Women at Apogee Conducts the First Summit

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The Women at Apogee program started with a mission to build a strong community of women across Apogee, providing encouragement, career guidance, and social support. This initiative is being spearheaded by Jane Boyce, President of Large Scale Optical, and Leah Rickert, VP of Staffing and Diversity, with the official program launch in November 2023. This is a voluntary program that commenced with a smaller group, providing the opportunity to develop, evaluate, and adapt core program elements before expanding.

This program is an outcome from focus groups that were conducted by Jane and Leah with women throughout Apogee. Key themes were identified through these sessions that centered around elevating the experience of women at Apogee, including building an internal community, offering external inspiration, providing training and development opportunities, and evaluating benefits and workplace offerings.

To help kick-off this program, a Women at Apogee Leadership Summit was held in Minneapolis at the beginning of November. The Summit was a significant success, with 65 women in attendance, representing every segment of the company. The event served as a platform to establish social connections, align on program goals, develop the structure for mentoring circles, and introduce professional tools and resources to aid in career development. The level of energy and engagement displayed over the course of the two days was truly remarkable.

Looking ahead, initial next steps to drive this program include implementing Mentoring Circles, further refining program branding and messaging, and planning additional activities to build on the momentum. The Mentoring Circles will be made up of small groups of employees who meet to support one another in their professional and personal development. Circles are a space where members can freely exchange advice, skills, knowledge, and expertise on a variety of topics.


Jane and Leah are thrilled with the inaugural launch and look forward to expanding and developing the program further.