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Joanna Robson, director of this year’s Women’s Leadership Conference, hugs public coo

Councilwoman Cindy Miscikowski told UCLA women Sunday that they need to break boundaries.

“You have the skills and the tools ... if you feel passionate about something, explore and knock on those doors,” Miscikowski said in her keynote speech at the 9th annual Women’s Leadership Conference, put on all day Sunday by the Bruin Belles Service Association.

The two other keynote speakers were Anne Firth Murray, who founded the Global Fund for Women, and Toni Yancey, an associate professor at UCLA’s Department of Health Services.

The three women, along with other panel speakers and workshop leaders, examined various aspects of life as a woman in the professional world. A major theme throughout the conference was problems that face today’s professional women.

“Even women like those of us in this room still face obstacles because of our gender,” Murray said, citing issues like sexual discrimination, choosing whether or not to have children, and domestic violence and rape.

Other speakers talked about self-esteem, eating disorders, stereotypes, unsupportive mates, conflicts between women, and the difficulties of balancing family and work.

Rebekah Fleischaker, who has worked as a car mechanic for the past 21 years, ran a workshop called “Women Who Work in a Place Filled with Dudes.” She spoke for nearly an hour about coping with the challenges of working in a male-dominated field.

“If you ever pull the girl card and use your cleavage or your butt, you will forever have lost the one power that you have,” Fleischaker said. “And if you want to be a hard-ass, you’re not going to get very far. You’re going to hit the same glass ceiling as with the boobs and butt thing.”

Fleischaker started as a secretary in an auto shop after high school, but said she got bored quickly and started teaching herself mechanics at home. Like many of the conference speakers, Fleischaker urged her listeners to find something to be passionate about and to take risks.

“Never worry about money. Money will come if you find the thing to do that you love,” she said. “We all need security, but if you’re willing to risk making a mistake and failing, you’ll get so much more out of life.”

Other workshops included a performance of “The Vagina Monologues” and a discussion of healthy ways to handle disagreements.

Jessica Weiner, who ran a workshop called “How to be an Everyday Actionist,” is an author and motivational speaker who coined the term “actionist” to describe someone who “inspires people to take action in their lives.”

“When I talked to young women about (being an) activist, it fell on a par with feminist,” Weiner said. “It meant that you had to be anti-something.” To avoid that negative connotation, Weiner started calling herself an actionist, and urged others to do the same. Before beginning her career, Weiner struggled with eating disorders, addictions, low self-esteem and depression. She discussed these issues during her workshop, as well as people’s tendencies to “live five pounds from now.”

Weiner said that people create obstacles for themselves by saying “‘I’ll be happy when...’ fill in the blank. ‘I’ll be happy when I’m thinner. My life will be great when I have a great boyfriend or husband. My life will be great when I graduate.’”

“The thing to remember is that there will never be a guarantee of what it’s going to look like for you,” Weiner said, echoing one of the conference’s main themes telling women to be flexible and take opportunities.

In addition to the speakers and workshops, the conference offered a lunch-time resource fair, with tables from organizations like the Clothesline Project, which works to raise awareness about sexual violence, and the UCLA Center for Women and Men.

The conference was directed by Joanna Robson, a second-year Spanish and psychology student and Bruin Belles member who attended the conference last year. “I was completely empowered,” Robson said of her previous experience. “I just walked out of the workshop thinking ‘I just have to be director of this next year.’ It was that amazing.”

Robson and the BBSA committee in charge of the event started having weekly meetings in October to plan everything.

“It’s on a much grander scale than anything else we put on, so it’s pretty impressive to me; the organization that went into it,” said Shawna Benard, a fifth-year psychobiology major and president of Bruin Belles.