LVHN Celebrates Women Through Lehigh Valley Business Empowering Women Award

Lehigh Valley Health Network (LVHN) has a long-standing tradition of hiring and promoting women within the organization. Across the health network and at every location, women lead the way. They hold leadership titles such as supervisor or manager and are also in chief, chair, administrator, vice president, senior vice president and president positions. More than a thousand women are leaders in the organization.

At LVHN, we are passionate about offering mentoring opportunities and employee resource groups to help colleagues connect with each other to learn and grow. As colleagues grow professionally and explore the possibility of earning a degree, LVHN provides support through individualized academic career consulting, defined career paths and educational support, including discounts and tuition reimbursement. Career paths help colleagues at every stage of their career see the opportunity to build a career with LVHN. Given the size and breadth of our health network, there are numerous opportunities to grow a career over a professional lifetime at LVHN, and these will only continue to expand.

LVHN has a proven track record of elevating women, encouraging their growth and supporting their leadership. The Women Physicians Advisory Group (WPAG) was started in early 2012. The original mission of WPAG was “to facilitate opportunities of interaction and networking between women medical students, residents, fellows and teaching faculty.” Due to increasing interest expressed by other women physicians, the group expanded to include all women physicians within LVHN in its activities. In January 2015, this LVHN Clinicians in Leadership group received a grant through the endowed chair of Thomas Whalen, MD, LVHN's Chief Medical Officer who retired in 2020, which allowed the sessions to continue and provided funds to grant 17 leadership development scholarships during 2015-2017 for young women medical students, residents and faculty.

LVHN launched Women in Leadership and Learning (WILL) in 2022 to promote leadership development, support, advocacy, self-promotion and education around the inclusivity and success of women in leadership roles. WILL connects the women of LVHN with each other and encourages them to reach new heights in their work and life through mentoring opportunities, inspirational speakers, panel discussions and enjoyment collaboratives. This group is the next evolution of the LVHN Clinicians in Leadership group, which launched six years ago. WILL focuses on the acknowledgement of all women as leaders navigating a broad range of personal and professional roles over a lifetime. The objectives of WILL are:

• Create a community to support women in leadership roles
• Develop and hold events – educational, developmental and advocacy based – to address the gender gap and gender stereotypes that exist in the workplace
• Provide advocacy for women in the workplace to achieve more equity and inclusion

LVHN celebrates women who make a difference. Women at LVHN are consistently recognized with the prestigious Women of Influence Award from Lehigh Valley Business. Each year, Lehigh Valley Business honors the region’s most accomplished and impactful businesswomen with the Influential Women in Business Award. These exceptional women are leaders in their fields, and each shares a commitment to excellence, integrity and making the region a better place to live and work. They also give the invaluable gift of time to others by making it a priority to mentor the next generation of leaders.

LVHN also makes many community investments to empower women. The health network is a longtime premier sponsor of the Lehigh Valley Women’s Summit, one of the largest gatherings of women leaders and influencers in the region with more than 700 women in attendance, as well as Girl Scouts of Eastern Pennsylvania’s annual Lehigh Valley Take the Lead event, which honors incredible women leaders who are positive role models in our community. In Carbon County, LVHN serves as an ongoing sponsor of the Carbon Chamber’s Women in Business program, which hosts monthly educational luncheons. Other community investments include annual sponsorship of the YWCA of Allentown’s The Perfect Fit program, where each year more than 600 women find the clothing and confidence necessary to start a job and build a career, and support of Bloom for Women (BW) and the BW NICE Red Shoe Luncheon. In 2024, LVHN showed its support of the Empowering Women Awards program and the Women of Influence Awards program through sponsorship.

LVHN was honored at an event in Reading with other award recipients on Thursday, Aug. 8.

LVHN colleagues are invited to join WILL. Email lvhnwillpower and express your interest in joining the group. All colleagues are welcome. If there is LVHN WILL, there is a way!