Annual Own It Summit Continues Virtually

Hoda Kotb, others speak to Santa Clara students

Despite a closed campus, the Santa Clara Own It Summit pushed forward this year with a virtual week of speakers that attracted dozens of students. 

The Own It Summit is an annual day-long conference held at Santa Clara that gives students the chance to network, participate in workshops and hear from a variety of women working in different fields. 

While Own It is a national network of conferences that take place across college campuses, Santa Clara’s Own It Summit was first established in 2017. 

Due to the continued COVID-19 pandemic, Santa Clara Own It senior co-chairs Ella Cooper and Ellie Grimes made the decision over the summer that this year’s conference would be entirely virtual. And to limit the feeling of “Zoom fatigue,” they extended their conference to take place in pieces over the course of eight days. 

Because the summit was virtual this year, it allowed the Own It team to find speakers that otherwise may not have been able to attend this conference previously. 

“In previous years this summit was mostly people from Bay Area companies because having people fly in was just a big expense for the club that we didn’t always want to incur,” said Grimes. “We were able to have people like Hoda Kotb who we probably wouldn’t have been able to in years before.” 

Hoda Kotb headed this year’s summit. Known for being a co-host on NBC News’ Today show, Kotb kicked off the conference and attracted over 70 students to attend.

In the days that followed, students also had the opportunity to hear from the Assistant Running Backs Coach of the Washington Football Team, a Senior Correspondent at NowThis, the Head of Brand Social Media at Lyft and a development executive at Nicole Kidman’s Blossom Films. 

For Grimes, she learned that the virtual nature of this year’s summit wasn’t inherently bad and provided a lot of opportunities. 

“[Being virtual] doesn’t have to be a bad thing necessarily,” said Grimes. “Being online can really open up some doors for not only the club but for the students to participate in as well at Santa Clara.”