Pilot Takes Off: The Kosoy Women in Business Program

Starting in fall 2024, 40 students are the first participants in an ambitious pilot program designed to improve the student experience for women at Georgetown McDonough.

The Kosoy Women in Business program, funded by Georgetown parents Brian and Andrea Kosoy (P’25), will involve career workshops, guest speakers, company site visits, and more — all designed to tackle the specific challenges women face in business education and in their careers.

Below, Ginny Randall, assistant director for undergraduate career programs, offers an overview of the program’s goals, and why it matters.

How did you become involved with Georgetown McDonough?

I was brought in specifically to help launch this new program — and to build out support for the undergraduate side of the McDonough Career Center. Most recently, prior to joining Georgetown, I had started my own career coaching business.

Why is a program like Kosoy Women in Business important?

Part of it is that there are less female students at McDonough, at least compared with other parts of the university, and we consistently hear about the experience of being the only woman in a group project or going out into your first internship, and you may be one of the only women working in a team of all men. We’ve noticed there is just a disparate experience between being a male-identified student and being a female-identified student.

Over the course of the last year or so, we were lucky enough to receive funding for a three-year pilot program, wherein we work with a cohort of students to build very tangible, actionable programming about building confidence and leadership skills both in and out of the classroom. A lot of leadership development programs focus on soft skills. This program is focused on how we can actually measure — from the beginning of the program to the end of the program — the ways in which students are actively growing in their leadership skills. They are volunteering to lead more projects. They are speaking out, speaking up, really making an impact in their classrooms and their workplaces.

What challenges do women face that are different from what men face?

I held a couple of listening sessions with groups of students early in my time here to get a sense of how to shape the scope of this program. What I heard consistently from our undergrads is that there are primarily male professors. Many of them have made intentional strides to be more inclusive in their language, but I heard an example from one student that a professor didn’t know what business attire to recommend to female students.

These things are probably not intentional. But there are biases that are experienced by female students in the classroom that aren’t experienced by male students in the classroom. And on the social side, there is this idea that there’s a boy’s club. Female students will consistently score well in class, but they’re the ones who are not raising their hands to contribute to group discussions, because when they do raise their hands they’re being cut off by other students.

Walk us through the details of the new program.

We opened up applications this past spring and selected our first cohort of 40 students, which is way bigger than we expected because of the interest that we’ve had.

We’ll have a kick-off workshop at the beginning of the fall semester where students will get to know each other. And there will be a group project component where they get to work together to really shape the future of this program moving forward. The idea is, we’ll have rising sophomores, rising juniors, and rising seniors in this 40-person cohort. We’ll split them up into different groups, so they get the chance to really build those peer and mentor relationships.

We’ll also be hosting a number of speakers and workshops throughout the year, based on needs we’ve identified in listening sessions. We’ll have one on building your personal brand and how to talk about yourself effectively. We’ll have one on personal finance, which is something I heard repeatedly requested by students. We are still in the process of booking some of our workshop speakers, but we are going to have a balance of leadership, personal development, and skill building — and some exposure to different industries and different job opportunities.

What part of the program excites you the most?

The community-building piece — specifically for those people who feel like, “I’m the only one in the room that experiences this. I’m the only one that’s asked to take meeting notes when I’m on the group project. I’m the only one that is responsible for formatting the PowerPoint instead of being able to present the ideas that I contributed to a group project.”

It’s realizing you’re not alone in it. That is the biggest differentiator for students to be able to build confidence and be able to speak up for themselves because they recognize, “I’m not the only woman experiencing discrimination or disadvantage in this particular context.” And if I realize that I’m not the only one, that actually gives me a little bit more incentive to speak up and make a change.