NWA Business Women’s Conference provides personal, professional enrichment

Athlete and adventurer Rebecca Rusch told guests at the 20^th annual NWA Business Women’s Conference on Tuesday (Sept. 18) that her 1,200 kilometer bicycle trek on the Ho Chi Minh Trail through Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia was a journey of self-discovery.

In her keynote address at the John Q. Hammons Center, Rusch spoke about her father’s death when she was three years old and described herself as feeling lost most of her life. But during that bike journey, Rusch found the 40-year-old crash site where her father died during the Vietnam War. “I found the place where my dad was shot down, but I also found myself,” she said.

Rusch is a professional endurance athlete and seven-time world champion in several sports, whose career includes rock climbing El Capitan in Yosemite, swimming down the Grand Canyon, mountain biking up Mt. Kilimanjaro, and whitewater rafting as a member of the US National whitewater rafting team.

Rusch told the crowd of 1,500 that throughout her career she has learned core values that now guide her life. Her first 10 years as an endurance athlete were spent taking great risks in adventure racing, successfully managing teams and also receiving awards and accolades; teaching her that “great risk equals great reward.”

At age 38, after the death of a teammate, Rusch decided to switch to mountain bike racing and became a three-time world champion in that sport.

“It showed me that if you want something bad enough, sometimes it’s not skill, prowess or anything else, it’s about heart, grit and guts,” she said. From that, she learned that “passion equals payoff.”

In the past few years, her career has focused on solo expeditions, such as the Ho Chi Minh Trail, that were more about personal discovery and helping others.

“I started to realize that the bike is really a vehicle for change and my career started to morph into being able to use my bike and my reach to do more,” she said. That led to her final core value:  “give equals get.” She summited Mt. Kilimanjaro on her bike, raising more than $19,000 to purchase bicycles for girls in Africa in order to shorten their commute to school. In addition, she is working to bring awareness to the need to clean up unexploded bombs from the Vietnam War that remain in Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia.

Rusch left the audience with a quote from Nelson Mandela, “Everything is impossible until it’s done.”  She said her journey has been about finding her own trail, and so she re-phrases the quote to “Impossible things are accomplished when you have your own trail map.”

The morning’s motivational speaker, former CNN anchor Daryn Kagan, shared her story about losing her dream job at the cable news network. That turned out to be for the best because she found her husband and stepdaughter and a whole new career as a result. She is now an author and host of DarynKagan.com, an inspirational, online website.

Jennifer LaPerre, vice president of Partner Solutions for Mercy Virtual, was named Woman of the Year. Meredith Lowry, a practicing patent attorney for Wright, Lindsey and Jennings, was named Young Woman of the Year. Both awards are presented to women who make significant contribution to the community.

During the day-long event, guests chose between 15 different breakout sessions, including “Power of Negotiation,” “Developing and Maintaining Your Personal Leadership Brand,” “The Growing Film and Television Industry in NWA and Why It’s Good For Business,” and “Strategies for Creating an Inclusive and Diverse Work Place.”

Sponsors included Mercy Health Systems, Walmart, Sam’s Club. The event was hosted by the Greater Bentonville Area Chamber of Commerce.