Women's eNews

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2023

Congratulations to all 21 Leaders for the 21st Century and a very special

to

Rebecca Cokley recipient of The Loreen Arbus Champion for Disabilities Award You are so very deserving!

Amazing work, Lori!

You are the heartbeat of Women’s eNews!

“Great leaders don’t tell you what to do, they show you how it’s done.”

–Alessandro Berselli

LOREEN ARBUS Honorary Gala Chair

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oreen Arbus is currently the President of The Loreen Arbus Foundation, The Goldenson-Arbus Foundation, and Loreen Arbus Productions, Inc. Through these organizations and in her personal endeavors, Ms. Arbus is a tireless advocate for women and girls; a champion for one of the world’s larg¬est minorities, people with disabilities; and is passionate about encouraging equal opportunities in television, film, communications, and the arts.

A high-profile professional and pioneer in her field, Ms. Arbus is a sought-af¬ter speaker at national and international conferences.

Among her many appearances, she has spoken at TEDxWomen. The author of six non-fiction books, she has also written countless articles for many national publications, and was twice nominated for an Emmy® Award. She co-wrote the first book on AIDs, Everything You Need to Know About AIDs, with Dr. Mathilde Krim.

She holds the trailblazing distinction of being the first woman to head pro¬gramming for a U.S. network, a feat accomplished twice

(both at Showtime and Cable Health Network/Lifetime). In addition to helping establish these two cornerstones of cable television, she launched Loreen Arbus Produc¬tions, Inc., an independent television production company with an emphasis on non-fiction programming.

Loreen served as Honorary Gala Chair of the Women’s eNews 21 Leaders for the 21st Century Awards gala in 2019, 2020, and 2021.

She is a past 21 Leaders honoree and returns as Honorary Gala Chair of the 21 Leaders for the 21st Century Awards Gala in 2022. For the gala, each year Loreen pres¬ents The Loreen Arbus Champion for Disabilities Award, which pays tribute to a pioneer in the disability community.

In 2020, Women’s eNews established The Loreen Arbus Accessibility is Fundamental Program. This inaugural fellowship has been created to train women with disabilities as professional journalists so that they may write, research and report on the most crucial issues impacting the disabilities community.

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Congratulations to all of the 2023 Honorees You each bring powerful & significant change to our world!

Special gratitude to

Anita Hill

the Dorothy Height Champion for Civil Rights Awardee

Deborah Santana Founder, CEO Do A Little Foundation

Deborah Santana Honorary Gala Co-Chair

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eborah Santana is an author, business manager, and activist for peace and social justice. Her non-profit, Do A Little, serves women and girls in the areas of health, education, and happiness. With a passion to provide edu¬cational opportunities for girls and women, Ms. Santana collaborates with organizations that work to prevent and heal relationship and sexual violence, improve the lives of America’s abused and neglected children, and a world¬wide community of artists and allies who work for empowerment, opportu¬nity, and visibility for women artists.

In 2005, she published her memoir: Space Between the Stars that told of her experiences growing up as a bi-racial child, and her coming of age.

Ms. Santana has produced five short documentary films, four with Em¬my-award winning director Barbara Rick: Road to Ingwavuma, Girls of Dara¬ja, School of My Dreams, and Powerful Beyond Measure. These films highlight the work of non-profit

partners in South Africa, and the Daraja Academy, a free secondary boarding school for girls in Kenya.

She has served as a trustee for ANSA (Artists for a New South Africa), the Smithsonian Institution, is a member of the Smithsonian American Wom¬en’s History Initiative Advisory Committee and a longtime supporter of Marian Wright Edelman’s Children’s Defense Fund. Deborah is mother to three beloved adult children: Salvador Santana, a songwriter, band leader, and instrumental artist, Stella Santana, a singer/songwriter/performer, and Angelica Santana, a poet, archivist and film producer.

Ms. Santana holds a Master of Arts in Philosophy and Religion with a Con¬centration in Women’s Spirituality.

A leadership donor of the Smithsonian National Museum of African Amer¬ican History and Culture, she works for the rights and freedom of women and people of color.

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Stacey Tisdale Board Chair, Women’s eNews

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tacey Tisdale, a more than 20-year veteran TV broadcast financial journalist, and financial behavior expert, is one of the first women, and the first African-American, to report from the New York Stock Exchange,in her role as a reporter/anchor for Dow Jones’ Emmy award-winning Wall Street Journal Television.

As founder and CEO of multi-media content provider, Mind Money Media Inc., international speaker, contributor and expert for some of the leading media outlets in the world – including Time Magazine, Good Morning America, the Breakfast Club, and AJ Impact – Stacey uses her personal finance and media platforms to educate her audiences about all aspects of our complex relationship with money, as well as the ways in which socioeconomics, gender,

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race, age, orientation, and culture, play out in our financial experiences and careers. She also co-hosts the monthly social media personal finance event, Wealth Wednesdays, with IHeartMedia, Power 105.1 Breakfast Club host, Angela Yee. In addition, she has created a personal finance curriculum for college students on behalf of the White House, and conducted research for the United States Congress on the financial behavior of professional athletes.

Stacey also creates financial education and life skills programs for professional sports teams and corporations including the WNBA”s Washington Mystics, the NFL Super Bowl champion, New York Giants, and the female employees of Microsoft.

Lori Sokol Executive Director & Editor-in-Chief

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ori 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 individu¬als 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 me¬dia, 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 recent book, She Is Me: How Women Will Save The World, was the recipient of the IBPA Award and a finalist in the International Book Awards.

She is currently writing her memoir.

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WOMXN UP! T H E

G L O B A L

N E W S

S O U R C E

Women’s eNews’ podcast, WOMXN UP! Features Female-identifying Individuals who are at the Forefront of Transforming our World into one that Treats Everybody Equally regardless of Gender, Race, Orientation or Ability.

2023

Honoring Nicole Bates Rebecca Cokley Andrea Constand Maeve DuVally Anna Fishbeyn Ellen Galinsky Claudia Gordon Ruchira Gupta Anita Hill Eleni Janis

LIFT Carolyn Maloney Diane Masciale Susan Mazrui Ms. Magazine Tiara Parker Peer Defense Project Jean Shafiroff Natalie Trevonne Zan Times

Breakthrough film of year: The Disappearance of Shere Hite

Nicole Bates Founder, Shattering Glass

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hattering Glass is a national 501(c) (3) organization, headquartered in Washington DC, which addresses the systemic economic, societal, and political barriers impeding equality for women and girls. Through advocacy, education, and outreach, Shattering Glass fights for gender equity and gender equality to ensure our daughters, granddaughters, and their children can achieve their dreams, know their worth, and live in a world free of discrimination and bias. Its mission is to create a world where gender equality is the norm, and “Shattering Glass” refers to breakthrough innovations, not women and girls successfully fighting to break down barriers.

Shattering Glass was founded on International Women’s Day in 2021 by its Executive Director, Nicole Vorrasi Bates. Nicole, an attorney with three decades of legal experience in Big Law, worked initially as a litigator. She spent the last 18 years as a mergers and acquisition tax attorney, a heavily male-dominated specialty, where she shockingly encountered just two women counterparts out of hundreds. Nicole has both directly and indirectly experienced discrimination and gender pay inequities. These experiences, coupled with the devastating impact the pandemic had on women, led her to leave her career and start Shattering Glass.

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It did not take long in the arena for Nicole to realize that enshrining the Equal Rights Amendment (“ERA”) in the US Constitution is the first critical step towards gender equality.

Accordingly, Shattering Glass’s primary focus has been on the publication of the ERA as the 28th Amendment. The ERA is the tool needed to address the economic, societal, and political barriers impeding equality for women and girls. Its publication will enable Shattering Glass to work more effectively on its other focus areas: economic equality, reproductive rights, and women and girls in sports.

Fighting for gender equality and publication of the ERA has led Shattering Glass to file multiple amicus briefs; engage with dozens of Members from both Chambers of Congress, including drafting and circulating for support multiple sign-on letters; meet with White House Counsel; work with Senior Staff of Governors Cooper, Hochul, Newsom, Pritzker, Whitmer, and others. Nicole has been quoted in the USA Today, the Washington Post, and Women’s eNews, and has been featured on numerous media panels and on-air pieces related to the ERA publication, women and girls in sports, and, more broadly, gender equity and equality.

Rebecca Cokley Program Officer, U.S. Disability Rights Ford Foundation

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ebecca Cokley joined the Ford Foundation in January of 2021 as the first U.S. Program Officer to oversee a Disability Rights Portfolio. Prior to joining Ford, she served as the cofounder and Director of the Disability Justice Initiative at the Center for American Progress. The DJI was the first disability centered project at a mainstream progressive institution. Rebecca and her team educated 12 different Democratic presidential candidates to develop their disability policy platforms. She implemented campaigns to save the Americans with Disabilities Act, Medicaid, and SNAP and pushed back against work requirements, the public charge, and ableist Supreme Court nominations.

A three time Presidential Appointee, at the National Council on Disability she restored the agency’s reputation as the civil rights voice for the disability community and managed projects on police violence, campus sexual assault, and the civil rights of disabled parents. She served at the U.S. Department of Education and the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. And she had the pleasure of serving at the White House as Director of diversity

engagement for the Presidential Personnel Office. Every role she’s served in has centered on bringing the disability community to the table on progressive issues and helping the progressive community come to the table on disability priorities. She was awarded the Richman Distinguished Fellow in Public Life for Brandeis University, The Frank Harkin Award for the National Council on Independent Living, and the Judy Heumann Champion of Justice award by Disability Rights Maryland. Rebecca has spoken at Netroots Nation, New York City Comic-Con, Yale University, the Women’s March National Conference and given a TedX talk. Rebecca has published with The Nation, CNN, Rewire, Refinery 29, and been a guest on MSNBC, NPR, The Takeaway, and Last Week Tonight with John Oliver. Rebecca sits on the board of directors for Rockwood Leadership Institute, Common Cause and is an Equity Advisory Board member for Sephora.

She was a Karl Pister Scholar at the University of California, Santa Cruz where she graduated with a B.A. in Politics. She is the proud spouse of Patrick, mother of 3, and is working on her first book.

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Andrea Constand Author

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ndrea Constand was a talented basketball player from Toronto who played for the University of Arizona and then professionally in Italy. In 2001, she was recruited as the director of operations for the women’s basketball team at Temple University in Philadelphia.

The only woman whose case against Bill Cosby went to trial, she tells her story in the new documentary The Case Against Cosby, which rails against a legal system that so often fails victims of sexual assault. This two-part documentary is based on The Moment, Constand’s memoir about standing up to Cosby for herself and for the more than 60 other women who accused him of similar crimes but who were unable to file charges due to the statute of limitations.

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The story is told from the perspective of several other survivors, and at times, it is aimed directly at anybody who has survived sexual assault. With Constand is at the heart of this film, she describes her experiences with Cosby with courage and utter clarity explaining, in painstaking detail, the complicated ways in which victims of sexual assault might react to their attackers. Psychological and legal experts also describe what is often thought of as “the norm”, accusing victims of taking “too long” to report their rapist, for example. But a long delay in reporting such a crime is common, particularly if the attacker is not a stranger. Too often, there is a chasm between the public perception of how a victim “should” behave and how a victim does behave.

Maeve DuVally Author and Principal, Glasheen & Co

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aeve DuVally is a skilled communicator and storyteller who forcefully advocates for diversity and inclusion, and is a longtime Goldman Sachs executive who transitioned to a woman while working at the Wall Street giant, DuVally spent nearly two decades as the company’s communications manager — most of them as Michael DuValley before she completed her transition in April 2019.

In her new memoir “Maeve Rising: Coming Out Trans in Corporate America,” she reveals how she went to extraordinary lengths to conceal her transition in the months leading up to her announcement to colleagues. Her memoir also focuses on being

“raised in an Irish Catholic family with a sadistic pathologist father” and her struggles with alcoholism.

Today, Maeve stands as a beacon of hope within the transgender community and beyond, using her experiences and her memoir to empower others to embrace their true selves and find purpose and fulfillment in their own lives.

Her story serves as a testament to the strength of the human spirit and the transformative power of authenticity and self-expression.

“This book is about the power of self-discovery and selfactualization,” DuVally says.

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Anna Fishbeyn Award-winning Actor and Director

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nna Fishbeyn is a director, actress, author, and public speaker. She founded XOFeminist Productions and Anteriya Films in order to create original, female-driven, innovative content for television, film and theater. She has a passion for the betterment of women in society and has shaped her work to drive gender equality.

Her feature film, “Galaxy 360: A Woman’s Playground,” screened at the Cannes Film Festival, sold out at the Toronto International Film Festival and is currently screening in a limited release in New York City. Set in 2195, the film explores a future where women rule the world and men dream of getting married during a hilarious male beauty pageant, garnering impressive critical and audience responses in its opening weeks. “Galaxy 360: A Woman’s Playground” was ranked “Number One Funniest Movie Right Now” by Newstrail, described as “Revolutionizing Gender Roles” by FilmDaily, and called “A cult classic in the making” by New York Weekly.

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During the past year, Anna created Anteriya World, a feminist platform where art meets social purpose featuring an AI animated world that explores a futuristic Galactic Matriarchy and offers everything from confidence building videos to inspirational leadership stories to meditation and health. Her other work includes the award-winning short film, Invisible Alice, the award-winning web series, Happy Hour Feminism, and the critically acclaimed plays, My Stubborn Tongue and Sex in Mommyville, and the one-woman standup comedy show, Anna on Fire and Uncensored. She is also the author of the critically acclaimed novel, The Matrimonial Flirtations of Emma Kaulfield, which has been compared by critics to Nabokov, Austen and Tolstoy. Anna has been featured on numerous television shows, podcasts and magazines: NBC, FOX, CP24 (Canada), CoWorking Channel (France), Ticker News (Australia), PX11, BroadwayWorld, Wrap Magazine, New York Times, Women’s eNews, London Evening Standard, Huffington Post, Buzzfeed, FilmDaily, and many others.

Ellen Galinsky President, Families and Work Institute

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llen Galinsky is the President of Families and Work Institute (FWI), an organization she co-founded in 1989. She is also the elected President of the Work and Family Researchers Network, a network of several thousand researchers globally and additionally serves as a senior advisor to the Immediate Office of the Assistant Secretary of Youth Mental Health at the Administration for Children and Families, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.

Between March 2016 and September 2022, she served as Chief Science Officer of the Bezos Family Foundation. Before co-founding FWI, she spent more than two decades at the Bank Street College of Education.

Her life’s work revolved around identifying important societal questions as they emerge, conducting research to seek answers, and turning the findings into action. She strives to be ahead of the curve, to address compelling issues, and to provide rigorous data that can affect our lives. Over her career, her research has focused on work-life, children’s development, youth voice, child-care, parentprofessional relationships, and parental development.

Galinsky is the author of Mind in the Making, a best-selling book on early learning that the New York Times called “an iconic parenting manual,” and Judy Woodruff of the PBS NewsHour named “must reading for everyone who cares about America’s fate in the 21st Century.”

Her book on adolescent development, The Breakthrough Years, will be published in early 2024 and involved nine-years of research, including three original studies. She is also the author of 90 books/ reports and 360 articles for books, academic journals, magazines, and the Web. Other career highlights include serving as the elected President of the National Association for the Education of Young Children (the largest group of early childhood professionals), being elected as a fellow of the National Academy of Human Resources (the highest honor in human resources), serving as parent expert in the Mister Rogers Talks with Parents series, and receiving a Distinguished Achievement Award from Vassar College and the 2022 Lifetime Achievement Award from the Work and Family Researchers Network.

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Photo Description: A Black woman wearing a slightly off the shoulder tailored teal dress. She is gazing directly into the camera posing with her elbows supported by a white column and her chin gently resting on her extended folded hands. She sports a blond micro-braid hairstyle neatly wrapped in a bun.

Claudia L. Gordon Senior Accessibility Strategist, T-Mobile US

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laudia L. Gordon is a dedicated advocate for people with disabilities with nearly 30 years of versatile professional expertise, with a personal mission to level the playing field and ensure the same opportunities are provided for all. She currently serves as the Senior Accessibility Strategist with T-Mobile US. In this role, she drives strategies for a disability inclusive culture and an accessible plus equitable work environment. Gordon has held senior leadership positions with Sprint Corporation, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, the National Council on Disability, and the National Association of the Deaf Law and Advocacy Center.

During the Obama-Biden Administration, Gordon served as the Chief of Staff for the U.S. Department of Labor’s Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs and the Associate Director of Public Engagement for the White House Office of Public Engagement.

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Adding to Gordon’s professional expertise is her lived experience as an immigrant at the intersections of race, disability, and gender, which is the foundation for the strong emphasis on disabled individuals with multiple marginalized identities that she brings to her work. For her unrelenting commitment to advocacy, compliance, civic engagement, and mentoring, Gordon has been recognized by the American Association of People with Disabilities, Google, AT&T Humanity of Connection, National Disability Mentoring Coalition, National Association of the Deaf, National Black Deaf Advocates, and The Root 100. Gordon is a native of Jamaica, graduate of Howard University, and graduate of the American University’s Washington College of Law.

Ruchira Gupta Emmy-Award Winning Journalist and Founder of Apne Aap

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uchira Gupta is an Emmy winning journalist and founder of the anti sex trafficking NGO Apne Aap, that empowers women and girls to exit systems of prostitution. I Kick and I Fly is her debut fiction novel.

She has been awarded the French Ordre National du Mérite, the Clinton Global Citizen Award, and the UN NGO CSW Woman of Distinction, among other honors, for her contribution to the establishment of the UN Trafficking Fund for Survivors, the passage of the US Trafficking Victims Protection Act and her grassroots activism with Apne Aap. She also holds a Doctor of Humane Letters

degree from Smith College. She has co-written a book with Gloria Steinem, “As if Women Matter” and edited two anthologies, “River of Flesh” and “Renu’s letters to Birju Babu”.

Ruchira has worked for the United Nations in Nepal, Thailand, Kosovo, Iran, and the USA. She occasionally teaches at the New York University’s Center for Global Affairs as a visiting faculty.

Ruchira divides her time between New York and Forbesganj, her childhood home in the foothills of the Himalayas, where she furthers the work of Apne Aap and paints her mother’s garden.

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Anita Hill University Professor and Author

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nita F. Hill is the University Professor of Social Policy, Law and Women’s Studies and Chair, Hollywood Commission for Eliminating Sexual Harassment and Advancing Equality.

Anita Hill graduated from Oklahoma State University and received her J.D. from Yale Law School. Starting her career in Washington, D.C., Hill worked in private practice as well as at the Education Department and Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. In 1989, Hill, was the first African American tenured at the University of Oklahoma, College of Law. Currently, she teaches courses on gender, race, policy and law at Brandeis University and

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serves as counsel to the law firm of Cohen, Milstein, Sellers and Toll, where she advises on class action discrimination cases. Professor Hill leads the Hollywood Commission working with entertainment industry companies and unions to eradicate harassment, discrimination and power abuse. She serves on the boards of several non-profit organizations. Hill is the author of Believing: Our ThirtyYear Journey to End Gender Violence (Viking Press 2021) and essays for various publications. Hill is also the host of Getting Even, a podcast and has offered television and radio commentary, and presented to hundreds of audiences around the globe.

Eleni Delimpaltadaki Janis CEO | Chief Investment Officer Equivico

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leni is an entrepreneur and investment manager who has dedicated her career to building businesses and developing people, particularly businesses that deliver a meaningful social impact while also generating attractive commercial returns.

She brings to any situation resilience and persistence, which has defined her own life as an immigrant to the U.S. and innovator in business.

When Eleni co-founded Equivico at the National Community Reinvestment Coalition, she sought to build a company that, like her career, is situated at the nexus of smart, scalable investments and social justice. As an investment professional, she draws on her experience in government, economic development and market

research, to invest profitably in businesses, assets and projects that benefit households, societies and investors alike.

Prior to Equivico, Eleni served as vice president at the New York City Economic Development Corporation (NYCEDC). During her tenure, she established the first ESG investing team, administered a portfolio of 18 tech startup incubators, and advised on investment strategies targeting minority- and women-owned businesses, life sciences and small businesses. Eleni also co-founded New York City’s corporate attraction team, which coordinated the City’s initially winning bid for Amazon’s second headquarters. The project was expected to be the largest economic development project in the U.S. in several decades.

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LIFT Anti-gun Violence Activist

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ounded in 1998, LIFT is a national nonprofit headquartered in D.C. with sites across the U.S. Its mission is to break the cycle of poverty by investing in parents. LIFT’s one-on-one coaching program empowers parents to set and achieve goals – such as going back to school, improving credit, eliminating debt, or securing a living wage – that put their families on the path to economic mobility.

LIFT advocates for policy that centers the voices of low-income families and partners with health systems, colleges, and local and national governments to deliver its services across the country.

The mission of Why We Live is to break that cycle by investing in parents by building families’ well-being, financial strength, and social connections to lift two generations at once, and they plan to change lives and change systems at scale by investing in HOPE, MONEY and LOVE.

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HOPE: The program addresses the trauma of poverty, inspires possibility, and increases well-being as parents transform dreams into achievable goals. Sixty-five percent of LIFT parents report reduced levels of stress within three months.

MONEY: Through integrated finance, education, and career coaching LIFT builds pathways to financial stability and mobility.

LIFT also provides direct cash as an investment in families. Ninetyfour percent of LIFT parents improve their finances within three months.

LOVE: Through LIFT’S program, parents have the opportunity to grow their professional network and form a community with other LIFT families. Ninety-five percent of parents build trusting relationships during their first three months at LIFT.

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Diane Masciale Vice President and General Manager at The WNET Group

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iane Masciale is Vice President and General Manager at The WNET Group where she oversees Long Island’s public media stations, WLIW21 and WLIW-FM. Additionally, Masciale is executive in charge of ALL ARTS, a multimedia platform devoted to arts and culture that continues to build accessibility across platforms with a growing library of media with closed captioning, open captioning, audio description, and in the near future, American Sign Language. Additionally, The WNET Group’s American Masters productions airing on WLIW21 feature expanded accessibility features and a new digital series about disabled cultural icons, as part of the recently launched Visibility, Inclusion and Accessibility

initiative. Masciale is one of the executives in charge of Amanpour and Company, the national PBS nightly public affairs series featuring CNN’s Christiane Amanpour. Masciale also created and manages Wavelength, an innovative digital content sharing platform for PBS member stations across the country. As a veteran news executive, Masciale is a three-time National Emmy Award-winner having last served as Executive Editor of ABC’s Good Morning America and Executive Producer in the ABC Long Form Unit. Previously, she was Acting Executive Producer and Senior Broadcast Producer at NBC’s Today Show as well as Senior Broadcast Producer at Dateline NBC.

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Carolyn Maloney The Edie Windsor Champion for LGBTQ Equality Honoree

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ormer Congresswoman Carolyn B. Maloney has spent her entire career working to advance women’s rights. In 2014, Ms. Maloney suggested to Jessica Neuwirth that they should work together to create an organization dedicated to passing the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA), which prompted Ms. Neuwirth to form the ERA Coalition. Ms. Maloney is thrilled to join as the Fund for Women’s Equality Chair as part of the ERA Coalition to focus on ensuring that the ERA becomes part of the Constitution.

First elected to city council 1982-1992, she created and chaired the contracts committee which oversaw a quarter of the city’s budget.

She authored and passed many accountability and reform contract laws and what was called, at the time, the toughest and best campaign finance bill in the nation. For 30 years, Ms. Maloney represented parts of Manhattan, Brooklyn, and Queens as a member of the U.S. House of Representatives. Ms. Maloney was first elected to Congress in 1992 during the “Year of the Woman. She became the 13th woman in history to chair a congressional committee first serving as the chair

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of the Joint Economic Committee as well as the first woman to chair the powerful House Committee on Oversight and Reform.

Among the measures she was most proud to author and pass were bills designed to improve women’s lives, including legislation to expand Medicare to cover annual mammograms for women, to require colleges and universities to publicize information about their records on sexual violence, to encourage law enforcement to target those who patronize sex trafficking victims and to create the Smithsonian National Women’s Museum on the Washington Mall.

Her Debbie Smith Act provides funding for law enforcement to process DNA evidence collected from rape victims and has been called the most important anti-rape bill Congress ever passed.

The story of the bill’s passage was made into a film called A Life Interrupted. Ms. Maloney also secured passage of the nation’s first ever paid parental leave to care for newborn or newly adopted children. She then passed paid family and medical leave for all federal employees and continues to fight for paid leave for all Americans.

Edie Windsor (1929-2017)

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LGBT Rights Activist

die Windsor was born in 1929 in Philadelphia to a Russian Jewish immigrant family. She graduated from Temple Uni¬versity in 1950 and received a Master’s Degree in mathe¬matics from NYU in 1957. She spent two decades working with mainframe computers, first as a research assistant at NYU and then at IBM where she ultimately attained the highest level technical position of Senior Systems Manager. She won a competitive IBM PhD. Scholarship to Harvard, and in 1987 was honored by the National Computing Conference as a pioneer in operating systems.

Edie was in the trenches and in the leadership of many LGBT organizations over the course of her life. She was involved with East End Gay Organizations, Long Island Gay and Lesbian Network, the LGBT Community Center of New York, SAGE, Team New York at the Gay Games in NYC in 1994, ACLU, Hetrick-Martin Institute, and Callen- Lorde Community Health Center, just to name a few.

She was also one of the first Marriage Ambassadors for Empire State Pride Agenda. The Edie Windsor Fund for Old Lesbians, gifted to Windsor on her 70th birthday and maintained and administered by Open Meadows Foundation, provides mean¬ingful grants to projects by and for lesbian older adults. Edie also served on the Board of Directors of SAGE (Services & Advoca¬cy of Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual and Transgender Elders) from 1986 -1988 and again from 2005-2007.

She was a founding member of the improv acting group, Old Queers Acting Up, whose rallying cry was, “Out of the closest, onto the stage.” For several years, this group performed skits around ageism,

racism, homophobia and the other oppressions at various venues such as the Task Force’s Creating Change conference, SAGE conferences, colleges, high schools, social work agencies, and more.

After spending four decades together, Edie and Thea Spyer, a clinical psychologist, were legally married in Canada in 2007. Upon Thea’s death in 2009 Edie became the executor and sole beneficiary of Thea’s estate and was required to pay federal taxes on her inher¬itance.

Had federal law recognized the validity of their marriage, Edie would have qualified for an unlimited spousal deduction and paid no federal estate taxes. Edie sought to claim the federal estate tax exemption for surviving spouses and was barred from doing so by Section 3 of the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA)which pro¬vided that the term “spouse” only applied to marriages between a man and woman. She filed a lawsuit against the federal government and is most widely known for her landmark Supreme Court case that followed, resulting in samesex married couples being granted full federal recognition in the United States for the first time. The case of United States v. Windsor is arguably the most influential legal precedent in the struggle for LGBT marriage equality.

Until the very end of her life Edie tirelessly and selflessly trav¬eled, continued to volunteer and attended events to be with the LGBT community that she dearly loved.

In 2016 Edie married Judith Kasen, a financial advisor, at New York City Hall and they remained together until Edie’s passing.

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Susan Mazrui Director, Public Policy, AT&T

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usan Mazrui began work in Communications in 1994 in Disability Marketing. In 1998, she moved to wireless, where she developed corporate strategies for state and federal legal and regulatory compliance. Mazrui was instrumental in establishing AT&T’s Corporate Accessibility Technology Office and was the architect of AT&T’s Accessibility and Inclusion Program with cross company teams addressing the needs of deaf and disabled employees. She currently works on corporate initiatives ranging from equitable AI to broadband services to community outreach.

Mazrui has served several terms on Federal Advisory Committees, at the Federal Communications Commission and the Access Board.

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Her contributions to the disability and aging fields have been featured in professional journals, blogs, podcasts, international conferences and at the White House. In 2021 and 2023, she received AT&T’s Connection Award recognizing significant individual achievement toward organizational priorities that demonstrate AT&T’s cultural pillars. Mazrui was named a Corporate Fellow by the Summit on Leading Diversity and inducted into the Spinal Cord Injury Hall of Fame. Mazrui was honored by The Community of Connection and TDI for her work in the disability field. She currently chairs the board of the World Institute on Disability and serves on the board of G3ict.

In her spare time, she loves to travel and dragon boat.

Ms. Magazine Anti-gun Violence Activist

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was nothing for women to read that was controlled by women, and this caused me along with a number of other women to start Ms. magazine.”

In short, Ms. was the first national magazine to make feminist voices audible, feminist journalism tenable and a feminist worldview available to the public.

Named as a New York Times Book Review Editor’s Choice, the book is hailed as the most startling, most audacious, most normbreaking of the magazine’s groundbreaking pieces on women, men, politics (sexual and otherwise), marriage, family, education, work, motherhood, and reproductive rights, as well as the best of the magazine’s fiction, poetry, and letters, featuring Billie Jean King, Alison Bechdel, and Audre Lorde, among many others.

s. magazine was the first U.S. magazine to feature prominent American women demanding the repeal of laws that criminalized abortion, the first to explain and advocate for the Equal Rights Amendment, to rate presidential candidates on women’s issues, to put domestic violence and sexual harassment on its cover, to commission and feature a national study on date rape and to blow the whistle on the undue influence of advertising on magazine journalism.

Co-founder Gloria Steinem explained the motivation for starting Ms. magazine, stating: “I realized as a journalist that there really

In celebration of its 50th year of publication, Ms. has recently published, 50 Years of Ms.: The Best of the Pathfinding Magazine That Ignited a Revolution,

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Tiara Parker Anti-gun Violence Activist

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iara Parker is a 28-year-old Philadelphia native and survivor of the Orlando NightClub Shooting that occurred on June 12th, 2016. She sustained multiple gunshot wounds and sadly lost her cousin Akyra Monet Murray. Akyra graduated in the top 3% of her class, and received a full-ride scholarship to Mercyhurst College for basketball. Since that night, Tiara has vowed to honor her cousin’s legacy and continue to pave the roads of change through her activism by making sure the voices of the 49 angels are heard, and anyone who has encountered gun violence regains their autonomy.

Tiara has worked to get politicians into office who care about all communities, and has advocated for common sense reform to

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stop gun violence with the Pride Fund to End Gun Violence as its Board Advisor. She is also a professional makeup artist who has worked with local celebrities, popular tv shows/stations, and has been featured in several magazines. She recently became the new Vice President of Victims First, a non-profit organization that supports, empowers, and protects victims of mass casualty crime through rapid response.

Through her healing journey she also founded the Global Activists Awards, which honors people working behind the scenes fighting for positive societal change, coining the phrase “The Fight is Global.”

Peer Defense Project Anti-gun Violence Activist

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he United States incarcerates more children than any other country in the world. The largest school systems in our country remain the most racially segregated. Young people live as the poorest age group in America, with children of color, children under five, children of single mothers, and children in the South suffering from the highest poverty rates. Over 90% of the civil and legal needs of low income youth go unmet. All of this is happening on a planet in a climate crisis, devastating marginalized communities.

In the face of these intersecting injustices, thousands of young people have mobilized and protested— more than ever before. Peer Defense Project (PDP) works to ensure that all young people can use the law in their fight for justice and for their lives.

In just its first two years, PDP has brought crucial lawsuits transforming the landscape for New York students, including: • In March of 2021, as false accusations about “critical race theory” took over conservative media, PDP brought a historic lawsuit against New York State and City defendants, challenging racial hierarchies in public education and asserting the rights of students (under the New York State Constitution) to an education that identifies and dismantles racism.

• In November of 2021, PDP won a settlement on behalf of New York City Black and Latino students who had been systematically denied access to the same athletic opportunities as students of other races, leading to a reorganization of critical resources and a commitment by the City to create 200 new sports teams by spring 2024.

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Jean Shafiroff Philanthropist & Author

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ean Shafiroff is a philanthropist, humanitarian, TV host, writer and the author of the book, Successful Philanthropy: How to Make a Life By What You Give. Jean is often referred to as “the first lady of philanthropy” by the press because of her generosity and extensive work as a volunteer fundraiser and leader in the philanthropic world. She serves on the boards of many charitable organizations and each year she chairs upwards of eight different charity galas. Among the many causes she champions are those involved in women’s rights, rights of underserved populations, health care and animal welfare.

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Jean serves on the boards of the Southampton Hospital Association, NYC Mission Society, Couture Council of the Museum at FIT, French Heritage Society, Casita Maria, the NY Women’s Foundation, Global Strays, and Southampton Animal Shelter Foundation Honorary Board. A Catholic, she has served on The Jewish Board for 28 years and now is one of their honorary trustees.

Jean served as the national spokesperson for the American Humane’s “Feed the Hungry” COVID-19 program, an initiative that raised $1,000,000 to provide food for over 1,000,000 animals living in 109 different shelters across the United States. She is the Ambassador for the Southampton Animal Shelter.

Photo Description: Natalie is smiling with a half ponytail hairstyle with long waves. She is wearing a brown tank top

Natalie Trevonne CEO and co- designer, Not Your Inspiration

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atalie Trevonne is an actress, consultant, writer and fashion designer. She is the Accessibility, Strategy and trainings consultant at LaVant consulting, Inc. which is a women of color, disabled led Marketing, Communication and Strategy firm with an emphasis on disability inclusion. As a legally blind creator, Natalie uses her disability to speak up and speak out for equal representation within the entertainment & fashion industry.

She’s currently the CEO and co- designer of Not Your Inspiration or NYI which is a fashion brand whose mission is to create accessible shopping experiences and more opportunities for people with

disabilities in the fashion industry. Natalie first began her fashion journey in 2020 when she started a podcast called Fashionably Tardy where her and cohost Melissa Lomax introduced their audiences to professionals working behind the scenes in the fashion industry.

In 2021, tech professional and Artist Ernest Spicer heard one of the Fashionably Tardy podcast episodes and searched for Natalie on LinkedIn. Together, they created the Nessa Dress Which was the first ever NFT created by a Blind designer. In 2022 they began working on a physical collection for “NYI” called Toucher or “to touch” in French. The collection is all about style you can touch.

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ZAN Times Anti-gun Violence Activist

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an Times is a women-led, investigative newsroom that covers human rights violations in Afghanistan with a focus on women, the LGBTQ community, and environmental issues.

The newsroom includes mainly women journalists working both inside and outside Afghanistan to tell stories of the marginalized populations who rarely have a voice to shape and inform public discourse.

Since the Taliban took over Afghanistan in August 2021, women and other marginalized groups have faced systematic repression, violence, and the complete erasure of their social and political rights.

Zan Times was born out of this moment of desperation, of anger, of trying to speak our truth in the face of injustice, and brute violence suppressing women and girls in Afghanistan. If was further born out of the need to reclaim their autonomy and self-determination, to seek ways to shape and define the future they want to live in, and to fight for equality and freedom for all.

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The journalists of Zan Times believe that change begins with awareness. Therefore, their vision is to build an independent, accountable, and professional newsroom for raising awareness and sharing analysis about the lives of disadvantaged groups in Afghanistan. Since many had experience working as journalists in Afghanistan, they are aware of the challenges, dangers, and opportunities of working in the media landscape, and are doing their part to make sure the stories of their country are told. To that end, they are building on what Zan Times created in 2022, producing more than 60 reports and 200 daily news articles in Dari-Farsi and English.

In 2023, Zan Times is focusing on producing in-depth and investigative reports on the lives of the most marginalized, while also supporting its team by building its capacity.

Zan Times knows it is the time of women and the time to ensure their voices are heard.

Breakthrough Film of the Year The Disappearance of Shere Hite

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he bestselling 1976 book “The Hite Report” liberated the female orgasm by revealing the private experiences of 3,000 anonymous survey respondents. Shere Hite’s findings rocked the establishment, presaged current conversations about gender and sexuality, and made her a target of the patriarchy.

The film was also just nominated for three Critics Choice Documentary Awards: Best Archival Documentary, Best Biographical Documentary, and Best Narration.

The feminist sex researcher and former model’s personal journals are included in the film, along with the original survey responses and exclusive archive footage. One commentator says that Hite’s findings “stunned everyone with the clitoris and the vagina” and demystified the female orgasm before her work was “weaponized by the right.”

Hite eventually vanished from the public eye, and died in 2020 after battling a long illness.

• Director: Nicole Newnham

Actress Dakota Johnson narrates this documentary, which charts Hite’s explosive rise to fame and then mysterious retreat.

“The Disappearance of Shere Hite” premieres November 17 from IFC Films

• Producer: Molly O’Brien, R.J. Cutler, Elise Pearlstein, Kimberley Ferdinando, Trevor Smith, Nicole Newnham • Writer: Nicole Newnham • Release Date (Theaters): Nov 17, 2023 • Distributor: IFC Films • Production Co: This Machine, NBC News Studios, TeaTime Pictures, Sony Pictures Television

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SAVE THE DATE APRIL 23, 2024