Today’s day-long event “Feng Shui for Women Today: Balancing your work and life” will offer both male and female students workshops intended to teach business skills for the working world, said the president of Students in Free Enterprise.Vineeta Menezes, president of SIFE , said the event is part of “Neeley Week,” a week-long series of events hosted by the School of Business.
The event consists of five speakers, a luncheon and a panel at the end of the day, said Menezes, a second year masters of business administration student.
Menezes said the “Planning for the Unexpected” workshop will prepare people for emergencies such as getting hurt at work, losing a job or getting a divorce. Other workshops cover topics such as the transition from an employee to an employer and knowing how to hire the right people.
She said the workshop will address issues such as how to surround yourself with the right people so you can reach personal business goals and how to make sure employers give employees a chance to fulfill their career goals.
The money smart workshop speaker will use a five week process created by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation to help manage finances, said Laura Cardenas, SIFE president project manager.
The event covers topics ranging from understanding what a bank account is, to explaining what credit is and how to build it. Cardenas, a senior marketing and finance major, said the speaker will also teach how to balance a checkbook and create a monthly budget.
“People in business world may struggle with this,” Cardenas said. “Maybe their husband might not let them balance the checkbook or pay the bills for example.”
Ted Legatski, the SIFE adviser , said one of the reasons for choosing the topics for the event stems from the consulting work the organization does with minorities and women from non-profit and small businesses.
“They’ve not been able to take advantage of the free-enterprise system as have others like white Anglo-Saxon Protestant males like me,” Legatski said.
Although the event is titled “for women”, Legatski said that some topics, such as “Employer to Employee” can apply to both men and women.
More than 20 hours of planning, phone calls and meetings were put into setting up the event, Cardenas said.
SIFE met with the executive director for the Fort Worth Women’s Business Center to come up with specific topics about women in business.
“We wanted to do something with balancing your life but it’s been overdone in the past year,” Cardenas said. “We put a spin on it with family, work and school as the specific areas.