Spoiler Alert: "For the most part, it all boils down to consent, communication, and the healthy processing of rejection"... intriguing, right?!

So what might 2018 have in store, particularly for women in the workplace? The National Association Female Executives (NAFE) asked people to weigh in on their predictions for the new year.

Read more about supporting each other in our professional relationships.

Lead5050 is a global professional network with a social purpose – to raise the profile of women in the international education industry and facilitate them into positions of leadership. We believe in the positive impact of women in business. We believe that when women and men work together towards gender equality we are stronger. We believe gender equality benefits men too.

As I was asked to be a mentor my first thought was: How am I going to do it? I have no time! But then I stopped for a moment and decided I wanted to help other women succeed and I must use my career achievements to reach back down and pull others up behind me – show them the way and lead them.

Melissa is an experienced Marketing Director with a demonstrated history of working in the education management industry. Skilled in Military Affairs, Event Management, Media Relations, Management, and Fundraising. Strong marketing professional with a Master's Degree focused in Digital Learning from Baker University.

It’s wonderful that the gender inequality debate in the international education industry is gaining momentum. But the question on our lips right now has got to be: where are all the men?

Yves is currently the Vice President of Operations for Open Hearts Language Academy. For 10 years, at the beginning of his professional career, Yves was a Middle and High school teacher and then a Department Head with the Edmonton Public School Board in Canada. In 1991, he became President of Nacel Canada Inc. and in 2001 added to his responsibilities the role of President of CLC Inc.

We want staff members, male or female, to know that we support and encourage their ambitions as leaders. We need to ask ourselves what changes we can implement, personally and professionally, so they’ll sense that support. We also need to ask ourselves whether our professional framework allows employees to reach their leadership goals. President & C.E.O

Rick Rattray is the founding Managing Director of ILSC GlobalFoundations. ILSC partners with universities to develop specialized on-campus co-curricular language and academic foundation programs designed to better attract, support, and retain international students. Prior to GlobalFoundations. Rick held education industry senior executive roles at Barbri, Shorelight, ReliasLearning, Colloquy (which he co-founded), and Kaplan. Rick has a Master’s degree in Public and Private Management from Yale University, and a Bachelors of Arts in Political Science from Florida Atlantic University.

We can celebrate that organisations like Lead5050 exist. It has shone a much needed light on gender inequality in international education – an issue many people in our industry are in denial of.

It’s been a week since Lead5050’s Inaugural Women in Leadership Awards and Lead5050 panel at ICEF. It gave me much to think about and I wanted to share some of these thoughts with you. In a nutshell, the Saturday Awards gala was fun and festive and allowed us to acknowledge and celebrate our peers’ achievements.

I was brought up in an entrepreneurial family. My mother, Marguerite, planted the seed of what we now know as EC, the chain of schools that specialises in English language learning.

When you meet someone with confidence, you just know it. They speak directly. They make more statements. They ask fewer questions. They seem unbreakable. Whether it is with friends, a significant other, or within the workplace, having confidence is critical in so many areas of our lives.

As women there are lots of things around in the workplace that hinder us on our way to the top but one that isn’t often talked about is how we actually hinder ourselves.

This year, Insight Lingua Russia celebrates 25 years in business - a fantastic achievement and one they are quite rightly, very proud of. Started by Elena Solomonova who you’ll also have seen is one of our #First50, and now co-run with daughter Anastassia Romanenko - here is their story as told by Anastassia.

Growing up in a family and culture where women are strong willed and respected for this, it was not until my professional life that I saw things were not like that everywhere. Honestly, when I began my career, it was surprising to me that women did not see themselves as equal in the workplace. Over the years, I have grown to understand different cultures and situations but remain conscious of the gift I have gotten by having been raised in a very positive situation.

Much research suggests that a relatively small proportion of the meaning of any communication is conveyed through the words that we say. But just how critical is the choice of words to use? and is it different for men and women?