness for diversity. We find respecting it as a chance for a deep understanding of reality. We encourage participants to get to know the world from another viewpoint than the one that she got used to.

This way we highlight personal engagement into networking, which supports young women staying outside the direct influence of the Foundation’s activities. Therefore, intergenerational cooperation – meetings of participants of the program with younger colleagues from marginalized areas – is a significant element of the program.

We aim to support highschoolers from towns in participants’ countries of origin, to reach young women even before the age when they take crucial decisions about their future.

We want to include schoolgirls from Poland B and C (lubelskie voivodship) as well as from other vulnerable regions in CEE.

The Leslaw A. Paga Foundation has created a team of experts and practitioners who altogether with Foundation’s Alumni will walk participants through the program:

24 Participants from CEE countries are recruited to the program. Training panels will be lead by local and foreign experts, representing the program’s business and social partners.

During the Academy, participants collaborate with colleagues from other countries, sharing their knowledge and experience, conducting research and writing a report on the situation of women in  labour markets in the CEE area.

Project activities are conducted in English.

More information about the schedule soon!

• Report on diversity in labour market in CEE area – prepared and written by participants under experts, Alumni and specialists on gender equity specialists’ supervision. 
• International workshops – remote educational meetings with Alumni and representatives of business partners. The trainers are women playing key roles in business, specialising in STEM, experts of digital market including entrepreneurs, startup founders, investors, high-level leaders and managers.
• Development process in the area of building a personal brand, worldview and self-esteem, with a mentor, member of the Council, an advisor in the area of development and mentoring in the Foundation. Participants from Poland will take part in the process, which is an integral part of the program. Foundation is the missing link in education. Our aim is education and self-development. Therefore, we are looking for solutions that not only develop the merit, but also build the moral compass that indicates life directions. The development process has been a foundation of the Academy program since the first edition, and it keeps responding to young women’ needs.

• Intergenerational debates – support to schoolgirls from marginalized regions and strengthen their good points. Meetings of participants, previous Business Women Academy editions’ Alumni, experts of business partners with girls from Lublin Voivodship from high school and technical school will be carried out in lean-in circles formula. The key point is sharing knowledge and tools enabling schoolgirls leveling up their self-esteem and create a network that support their way out of region. 
• Peer-to-peer support under the Buddy program – the participant builds a bilateral, friendly, non-mentoring relationship with her “Buddy” – a senior Alumni of the Foundation chosen for each individual participant within the careful matching process. This unique relationship helps to understand the Foundation’s environment, enter the community, but also to build a personal bond with a person with a similar background.
• Leadership evenings – meetings with top managers representing our business partners – we are going to focus on discussion on how to develop personal capacity in both career and private lives. 
• The great final and onsite workshops in Warsaw – opportunity to meet with participants of the projects, Alumni, trainers, business partners representatives. Summing up the progress done within the project, evaluation workshops and presentation of the results during the final event. 

Our activities are addressed to young, entrepreneurial women, aspiring to managerial positions and leadership roles in professional and non-professional environment. We want to reach to those women who are bold, who have moral compass and who are not afraid of taking action. 

We are looking for last-year female students and graduates up to 27 years old in law, finance, health care, marketing, IT, energetic, psychology, with special consideration of STEM (science, technology, engineering, mathematics) faculties from universities in the CEE region.  

Graduates are rewarded with Alumni of Leslaw A. Paga Foundation title, becoming a part of over 5 000 Alumni community – professionals, experts, leaders who share Foundations’ values and who fulfil themselves professionally all around the worlds. 

Graduates get to know specialists and culture of work abroad in top management positions on international level.  

They create their own independent brand mark based on activity, involvement and self-acceptance as women in professional career path. 

They acquire expert knowledge necessary to act in specified professional areas. 

Graduates create a strong community of people who supports each other in private and professional lives.