The theme this year was ‘Moving Forward’.
AB Wire
NEW YORK: BAPS Swaminarayan Sanstha hosted their ninth annual Women’s Conference at 11 centers across North America, to inspire women of all ages to push themselves further in the pursuit of their dreams, while making a commitment to bring other women along.
The conference, themed “Moving Forward,” focused on creating positive change that starts from within. Over 1800 women gathered at the BAPS Swaminarayan mandirs in four cities (Edison, New York, Robbinsville, Washington, D.C.) in the northeast region to participate in this annual conference.
The event was held over one-day and covered three key concepts: compassion, forgiveness, and perseverance. At the conference in New York, the attendees were moved by special guest Dr. Uma Mysorekar, President of Hindu Temple Society of North America, who eloquently spoke of compassion being one of the strongest attributes she holds as a leader. She shared her personal journey of finding happiness through compassion for herself and others.
Dr. Mysorekar, speaker at the conference in New York elaborated on how this quality made her an effective leader and mentor in life. The audience was moved by her experiences and recognized the value of shifting ones perspective to build a positive outlook on accomplishing goals.
The conference continued with a session on forgiveness, and how this tool can help one advance her life in ways previously thought unimaginable.
“If we want to live a happy life, we must forgive. If we want to lead a healthy life, we must forgive. In order to move forward, we must forgive,” said Rupal Patel, at the conference in Edison, NJ. She led the audience through an interactive discussion on practicing the art of forgiveness and left attendees with a challenge to move forward from negative situations and circumstances.
In this presentation, the audience was encouraged to put themselves in the shoes of another and learn to let go, as forgiveness leads to healing and happiness. In the conference at New York, Vilpa Patel, Clinical Educator representing Astra-Zeneca’s Diabetes in Rhode Island and Massachusetts said, “In olden days, ‘forgiveness’ was referred to as ‘veer bhushanam’ which means ‘a brave soldier’s ornament’ because it takes a strong will-powered person to forgive.”
In closing to the conference, in New York, Seema Vyas, Vice President at Optum, motivated the audience by creating an environment of introspection. She asked the audience to think of all the obstacles and failures they face in their day-to-day lives and take note of the small instances where they have persevered. By sharing her own struggles, she took the audience through a journey of overcoming challenges by recognizing patterns of failure and correcting them with more achievable, measurable goals.
Kavita Patel, a dentist by profession, speaking at the conference in Edison created an environment of camaraderie amongst the women in the audience to realize that the power of perseverance was within them all, they just need the right strategies and motivation to continue moving forward in life.
Sharing her thoughts on the conference at Robbinsville, chief guest, Ruma R. Som, a consultant for Assa Abloy Door Security Solutions said, “After the Women’s Conference, I realized the straightforwardness of all the components for moving forward, namely, forgiveness, compassion, and perseverance. Such components are easily understood, but rarely put into practice. Everyone understands the importance of each component, but today’s conference showed us how to actually go about doing so.”
Speaking after the conference in Washington, DC, Ami Shah, Managing director at Fortress Investment Group said, “Having three teenage daughters, I was very impressed at what they did and that was an eye opener. And I think with them and the appropriate topic of ‘Moving Forward’, you could not hit a better tone in that regard.”
The chief guest at the conference in New York, Mojgan Cohanim Lancman, Judge at Supreme Court of Queens, NY, said, “It’s very important that we give our girls the confidence, support and the virtues we learned today and inspire them to move forward so they can accomplish great heights.”
After the conference speakers were available for one-on-one mentoring to help attendees with their own professional and personal growth.