AMBASSADOR ALICE DEAR

Board Chair, Women’s eNews

Former U.S. Executive Director of the African Development Bank

Member of the International Planning Committee of the Global Summit of Women

Ambassador Alice Marie Dear, Africanist, banker, consultant, and diplomat has enjoyed and excelled in multiple careers with a global focus. In each endeavor she has proudly deployed her creative energy to empower women and girls.

In this milestone year, the Honorable Alice Dear celebrates her 50-year membership in Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority, Incorporated. She became a member on the very Howard University campus in Washington, DC where the international service organization was founded in 1908. She credits AKA, the first Greek-lettered organization founded by African American college-educated women, with modeling for her at an early age how to leverage the power of women through collaboration, preparation and service. AKA enabled her to develop and fine-tune critical leadership skills for success. Those early building blocks propelled her career achievements that we celebrate this evening.

Ms. Dear honed her skills in international banking, finance and marketing during an 11-year tenure on Wall Street in the Middle East and Africa Group at Irving Trust Company, now Bank of New York Mellon. Her familiarity with the nuances of African business, economic, political and cultural affairs complemented her skills acquired at Irving as an international lending officer, trade finance specialist and marketing officer for operational services.

She left banking in 1988 as a Vice President to launch an international consulting business with a focus on Africa, and to make a difference in the lives of those she encountered.

In early 1994 President Bill Clinton appointed Alice Dear, with unanimous Senate confirmation, as U.S. Executive Director of the African Development Bank Group, Africa’s premier financial institution headquartered in Abidjan, Cote d’Ivoire. From 1994-2000, Ambassador Dear, the first woman appointed to this position, represented the U.S. Government on the Boards of Directors of the African Development Bank Group, sharing responsibility for oversight of the Bank’s financial, operational and administrative management, including its then $3 billion annual lending portfolio, a key contributor to the economic development and social progress of the Bank’s 54 regional member countries.

LORI SOKOL Executive Director & Editor-in-Chief

Lori Sokol, Ph.D., assumed the role of Executive Director and Editor-in-Chief of Women’s eNews in July, 2016. She previously served as it’s Board Chair in 2012-2013. Dr. Sokol was the Founder and President of Sokol Media, LLC, publisher of magazines that advocate for diversity, inclusion and sustainability in the workplace. Striving to empower individuals to triumph over gender-related societal limits so they can reach their full potential unhindered, her articles have been published in such major market publications as the NY Times, Slate.com, Ms. Magazine and The Huffington Post. She has also been interviewed in the Wall Street Journal, Forbes, MSNBC, CNBC, Spectrum’s NY1 and WPIX.

As a doctoral candidate in Educational Psychology, Dr. Sokol’s research specifically focused on the media’s influence in crafting gender roles, further seeking to expose how stereotypes are created and maintained. She has published academic articles on the intersection of psychology and the media, taught seminars on Media Psychology through the University of Beijing, China, and served as an Adjunct Professor in the Psychology Department at Montclair State University where she taught the course, Psychology of Women.

In 2009, Dr. Sokol was elected to the Asian Women Business Council’s Executive Committee as its U.S. representative to help Asian female business owners expand their reach into the United States. She has also served as a national keynote speaker for the Society of Marketing Professionals and the International Telework Association Council, and internationally at the Asian Women Entrepreneur Conference in Seoul, and the International Women in Commerce Summit in Kuala Lumpur. In December, 2018, Dr. Sokol was featured in The Femocrats, About Face portrait series at Art Basel in Miami, a dynamic art series created to effect profound social change by challenging concepts of gender, race, identity and nature (see portrait image above).

Dr. Sokol is a member of the National Press Club and on the Advisory Council of Have Art Will Travel. Her first book, The Agile Workforce and Workplace: The New Future of Work, was published by Working Mother Media/Bonnier Corporation in 2011. Her award winning book, She Is Me: How Women Will Save The World (She Writes Press, 2020) will be published as a children’s book in Spring 2023.

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Honoring

The Advocates for Human Rights

Beyond Barriers

Equal Voice | Equal Future

Julia Haart

Jewish Women’s Foundation of New York

Kisha Mays

Elizabeth Melendez Fisher Good

Michelle Miller

Paramount Global

PowHer New York

Alfreda Robinson

Dr. Ruth Shaber

The National Organization on Disabilities

Grace Vandecruze

Victims First

Vote Mama WBDC

Blanche Weisen Cook

Women In Tech

Breakthrough Film of the Year

THE AMERICAN DREAM AND OTHER FAIRY TALES