A breezy poolside welcome on the Miami bay marked the start of our 2016 Prime Global Women's Leadership conference, where we embarked on a journey with 64 women from all over the US and Canada, as well as three international attendees from France, Germany, and Switzerland.

We spent three days learning and discussing topics such as creating relevance and impact in both our career and every day life, gender differences in communication and how to effectively communicate as a woman leader, assertive communication, and the art of negotiation. We also interacted with a panel who represented the three current working generations (baby boomers, generation X and millennials), discussed how they each operate differently, and debunked a few myths about their stereotypes.

Noha Yahia and Kristin Berry (centre) with Virginie from Paris (L) and Maryann from Switzerland (R)

Top of mind for everyone were the subjects of recruitment, employee engagement and retention. With the improvement of the US economy, many of the firms were growing and wanted to find employees that they can train and grow in to successful seniors and managers without losing them to other firms and industries. We shared with one another tips on just how to do that and the last session of the conference explored the same topic on how to motivate and engage ourselves and others in our firm.

We had many discussions regarding career development, life as an accountant, and ways to improve operations at both a firm and personal level. Specifically, the session that we felt was most relevant to us and to Shimmerman Penn was the Power of No session, which taught us how to create relevance and impact in both our careers and every day lives. This session taught us how to select projects and activities that result in good energy and help us to get to our ultimate goals, and ways to delegate or say no to activities which are not beneficial to us in the long term and do not provide us with good energy.

Great friendships were formed and we look forward to sharing our new knowledge with the firm and maintaining connections with our new Prime Global contacts.