OWN IT has partnered with Georgetown’s Office of Public Affairs and Strategic Development for its second annual OWN IT Summit.

The office will serve as an advisory body during the planning of the summit, a daylong conference scheduled for March 28 that aims to bridge the gap between successful female leaders and college students.

OWN IT hosted its inaugural conference in April 2014 at Georgetown, bringing together over 400 attendees and 30 nationally recognized speakers to discuss women’s leadership experience. Staff from the Office of Public Affairs and the President’s Office have been working with students for the past year to plan the 2015 summit.

OWN IT co-founder Helen Brosnan (COL ’16) said that the OWN IT team proposed the idea of formal partnership earlier this year.

“We have worked with some people in the Office of Public Affairs since last year,” Brosnan said. “We had regular meetings with them, and we keep them updated so that we can get people in the university interested in the summit [to] know about it. When we met at the beginning of the year, we pitched the idea [of partnership] to them and they kind of came to us. We both realized that this would be a nice fit.”

Office of Public Affairs members who are on the OWN IT Steering Committee meet regularly with the student organizers to discuss various issues, ranging from inviting speakers to acquiring sponsorships.

“It is like running a mini-business we have no idea how to run,” Brosnan said. “And now we can have some professional advice in an institutionalized or formalized way.”

“However, at the end of the day, it’s still the students and the executive team that put this all together,” OWN IT co-founder Kendall Ciesemier (COL ’15) said.

Georgetown Associate Vice President for Strategic Communications Stacy Kerr said she believes that the OWN IT Summit aligns with the university’s commitment to fostering an environment in which women can learn and grow.

“We saw this as an opportunity to create programming and content that can benefit and inspire members of our own community and young women around the country, as proven by the other universities who are now hosting OWN IT events on their campuses,” Kerr said. “We believe that OWN IT events are providing exciting content for our community and positioning Georgetown as a leader in inspiring young women around the country.”

The university also recently formed the Georgetown Women’s Alliance, which aims to bring together women and groups from across campus. According to Kerr, GWA will serve as a formal umbrella under which many current activities can be aligned to create greater visibility for work occurring across Georgetown.

“GWA intends to create a wide range of opportunities in which Georgetown students, faculty, staff and alumni may participate and find learning, development and growth experiences like the OWN IT Summit,” Kerr said. “[OWN IT] is very consistent with the programming goals for the Georgetown Women’s Alliance and the work that they support to inspire and enrich our community.”

Although the Office of Public Affairs will be taking full responsibility for the budget of the OWN IT conference, no direct funding will be provided by the university. Instead, the budget will be completely covered by outside entities.

“We have a planning committee made up of just undergraduates, and one of our chief responsibilities is to cover our budget,” Ciesemier said. “Our sponsor this year is Bloomberg, who also sponsored last year’s conference.”

OWN IT founders said that their relationship with the Office of Public Affairs has been helpful and that the office’s experience and expertise are huge assets.

“We have been very grateful for this open partnership, and to have that kind of advice from people who do know what they are doing is just invaluable,” Ciesemier said. “It also helps to have a structure in place that encourages us to push the boundary a little bit and do exciting things within the university. This is really what makes Georgetown special — the fact that initiatives can happen here, and not just happen here but have the university say, ‘Hey how can I help you’ and ‘What resource can we offer you?’ It’s been unbelievable.”