Above: Female leaders from Konica Minolta and some of its dealer partners participated in the Women’s Leadership Summit at the LPGA Pelican Women’s Championship held November 10-13, 2021.
Konica Minolta announced a new dealer program, Step Together. Built to inspire their professional development, Step Together will bring the women of the office technology industry together for support, collaboration and inspiration. Introduced at Konica Minolta’s recent Dealer Summit, the program strives to build community, create a positive environment to share experiences and build intentional leaders.
The Step Together program will officially commence this summer with a series of virtual sessions featuring special guests, culminating in a live event at the LPGA Pelican Women’s Championship in November in Belleair, Florida. As the title sponsor for the tournament last year, the company leveraged its participation by inviting a group of female leaders from its dealer community to attend the Raymond James Women’s Leadership Summit, which was part of the event. Konica Minolta is also the official multifunction printer of the PGA Tour.
Konica Minolta has had much success with its similar internal program, Step Forward. Started in 2015, Step Forward was developed to inspire women in professional excellence. The program is open to all employees, and focuses on helping women develop leadership skills and men to understand how they can impact change. Since its inception, the company has seen a 118% increase in the number of women at the director level. This growth demonstrates Konica Minolta is focused on increasing representation with talented women in entry level roles, as well as developing and advancing women in leadership roles.
Step Forward provides a forum to bring women together and support them in their career advancement. Monthly meetings, open to both men and women, feature an inspirational speaker. Prior to the pandemic, live meetings yielded 100+ in-person attendees. The program went virtual in 2020 and was rolled out nationally last year, currently seeing upwards of 650 employees at each session. Recent topics have addressed health and wellness, being resilient and different leadership styles.
“There are going to be more and more women breaking glass ceilings and we want to be a driving force for that, which was our inspiration for the Step Forward internal program and now the Step Together dealer program,” said Kay Fernandez, senior vice president, Marketing, Konica Minolta. “We’re eager to get Step Together underway and create a really dynamic network for communication among the women in our dealer channel.”
Additionally, in partnership with Exec Online and Berkeley Executive Education, Konica Minolta provides online courses to empower women through its Accelerating Women in Leadership program. The company also recently launched its first LGBTQ employee resource group, called Vibrant, which drew nearly 200 employees at its first meeting.
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