JAWS CAMP 2025 Session: Sign Your Permission Slip: Reclaiming Power in Your Career Crossroads with Theola DeBose
(WASHINGTON, DC) - JAWS’ 40th Anniversary Conference and Mentoring Program (CAMP) will be held September 5-7, 2025 at The Royal Sonesta Hotel in Washington, DC’s Dupont Circle neighborhood.
Join us on Sunday, Sept. 7 for a session titled Sign Your Permission Slip: Reclaiming Power in Your Career Crossroads with Theola DeBose, creator of JSKILLS. Too often, women wait for someone else to validate their next step — an editor’s approval, a mentor’s blessing, or a job posting that feels like a “fit.” Real growth happens when you give yourself permission to move, to change, and to claim the opportunities you can pursue right now.
In this session, former Washington Post journalist-turned-career coach Theola DeBose invites you to step into the driver’s seat of your career. Drawing on stories of reinvention and resilience, she will offer practical strategies to quiet external noise, trust your instincts, and rewrite the rules of what’s possible.
Audience Takeaways:
Identify the invisible “permission barriers” holding you back.
Reframe fear and doubt as signals of growth.
Leave with a concrete next step — your signed “permission slip” to take your next best step.
What happens at CAMP? This will be JAWS’ 40th CAMP. While the format and size have varied over the years, the goal has not: to bring women journalists together from different specialties, beats, demographics and geographies to share with, learn from and empower each other. There will be structured presentations and workshops, planned social events and free time for unstructured relationship-building and city exploration. The CAMP Site Selection Committee chose Washington, D.C. based on feedback from members urging a balance between an urban setting allowing easier travel with access to a get-away-from-it-all vibe. The committee also took into account the venue’s capacity, support for conferences, cost and central location.
Stay tuned for more programming announcements and updated information on the CAMP page.
ABOUT THE SPEAKER:
Before starting JSKILLS, a career change university, Theola DeBose was a corporate Transition Coach for professionals after a company layoff. In journalism, she was an award-winning reporter at The Washington Post and worked in the local and federal government in education and arts and culture.