History
Ten undergraduate Harvard women founded Harvard Undergraduate Women in Business in the fall of 2000. The first Annual Conference "Preparing to Lead" was held at the Charles Hotel on December 4th of that year, attended by 250 Harvard women and company representatives. Sponsored by Goldman Sachs & Co., the conference featured speakers Angela Shapiro, President of ABC Daytime and Buena Vista Productions, Jacquelyn Hoffman-Zehner, partner at Goldman Sachs & Co., and Patricia Pomerleau, CEO of CEOexpress.com. With such high attendance, the founders recognized their organization was fulfilling a vital need at Harvard, and from that kick-off event, the membership of HUWIB grew from 10 to its current size of approximately 150 active Associates and 400 members. Members receive information about panels, events and activities through HUWIB publications and mailing lists.
HUWIB's subsequent conferences garnered campus-wide attention, and these annual events became supplemented with regular panels on investment banking, consulting, business dress, and networking. The conferences have since expanded to an intercollegiate level, with HUWIB hosting its first Intercollegiate Business Convention (IBC) in October 2005. Over 400 women from 30 different universities attended the IBC, which was held at the Marriott Hotel in Boston. Besides hosting conferences, HUWIB's mentorship program has flourished from its start in 2001. In 2002, the organization arranged with sponsors to lead members on an April trip to New York City's financial district, an event that has become a club hallmark. HUWIB Associates have since expanded their outreach initiatives to include career exploratory trips—twenty-five associates visited companies in Los Angeles during Harvard’s intercession in 2005.
As the club grew, it attracted the attention of a wider array of companies seeking to recruit on campus, and today, in addition to regular events to which company representatives are invited to meet with members in a social setting, HUWIB enjoys recent membership partnerships with Harvard Business School's Women's Business Association and the 85 Broads network.
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