Professional Development for Women at GE
GE is committed to taking on the world's toughest challenges. In order to fulfill that promise around big issues like clean energy and affordable healthcare, we rely on a culture of leadership and diversity to drive innovation and productivity. The success of diversity at GE is a reflection of the integrity of our leadership and builds a strong foundation for future leaders to continue our tradition of inclusiveness. By bringing individuals, cultures and ideas together we create a stronger company and a better world.
The Women's Network
The Women's Network is all about growth. It exists for the more than 100,000 women working at GE to cultivate their leadership skills, business practices, personal contacts and career opportunities. By engaging and developing our membership in areas such as technology and sales, we are working to provide the growth leaders who will ensure GE's success going forward.
The Women's Network was created in 1997 to help the women working at GE advance their careers and the company's business. This effort includes sharing the experience, best-practices, and knowledge of successful women role models: the executive team represents a diverse group of women from each of GE's businesses and critical corporate functions.
All Women's Network events share the goal of professional development. Typical examples include workshops, speaker engagements, mentoring and networking activities. We also reach out to the communities in which we operate, partnering with local organizations to contribute physical and financial resources for those in need.
At a global level we have established a scholarship program aimed at supporting qualified women in post-secondary school. Our goal is to support young women interested in technical or business careers while building a future pipeline of candidates for GE's entry-level leadership programs.
The Women's Network has five priorities:
- Enhance women's professional growth by providing information on coaching career paths, flexibility, and role models
- Develop new and existing commercial talent
- Foster the retention and promotion of women in technology and engineering
- Improve GE's ability to attract, develop and retain diverse women
- Cultivate the leadership competencies that reflect GE's focus on growth
Our focus on these five growth priorities will ensure that women are well prepared to realize more and better opportunities for themselves and for GE.