Own It, a student-founded organization dedicated to promoting women’s leadership and empowerment, has expanded its second-annual Own It Summit to Boston College, Washington University in St. Louis and Howard University, which will offer Own It-sponsored summits in 2015.

Georgetown University Women in Leadership hosted the inaugural Own It summit last April with over 400 attendees and 30 nationally recognized speakers. Own It has separated from GUWIL and is now sponsored by the Office of Communications and Public Affairs, but still works closely with the club.

Brosnan and Ciesemier said they hope to see Georgetown as a hub for women’s leadership and programming.

“We want the summit to be recognized as this national [event] that Georgetown is putting on,” Ciesemier said. “Georgetown is supporting the events progressing across the country and [university officials] like that its seen as something that’s starting at Georgetown and kind of trickling across the country.”

“One of the reasons we started Own It was that we witnessed this issue where a bunch of high-powered women leaders are talking to themselves,” Own It co-founder Kendall Ciesemier (COL ’15) said. “We wanted to help bridge the gap between college- age women and the women that they hope to become and emulate the careers of.”

According to Own It co-founder Helen Brosnan (SFS ’16), the summit attracted attention from students and administrators at universities throughout the country. Own It is now working with the three other universities to provide a template and advice for their nascent summits.

“The summit that happens at Georgetown is the home base, and the other summits are splinters off of that in the different regions,” Brosnan said. “They will end up being smaller versions probably this year, but they are branches of Own It and we like to call Georgetown the home base.”

According to Brosnan, the group will continue to expand by communicating with local high schools, reaching out to other colleges and universities and connecting with alumni.

Members of the Own It team will travel to San Francisco in November to network at a Georgetown alumni event in order to engage a broader demographic.

“One of the reasons that we are really passionate about expanding and that we have built this summit team around expanding, is that we really want to do events that connect different types of people,” Brosnan said.  “Our primary purpose is engaging young women in these big convening events and reaching the largest audience possible.”

Own It Chief of Staff Maya Davenport (SFS ’16) said that although the summit is expanding, it will remain focused on developing an established program at Georgetown.

“The summit is expanding by extending our model as a platform for other schools, but even more importantly, the Georgetown Own It summit is working to make sure that within the Georgetown community the summit is creating an inclusive space in which every person can learn and develop,” Davenport wrote in an email to The Hoya.

This year’s Georgetown summit will occur on March 21. Alana Snyder (COL ’16), president and co-founder of GUWIL, has helped plan both summits and said that the event serves as an inspiration for young women and men.

“Basically, the goal in having a summit like this is to provide students with the inspiration to accomplish incredible things by using the speakers as platforms for motivation,” Snyder wrote in an email to The Hoya.“This means that undergraduates are exposed to dreams that some of them never even knew they had. …We hope that the women of this generation can take what they learn and change the world.”

Davenport agreed, and said she hopes the next summit will further incentivize women to become leaders.

“Our main goal for the summit is to inspire,” Davenport wrote. “The goal of the summit is to inspire young women and ignite a fire that drives them to pursue and achieve whatever dreams and goals they have.”