The Students Offering Support program (SOS) hosted Carlmont’s first annual women’s conference, “Aspire to Inspire” to encourage girls to make goals for themselves in the future.

The conference featured 31 speakers from different industries who talked about their careers and how they became successful. A few of the speakers included Lauren Chief Elk, a women’s rights activist, current teachers and counselors at Carlmont, and Carlmont graduates.

Sophomore Sophie Fox commented, “I thought it was really inspiring to see women being successful in different forms of work and it got me excited for my future.”

SOS led the conference by asking the speakers questions such as the pros and cons of their job, their role models, and how high school and college education helped them in their careers.

Kristen Dames, a member of SOS said, “The women’s conference was Ms. Bustamante’s idea. We wanted to do it because we wanted to show women different job opportunities and get speakers to share their stories and get all kids, not just girls, to understand different ways to get jobs, not neccessarily just four year colleges.”

There were many speakers throughout the night, so there were a limited amount of questions a speaker could answer. Some students in the audience wanted to have more time to ask their own questions to the career women.

Fox said, “I wish that it was more interactive. I wanted to ask different questions to different people.”

Overall, many students were inspired by the stories of the women.

Dames noted, “We had about 31 speakers and listening to their stories and what inspired them and what made them who they are today, inspired me. A lot of them stuck with school, worked hard, and took advantage of volunteer opportunities.”