Published on 01-31-2025
For many women, one of the largest hurdles to career advancement is owning their seat at the table. The Monarch Leadership Conference at the Daniels School of Business features two trailblazing Purdue alumnae, Jocelyn Wong and Stacey Burr, whose years of broad business experience helped them command the room. They will share their keynote insights with this year’s conference attendees.
Jocelyn Wong, a visionary business strategist with more than 25 years of experience across consumer-packaged goods, retail, and on-demand delivery platforms, brings her expertise in leveraging data-driven strategies to create long-term success. Her career highlights include leading transformative marketing initiatives at Lowe's and Gopuff, as well as serving on the boards of diverse companies.
Stacey Burr, a pioneer in wearable sensing technology and former VP at Adidas, revolutionized the industry by commercializing e-textiles and spearheading innovations like the miCoach Elite athlete monitoring system.
This year’s speakers embody the conference's focus on breaking barriers and and building self-confidence, topics that student-led conference organizers identified as crucial for women launching careers in business. Headliners Wong and Burr have spoken to Executive Forum students in the past. Their stories of resilience and ingenuity promise to empower the next generation of women leaders to claim their seat at the table and define success in their own terms.
The Monarch Leadership Conference, now in its 16th year, has grown into a premier women's leadership conference that is making waves not just within Purdue, but across the Big Ten and beyond.
At the helm of this year's conference are Chloe Newman and Disha Panda, serving as Co-Vice Presidents of the Conference for Women in Business, a Purdue student organization. Their leadership exemplifies the school's commitment to developing women leaders from within its student body.
Disha Panda remembers the first day she walked into class, scanned row upon row, and couldn’t find another woman in the room. She subsequently joined Women in Business. She and Newman have been involved with the Monarch conference throughout most of their time at Purdue. Their vision is to cultivate business environments that create space for everyone and help women own a place at the table even when they are in a minority.
Panda and Newman focused the 2025 conference on breaking barriers and building self-confidence to increase women in business spaces. The organizers identified these as critical issues facing women in business. The leaders chose this year’s topics, including overcoming implicit bias, inclusive leadership, conflict resolution in diverse workplaces and building confidence in the boardroom.
Newman and Panda organized the conference around feedback from last year’s conference, reviewing all the data before writing a mission for this year. This allowed them to tailor complex business topics into digestible, applicable content for jobs and student life, making the conference particularly relevant and impactful for its audience.
The conference has expanded rapidly in recent years and will host 240 attendees across Purdue’s campus and other Big Ten universities. Cara Putman, faculty advisor to Women in Business and the Monarch Leadership Conference and director of the Brock-Wilson Center for Women in Business, encourages each year’s leaders to think of the conference as becoming the premiere women in business leadership conference.
It also stands as a testament to the Daniels School's commitment to empowering women in business leadership. By fostering a student-led initiative that addresses crucial issues, provides networking opportunities, and offers practical leadership experience, the school is actively shaping the next generation of women business leaders. As the conference continues to grow and evolve, it promises to play an increasingly important role in advancing women's leadership in the business world.
