Women Leaders Archives

Vote for the G.O.A.T! Join in the Fun and Build Women’s Leadership

Plan International USA is working to build women’s leadership by inviting young people ages 13-22 to “Vote for the GOAT (Greatest of All Time).” While this acronym usually applies to football stars and other sports legends, Plan is using the acronym in a much for fun, purposeful, and world-changing way. Specifically, Plan’s GOAT competition refers to the greatest female, femme or nonbinary person advancing gender equality across the categories of visibility or representation, women’s health, equal opportunity, and gender-based violence.

Plan International USA—an independent development and humanitarian organization advancing children’s rights and equality for girls—established the “Vote for the G.O.A.T” competition to heighten awareness about those working on behalf of gender equity, and to benefit needy women and families in the developing world.

WPI Cancels Plugged In Conference, Plans to Move Online

Editor’s Note: The following message is from Andrea Pactor, Associate Director, Women’s Philanthropy Institute, Indiana University Lilly Family School of Philanthropy, regarding the 2020 Women Give conference.

Dear Friends,

Thank you for your patience as we wrestled with whether or not to move forward with Philanthropy Plugged In in light of the rapidly spreading COVID-19 situation. Yesterday, the Indiana University President made the decision to cancel the symposium easier. At Indiana University, as at several universities and businesses across the country, all travel outside the state is suspended through April 5 and we are discouraged from scheduling events with more than 100 attendees. Sad as we are not to see you in Chicago, we know, as one speaker mentioned, that this is the right thing to do.

ReflectUS Hires New CEO to Increase Women in Texas Politics

ReflectUS, the nonpartisan coalition of the nation’s leading women’s representation organizations, is pleased to announce the hire of Tiffany Gardner as the coalition’s new CEO.

Tiffany Gardner has been appointed as CEO of ReflectUS. (Image Credit: ReflectUS)

“Tiffany’s hire comes at a pivotal moment for the organization, and her leadership will help us capitalize on the heightened civic engagement of a presidential election year and advance the number of women in public office across America,” says Madalene Mielke, ReflectUS Board of Directors Chair and CEO of Asian Pacific American Institute for Congressional Studies (APAICS).

Tiffany brings a decade of extensive international experience in human rights advocacy and domestic public interest. She has worked on women’s rights, human rights and grassroots organizing throughout Africa, Southeast Asia, and the United States. She worked with the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission, the United Nations International Law Commission and Human Rights Watch and recently was the co-founder and director of the One World Exchange Program for under-represented U.S. college students and organized international solidarity coalitions. She is a former Mergers & Acquisitions associate at the New York law firm Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom LLP. She received a B.A. from Yale University, a J.D. from New York University School of Law and a LL.M. in human rights law from Columbia University Law School.

Leading Women: The Highest and Best Use of My Worth

Twenty years ago, I moved out of corporate America to focus on social change. I had been successful on Wall Street and then at a large global conglomerate, working on mergers and acquisitions, capital financing, building brand equity, launching new products and finally restructuring country portfolios in the consumer products industry. It had been quite a run. My colleagues and friends were puzzled as to why I would give up a productive career to work in a field that was not lucrative and seemed poised for uncertain gains.

I was moving on because, as an advisor to a human rights organization at that time, I experienced an epiphany while offering simple business frameworks and tools that were met by the nonprofit organization’s leaders with delight and surprise. A small pivot in my business-trained mindset was seen as a huge and innovative intervention. It made me realize that my corporate and business school training could shift the ways that these critical organizations functioned, and could even make them sustainable. And thus began my path.

Elect Women by Funding Them at Every Level: Paula Hodges

I was sitting in my office, wincing at the mid-afternoon sun bouncing off the gold dome perched atop the New Hampshire State House five years ago. The slant of the light created a glare that made it hard for me to look interested in the droning of a DC consultant who had cornered me there. He had scheduled meetings with operatives like me to talk about something “big” and “early” in the First in the Nation presidential cycle in New Hampshire – a $15 million spend to “draft Elizabeth Warren.”

Warren had just been elected to the U.S. Senate three years prior. His idea was nested in a paid and earned media schtick. He had donors. He had ideas. I was the lone progressive infrastructure staffer who had just gotten a crash course on running the state’s super PAC coalition to elect democrats up and down the ballot. I had seen a glimpse of the battlefield ahead and could have cared less about his ideas, mainly because he wasn’t actually looking for feedback.

Alliance for Women in Media Announces New Board

The Alliance for Women in Media and its Foundation (AWM/F) are pleased to announce their 2020 National Board of Directors.

The Alliance for Women in Media recently announced is 2020 National Board of Directors. (Image credit: Alliance for Women in Media)

New to the AWM Board are: Katina Arnold, vice president, corporate communications, ESPN; Abby Auerbach, executive vice president, chief communications officer, TVB; Michelle Ray, executive director, The Walter Kaitz Foundation; Sandra Rice, senior vice president, outreach and strategic partnerships, Center for Talent Innovation; and, Esther Mireya Tejeda, senior vice president, head of corporate communications & PR, Entercom.

Officers of the board have been announced as Keisha Sutton-James, Chair, vice president & CEO, Sutton Button Productions LLC, serving as chair, Heather Cohen, executive vice president, The Weiss Agency, serving as incoming chair, Christine Travaglini, president, Katz Radio Group, serving as immediate past chair, Josie Thomas, CBS, serving as treasurer, and Annie Howell, co-founder and managing partner, The Punch Point Group, serving as incoming treasurer.

Rachel’s Network and People Over Petro Battle Industry Giants

Ecofeminist funder Rachel’s Network is collaborating with the People over Petro Coalition in combating the petrochemical industry in the Ohio River Valley.

The Ohio River forms at the confluence of the Allegheny and Monongahela Rivers in Pittsburgh, and flows southwest nearly 1,000 miles to southern Illinois where it meets the Mississippi River. Several corporations, notably Shell, have projects in the works to produce plastics and chemicals in the Ohio River Valley, and have already begun building ethane cracker plants, pipelines, storage facilities, and other dirty infrastructure. These projects will foul the air and water, exposing residents of parts of Ohio, Kentucky, Pennsylvania, and West Virginia to toxic emissions, sending health costs from just three proposed plants into the billions over the plants’ lifespan. Moreover, such production exacerbates climate change and make local economies vulnerable to the boom-bust cycles typical of the energy industry.

Platforms for Good: Summer Sanders and Plan International USA

On February 20, 2020, global development organization Plan International USA announced its newest Ambassador, Summer Sanders Schlopy.

An Olympic athlete and most decorated U.S. swimmer in the 1992 Olympics, Summer is known for using her platform for good. She rose to precedence as a member of Stanford’s swimming team, taking on the 1992 National Championship and Olympic Games. In Barcelona, Summer became the most decorated U.S. swimmer with one bronze, one silver, and two gold medals.

In the early 1990s, Summer turned to television, commentating the NCAA Swimming Championships for CBS Sports, and hosting MTV’s surf-and-sun competition show Sandblast. Her numerous television accolades include correspondent, co-host, and host for a range of sporting events, TV series, and competition shows.

#EmbraceAmbition Convenes to Challenge Gender Norms

The Tory Burch Foundation, a nonprofit organization empowering women, is bringing together leaders, activists, and performers for an event billed as The Summit: Challenging Stereotypes and Creating New Norms. The Embrace Ambition Summit (#EmbraceAmbition) will be held on March 5 in New York at Jazz at Lincoln Center’s Frederick P. Rose Hall.

Speakers will include:

Tory Burch – Executive Chairman and Chief Creative Officer of Tory Burch LLC, an American lifestyle brand, and Founder of the Tory Burch Foundation;
Gloria Steinem;
Yola – Grammy-nominated singer-songwriter and musician from Bristol, England;
Ashley Judd – Author, actor, leader of the #MeToo movement and founding member of Time’s Up;
Tina Tchen – President & CEO of Time’s Up, and formerly executive director of the White House Council on Women and Girls;
Sylvia Earle – Founder of the marine environmental organization Mission Blue;
Claudette Colvin – One of two survivors of the Browder v. Gayle U.S. Supreme Court Case that ended bus segregation in Montgomery, Alabama;
Diane von Furstenberg – Fashion designer, philanthropist and Founder and Chair of her eponymous company;
Mellody Hobson – Co-CEO and President of Ariel Investments;
Deja Foxx – Founder of @GenZGirlGang, an online community of womxn; and
Anne Finucane – Vice-Chair at Bank of America, and Board Chair of B of A’s European Bank.

The Tory Burch Foundation-convened Summit will include stories and conversations featuring female leaders from Hollywood, business, science, entrepreneurship and youth movements who will tackle “challenging stereotypes and creating new norms.” The all-day summit will include performances, including short stories, spoken word, and music.

Attendees will be able to connect with women-owned businesses at the entrepreneur marketplace, visit the Tory Burch Foundation pop-up shop, and network with other attendees. Applications to attend have closed, but anyone can sign up for the free live stream of the event.

Power to Decide: Ginny Ehrlich on Repro Rights and Access

Editor’s Note: This interview in our Feminist Giving IRL series features Ginny Ehrlich, CEO of the nonprofit Power to Decide, “the campaign to prevent unplanned pregnancy.”

Ginny Ehrlich, courtesy: Ginny Ehrlich

What do you wish you had known when you started out in your profession?

When I started my career, I really wish I had truly understood the breadth of possibilities available to me. Early on, I had a limited view of what I could achieve professionally. But I have been extremely fortunate to have exceeded even my wildest professional dreams. So, what I have learned is that with grit and vision, anything is possible.

What is your current greatest professional challenge?

Category: Women Leaders