2022

Beyond Barriers is the world’s only performance acceleration platform that helps companies unlock the full potential of their female talent.

Our platform helps companies grow their leadership pipeline by empowering individual team members with career conditioning curriculum, intelligent navigational tools, and personalized guidance.

Our science-backed and data-driven methodology is designed for the future of work, built for enterprise, and accelerates success for women in the workplace.

Equal Voice | Equal Future is a Digital Hub created by The Fund For Women’s Equality that:

• Amplifies issues of importance to BIPOC and LGBTQI+ women and girls; by commissioning storytellers from these communities; this includes a cohort of 10-12 women. We will introduce nuanced narratives that uplift their leadership and cement their place in the post-pandemic economy. Their writings and media productions will also socialize important policies such as the Equal Rights Amendment, which would have a game-changing impact on issues like labor force participation and unequal pay.

• Cultivates an ecosystem and team of content creators and journalists representing the BIPOC and LGBTQI+ women and girls communities focusing on gender justice, equity and social justice as it relates to the ERA.

• This includes:

• EV | EF cohort (team) consisting of 10-12 young women, content creators/journalists

• EV | EF partner collaborative cohorts: ERA ratification media projects integrated through their programs and curriculum

• EV | EF editorial board & team

• Serves as a resource to highlight, feature and connect like-minded organizations, journalists/content creators and education institutions focused on equity and social activism in media. We will also create new economic opportunities via our partner organizations.

Julia Haart

Julia Haart is a self-made business woman, designer and bestselling author. She was raised in an Ultra-Orthodox Jewish community. At age 42 she fled, changed her name, and without any formal education or background in fashion launched her career as a designer with her namesake shoe collection.

In 2021, Julia took the world by storm with her NETFLIX hit series ‘My Unorthodox Life,’ which premiered in over 190 countries. The show, renewed for Season 2, challenged assumptions and captivated viewers. Now with her memoir, BRAZEN, Julia writes with radical vulnerability and honesty sharing her deeply personal journey of heartbreak, resilience and courage to flee a fundamentalist community. Released April 2022, BRAZEN, became an instant bestseller simultaneously in the U.S. and U.K.

Julia lives in New York City with her four children.

Inspired by our Jewish values, the Jewish Women’s Foundation of New York pursues and promotes a world in which all women and girls are ensured a healthy and supported environment…a world in which we all have equal opportunity for economic, religious, social and political achievement.

We work to make this a reality by cultivating leaders for now and the future, funding innovative programs and advocacy efforts, by providing education on vital issues, and by encouraging our donors to view all philanthropic giving through a Jewish and gender lens.

Kisha Mays

Kisha Mays is a Visionary Founder & CEO of Just Fearless and HERstory Connections, FemCapitalist, Investor, Best Selling Author, and Philanthropist. One of her missions is to help scale 1,000,000 Fearless Female Entrepreneurs generating a minimum of $1,000,000+ in annual net revenue utilizing the HERstory Connections organization for Female Founders to turn them into unicorn global businesses. She recently launched the $100 million HERstory Made Angel Fund which is a fund exclusively for female founded companies.

She pays it forward by supporting non-profits worldwide that specifically support & empower women and girls. Kisha and her team are developing strategic partnerships for 2022 - 2023 and beyond to take this international business and brand to an explosive level bringing Just Fearless from behind the scenes to the forefront. Kisha has been featured in Business Insider, The New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Fast Company, and Forbes, to name a few.

Her major influences are Oprah Winfrey, Sara Blakely, Madam CJ Walker, and Richard Branson, for their fearlessness, exceptional courage, drive and ambition, willingness to go after what they desire & believe in all while setting the standard and breaking through any and all ceilings. Even with all the success she has achieved, Kisha still feels like she is only getting started.

She is Just Fearlessly building her global empire helping other Female Founders to do the same!

Elizabeth Melendez Fisher Good

Elizabeth Melendez Fisher Good is passionate about awakening the calling in others. As a pioneer in the anti-sex trafficking movement for more than a decade, she has helped thousands of survivors find freedom and a new life.

Today, she has expanded her work to help all break free from past trauma and self-defeating mindsets, allowing them to fulfill their eternal purpose and destiny!

Based upon her book “Groomed” (Harper Collins, 2020), and decades of experience in counseling, she launched an initiative which empowers families and individuals to walk in complete freedom and transparency that breaks generational patterns and bullet proofs the family.

She is the founder and CEO of The Foundation United, which was created out of her passion to end sexual exploitation and protect children globally. The Foundation United collaboratively provides best practices and proven models to eradicate sexual abuse and exploitation domestically and internationally. Their initiatives create scalable, systemic change in education, law enforcement, healthcare and the church. As the founder of REAL TALK, she helps ministries address the root causes of demand and exploitation, from top leadership to kindergarten.

Elizabeth holds a Master’s Degree in Psychology, and is the recipient of the prestigious New York City Global Business Leader Award, SRQ Women of Influence Award, and the Tampa Bay Business Woman of the Year Award. She has delivered two TedX talks and one LiftX Talk to 18,000 military leaders. She is a featured speaker at the 2022 Shared Hope International Conference and the Global Strategic Forum in Austria.

Michelle Miller

Michelle Miller is the co-host of CBS SATURDAY MORNING. Miller joined the broadcast in July of 2018. Her work regularly appears on the “CBS Evening News,” “CBS This Morning” and “CBS Sunday Morning.” She has also appeared as a correspondent on “48 Hours.” Miller joined CBS News in 2004.

While at CBS News, Miller has reported on many stories of national and international importance. She provided extensive coverage of the unrest in Ferguson, Missouri, following the shooting death of Michael Brown. She also covered the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting in Newtown, Conn.; the shooting at Chardon High School in Ohio; the 2004, 2008 and 2012 presidential elections; the death of Whitney Houston; the 100th anniversary of the Titanic’s sinking; medical care for the rural poor in South Africa, and Hurricanes Sandy, Irene and Katrina.

Miller’s reporting has earned her several prestigious journalism awards including an Emmy for her series of reports on the National Guard’s Youth Challenge Academy, an Edward R Murrow for her coverage of a day care center stand-off in New Orleans, and she was part of the Alfred I. duPont –Columbia Award winning team for coverage the Newtown, Conn., school shooting. In 2019, Miller won a Gracie award for her reporting on the hidden world of sex trafficking in “’48 Hours’: Live to Tell: Trafficked.”

PowherNY is a network of individuals and organizations coming together to accelerate economic fairness for New York women. Our backgrounds, jobs, economic status, age, and religions may be different, but we all agree that women deserve and need a level playing field. Some of us are longtime advocates and others new to the conversation, but we find common cause as a community: learning together, sharing information and actions, and generating Powher to create a new reality for 10 million New York women and their families.