Description

Executives Club: Workforce Development: Filling the Gap in our Workforce featuring Sylvia Acevedo, CEO of Girls Scouts of the USA

The workforce of the future will need more well-trained STEM professionals. American innovation, productivity and global competitiveness depend on it. Girl Scouts knows that girls are America’s great untapped resource. While women make up half of the total U.S. college-educated workforce, they hold only 29 percent of science and engineering jobs. Girl Scouts is expanding its reach and impact, doubling down on the commitment to fuel this pipeline and ensuring that our country remains strong, dynamic and competitive in the industries of the future.

As the Quad Cities community works to develop a talent pipeline and ensure that young people are equipped to fill jobs of tomorrow, Acevedo will share her perspective on the role we all play in ensuring the next generation is prepared for jobs and leadership.

Sylvia Acevedo, CEO of Girl Scouts of the USA, is a longtime advocate for underserved communities and girls’ and women’s causes.  Sylivia’s accomplishments include:

2019 InStyle #7 Women Changing the World
2018 Forbes America’s Top 50 Women in Technology
2018 Fast Company Most Creative People
2018 Author of Path to the Stars
 
Committed to Girl Scouts’ mission of building girls of courage, confidence, and character, who make the world a better place, Sylvia was involved with Girl Scouts long before being named CEO. As a girl growing up in New Mexico, after her family suffered a major tragedy, Sylvia was forced to move and leave behind her school, her neighborhood, and her friends. It was this move that brought her to Girl Scouts, which would change her life forever. Her troop provided the tools and experiences not widely available to girls of her background at that time. In Sylvia’s words, “This life-changing experience showed me what leadership looked like and enabled me to pursue leadership as a goal.”  
 
Over the years Sylvia has spoken across the country about the importance of helping girls discover their strengths, passions, and talents.
 
Sylvia is a member of the President’s Advisory Commission on Educational Excellence for Hispanics and serves as chair of its Early Learning Subcommittee. She understands the U.S. education system and the challenges parents face in their children’s educational journey, and has traveled nationwide, talking with educators about the Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Family Engagement curriculum, which she authored to help narrow academic achievement gaps in America. She is currently developing an aspirational memoir for middle school students that promotes STEM.  
 
A talented technology executive who has held positions with some of the world’s most respected companies, previously Sylvia was the founder, president, and CEO of CommuniCard LLC, a marketing firm known for its innovative approaches to working with changing community demographics. Prior to that, she served in executive and business development roles at REBA Technologies, Dell Computer Corporation, Autodesk Inc., Tandem Ungermann-Bass, Apple Computer, and IBM—and she began her career as a rocket scientist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory. 
 
Sylvia was one of the first Hispanic students, male or female, to earn a graduate engineering degree from Stanford University—an MS in industrial engineering—and she holds a bachelor of science degree with honors in industrial engineering from New Mexico State University.  
 
This program is exclusively for Presidents, CEO's and Executives, register to attend

**Cancellation Policy - If you need to cancel your registration, you must do so more than 72 hours prior to the event date in order to receive a full refund.