On the radio: Women to Watch features President Katherine Bergeron
Leadership isn’t about the individual; it’s about the collective, Connecticut College President Katherine Bergeron told Susan Foley Rocco, host of Women to Watch™ Media, a live weekly radio show that features stories about some of the most accomplished women worldwide.
“Leadership is bringing people together for a greater good,” Bergeron told Rocco, who is also the founder and producer of Women to Watch™ Media, LLC. “It’s not about how much power you have, but how much you enable and empower your community to achieve the things they want to achieve.”
During Bergeron’s hour-long conversation with Rocco, she talked about how growing up as the middle child of five taught her to be both a mediator and a boss—skills she says she still uses daily. Bergeron also said that her parents fostered her love of music from an early age, impacting her life in countless ways.
“Finding what you really love is probably the most important thing for any young person’s intellectual growth,” Bergeron said. “Almost anything you do—if you do it and love it—will lead you in very profitable ways in later life, even if you aren’t doing that thing anymore. I’m not playing instruments now, but that background has been quite formative in all kinds of ways.”
Connections, Connecticut College’s reinvention of a liberal arts education, is designed to have a similar impact for students, Bergeron said. Connections is a new kind of curriculum that lets students integrate their interests into a meaningful educational pathway that will carry them through college and into a fulfilling, effective career and life. It is designed to unleash a student’s curiosity in a way that allows them to incorporate their passion into every aspect of their college experience.
“The idea is to allow students to orchestrate their education with a whole team of advisers, to allow students to learn for life beyond college, and also to encourage students to put the world together in new ways by making those connections: buttressing their academic major with interdisciplinary course work, with a world language, with a relevant internship and really with a whole interconnected outlook,” Bergeron said. “It’s a whole four-year integrated journey, and we really think it will make our students better prepared for the kind of problem solving that the new world of work requires.”
To listen to the full interview, visit women2watch.net.
