Register for the 2024 Women of Distinction Awards Luncheon

Join the Missouri Athletic Club in celebrating this year’s four honorees from the community, along with one Rising Star. Each honoree has demonstrated tremendous vision and mentorship in business, civic, and philanthropic endeavors. Register on the MAC app or call 314-539-4470.
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Missouri Athletic Club Connections highlights the foremost private club in St. Louis known for attracting exceptional people and enriching lives for generations.

Transcript

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Hi, and welcome to Missouri Athletic Club Connections, a podcast highlighting Missouri's only premier athletic club. The MAC is recognized as the foremost private club in Saint Louis, known for attracting exceptional people and enriching lives for generations. I'm MAC communication strategist Monica Ryan, and today we are looking ahead to the MAC Women's Initiative Group hosting the Women of Distinction Awards Luncheon: Women of Purpose and Impact presented by Mosby Building Arts. With me are President Jodi Petersen and MAC Governor Carrie Burggraf. Welcome, ladies. Thanks for being on the podcast. Thanks for having us. Of course. The Women of Distinction Awards Luncheon is coming up on October 9th. Can you share with me a little about the awards and how can people register? Sure. I can start with a little bit about the awards. So since 2011, the Missouri Athletic Club has celebrated over 50 Women of Distinction honorees. And these are women who have and continue to make pretty significant impact in our communities, whether it be in their profession, in civic engagement, in mentoring. And the one thing that all of these women have and continue to have in common is excellence, growth, grit and determination and empathy. Very cool. Very awesome, very deserving women. Yeah. One of the things we're super proud of is that there is a charitable component to it, and unlike a lot of award programs, we have $500 for each awardee, honoree to contribute to the cause of their choice, and we're really proud of that. Nice. And as far as registration goes, how can people see these amazing women receive their award? Yes, absolutely. It's a really actually, really easy if you're an MAC member and you have the app, you can go in and look at the calendar for October 9, register for the event there. If someone is wanting to do it old school or they're nonmembers, they can call either the MAC Downtown and ask for the catering office or they can go to Eventbrite and look up MAC Women of Distinction Luncheon and register there. Perfect. And what is each of your involvement with the awards? Yeah. So in 2018, Angie Minges, who is now Past President Angie Minges, was chairing the event. And following that event, she had asked if I would think about assuming accountability of the role of of chairing it going forward. And so something I was very honored to do. And so since 2019 through last year, I had the distinct pleasure of honoring of serving as the chair and have now turned the reins over to very capable hands with Governor Burggraf, and Lauren. Awesome. Awesome. And so these women that are being honored this year, can you tell me a little bit about each one of them? Absolutely. We're really excited about these women. Becky Domyan is the senior VP and marketing manager for Audacity. One of our if you know radio in Saint Louis, you know of her work. Dr. Ghazala Hayat is professor of neurology. She's the director of the neuromuscular Department and Clinical neurophysiology services at SLU. Angie Minges our own Angie Minges is the director of Partnership Marketing and Events at Nestlé Purina and our first female president at the MAC. Lindsey Niemeier. Is the president at TCARE. They're a company that supports caregivers and works to prevent burnout in caregivers. And Allie Dudenhoeffer is our rising star and she is a financial professional for BJC. BJC health care. Awesome. Awesome. I'm sure they're super excited when they heard that they were going to be honorees. How does someone become an honoree? What's that process look like? Honestly, it's great because it invites women from all over St Louis. They don't have to be MAC members and they can nominate themselves. But most often someone in the community knows of an amazing woman and would like to nominate her. Every early spring we have the nomination form available on the website and or you can call and ask for more information about it. And then they just fill out nomination form highlighting our four pillars and can get letters of support. Things like that. Pretty easy. Does anyone like vote on it from the Women's Initiative Group Committee? How does that work? We do have a Women of Distinction committee and there are core members that sit in the meeting that reviews the nomination, scores them and chooses our honorees. Awesome. They're usually fairly spirited debates which which is really nice because it I think that's what we owe to the all the nominations. And so there have been some some good discussions over the last several years in particular. But I think it's proven to be a process that works really well and helps. Obviously, when you look at the level of honorees that we've had historically as well as again, this year, you know, very top notch. So great. You know, that discussion can be very fun because that's super close, right? They're just such impressive women. And and people are trying to... It's amazing, really, to know how many women in our community are having such a significant impact. It's really it's refreshing. That's awesome. And so how did these honors start? It really was fairly straightforward. It was quite literally just to get female members in the Club as well as outside the Club, just engaged and involved. Okay, So for this year, what's the event's run of show?

We will start at 11: 5:44

30 that day with a reception. And that's a key point of it, because you get to meet the honorees face to face and at 12 we’ll go up and have lunch and the honorees will receive their awards following lunch and then one of our favorite parts with President Petersen emceeing the event is our panel discussion, where we hear more from our honorees. Awesome. President Peterson, can you give me a little sneak peek as to what some of your questions might be for the honorees? I don't know if we can disclose. You know, some of them I think, will be along the lines of just that. Each of our honorees, their experience, you know, what we typically have found in our past events is there's always kind of a common thread. And so what we try to do as a committee is really kind of start to kind of peel the layers back and really get at what is the common thing or things that each group. And what's interesting is that not only do you see that amongst an existing year set of honorees, but you see it over time. And I think that's some of the feedback that our past guests in attendance have communicated as well as that's really a unique event, not something that is just for women about women. We actually have seen over the last couple of years a fairly significant increase in men attending or men getting reservations for their counterparts, female or otherwise. And so one of the things that they have told us is, is just that is that you start to see the common threads. And so what we'll try to do is kind of delve into that in the areas where they've had impact and see how we can kind of identify this year's common thread. Great, great. So just a reminder to our listeners - who can attend this event and how do people register? It's open to anyone who would like to attend. We'd love to host them. They can either as an MAC member go to the app, they can call catering through the Downtown MAC office and they can also go to Eventbrite looking up MAC Women of Distinction Luncheon. Awesome. Well, President Petersen, Governor Burggraf, thank you so much for coming on. I'm sure that our listeners are beyond excited to start registering. Awesome. Thank you so much. Of course. Thanks for tuning in for another amazing episode of Missouri Athletic Club Connections. Stay connected with us through the events calendar, the MAC app and social media, and we'll see you soon.