At the Detroit Regional Chamber’s 2026 International Women’s Day celebration, leading women from various sectors across the Detroit Region shared their personal interpretations of this year’s theme, “Give to Gain,” and how it impacts their lives, both personally and professionally.
View the full session recording below.
Tiffany A. Albert, Senior Vice President of Community Relations and President of BCBSM Foundation, and Chief Inclusion Officer at Blue Cross Blue Shield of Michigan, offered a powerful reflection on leadership, generosity, and how a scarcity mindset can harm women in the workforce. Albert opened her discussion with a question — how do leaders, particularly women, show up in ways that create meaningful and lasting impact?
At the heart of Give to Gain, Albert explained, is the understanding that generosity is not a loss of power — it is a “multiplier.” She’s experienced this in her own career mentorships. “It’s the lived truth that generosity isn’t loss of power, but a multiplier. I believe that when people have the right support, whether it’s mentorship, allyship, advocacy, tools, resources, education, training, we don’t just grow,” she said. “We actually become limitless.”
She noted that sharing knowledge does not dilute expertise; it sharpens it. Sharing career experiences reinforces wisdom and helps build a stronger, more confident workforce. In Albert’s own career, every meaningful step forward came not from someone guarding information, but from someone opening a door and saying, “Let me show you how this works.”
She reinforced challenging the status quo of scarcity mindset, saying, “Scarcity mindset costs us more – what if every time we give, we’re not actually losing anything. What if that’s what causes us to succeed?”
Rather than focusing on professional milestones, Wafa Dinaro, Executive Director of the New Economy Initiative (NEI) at the Community Foundation for Southeast Michigan, centered her remarks on lived experience, dignity, and what becomes possible when people choose to give freely without knowing expectations or consequences.
At just three years old, she arrived in the United States on a plane from Lebanon. The decision to leave was not optional — it was necessary for her family’s safety. What her parents hoped to find was safety and opportunity. They found that in Detroit.
“I didn’t have to be told what hard work looked like,” she said, recalling her father leaving their house before sunrise and coming home exhausted every night, without explanation or complaint. Her parents taught her a lesson that would shape her definition of courage for the rest of her life. What began as a sacrifice from her parents turned into the possibility of a better life and changed her outlook on supporting others, from simple grocery shopping with her mother.
Years later, she realized that the store they visited was Focus: HOPE, and that the organization’s deliberate choice to lead with dignity reinforced the idea that how help is offered matters just as much as the help itself. To support that future, Dinaro challenged the audience to rethink how they defined help. The work includes supporting assistance programs and extending dignity to the most vulnerable — not as charity, but as an investment in other people and in the future. Everyone, she reminded the room, has benefited from someone giving first.
Dinaro urged the audience to see something else: future teammates, future leaders, and individuals already building skills many never develop. The ability to stay calm in complexity, to translate across systems and languages, and to advocate for others is something she has first-hand experience with.
“I have three kids and a beautiful family that I am also trying to teach what I learned the hard way,” she said. “I want them to understand that Detroit and this Region is worth betting on … and Detroit gave me all of the opportunities.”
Evette Hollins, the Vice President of Customer and Community Engagement at DTE Energy, began by naming a familiar narrative many high‑achieving women know well. Success is often defined by accumulation: titles, compensation, and influence. Women are taught to compete, to outwork, and to prove themselves to earn a seat at the table. What is rarely discussed, Holland noted, is the cost of climbing alone.
“The old definition of leadership was power. Power that was limited and protected. Power that was guarded,” Hollins said. “Success was treated like a finite resource, as if only some were meant to make it and reach the top.”
Specifically for women, success felt like something to defend rather than share. While the language around women’s empowerment has evolved, Holland challenged the audience to move beyond slogans and social media affirmations and into action, saying,“… reciprocity isn’t about good vibes, it’s also about leverage … So what if reciprocity is strategy?”
Through this, she emphasized that feelings alone do not build institutions or dismantle entrenched structural inequities — strategy does. Viewing reciprocity through a different lens, rooted in force multiplication, like Newton’s cradle. Force multiplication is a principle of physics in which a single input is intentionally transferred to create an outsized output. A force multiplier increases results without requiring proportional effort.
While organizations invest in technology to scale and in capital to expand, Holland noted, people are rarely discussed as force multipliers, despite it being such a prevalent attribute in leaders. She continued, saying that the most powerful individuals are not those who perform well only for themselves, but those who influence the performance of everyone around them.
“They don’t hoard information; hey transfer it. They don’t protect access; they share it. They don’t guard credibility; they lend it. Reciprocity is the mechanism. Force multiplication is the outcome,” she said. “When one woman is alone, it’s progress. But when she becomes a force multiplier, that’s acceleration.”
In a candid and personal discussion, Mariyah Saifuddin, the Chief Executive Officer and Co-founder of Innovative Solution Partners, told attendees to value their own paths, to stop judging themselves so harshly, and to recognize that leadership is not about having it all figured out, but about showing up authentically and creating space for others to do the same.
Sitting in a mock interview during business school across from an MBA student, she recalled being dismissed with a single phrase: “daddy’s little girl.” In that moment, years of hands‑on experience helping with her parents’ business were erased. Judgment was easy; the context was ignored. As a result, she felt small, invisible, and angry.
After proving that MBA student was wrong by landing a role at a Big Six consulting firm, she struggled. Without a mentor and unsure how to navigate the system, she felt lost. What followed was exhaustion and burnout. The work drained her spirit, and the reality of her life never matched the ideal image she held in her head. On the outside, she appeared successful, but internally, nothing felt balanced. Depression and burnout took hold, intensified by impossibly high expectations of herself.
A turning point came unexpectedly, through a phone call from the daughter of an immigrant client. The young woman was starting her first job and felt mentally overwhelmed, drained, and fearful of what exiting that role might mean for her future. In her moment of uncertainty, she reached out to someone she believed would understand — Saifuddin.
That call created a powerful full‑circle moment. For the first time, she saw her own journey clearly. Simply by showing up, raising a family, leading a business, and staying engaged in the community, she had become visible to someone else. As she reflected, leadership is not defined solely by accomplishments. It is defined by what others believe is possible because you did it.
In that moment, the young woman did not need a polished answer. She needed someone to listen, to be honest, and to offer encouragement grounded in real experience. And most importantly, this interaction gave Saifuddin something she did not know she needed. Permission to own her greatness, value her lived experience, and recognize that her experiences forging her own path mattered.
“She gave me permission to own my greatness. We all have it. It’s our values. It’s our beliefs. It’s our talents. We all have greatness,” she said. “She gave me permission to own and value my own journey.”
Saifuddin serves as a reminder for women to stop looking at themselves so harshly through the lens of unrealistic expectations. Feeling like a failure does not negate leadership; often, it is the very thing that shapes it. Leadership begins with believing that your story has value — exactly as it is.
