Beat Q&A
Lela Dinakaran-Beane leads Women Who Work towards inclusive professionalism and supportive networks
Lela Dinakaran-Beane is the co-chair of Women Who Work, a division of the Athens Area Chamber of Commerce that provides a network of support to working women in the community.
Q: What has been your most successful event and what impact did it have on those who attended?
A: We did a “Deconstructing Professionalism” event. The main premise of the event was: let's talk about what professionalism means as a whole, let's talk about how it's different for men and women and let's talk about the obstacles that we have to face as women because professionalism is different for us. And, let's take it one step further and talk about how we overcome those obstacles. At the end, it was an hour and a half luncheon, and we could have kept talking for at least three hours, so much that we could have talked about and covered in that topic. I think people walked away learning something, and if they didn't learn something, they at least felt some form of validation.
Q: How have you seen Women Who Work make a positive impact in the Athens community?
A: Definitely connecting businesses with other like-minded women, where they can foster relationships to help them personally and professionally. And then, just by leading by example. We do a big event in March and talk about our values and what we are trying to accomplish. And, we speak a lot on diversity and inclusion. One of the reasons why we changed to Women Who Work, as opposed to Women in Business, is because Women in Business sounds like it’s exclusive to those people at the top of the pyramid. But really, if we’re doing everything we say we want to do, then we shouldn’t just cut out half of the workplace. It should be a resource for all working women.
Q: How would you describe the community you have created in Women Who Work?
A: If you look at our entire committee as a whole, no two people are the same, and I think there’s a lot of strength in that. We really push the idea of women supporting women and I 100% see that happening within our group. The way that we positively impact the community is serving as a helping hand for each other.
Q: What are your future goals for Women Who Work and how do you plan to achieve them under your leadership?
A: I would love to just serve as a role model for other young women, especially women just graduating from college. I get how hard it can be joining the work field because me personally, I didn't see a lot of women of color in leadership roles. So, it was hard for me to figure out like, what does that path look like? I feel like, in a lot of ways, I had to create that on my own. So if I can make someone else's job easier in saying like, this is what I did, you can do it too; and anything you need, I'm here; and tell me what connections you are looking to build in the community, I'll see what I can do. And really just being that helping hand.
Comments trimmed for length and clarity.
Why I Wrote The Story
For this assignment, I had to conduct an in-person interview with someone in the Athens and UGA community related to my beat and create a Q&A story with their best quotes. This was my first story and official interview of the semester, where I learned the most about my strengths and weaknesses during interviews. This experience taught me how I could improve my interviews and the questions I ask, like not asking two questions at once. It was a learning experience and greatly changed all of my following interviews for this course because I was able to continue the aspects that went well and make changes from my mistakes. Writing this story helped me become more aware of finding quotes that are the most interesting and unique, which is something I had never done before. It was difficult to cut out good quotes because only the best could fit in the word count and I started to learn what kinds of quotes would be better paraphrased. Overall, this experience was a solid starting point, where I truly learned to step out of my comfort zone.
