Discovery Days 2016 Brings Young Female Leaders to Comcast NBCUniversal

The event gives participants an opportunity to meet with a cross section of high ranking women and take part in skill building workshops.

This summer, Comcast NBCUniversal is proud to join the Discovery Days 2016 Tour, an event series by GenHERation that brings high school and college women inside the largest innovation companies to meet and learn from female executives.

GenHERation helps young women access professional career paths, skill building, and scholarships through their digital platform and live events. Discovery Days gives participants an opportunity to meet with a cross section of high-ranking women and take part in skill-building workshops. It runs from July 18th through August 8th in five U.S. cities: Philadelphia, New York, Washington D.C., San Francisco and Los Angeles. In addition to touring Comcast’s global headquarters in Philadelphia and NBCUniversal at the iconic 30 Rockefeller Plaza in New York, the women will visit The United Nations Foundation, Twitter and other leading organizations.

"The idea is to close the leadership gap," says Katlyn Grasso, Founder of GenHERation. "We can show these young women ‘you can do anything’ by physically bringing them to where these female executives work."

Although women have made major strides in the U.S. workforce—49 percent of job holders are women according to a 2014 report by CareerBuilder—those changes have yet to reach the top. Women comprise just 4% of CEOs, less than 10% of top earners, and less than 20% of board members in S&P 500 companies, according to Catalyst.

Grasso, who grew up in Buffalo, New York, attended an all-girls high school and served as a Girl Scout before graduating from Wharton in 2015. She says her family nurtured female leadership.

"When I got interested in the business world," she says, "I realized there were so few women starting and leading companies. I wanted to change something about that."

As a young, female leader, Grasso got to know Comcast NBCUniversal through engagement events, including the Millennial Trains Project and Tomorrow Tour.

"Comcast is all about supporting and enabling entrepreneurship," she says. "They’ve shown me that it doesn’t matter where you are in the world – if you can connect to the entrepreneurial community, you can build something that has a lasting, sustainable impact."

She’s been encouraged by her relationships at Comcast NBCUniversal with Senior Executive Vice President David L. Cohen, Chief Business Development Officer of Comcast Cable Sam Schwartz, Senior Director of Entrepreneurial Engagement Danielle Cohn, and Fellow and Vice President of Community Investment Charisse Lillie.

"From partnering with diverse organizations to empowering people with disabilities to increasing the number of women leaders across our company, our commitment to being the model company for diversity and inclusion has never been stronger," says Cohen.

In just two years, Grasso has grown GenHERation to 60,000 members and partnered with major organizations–including Adobe, espnW, and American Heart Association–to help young women build campaigns that improve their communities.

Grasso looks forward to introducing Comcast NBCUniversal to a new generation of female leaders when the tour stops by New York on August 2nd and Philadelphia on August 8th.

"There's still value in connecting people and ideas together in a tangible space," says Grasso. "We’re helping these companies to engage with these young women at a very impressionable age."

If you’re interested in partnering with Comcast NBCUniversal to help grow entrepreneurship, please get in touch.