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SESSION TYPE: Featured Speaker (Panel) SESSION TITLE: Women, War and Peace STRAND: Social Studies DAY: Saturday TIME: 11:15 - 12:15 pm LOCATION: Regent Parlor, 2nd floor |
BIOGRAPHY
Beth A. Brooke is Global Vice Chair of Public Policy, Sustainability and Stakeholder Engagement at Ernst & Young and is a member of the firm’s Global Management Group and a member of its Americas Executive Board. Beth has public policy responsibility for the firm’s operations in 140 countries and relations with regulators, policymakers, and capital market stakeholders. Beth was named three years in a row by Forbes Magazine as one of the “World’s 100 Most Powerful Women” and was named 2009 Woman of the Year by Concern Worldwide.
During the Clinton Administration, she worked for two years in the U.S. Department of the Treasury, where she was responsible for all tax policy matters related to insurance and managed care. She played important roles in the healthcare reform and Superfund reform efforts.
Throughout her career, Beth has been actively engaged in numerous civic and business organizations. She is a member of the inaugural class of the Henry Crown Fellows of The Aspen Institute and the Committee of 200. She serves on the Boards of Vital Voices, The Committee for Economic Development, The Atlantic Council of the United States, the Partnership for Public Service, TechnoServe, the National Women’s Law Center, and The White House Project. She serves on the March of Dimes Public Policy Advisory Council, the Women’s Leadership Board of the Kennedy School at Harvard, and the Women’s Advisory Board of the World Economic Forum. Beth serves on public policy advisory councils for Georgetown University and Indiana University. She is also a member of the Audit Advisory Committee for the U.S. Department of Defense, is a member of the U.S. delegation to the United Nations Commission on the Status of Women, and serves as a Pathways Envoy for the U.S. State Department.
Abigail Disney (with Gini Reticker) is the co-producer of Women, War & Peace. Disney & Reticker’s previous collaboration is Pray the Devil Back to Hell, the highly-acclaimed film about how women were instrumental in bringing peace to Liberia after 14 years of civil war. The film has inspired audiences and won kudos from New York to London (“Extraordinary” – The Guardian), from Davos to the Hague. Winner of the 2008 Tribeca Film Festival’s Best Documentary, the Audience Choice Award at the Jackson Hole Film Festival, the Silverdocs Witness Award, and numerous others, the film has been seen in 27 countries on 7 continents. Archbishop Desmond Tutu said it “eloquently captures the power each of us innately has within our souls to make this world a far better, safer, more peaceful place.”
Disney is a philanthropist, business woman and community activist. She is Founder and President of the Daphne Foundation, a progressive, social change foundation that makes grants to grassroots, community-based organizations working with low-income communities in New York City. Over the years, the Daphne Foundation has provided more than five million dollars in general operating support grants, along with grants for technical assistance, and infrastructure improvement. She is also Vice Chair of the Board of Shamrock Holdings Incorporated, an investment company that runs funds in private equity, real estate and stocks.
As a community activist, Abigail has spoken to a wide variety of women’s groups, community foundations and financial professionals across the country about the power of activist philanthropy and the importance of pursuing a life of engaged and intelligent volunteerism. She serves on the boards of the White House Project, the Global Fund for Women, and the Fund for the City of New York, as well as on the advisory boards of the Association to Benefit Children, and the HIV Law Project.
Internationally, her long history of work in support of women’s leadership has drawn her into missions and high level meetings in support of issues as diverse as the dislocation of the San people in the Kalahari Desert, NATO’s position on women’s leadership in Afghanistan and Iraq, the rights of indigenous women in the Americas and women’s philanthropy in Dubai. She has been a keynote speaker nationally and internationally on the subject of women’s political and economic empowerment, and through her work on women’s funding she engages with a robust network of activists ranging from the grassroots to heads of state.
Kavita N. Ramdas is President & CEO of the Global Fund for Women, the world’s largest grantmaking foundation ($21 million) focused exclusively on supporting international women’s human rights. For three decades, Kavita has worked to empower women worldwide with the financial resources to increase girls’ access to education, defend women’s right to health and reproductive rights, prevent violence against women and advance women’s political participation and economic empowerment. Kavita has served on the boards of the Women’s Funding Network, the Women’s Rights Prize of the Gruber Foundation and the Ethical Globalization Initiative, and is currently serving on the Global Development Advisory Panel of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the Advisory Panel of the Asian University for Women, and the board of trustees of Princeton University. Kavita has written for Foreign Affairs and numerous other publications, and she has appeared on Bill Moyers, NPR and other media. She is the recipient of several philanthropic and leadership awards, including most recently, the Haridas and Bina Chaudhuri Award for Distinguished Service presented by the California Institute of Integrated Studies (CIIS). Kavita received her master’s degree from the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs at Princeton University and her bachelor’s degree from Mount Holyoke College. Kavita is fluent in Hindi/Urdu, English and German, and conversational Tamil, Spanish and French.
