Sharon White-Harrigan | The 2019 MAKERS Conference
Sharon White-Harrigan, Clinical Director, Women’s Prison Association, talks about America’s broken criminal justice system from the 2019 #MAKERSConference at Monarch Beach Resort.
[MUSIC PLAYING] OPRAH WINFREY: How am I going to use myself for something that's bigger than me? KUMAIL NANJIANI: This is not my story. This is our story. MICHELLE OBAMA: I started to ask myself, how do I give something back? AMERICA FERRERA: We need to just start encouraging one another to step through the fear. ABBY WAMBACH: Let's have a conversation around our differences for all equality. LENA WAITHE: There's still a lot of others who haven't been included yet. Until everyone is in the room, I think we still have work to do. - No one thinks we have the balls to pull this off. - A record breaking number of women ran in the midterms and won. - Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the youngest woman ever elected to Congress. - Sharice Davids and Deb Haaland, the first Native American women elected to Congress. - Rashida Tlaib and Ilhan Omar, the first two Muslim women. - My responsibility is to tell you the truth. I am an independent person, and I am no one's pawn. - I'm here to say never again for those girls too. - 98.25, Chloe Kim, your Olympic champion. - Do people assume all your problems got solved because a big strong man showed up? - Yes! What is up with that? - Tips up? - Tips up. LISA BORDERS: The army that we seek is the human army. We are looking to make the world a better place for all of us. ARLAN HAMILTON: Bringing all of us to the table fosters creativity, innovation, and prosperity. JOE BIDEN: It's on us, meaning it's on everybody to change their culture. JILL SOLOWAY: A global revolution is going to happen. Try things in your risk space today because it's going to change the world. JADA PINKETT SMITH: Without all of us, we really aren't going to be able to make the changes that we all desire. TARANA BURKE: We have to talk to each other. We have to be in community with each other. We have to build with each other. SHARON WHITE-HARRIGAN: All of us. It means stepping into a place with everything that we have. JAMEELA JAMIL: We just need to listen to each other and understand one another's point of view. And then we will all realize that we are so much more similar than we were told we were. And together, we can achieve brilliant things.
- I mean, we gotta make sure that this guy is really-- I mean, you seem like a MAKERS man. GURU GOWRAPPEN: Oh. - But we gotta make sure. GURU GOWRAPPEN: Oh, I feel so lucky. I feel so lucky. - OK, so Gloria knows this. At the end of every one of our MAKERS interviews, we do something called the MAKERS minute. Right? Everyone's nodding their heads. You know. You've seen it. But have you seen it with Guru? Are you ready, Guru? So here's how it works. OK. Basically, there are 17 questions on this list. GURU GOWRAPPEN: They say getting humiliated is a good part of-- - Hold on. Wait. GURU GOWRAPPEN: --of building trust. - So far, he's breaking the rules. [LAUGHTER] OK, so you have to answer as many as you can in a minute. And the record holder is 16. And that's Gloria Steinem. [LAUGHTER] So it's kind of like, do you really want to win? But I don't know. Or do you want to be a MAKERS man. GURU GOWRAPPEN: I'll been lucky to get three, so-- - OK. Who's-- Jerri, you got a timer? OK, say go. - Go. - OK, best word to describe you. GURU GOWRAPPEN: Passionate. - Sunrise or sunset? GURU GOWRAPPEN: Sunrise. - A female who inspires you. GURU GOWRAPPEN: Serena Williams and Mother Teresa. I gave you two names. - Oh, you're cheating already. All right, something that makes you hopeful. GURU GOWRAPPEN: Education. - Something that pisses you off. GURU GOWRAPPEN: Inefficiency. Oh, my god. I'm doing good. - No, you're doing great. OK, something you're afraid of. GURU GOWRAPPEN: Ocean. - OK. GURU GOWRAPPEN: That's a long story, so-- - OK, well, then you won't win if you get into it. OK, so if you could be-- something you wish you did more often. GURU GOWRAPPEN: Play tennis. - Something you wish you did less often. GURU GOWRAPPEN: Sleep less. - Yeah, sleep less? GURU GOWRAPPEN: Yeah. You don't have more time to do this stuff. - Headline you'd like to see on the cover of "The New York Times" tomorrow morning. GURU GOWRAPPEN: MAKERS Makes History. - Yes! So good! So good! Oh, my god. OK, if you could give your 15-year-old self-- out of time! You didn't win. GURU GOWRAPPEN: What? No. - But you did great, Guru! GURU GOWRAPPEN: OK. Thank you. Thank you. - Thank you, Guru. GURU GOWRAPPEN: Thank you all. Thank you. - Our MAKERS man, our CEO, thank you, Guru. [MUSIC PLAYING]
ANNOUNCER: Please welcome Jameela Jamil. [MUSIC PLAYING] JAMEELA JAMIL: You're going to make me cry. I get very nervous doing public speaking on my own. But hello, everyone. I hope you're well. Today I'm going to speak about men, which I know isn't necessarily the theme of the day. But while I acknowledge that they have been our greatest enemy, I truly believe that they can be our greatest ally going forward. And so I've written something about how perhaps that could happen. It's called "Tell Him" So I suppose when talking about feminism, I can't help but feel that it's not only us who should be learning and growing, being armed with motivation and understanding. I think so many women have the power to infiltrate misogyny from their own homes, and it starts by never taking for granted how poisonous society can be to the male psyche and protecting boys from the onslaught of misinformation that is everywhere. They are bombarded with dangerous imagery, song lyrics, peer pressure, and often quite damaging, violent, and frankly entirely intimacy-free pornography, all of which are sold to them as a glamorous and realistic norm. Men are throttled with toxic masculinity and given made-up ideals that they are forced to subscribe to. They are belittled and rejected when they show signs of sensitivity. They are mocked and insulted when they show their pain or care too much. Just the mere fact that music that is kind to women or talks about feelings is considered wet or labeled sad boy music. It is such a potent, rotten marinade that boys grow up soaked in. Don't get me wrong, this isn't some poor boys' appeal. It's just that in my opinion, it's if men are recruited young and brainwashed in order to be indoctrinated and manipulated into an oppressive, patriarchal institution. This is a call to arms for the women who have boys growing up in their houses. We have a lot of work to undo. Mothers, sisters, and aunties, I implore you to take this little sponge and render him sodden with humanity and an understanding of women. It will send him into this delusional world with an armor of empathy and self-assurance that a strong woman is something to be celebrated and not feared, crushed, undermined, spoken over, stopped, humiliated, shamed, blamed, discouraged, controlled, and told that to be worth anything in this world. she just has to be thin and beautiful and look young forever. [LAUGHTER] All you have to do is tell him the truth. Tell him what happened to us. Tell him our whole story. Tell him how only very recently we were able to fight, protest, beg, and starve our way to basic human rights. Tell him that a long time ago, as far back as you can imagine, men became afraid of women. Women could make people inside their bodies. They could then feed those people using only their bodies. They had an extreme and quite scary tolerance for pain, and were distracting and beguiling for man. On top of all of this, we were equally able to learn, to hunt, to keep ourselves and our kin alive. Men feared that other than their semen, women had little need for them. And actually, we were very self-sufficient and tough, while at the same time being able to arouse men and sometimes drive them quite mad with love, lust, and possessiveness. We held quite a lot of power. And so using the only thing that they had over us, physical power, they fear-mongered an entire generation into submission and controlled us for thousands of [BLEEP] years. Tell him that we worked the same hours with the same skill sets and the same qualifications for less money just because of the chromosomes that we were born with. Tell him we were only recently allowed to choose who we love rather than be sold by our fathers to the highest bidder, however unattractive, unkind, unsafe, boring, or old that man may be, with no question as to what we wanted or what sexuality we were. And tell him this is still going on in many parts of the world. We're still second-rate citizens. Tell him what it's like to be a woman. Tell him that we have to be on guard-- literally ready to protect our lives-- every time we walk down the street at night, walk through a park, get into a cab, take a train, go out drinking, walk to our car, go on a date, be in a lift with a stranger, or be in any basement ever. And sometimes, we even have to feel afraid in our own houses because there is a constant threat to our safety from men, both strangers and more often, ones we know. Make him sympathize with us and feel protective over us. Tell him to cry when he is sad. Tell him how important it is to talk about his feelings. Tell him it is better to be soft and strong than to be hard and weak. Never let anyone tell him to stop being a girl when he's showing sensitivity. By narrowing these ridiculous prescribed gender roles, we will come closer together and no longer be such a mystery to one another, which I believe will dilute at the fear and mistrust that men have towards us. And by making him a more mentally stable and secure person, you will far lessen the likelihood of him being infiltrated by our insecure and pathetic patriarchy. Treat him with kindness and empathy. Make him feel safe. Do not betray his trust. Your relationship with him will shape his entire outlook on women. So that in every girl he looks at, he will see you and feel love and respect. Make sure he confides in you from a young age, that you will have a sense of what poison is pouring into him. And do not judge him-- at least not to his face. You can completely judge him behind his back or to your friends. But to his face, you must explain the correct, fair pathway in a way that makes it sound fun and appealing. Tell him about sex. Not just reproduction, but sex. The fun, pleasurable part of it. The joy of equal pleasure and enthusiastic consent. Do not shy away from this. Do not to make it an awkward topic in your house. Because if you push him into the shadows, he will find Pornhub in there and that will become his teacher. And nobody needs that [BLEEP]. [LAUGHTER] I believe that learning sex from porn is like learning how to drive from watching "The Fast and Furious," a [BLEEP] terrible idea. Tell him about the history of the word no for women and how new it is to our vocabulary, and how if he were to abuse our historical conditioning to bend to the whims of men, it would be the greatest sin and sign of weakness that he could show. And when it comes to sex, tell him technical consent isn't the gold standard. It is just the basic, complete, most bare foundation. And anything less than a woman being enthusiastic about something sexual that is about to happen is a sign that he must stop and talk to her. Tell him that being generous in the bedroom will be reported far and wide among the lands-- [LAUGHTER] --because we tell each other everything, and his name shall become legend among us. [LAUGHTER] Tell him about your hopes and dreams so he grows up wanting them for you and feels as though they are important. Tell him how you feel. Don't always be perfectly stoic, as we have been conditioned to pretend that we are, which in turn means that men overestimate our coping ability and then push us to the [BLEEP] edge. Build a man who understands that we are only human and we have needs and sometimes we need help. Tell him that we are smart. Show him smart women that you admire. Tell him to look for that in a girl. Show him films with tough female leads from when he's young. Tell him that we're funny and show him funny women. Tell him we are strong and tell him that's a good thing. Tell him it's cool. Tell him it's sexy. Show him how strong you are, and don't just pick up after him and do not pick up after a man in your household. Command the respect that you deserve. Be his friend. Be his teacher. Spend your life with and raise him. If you choose to raise him with a man, in front of a good man who shares your beliefs and respects you. Do not ever sell yourself short. We may have to fight our generation of men and the one before that and the one before that for our rights, for our safety, and for our voices to be heard, which is sad and it is frustrating. And I know that I am asking you for even more labor, but we have a golden window of opportunity here to completely reshape the future of our entire society from our living rooms. Build these men from scratch to fit women rather than just taking up all the space and forcing us to compact ourselves to a little corner allocated to us by them. God, we must be pretty amazing to have overcome all of this [BLEEP]. Tell him. Thank you very much. [APPLAUSE]
- Please welcome Sharon White-Harrigan. [MUSIC PLAYING] SHARON WHITE-HARRIGAN: Thank you. Good evening. I am honored to be here. [APPLAUSE] I am here tonight because there are so many Sharons out there. Too many women, especially women of color, are trapped at the crossroads of racial, gender, and economic oppression like I was-- caught up in a system that is in serious need of repair. So tonight I am asking all of you-- all of us-- to support and empower these women and to do what we can-- all that we can-- to keep them out of the criminal justice system in the first place. [APPLAUSE] We can't ignore the common risk factors that lead women in a lack of safe housing, lack of education, which, in turn, leads to a lack of employment and a lack of resources for mothers. Many have untreated mental health needs and substance abuse issues, but do they deserve punishment? Absolutely not. What they do need is help. Your help. Not tough love, just love. [APPLAUSE] I remember standing in the court room and reading on the wall, you know, right above, "In God We Trust." If anybody knows anything about God then you know that God is love, that God is charity-- I'm about to preach. God is compassion. So, again, I'm asking all of you to show compassion to these women way before they end up behind bars. [APPLAUSE] So my role at the Women's Prison Association-- I help women transition back into society. And I had this one client, and I'm going to call her Mae, where her mother had her at a very early age, at the age of 13. Almost every man she encountered molested and raped her. She lived on the street. She ate out of garbage cans. She grew up in foster cares and group homes and ended up in and out of jail. Sadly, that's not an unusual story. But we helped her get her first apartment, her first place ever where she's safe. She even has a kitchen where she can cook, now that will change her life. And that is what makes my work not work, and this is also what makes WPA so unique. Because we provide individualized, gender-specific, trauma-informed support to the women who need it. And if we invest in education, and employment, and offer resources to these women, the community can then provide what the women needs to avoid arrest in the first place. Because what you don't know is that prison doesn't help these women. And they have very little to none justice in the criminal justice system. So we have to change the systems that are failing them in the first place long before they get pulled in. So that's where you come in. And I'm challenging you all-- you heard me. You all-- all of you, all of us to go back to your companies and ask that question-- do we hire women with criminal justice histories and, if not, when will we start? [APPLAUSE] Hire these women and those at risk, because WPA can help you-- just wanted to share that-- change their futures, invest in them, and make that change sustainable by offering them professional training and development, a livable wage, and then I'm going to push the envelope, child care. [APPLAUSE] So, yes, we have a whole society to change, but let's start with one hire. Let's start with you. Be that person to make that change. Be that person to take that chance. Open your mind, trust in a woman's capacity to change, and then help her do just that. [APPLAUSE] Think of me, remember my story, help a Sharon. [APPLAUSE] And you will find, like I did, when I went to prison for the first and only time, that they are people too-- not criminals, not monsters, but creative, brilliant women who were cut down way before they had a chance to soar. Some want their stories heard, others might need material things, but all their lives will change just by knowing someone, anyone gave a damn. [APPLAUSE] Let that someone be you. So this is my call to action tonight. Thank you. [APPLAUSE] [MUSIC PLAYING]
- Please welcome Lynzy Lab. [APPLAUSE] LYNZY LAB: Hi everyone. My name is Lynzy. It's an honor to be here. I wrote this song the day after Brett Kavanaugh was sworn in. [MIC FEEDBACK] Ooh. It's called, "A Scary Time for Boys". (SINGING) I can't walk to my car late at night while on the phone. I can't open up my windows when I'm home alone. I can't go to a bar without a chaperone. I can't wear a mini skirt if it's the only one I own. I can't use public transportation after 7:00 PM. I can't be brutally honest when you slide into my DMs. I can't go to the club just to dance with my friends. And I can't ever leave my drink unattended. But it sure is a scary time for boys, yeah, gentlemen. Band together. Make some noise. It's really tough when your reputation's on the line and any woman you've assaulted could turn up any time. Yeah, it sure is a scary time for guys. Can't speak to any women or look them in the eyes. It's so confusing. Is it rape or is it just being nice? How inconvenient that you'd even have to think twice. I can't live in an apartment if it's on the first floor. I can't be wearing silk pajamas when I answer the door. I can't have another drink, even if I want more. And I can't make you feel invalid, unseen, or ignored. I can't jog around the city with headphones in my years. I can't speak out against my rapist after 35 years. I can't be taken seriously if I'm holding back tears. And I can't ever speak earnestly about all these fears. But it sure is a scary time for dudes. Can text a girl repeatedly, asking for nudes. Can't make her have sex when she's not in the mood. And what gives her the right to give you attitude? Yeah, it sure is a scary time for men. Girls like to act like you're to blame and they're the victims. Her dress was short and she was drunk. She's not so innocent. But then your dad's the judge and you won't be convicted. Wait a minute. That doesn't-- that's really strange. Hang on. I just want-- I just want to make sure I'm getting this right. [INAUDIBLE] Carry the one. Yeah, no, it's not adding up. I guess it's probably not such a scary time for boys. They've always had the upper hand. They've always had a choice. It's time for women to rise up, use our collective voice. It's going to take all of us. So let's go make some noise. [CHEERING] Thank you.
- Please welcome Amanda Nguyen. [MUSIC PLAYING] AMANDA NGUYEN: Oh my god, y'all are going to make me cry. Jeez. I wanted to come out here and talk about political strategy and how to pass your own law, and I will. But I also want to take this moment to just thank you from the bottom of my heart. Because I still remember the moment that I walked out of the hospital. I remember being so alone and the rape kit was over. And I went to the front desk, and the woman in the front just handed me a taxi voucher to go back to the place where I was raped. And the sun was still rising, my examination had taken six hours long. Most people don't know that it's three to seven hours long. And that was it. I remember being like well, where do I go from here? And so today from wherever you are, whatever you're fighting for, you might feel scared and I know what it feels like to feel scared. After my examination I tried to learn what rights were available to me. And I grew up in America believing in our sacrosanct values, that survivors really did-- and everyone-- had equality under the law. That we as citizens have the right to petition our government. And so when I was met with a broken criminal justice system like so many rape survivors, I remember walking into my local area of crisis center. There weren't enough seats for us in the waiting room. And I thought to myself, if I am struggling and I have resources, what is everybody else doing that doesn't have my resources? And at that moment, I realized that had a choice. I could accept the injustice or rewrite the law and one of these things is a lot better than the other. And so I rewrote it. In 2016, the team I founded-- Rise-- organized relentlessly and we passed the Sexual Assault Survivors' Bill of Rights unanimously through the United States Congress. [APPLAUSE] It's the 21st bill in modern US history to pass an on the record roll call vote in both chambers, and the statistic for that is .016%. [APPLAUSE] But I want to talk to you about where we've been from that moment. Because after President Obama signed it, we heard from over a million people. People all around the United States and people all around the world who reached out and said, I'm a survivor too or I know someone who's a survivor and we need to work on these things. And so with that I took a leap of faith. Usually I talk about the rights, but I think that's been covered here. So today I'm really speaking to entrepreneurs and women and anyone really, however you identify, about taking a leap of faith. I have a dream and that dream is to be an astronaut. But over the past couple of years, I am an activist. And one thing that I noticed in my peers is that we often-- especially those who are young, trying to figure out their lives, graduating from college-- try to figure out boxes to check. One of the first questions that people ask at parties is what do you do? And I actually like really don't like that question. I've learned to say, how do you spend your time? Because a lot of people choose to spend their time and their passions in different ways. It might not be actually what they get paid doing. And one thing that I want folks to know is that you can be whatever it is that you want to be. And I want to be a civil rights astronaut. Which means I'm both a civil rights activist and an astronaut. There's this concept in space, it's called the overview effect. This happens to a lot of astronauts. And it's when they first see earth for the first time from the vantage point of being in space. It's a cognitive psychological shift that happens. And astronauts describe it as an overwhelming feeling of awe. This idea that everyone that's ever lived or died is on this pale blue dot. And what people-- astronauts-- want to tell people is that you can't see man-made borders from space. But what you can see are other issues-- environmental destruction. And it gives them an orbital perspective. Spaceship Earth is what they call it. And this idea that we are all one. That we all have a shared humanity and that we should really, really try to remember that we are global citizens. At the core of what I do is that justice should not depend on geography. And also that the most powerful tool we all have is our voice. I remember my Massachusetts law-- before it became law, it was the first bill-- it was my own civil rights on the line. I got a call from my policy advisor and she had said they're not bring up your bill. It's going to die. And I sat in the airport-- I was in D.C. At the time-- just crying-- because I was like well what's the point in actually showing up? Because I'm just going to watch my civil rights get slaughtered in the Massachusetts State House. And it was other survivors who called me and said just show up. Stand there and let them see your face as they walk out of that floor. And I was the last person that was on that plane. And the next day for 14 hours I talked to everyone that I could. I showed up and I said, my name is Amanda-- here are my civil rights. Please care about them. But we worked our way through. And by the end of those 14 hours, the speaker brought it up. And it passed unanimously through the-- through Massachusetts. [APPLAUSE] I want people to know that no one-- no one is invisible when we demand to be seen. And it's this concept that really has-- throughout my experience in activism played true and true again. I want folks to know even if you're a young-- especially if you're a young Asian-American girl-- that you have a voice. And that your voice deserves to be heard. On one of my trips to Congress after the bill had already passed, I remember walking out of the car and this one woman just ran up to me and she was like, you don't know who I am, but I want to tell you that I was raped too. And the fact that you're Asian-American and the fact that you are speaking about this means so much to me. Because there are so few people who look like me who are talking about these issues. And I'll never forget her. It's honestly so important to me when survivors share their stories. Because I get a lot of them. But every time a survivor shares with me it's like they're handing over a coal. And it's a weight that I carry, but it keeps my fire alive. And over time, all of them become diamonds in the sky. And so to any survivor who is listening out, there I want you to know that you are not alone. That you deserve to be believed and more importantly, you matter. Think over the past couple of months, we have seen that be questioned. But I want you to know that there are organizers working on the front lines of every single state in America and around the world. My organization Rise is fighting for these civil rights. And over the past 20 months, I'm so proud to say we've passed 20 laws, all unanimous. [APPLAUSE] And so with that, if anyone wants to organize, there's always a place for you at Rise. And lastly, no one-- no one-- is alone when we not only demand to be seen, but when we come together. Thank you. [APPLAUSE] [MUSIC PLAYING]
- Please welcome Nadia Bolz-Weber. [MUSIC PLAYING] NADIA BOLZ-WEBER: The problem with that video going viral is I was in the Sea-Tac Airport a couple of weeks ago, and this dude's like, you're the forgiveness pastor. And I was like, oh, no, no. I'm like the, is shitty at forgiveness but is desperate pastor. Super sorry for the confusion. [LAUGHTER] It was bold. It was a bold move for MAKERS to do that whole "Have a Little Faith" series, since as we know, religion, you know, historically has been a source of so much misogyny that so much of us have suffered from. When, as a newly ordained clergy woman, I first started blogging, these conservative Christian bloggers would attack me and write shit about me on their blogs. And they wouldn't use my title, Pastor Nadia Bolz-Weber, because they didn't think girls could be pastors. Now, there are a million reasons I shouldn't be a pastor, but being a girl's literally not one of them. So instead, they called me-- they made up a term of insult. They called me Pastrix Nadia Boltz-Weber, which sounded kind of dirty. And so I titled my first memoir, "Pastrix," which became a New York Times bestseller. So if you're keeping score at home, I won that round. [APPLAUSE] Just saying. But it taught me the power of, like, reclaiming things that have hurt us, and using those things to heal us. And religion is potent stuff. And yeah, it's been the source of so much harm. I can't deny that. But I really think that scripture and theology are actually far too potent to be left in the hands of those who would use it to justify their dominance over another group of people. These things, in the right hands, can and should be used for good. At the end of the video you just saw, I quoted a short verse from John's Gospel, so it made me think, what other texts in the Bible could be used for good and not for harm? So here's a little peek, live, of one of the many sermons from season two of "Have a Little Faith" that will debut today at makers.com. Ready? It starts with some verses from Luke's Gospel, and they're super weird. It goes like this. In the 15th year of the reign of Emperor Tiberius, when Pontius Pilate was governor over Judea, and Herod was the ruler of Galilee, and during the high priest of these dudes that were the high priests, the word of God didn't come to a damn one of them. The word of God came to this weird guy named John in the Wilderness, which is just another story. So I've been wondering, what did it feel like 2,000 years ago to be ruled by Emperor Tiberius? Like, what did it feel like to be under the domination of Pontius Pilate? We know little of, like, the interior lives of people who lived in Judea at the time. But I wonder if, to the people in Judea at the time, the power of the men who were named in these opening verses felt inescapable. I asked my parishioners a similar question once. I asked them, who or what in the world seems so powerful that it feels like it's inescapable? Like, it feels like it's in charge. And their answers kind of destroyed me. Their answers were things like, my depression, and not feeling good enough, and body image issues, and debt, and abuse, and white supremacy. Also appearing on the list of powerful forces that cannot be overcome were potato chips, and Oreos, which I feel like is fair. [LAUGHTER] But I was struck by how many of them consistently mentioned anxiety. I know that at different times in my own life, there were forces around me that felt so powerful, it felt like they were in control, like my addiction, and my unhealthy relationships, and my horrible boss, and my own depression. And these things felt like emperors, like tyrants. And the anxiety that they created in me felt inescapable. So I don't know about you, but I find myself in the midst of the powers and principalities of this world, and I find myself in the chaos of a country that's in ideological lockdown. And in the midst of such anxiety, I'm desperate for hope-- I mean real hope, not platitudes or cheerful sentiment. I need something to feel more powerful than the forces that rage around me. And to be perfectly honest, even though I'm a pastor, sometimes my anxiety makes prayer difficult. So if you, too, are anxious and can't pray, maybe we can all take a note from the priest who once suggested that maybe we can pray for the conversion of our anxiety. Because he said, when anxiety is converted, you know what it becomes? It becomes hope. And I couldn't think of a better thing to preach to you. If you have anxiety now, it just means you are almost hopeful. You're, like-- you're, like, super close. [LAUGHTER] So here's a word for the conversion of our anxiety. Here is the thing that pushes me that tiny distance between my own anxiety and actual hope. It's when I realized this. You know that list of emperors, and rulers, and power brokers who were so feared and powerful at that time in Luke's Gospel? You know what? The only reason anyone knows their names-- the only reason these tiny, so-called powerful men are even remembered at all, 2,000 years later, the only reason anyone even says their names, is as a footnote to Jesus, a homeless dude who hung out with fishermen and sex workers, and said we should give our money away and forgive our enemies. So can you imagine what a blow it would be to Pontius Pilate's ego if he knew that? So my prayer, when I don't know what to pray, is super simple. I just name every single thing in person that seems so powerful as to feel inescapable-- rulers, tyrants, societal forces. I name them, and then I just go, footnote. I mean, seriously. Pontius Pilate? He's a footnote. Your bully from middle school? Footnote. Your depression? Footnote. Your shitty boss? Footnote. Pathetic narcissists of every variety? Footnote. Don't mistake me. All those things are very real. And the harm that they have on us and on the world is also real. But to me, the whole point of having faith-- the whole point of believing in a power greater than ourselves in any way, like in any variety that works for you personally, is that it allows us to believe in a bigger story than the one we tell ourselves, a bigger story than the one shouted on cable news, a bigger story than the one being shouted inside our own heads. In my own anxiety, I can only see a few feet in front of me, and the world feels like it's closing in on me. But the bigger picture-- in the bigger picture, I defiantly believe that forgiveness is more powerful than resentment, and that compassion is more powerful than judgment, and that love is always more powerful than fear. [APPLAUSE] [MUSIC PLAYING]
- Please welcome Kerry Cooper. [MUSIC PLAYING] KERRY COOPER: So I wanted to-- after yesterday's beautiful poem, one of our beautiful customers at The Fit Lab wrote us a poem that I thought I would start with. Rothy's are more than just shoes. They're helping the earth improve. Their sustainability empowers community. Their colors are sure to amuse. It was such a sweet thing. So thank you to-- I think it's @FeministLimericks that wrote this to us. And thank you. So I thought-- I don't have a clicker, but I thought I would just start with a little bit about me. I am a dork by trade. I'm a mechanical engineer. After getting my MBA, I went back, and I spent most of my last 20 years in retail and apparel at some brands you probably recognize, Levi's and Walmart and ModCloth. And one of the things that you see in apparel is how much waste there is. At Levi's, we were making fabric commits and capacity commits a year out. And the amount of waste is just staggering. There is a garbage truck full of clothes burned every second. A garbage truck full of clothes burned or in a landfill every second. We have to do better. And Rothy's is this amazing combination for me of all of my professional passions. It's the nitty gritty supply chain details alongside this amazing community of customers that love our brand. And with our commitment to sustainability, it really is a job I hope lasts forever. I love what I do. So I wanted to talk to you a little bit today about Rothy's and how we take a different approach to manufacturing design. And it all started with this. Some people look at this as trash, or hopefully, recycling. But that's what makes entrepreneurs, like the ones you've heard from today, different. They see possibilities. By the way, 9% of these are recycled. 12% are incinerated. And the other 80% are going into landfill. It's appalling. So in 2012, our founders, Roth and Steven, who saw their wives' lack of comfortable, sustainable shoes, went to work. They spent four years of R and D to figure out how to make a plastic water bottle into shoes. So today, you start with melting plastic into pellets, extruding it into yarn, 3D knitting it into shapes so you don't have waste of what you're cutting out, and making a beautiful, machine washable shoe. And so what began as this idea to create recycled single use plastics into something beautiful and useful led to this. Which last year, we sold a million pairs of these alone. [APPLAUSE] And what drives this brand is the women that wear it. So this brand is driven by this insanely comfortable shoe that compels people to share it. When you wear it, people stop you and say, oh, are those Rothy's? And luckily, they're distinctive looking. And so people, when they ask you-- like, are they as comfortable as people say they are? The first response you get back is, yes. And, oh, by the way, did you know they're machine washable? And when you see another woman wearing them, you can't help but kind of have a little wink and a nod of, hey, look, we're all in it together. All of us are in this together. So today, we're excited to announce we've repurposed almost 25 million water bottles. [APPLAUSE] It's not bad, but here's the thing. It's like a drop in the bucket, and this is more than just Rothy's. Sustainability isn't a fad or a gimmick. It's the future. And as we think about clean beauty movement and organic foods, sustainability is going mainstream. And conscious consumerism is here, and that's an amazing thing. So if you look at who our customers are, they're you. They are women who are demanding change. And I think all of us are the decision makers for what we buy. I think 80% of purchases are decided by the women that lead the household. And it's women like Stella McCartney, like Jenn Hyman, like my all-female executive team at Rothy's that are ones driving this change. [APPLAUSE] As our environmental crisis reaches epic proportions, these practices have to be adopted more broadly through the fashion and the retail industry. And it's a problem that requires all of us to solve. So here's my challenge to you. Think different. Take something that doesn't seem like it makes sense. Take it apart. Put it back together. We need more female entrepreneurs. Go start a business where you think you can make a difference. Take something that is destined for the landfill, and figure out how you're going to reuse it. All of us can bring fresh thinking to make sustainability work. And it won't work unless all of us do it. Thank you. [APPLAUSE] [MUSIC PLAYING]
- Please welcome Celeste Burgoyne. [MUSIC PLAYING] CELESTE BURGOYNE: Hi, I'm so honored to be here with you guys today. My name's Celeste, and I'm on the board of Makers and I'm proud to work for Lululemon. My story, I imagine, is like many of you in the room today. Everyday I wake up a mean to live into my best life. Not the life that I think I'm supposed to want, or the life that I think those that love me most want for me, but the life that I have chosen. The life that exemplifies what matters most to me. I was raised by two wonderful parents-- by a mom who had a big job, and a dad who came to every school event, whether he was invited or not. [LAUGHTER] And none of those things were all that common back then. So after graduating from the University of San Diego, not far from here, I found my personal love for business. I started working for a small retail company, and I fell in love with the entrepreneurial qualities right away. I was 22 years old, I was leading a team of 30, and I was responsible for everything within those four walls. Retail was not a passion of mine. It wasn't something I thought I was going to make a career of. But I fell in love almost immediately. Since then, I've had the good fortune of joining Lululemon a little over 12 years ago today, when there was less than 10 stores in the US. My family thought I was crazy. I packed my bags, moved to Canada, and started working for a company where they couldn't even pronounce the name. [LAUGHTER] But I went anyways. Within my first seven years at Lululemon, we had a blast. We worked hard. We opened 25 to 30 stores a year. We went public. And on top of that, I got married and had two sweet little boys. Those years with all the change were wonderful, and I attribute a lot of that to the culture of personal development and feeling a family at Lululemon. And it was that same environment that I leaned on when I needed it most. It was that same environment that supported my boys and I when the unexpected happened-- when my husband, the love of my life, passed away from cancer at the age of 40. Nothing prepares you for something like that. So we all know life happens, and I just wanted to share a few things I've learned along the way. First, it isn't about having at all. No one can actually have it all. That isn't a thing. But what it is about is figuring out what it all means to each of us-- what our "all" is. And what I've learned-- sometimes the hard way-- is, if you don't figure out what your "all" is and choose it, someone else may choose it for you. Prioritize relationships. I mean real friendships. Give to them, lean in, be vulnerable, don't take them for granted. I think we all know that we need those relationships more in the future than we can even know is possible. So I'll leave you with a few final words, large and small, we all know it's the choices we make each day that create our future. But it may actually just be the courage to move forward that matters most. Thank you guys very much. [APPLAUSE] [MUSIC PLAYING]
- Please welcome Kylene Campos. [MUSIC PLAYING] KYLENE CAMPOS: Good morning, Makers. It's an honor for me to be here in front of you today. I am the chief storyteller or marketing director for SK-II. It's a global skincare brand with origins in Japan best known for our cult classic, Facial Treatment Essence. Some of you might be thinking and wondering, what's an Asian brand, a beauty brand, doing here at Maker's speaking about women's empowerment? Well, we didn't just get up one day and decide, let's get behind the cost, or let's be purpose-driven. How did we get here? Consumer obsession has always been our mantra. And as we connected with many of our consumers-- a diverse group of young working women all across Asia-- to interview them, understand their skin care needs, concerns, perceptions of beauty, how it all fit into their lives, we began to realize that there were more important things than just skin and beauty. The more conversations that we had, the more we listened, the more our own perceptions changed. I remember talking to a woman in Shanghai. And she said, it's so difficult to find someone at my age. I'm a leftover woman, a Sheng nu. And for those of you that don't know, Sheng nu is a derogatory term in China used to describe unmarried, single women after the age of 25. And this woman was only 30 with a strong career, doing amazing things with her life. And this wasn't just happening in the more traditional parts of Asia. Even progressive Singapore where I work, I had people from my team wanting to leave their high-powered jobs because of the pressure to be married. And they wanted to go back home and find a husband. It was clear in these conversations and in the many more that we had that women were being put into a box and just how much pressure there was. Being the perfect woman in society's eyes, this was the box. And so we realized that we needed to be a brand that went just beyond selling beauty products. We needed to be a human brand and connect at the human level. And so we made a commitment to use our voice as a force for good. And in that year, Change Destiny was born. We created Change Destiny as a platform to give women courage, to break barriers, to overcome limitations and to go beyond social stereotypes to embrace individuality and really shape their own destinies. And so as part of that platform in May 2016-- that's almost three years ago-- we launched a film called, "The Marriage Market," which put the spotlight on the labels of Sheng nu or leftover women in China and really brought to life the real issues that women face because of this pressure. But beyond the millions of views and likes and shares that we got, it was really the messages from women all over the world that floored us. Women said, I'm so glad you have finally brought this up. They said, this has given me the strength to continue to go on. They said, we are not leftover women. We choose to be happy, independent women. And this inspired us to keep on going. We've launched several films since then, tackling the issue in Japan and in Korea and really all across Asia. Today marks the second day of Chinese New Year. It is the biggest holiday in China and for Chinese all around the world. Women, families celebrate by coming together for the start of the Lunar New Year. But for young single women, this is the most stressful time of the year where the pressure is at its peak. There are questions upon questions of husbands, boyfriends, marriage, even children from parents and relatives. And it is for this reason that young single women avoid going home in what should, otherwise, be the happiest time of the year. And on this note, I would like to share a film that we will be launching globally in a week's time. And in this film, we felt it was necessary to go beyond making declarations, go beyond highlighting issues. It was time for us to make true change. And true change happens when we are able to take that first step to bring people together. Its true change comes when we are able to bring together people with different points of view, people from different sides to bring true understanding to bring all of us together. And so here is the film called "Meet Me Halfway," which celebrates courageous women who have been able to take that first step to create understanding and change destiny. [MUSIC PLAYING]
- Please welcome Vicki Shabo. [MUSIC PLAYING] SONG LYRICS: Higher than I ever been. I will fly. I will fly. VICKI SHABO: Hey there. Isn't that such a powerful clip? So this is from a movie called "Zero Weeks." It's available online, and the whole thing just makes you want to cry and also take action. So I'm here to tell you why this is the right time to take action. Let me tell you why I'm hopeful, even in this time where things feel so hard and so divided. I'm going to start with a story. So this past fall, I was inspired to go out to North Dakota-- (IN ACCENT) --North Dakota, Fargo-- (NORMAL VOICE) --to take some time to go knock on doors for a senator that I enormously respected. And while I was there, I found common ground with people that I really just didn't expect. So a man pulled me into his house-- literally pulled me into his house-- and wanted to tell me how everything in Washington was wrong, how politics was terrible, and he thought that he disagreed with me on every public policy. Same with this woman, who told me about her own-- her disabled daughter, her own health condition, her low wages. She felt like everything was wrong, and, like, she would disagree with me on everything, especially on women's rights. And as we talked some more, we found that we actually had common ground around paid family leave as a policy support for families, and to really express the family values that we all agree this country should hold dear. So I'm feeling hopeful and I'm feeling optimistic, and I want to tell you a couple of other reasons why, and it's not just that 84% of voters support national paid family leave, and that support is strong among both Democrats and Republicans. It's also that policymakers are finally, finally taking action. So in states, in the past two years, we've won three state paid family and medical leave laws, we've won equal pay laws, and policymakers, governors, and legislative leaders-- not just backbenchers-- are increasingly taking action on this issue. Second, in this last divisive campaign, there were glimmers of hope. 50% of candidates for Congress and Governor in competitive races had paid family leave, equal pay, or sexual harassment as part of their platforms. On paid leave alone, and this one gives me huge pride, we went from 4% of candidates that talked about this issue back in 2014, just four years ago, up to 29% this year. And those who talked about the issue, who had it as part of their platforms, they were more likely to win. That brings me to my third piece of optimistic hope. The new women in Congress. How many of you have been following them? [APPLAUSE] I know, right? It is amazing to see people that look like us up there, and actually this past week, I was at an event with Lauren Underwood, who's a new member of Congress from Illinois. Yep, she's amazing. And she said on the campaign trail she used to joke about her girlfriends, and now her girlfriends are in Congress-- so cool. So you know, they're like us, and what gives me-- what makes me feel just so good, these are people who have dealt with pay disparities. They're people who have been given the side eye because they've been called too bossy or aggressive. They're people who have felt the heartache of needing to hand a newborn over to somebody else too soon because they needed to get back to work. They get it. And you put those new folks, the new energy people who are young and vibrant, and look like us with some of the longtime leaders. Who for decades, for years, have prioritized paid leave and equal pay. They're in positions of huge power. You only need to look at the State of the Union the other night to see that. And candidates for president have this issue as part of their platforms as one of their key priorities. So I am super hopeful about the future. It is time for us to win. We are on the edge of winning national paid family and medical leave, I really believe that. I think we're on the edge of trying to putting policies in place to make it harder for employers to discriminate against women on the basis of sex related to pay, and other issues with pregnancy. But it's going to take all of us. It is time for us to jump in. So this year, I think the House of Representatives has a great chance of passing the Paycheck Fairness Act to help close the wage gap. I think this year, the House of Representatives can pass a comprehensive, affordable tested plan for national paid family and medical leave. Now the Senate, the president-- I'm not sure they're going to get us all the way to where we need to be to pass these things into law. But our actions and our investments right now, all of us, all of us playing our role, can help hasten the pace of change to make damn sure that by 2021, we are seeing new laws in this country. So it is time for us to band together. I want you to get ready to jump into this because all of us, all of you, your voices, your influence, your networks, it is essential that you use those to seize this moment. And who knows, if we are really loud and really persistent, maybe we'll even make change sooner, because these issues are on the agenda of politicians from both parties now. These are mainstream issues. So who's ready for action? [APPLAUSE] Yeah? OK. Awesome. All right, so I'm going to ask you to do three things right now. First, I want you to think about the ways that you, you personally, can use your voice in your workplace or your community to make change. Who can you talk to? Who can you influence? Who can you mobilize? Now I want you to have some accountability here. So I want you to turn to your neighbor and I want you to tell them the first thing that you are going to do when you get home to fight for better policies for women and families. Kerry Washington did this at our annual gala this year, and it stuck with me. So I wanted to make some other people do it. Turn to your neighbor and tell them the one thing you're going to do. [CHATTER] I love it. Awesome. Woo. [LAUGHS] All right. [LAUGHS] You guys are amazing. All right, here's the last thing I want you to do. I want you to-- you guys are still talking, that's good. All right. Are you ready for number three? Number three, you're going to take action right now. Pull out your phones, go to supportpaidleave.org/makers-- supportpaidleave.org/makers, and tweet at your member of Congress, telling them to prioritize national paid leave. You just have to enter your zip code at that web page, and it'll go straight to your member of Congress. I want you to tell them, with your message, that you and 100 million people who do not have paid family leave now want it now. You want Congress to hold hearings and pass a bill this year. Congress works for you, and you mean business. So thank you for doing that. If you want to talk more about how you can get involved, go ahead and flag me down over the next couple of days or tweet me @VShabo or friend me on LinkedIn, and we'll talk. Thank you so much. We're going to win this together. Thank you. [APPLAUSE, MUSIC PLAYING] SONG LYRICS: Higher than I ever been. I will fly. I will fly.
- Please welcome Dr. Chelsea Jackson Roberts. [MUSIC PLAYING] CHELSEA JACKSON ROBERTS: In 2004 my life changed. Her name was Misty Denise Carter. And she was my best friend. On September of 2004, I remember the phone ringing and my father being on the other end. And his words, he said, Chelsea, Misty is no longer with us. And like most dads, at least my dad, I was used to him getting wires crossed, the information wrong. But this time he was right. On September 4, 2004, my best friend Misty Carter was murdered. And what came after it that surprised me. All I remember was falling to my knees. I remember this overwhelming amount of pain, of sorrow, of fear, of anger. And more than anything, I remembered how hard it was for me to breathe, how hard it was for me to take my next breath. Because every time I breathed, I was reminded that she was no longer here. Misty and I were freshman roommates at Spelman College. And when we graduated, we had dreams. She was going to open a spa. And I was going to teach yoga. And although Misty's dreams cannot come true, I made a commitment to her. And it manifested in my practice of yoga. Because each time I practice yoga, I'm reminded to breathe. Each time I practice yoga, I'm reminded that I am alive right now and in order to honor Misty's memory and her legacy of providing spaces for little girls and young women who look like us to be seen, to be heard, to be valued, to have spaces to breathe. So in 2013 I founded Yoga, Literature, and Art Camp for teen girls at Spelman College Museum of Fine Art where we serve girls ages 13 through 17 who self-identify as young women of color. And it's a tuition-free camp where they learn how to breathe up against all of the trauma. All of the experiences that we encounter in this body, we have spaces to breathe. And so right now, I invite you to breathe with me. So in your seats, I want you to find a comfortable position. And if you can, get your feet grounded onto the earth if that's possible. Yep. Try to get rid of the things that you're holding. And take in a deep inhale. Draw your shoulders up towards your ears and exhale them back around and down and notice how it feels to have this breath right now. As we have gathered over these couple of days together listening to different stories, allow yourself to harness your own power that you brought to this space. Allow yourself to feel the breath flow in and out of the body. And I invite you to close your eyes. And together, let's take in a deep inhale and just a slow exhale. And in that exhale, I invite you to honor the commitment that you made when you registered for this conference or when you embarked on the journey that you do in your lives. It's going to take all of us to continue to contribute to a world that is just, that is equal, that is safe, and a place that we can all breathe. So together, let's take in one more deep inhale and exhale here. When you're ready, please open your eyes. I am Dr. Chelsea Jackson Roberts, founder of Yoga, Literature, and Art Camp and global ambassador for Lululemon. Thank you.
HILLARY CLINTON: Hello, Makers. I wish I could be there with you because this is such an important time. More than at any other point in my life, women are coming together to tackle big problems and rewrite old rules. And I am energized and encouraged by the diverse group of women everywhere who are speaking out-- speaking out against inequality, and bigotry, and racism, and homophobia, and organizing to create change in their communities and our country, refusing to give in to cynicism or fear. You know, the tidal wave of women and young people running for office is helping to build an America that's not only kinder, fairer, bigger-hearted, but safer, stronger, and more secure. And as Speaker Nancy Pelosi-- doesn't that sound great-- has proved yet again, it often takes a woman to get the job done. I've said for many years, and I believe more fiercely than ever today, that standing up for the rights and opportunities for women and girls is the unfinished business of the 21st century. Finishing that business is going to take all of us-- innovators and entrepreneurs, athletes and activists, trailblazers and changemakers, and also women and men. This is a pivotal moment. And all together, I believe there is nothing we can't do. So here's to the work ahead. And I look forward to working with you every step of the way.
NADIA BOLZ-WEBER: At different times in my life there were forces that felt so powerful and totally in control-- my addiction, my unhealthy relationship, my horrible boss, my anxiety, and depression. At the time, these things felt inescapable, like they would always rule me. So back in Jesus' day, there were these emperors who've ruled for a certain number of years, and then they didn't. It's one reason I'm kind of obsessed with how the story of Jesus is set up. When the Bible says, in the 15th year of the reign of Emperor Tiberius, when Pontius Pilate was governor of Judea and Herod was ruler of Galilee-- and during the high priest of these dudes who were high priests, the word of God didn't come to a damn one of them. But during their reign, I imagined it also felt like they would always rule. Those whose power, at the time they were alive, felt so absolute are only a footnote to Jesus. Given that list of emperors and rulers, I wonder if he was preaching to an anxious people needing some hope in that context-- real hope not platitudes or cheerful sentiment. I say this because there are things happening in our world right now that make me and a lot of people I love very anxious. So maybe we can pray for the conversion of our anxiety. Because when anxiety is converted, you know what it becomes? It becomes hope. Which means if you have anxiety now, you are almost hopeful-- you're like super close. You remember that list of emperors and rulers at the beginning of the gospel, the ones who were so feared and powerful at the time. The only reason these tiny, so-called "powerful" men are even remembered at all 2000 years later is as a footnote. So here's my prayer for those of us who are so anxious that we're nearly hopeful. Let's all name every single thing and person that seems so powerful right now as to feel inescapable-- rulers, tyrants, societal forces, et cetera-- name them and then say footnote. Pontius Pilate-- footnote. Your depression-- footnote. Student loans-- footnote. The gun lobby-- footnote. Power hungry narcissists of every variety-- footnote.
- Please welcome Moj Mahdara. [MUSIC PLAYING] MOJ MAHDARA: Come on, more energy. Hi, guys. Nice to be here. Thanks for having me. Shout out to Dillon who talked me into doing this. So here we go. I'm going to tell you the story of I Also. So about a year ago, I was with a friend of mine, a mentor, someone I have really always looked up to, a super talented woman who runs a large operation with a fund, a large celebrity clientele, and all of you would definitely consider her to be a mogul. And out of curiosity, I asked her. What's your [MUTED] number? She kind of looked at me. It's a very forward question. Tilted her head to the side, and she gave me a seven digit number. And I thought to myself, how can that be? How many people in this room have a [MUTED] you number? Put your hands up. How many people in this room know what a [MUTED] you number is? [LAUGHTER] OK, a [MUTED] you number is a number that is beyond retirement. And at that point, you are only doing what you choose from a professional point of view, right? So if I asked the same question of our male peers and friends, they would say eight to nine figures without even skipping a beat, right? So I personally have a very high eight figure number that I'm going for. That's my number. But when I say that, I sound overreaching, right? So as activated as we are by Time's Up and MeToo, it's still a toxic time for a woman who's incredibly ambitious. Women who not only say MeToo, but I Also. As in, I also want to make a lot of money. [LAUGHTER] I want to do that to even the playing field, right? And I want all of you to also make lots of money, right? [CHEERING] [APPLAUSE] I'm serious. You're going to clap like that for more money. [CHEERING] I mean, come on. So one way to protect yourself from an abusive boss is to be your own boss. But you need capital to start your own business. And it's mostly men who have the capital, yes? The world's richest 26 people have the same amount of capital as half of the world's population. And that's the poorest half, right? That's 26 people versus four billion. And of those 26 people, only two of them are women. Women are still earning $0.80 on the dollar. And that's white women. Black women are earning $0.63 of that dollar, and Latina women $0.54. Not cool, right? So making money is an essential part of equality for us. And I think we really need to get focused on that. As a kid, being gay was not welcome nor accepted. I basically left home at 16 with no family support, and I've been on my own ever since then. I've built four startups from the ground up. [CHEERING] I'm an investor. I have a family that I support, right? I'm a boss, right? But it's not enough. It's not. The memes are not enough. The marches are not enough. The hashtags, the logos on the mugs, they're not enough. Because in my opinion, the best revenge is the amount of zeros in our bank account. [CHEERING] [APPLAUSE] I find that women in particular get very uncomfortable when I bring up wealth. Right? You can kind of sort of feel it in this room when we started out the talk. And every woman I know can name the best restaurant, vacation, where to get the best anti-aging or this or that website, but we do not share our financial knowledge with each other. Those are the conversations we need to be having here. Like, do you know a great lawyer? Do you know a great banker, wealth manager, an international capital source who's investing in US-based businesses? What's your strike price? What's your liquidation preferences? Those are the questions that women need to be asking each other. Because let me tell you what the guys are talking about at their conferences. They're talking about building extreme generational wealth. As a Butch woman, a perk, for once, right, for once, I get to tag along with the guys and be like a lady fly on the wall. And in the back room with their cigars and after everyone leaves, the guys are talking about which companies to get in early and how they're going to build massive wealth with each other. Because making money is a function of friendship for men, but it's not for us, right? I have multiple billionaires on my cap table. And every meeting starts with them saying, this is my new Rauschenberg or Picasso or what renovation they're making on their third home or the $10 million they just bought in Secondary and Bird and Lyft. But the MeToo and Time's Up movement has created a PR halo for me-- here I am-- and for all of us. But it's not created a wealth movement for us, right? So meanwhile, the most "successful" paid leaders or the most visionary entrepreneurs are facing charges of sexual misconduct. But they're still vacationing on $600 million yachts at Christmas, or they're scamming thousands at a fake music festival with a $7.5 million penthouse with multiple documentaries they're starring in. [LAUGHTER] Right? All shame-free, shame-free, like amazing, because society has plenty of forgiveness for these male oopses, because their bankroll cushions them from our judgment. It buys them the best lawyers, PR firms, and it wrangles them out of almost everything, right? And I don't want to do any of those things. But I want that market share. And I definitely want that freedom, right? [CHEERING] So I'm going to have a mint. See? Free. So women in this room and beyond, you can share your best tips for mascara and childcare. But we need to start sharing our financial hacks. So start by dreaming and asking, what's my vision of success? Visualize it, own it, and name it. I also-- what? What are you also going to be creating for yourself? Talk to someone at this conference about your money, your budgeting, your cap tables. You can build your network, but you need to build your net worth. [WHISTLE] [APPLAUSE] So go out and increase your financial literacy. Click on posts about interest rates and mortgages and IPOs and deal structures and get your head in that I Also space. I also want. I also deserve. Because financial equity is not the only tool we have, but in this fight, it gives us more power to rewrite the rules. And as a woman, you know this. We get hazed. Not because we're getting inducted into, but for simply wanting to be in the club. Do you really-- like you understand what-- you get that, right? Just for wanting to be in that club, there's hazing. It's so real, that hazing, that like, I deserve. So for me, after MeToo and after Time's Up, for me, it's I Also. I want generational wealth. I want investments and opportunity. I want the opportunity to fail and to try again, right? I want to live shame-free, entitled to my place in the world as an entrepreneur. Thank you. [CHEERING] [APPLAUSE] [MUSIC PLAYING]
SHARON WHITE-HARRIGAN: There's nothing correctional about the Department of Corrections. They just put you all in one place, and it's like a dog fight. Throw a piece of meat and let them go. I was raised in the Bronx. My parents, exceptional. They raised us with education as the cornerstone. Of our household, I was the one that brought laughter. I was a clown. Having my daughter out of wedlock, my parents wasn't happy. His parents wasn't happy. And so we planned a wedding. And we were excited about our future until that fateful day. Dave was killed in a car accident three days before wedding. Everything changed. Immediately something snapped. I felt so lost. The Black eyes, fractured jaw, fractured ribs, the bruises. And when I tried to say I would like a divorce, he tried to pull me into the alley and kill me. I'd made a promise to myself that I was not going to allow anybody else to abuse me in any kind of way. A few years later, a man attempted to rape me. And I fought for my life. The judge was a racist. I'm very clear it was about the color of my skin. I had letters from the church community. I had support in the court room, and it didn't matter. They only cared about locking this black girl up for defending herself. When I got there, I realized that the majority of the women were there because of a man. There is 840 women in Bedford Hills Correctional Facility that is re traumatized again and again, and nobody gives a damn. And we all hear deviance put together and just it feels like a box. For us to fend for ourselves, I knew that I had to stop being angry. I knew that I couldn't afford to be bitter anymore. I decided that I'm going to do everything that I can to be the best that I can be because one day I will come home. And when I do, I'm going to be a force to reckon with. The reentry process was difficult because people had the box. Have you ever been convicted of a felony? Of course, I'm going to check it because I did. And so every day I hit that pavement. The women coming home we're a sisterhood. And so I'm an advocate. I'm an activist to make sure that the women receive the help and support that they need. I may have been broken and I'm still under construction. But I stand as a woman no longer broken but put together. [MUSIC PLAYING]
JADA PINKETT SMITH: You can't tell me what being a woman means for me and what that looks like. You're not allowed to tell me what my motherhood should look like. You're not allowed to tell me what my strength should look like. You're not allowed to tell me what my vulnerability should look like. That is for me to decide. I grew up in Baltimore, Maryland. My mother had me at a very young age and we lived with my grandparents. My grandmother wanted me to learn about everything. So I had to take piano lessons, I had to learn French, I took ballet, I took tap, I took everything you could imagine. People loved my energy, people thought was really talented, but I was really rough around the edges. And I got a couple of people they're like, "You'll never work, your east coast accent is too strong." And I would just sit there and I'd go, "OK. We'll see about that." But to be able to do a movie like "Menace II Society" at that time, which was about urban culture in Los Angeles, what I realized is that there really isn't that much difference between the emotional and psychological aspects of living in urban neighborhoods. Whether you're on the east coast or the west coast. It's all the same pain, it's all the same frustration. They told me I was too short. But I've met Will, and we became really good friends. And then he went through a divorce and we decided to date. And then that was history. Fresh Prince of Bel-Air, many years later, came back trying to get me to play his longtime girlfriend on his show. And I was like, "Nope. I'm a movie star now. Boy, bye." It was a heyday for black talent. We came into Hollywood, all we had to do was come ready and kick the door down. Right? And then it kind of eased down, the fad went out. Right? And so that was tough. You had to tone down your blackness in order to be acceptable. And there were some of us that were able to crossover into white culture, more mainstream projects. So, "Matrix," for instance. But there were only a few of us. Here we are at the red table. Yes. Ladies, once again, today's subject matter is mental illness. We are talking about addiction. We are going to be talking about race and racial relations between women. I called it "Red Table Talk" because it's a place of purification, that fire, burn, it's hot. Sometimes sitting is not the most comfortable. My mother is 65, I'm 47, Willow's 18. So you are talking about three very different viewpoints. I think that I've learned over the years, people are going to tell you everything that's wrong about you. And if you're not clear on everything that's right, and everything that's beautiful about you, people will steal you. And so it's just a matter of really having the courage to create the life that is specific to you and no one else. And to have a family that loves each other, and supports each other, that's my greatest accomplishment.
[MUSIC PLAYING] NADIA BOLZ-WEBER: I really believe that when someone else does us harm, we're connected to that mistreatment like a chain. Because forgiveness is nothing less than an act of fidelity to an evil combating campaign. So it's not an act of niceness. It's not being a doormat. It really, to me, is more about badass than that. Maybe retaliation or holding on to anger about the harm done to me doesn't actually combat evil. Maybe it feeds it. Because in the end, if we're not careful, we can actually absorb the worst of our enemy, and on some level, even start to become them. So what if forgiveness, rather than being like a pansy way of saying, it's OK, is actually a way of wielding bolt cutters and snapping the chain that links us? Like it is saying, what you did was so not OK, that I refuse to be connected to it anymore. Forgiveness is about being a freedom fighter. And free people are dangerous people. Free people aren't controlled by the past. Free people laugh more than others. Free people see beauty where others do not. Free people are not easily offended. Free people are unafraid to speak truth to stupid. Free people are not chained to resentments. That's worth fighting for. There really is a light that shines in the darkness, and that the darkness cannot, will not, shall not, overcome it. [MUSIC PLAYING]
JAMEELA JAMIL: I'm angry with irresponsible celebrities, who take a platform that they're given and they use it so greedily. And so I'm going to be part of the change, or they will have to kill me, which they probably will. I was a quiet kid. I was very weird. I was deaf from maybe the age of like one or two. Had seven operations on the inside of my ears before I was even 12 years old. And I think when you can't hear you become very, very hyper observant, hypervigilant. I just wasn't set up for being a teenage girl in an all girl school especially not one of the only poor girls in that school. I'm one of the only South Asian girls in a predominantly white school. I didn't eat really a meal between the age of maybe 14 and 17, probably longer. And I didn't menstruate during that time. And I was just a miserable obsessive anorexic, who would hide my food. But it was something that got knocked out of me literally when I was 17. I got hit by a car into another car and broke my back. And so I wasn't able to move for about two years. I gained 75 pounds and had to learn how to walk again, which really re-established my relationship with my body and made me realize that I'd really abused it and taken it for granted for a very long time. And so it's the best thing that ever happened to me. And while it didn't take away probably the body dysmorphia, it took away the habit of hurting myself deliberately. The day that the show got announced and my ratings were really big, way higher than anyone anticipated, the only thing that got reported about me was that I'd gained some weight. And there were photographs fat shaming me all over national magazines. And one of the worst things about that is that that was actually one of the best years of my life. But in all the photographs that they would publish of me, I look sad. It forced me just to fall in love with myself and to fight back, to fight back for myself and to fight back for women. In that week, I decided to make a bucket list or a fuck-it list as I like to call it. The number one thing on that list was move to Los Angeles. And a week later, it turned out not to be cancer. And I was told by, I'd say, nearly everyone that I was too old, too fat, and too ethnic to try and start a career again in the United States. We were just told that it was an annoying English Pakistani woman, who's too tall. And my agent looked at it and he was like, yeah, it's just you. So he sent me in for the audition. And I had no nerves really because why would they give me the job? I saw a picture of the Kardashian's with their weight written across their bodies. These are business women, and you would never have a picture of six businessmen reduced just to a number on a scale. I would like to weigh myself in what matters, and that was my financial independence, my activism, my relationship, my amazing friends, the things that I am grateful for. That's what I weigh. So that's why I started the iweigh movement because we're world leaders. We're leading scientists, and yet we're still being undermined and measured on a scale. This is ridiculous. I truly believe that making women obsessed with their image is a clever way to take our eyes off the ball. It means that we're not thinking about business, the way that as much as we could. We're not sleeping as best as we could. We're not able to grow the things that matter in our lives because we're so busy panicking about our bodies. What a genius way to stop us from becoming equal. How can we be as powerful as men when we're worried all the time. I'm done with standing back and watching women be hurt. And really, we've seen with MeToo and Time's Up, you just have to get loud and you have to be really, really fearless. And so the revolution is not only coming. It is here. [MUSIC PLAYING]
LISA BORDERS: Time's Up is, in effect, a response to MeToo. We insist on a world where there is safe, fair, and dignified work for women. We are here so that no woman ever again has to say MeToo. [MUSIC PLAYING] I grew up in Atlanta. It's the cradle of the civil rights movement. My grandparents were deeply engaged in leading marches and protests and organizing in communities. When Dr. King was assassinated, I can remember holding my grandfather's hand the day that his casket was being pulled down Auburn Avenue. So I had a really deep exposure to civic engagement. I'm getting called racial slurs on a daily basis they didn't know me at all. But on the basis of my skin color and, frankly, being what they perceived as different from them, then I must be somehow less. And so I very quickly understood that my responsibility was not only to get my degree. But it was to demonstrate that I had not only the capacity but the capability to achieve the way that they did, which meant I was exactly like them, two eyes, two ears, one nose, but a very smart brain. My grandparents worked at the Coca-Cola company. My grandfather on my mother's side worked as a chauffeur for one of the first presidents of Coca-Cola from 1929 to 1959. My grandmother worked for 15 years as a maid. So for me to get to work at the Coca-Cola company as a senior officer meant that we had moved as a family from the chauffeur seat to the executive suite in two generations. The business was not doing well and had lost its footing. My passion not just for sports and basketball in particular but for supporting women in their professional goals was really what I was interested in doing. In three seasons at the WNBA, we were able to turn that business around. Every key performance indicator had been turned northward. 3/4 of them were all double digit increases. It was really sort of frightening initially that this was not just in entertainment, that women from different socioeconomic groups across industries, across sectors, were raising their hand and that this was a relevant and resonant experience that we were seeing globally. I can remember thinking we should do something about this. We were born out of tragedy and trauma. But this was women supporting women right from the very beginning. The sisterhood is global today. There are women pledging to work together to ensure that we redesign the world where women have safe, fair, and dignified work. So I have always been one to tackle my problems head on. Don't wait and try and figure them out tomorrow. We're going to figure this out today. And what women are saying is we will not tolerate abuse of any description. Period. Full stop.
- Please welcome Megan Smith. [MUSIC PLAYING] MEGAN SMITH: So I wanted to bring Joy Buolamwini to you guys. Today, she's at Emory giving the provost lecture. She's an extraordinary scientists, computer scientist, and engineer. And when she was a student at MIT, she just noticed face recognition wasn't seeing her. And so she put on a white mask. And it saw her. So this is it. You've taken photographs of people. And if there's a person of color, you have to adjust the light, turn on the flash. This is racist, right? So we have to know that technology can be good or bad. It's just good or bad. It's whatever we do with it. And, in fact, we were over at the Norman Lear Center. And they had this little piece. And it was, media is good or bad, right? We're humans. And we do what humans do. And we do good and bad things. So what I'm hoping-- in this session, we're going to talk about AI, data science, machine learning, and all the emergence that's happening. People say this is like the beginning of fire, right? These are important technologies. And my hope is that you feel welcome into this world. This is our world. Everybody owns what's going to happen. It's not about a small group of people who'd like to use it for their interests. It's for whatever. So in these images, I wanted to bring Joy forward. And I also want to share that-- if you bring up the slides-- that Joy is actually in the cover of Time this week. Ava DuVernay is the guest editor. And it's about optimistic art. And so she's one of 34 featured folks. And it launched this morning. So I hope you'll read that article. And the point of Joy's work is we can solve this if we foresee it, right? So the weapons of math destruction, right? If you haven't seen Kathy O'Neill's TED talk, you have to see it. Because you can learn so much. And it helps you not be afraid of code but be invigorated to figure this out. Because we don't want loss of liberty. We don't like loss of freedom, economic opportunity, all of those things. This is our Congress. So we can use the data to see that Democrats and Republicans used to vote together in the '50s, onwards. And now, they're completely divided, once we have cable news and this media landscape that divide us, right? This is some work that I've shown you guys before, which is, who gets to speak on films? Children television down here, blue is men's lines, red for women's lines. So men's lines to women's lines in 2000 films. So AI learns on data. So it may be we have to learn that women are going to speak less in life with AI. No. We can use AI, machine learning, face recognition to actually audit media. So this is some work with USC from the Viterbi School that we do with Geena Davis and others. So we can use the AI for what we want to solve, for equality and justice. AI is, of course, for these things, huge business. But it's also for all of these things. AI, machine learning could be for poverty reduction, for equality, for justice. Why not? And if we knew our history we know that Ida, and Ellen Swallow Richards, and all these women in the time have done that. This is a picture that shows where the money's going to flow. This is from PricewaterhouseCoopers and some of the Accenture data. But I would notice that Africa's not even on this map. [INAUDIBLE], right? So this is Google's data, some engineers hooking up our search traffic to search, just like-- you know, the Earth from space, right? When we see the light. So wherever there's people, they're searching. Except, look at that. Right? And this is a couple years ago. But still, could we use some of the development money to get broadband to a billion talented people so they could join us in the conversation? Thank you. Let's go. Right? So how do we use collective genius, all of us, right? That's what we're trying to do. And so I just want to riff a couple examples. Grace is in 10th grade. She's a computer scientist. And she's teaching the police chief of New Orleans how to code. Because justice and tech go together. This is a high school in Houston who suffered a great-- of course, the hurricanes. This is an environmental justice high school that used to be, as a Title I school, 50% graduation rate. Half the kids left. Now, it's above 90%. Because they work in environmental justice, on real things. This is an incredible film from Sundance last year, "Inventing Tomorrow." All of these young people are like the Parkland Kids. They're STEM kids. And they invent things, like [INAUDIBLE], who saw the river looking like this. This crap blew in her school bus. And she didn't say, oh, no. She said, let's start measuring. And let's start fixing it right now, right? So that's what can happen. I talked to you about Hokulia, the young people working with the mentors who can Polynesian navigate, right, with no instruments. They went around the world with no instruments. These are just some of the young people doing that. Think about, in the age of AI, that human intelligence is so great. You know, we went to the United Nations. My colleague Susan Osner, is here, who helped with doing the solution summit. We put out a call from the UN, who, already, is solving the goals? And all these people emerged. So how do we get behind these solution-makers on all these topics, whether it's the Native Americans from Standing Rock and Pine Ridge who are already doing solar, and energy, and agriculture things; or whether it's Greta, who is coming forward and really demanding that we pay attention, if our house was on fire, wouldn't we run outside and start doing something, that's happening with the planet? Here's a data point. We explode the equivalent of three Hiroshima bombs every second, in terms of heat, into our oceans. Panic! She says, please panic! I hope you will panic! Let's work on that! On this stage, we had Olivia and Komura. Remember Komura? She was listening to the room for domestic violence with her app. So we could see if we should call the police. Alexa and SIRI aren't doing that. But that's what we could use them for. We could figure out the privacy so it was OK. We could work on that if Komura's in the team.
ABBY WAMBACH: If you truly want to be treated like a man, if you truly want equal opportunity, you need to be handled being treated like a man. And if you're not, we deserve to get crushed in the media. I'm like, yeah, bring it on, baby. [MUSIC PLAYING] I grew up in Rochester, New York. I'm the youngest of seven children. My brothers and sisters treated me like I was just like one of the team. I started playing soccer at five, and I was a competitive kid and not scared. My first three soccer games I ended up scoring 27 goals. I needed to be challenged. So my parents stuck me on the boys team. [MUSIC PLAYING] My high school years were amazing, because we answered to our coach, yes ma'am. My mom gave her the go ahead like, hey, yell at Abby. Give her a hard time. Don't let her develop this overconfident sense of herself. This is high school. We would have done anything to win. [MUSIC PLAYING] Mia knew that she could tell me anything and I would listen to her. She was the best in the world. And to be a confidante with her on the field, we became kind of a dynamic duo. [MUSIC PLAYING] - Drives it far side, headed by Wambach. And Wambach has scored! USA leads. ABBY WAMBACH: It was just such an amazing feeling to be able to win, knowing that my idols, Mia, Joy Fawcett, Julie Foudy, these women were all retiring. And so to be able to send them off with a gold medal around their neck, I don't know if I've ever felt more pride in my life. [MUSIC PLAYING] As a player and as a competitor, you define yourself by not just wins and losses, but with championships. And this was my first attempt to try to win a championship without Mia, without the people that kind of put women's soccer on the map. And we lost embarrassingly to Brazil. I actually wanted to disappear. Some of my darkest days were after that tournament. It definitely fired me up and impassioned me to ensure that that never ever happened again. [MUSIC PLAYING] This is my last shot at winning a World Cup ever. If I want to be happy, if I want to not be pissed off for the next 40 years of my life, we better win this thing. It took a lot of checking my own ego at the door to take a step back and let some of these kids take a step forward, so that they can grow their confidence, maybe change the course of the game one way or another. I am a control freak. I'm fine with saying that. I was freaking out like the whole game. - That's it, game over. The job is over. The US wins the 2015 Women's World Cup. [CHEERING] ABBY WAMBACH: When the final whistle blew, I remember kneeling and just having like this huge, huge sigh of relief, because I knew it was over. That this was the end of my career. [MUSIC PLAYING] There's just really nothing quite like putting that crest on and representing your country. I have to be able to feel confident and comfortable with walking away from that and hoping that not only did I leave the game better than I found it, but the value systems and the ethos that I hope to have instilled will continue that culture. This is what it all means, those years that the blood, sweat and tears was worth it. [MUSIC PLAYING]
- Please welcome Gloria Steinem. [MUSIC PLAYING] GLORIA STEINEM: Well, obviously I'm not Dusty, but I think maybe we have a photograph of me and Dusty coming up somewhere. She came. She came with her wife this morning, but she wasn't feeling well, so she can't be with us. But she is with us in spirit and photographs. And because she's not here, I get to tell you how important she is, OK? Because I think that flight attendants, as we now say instead of stewardesses, are probably the single most important group when it comes to telling the story of women's employment in this women's movement, because they were an all-female group in a very, very male environment. And I came to know how important they were to me because ever since I started wandering around on the road, in 19-- I don't know what. '69, or '70, or something? They were my flying girlfriends. They looked after me, right? And I listened to them and all of their labor problems. So I just want to say that-- I just want to take us through the history a little bit because the first stewardesses were registered nurses, hired to make passengers feel safe at a time when flying was new, and air sickness was frequent, and passengers were fearful. Some pilots so resented this female invasion of their macho airspace that they quit. You can't make this up, OK? [LAUGHTER] Once male business travelers became the airlines' bread and butter, everything changed. Stewardesses were hired as decorative waitresses with geisha-like instructions. There were executive flights for men only, complete with steaks, brandy, and cigars lit by the stewardesses. Though they still had to know first aid, evacuation procedures for as many as 75 kinds of planes, underwater rescue, emergency signaling, hijacking precautions, and other skills they had to go to school for six weeks to learn, nonetheless, their appearance was prescribed down to age, height, weight-- which was governed by regular weigh-ins-- hairstyle, makeup including one single shade of lipstick, skirt length, and other physical requirements that excluded such things as a broad nose. One of the many racist reasons why stewardesses were overwhelmingly white-- there were almost no black stewardesses. And actually, I once met one who had been put off the plane by a pilot who saw her reading an Eldridge Cleaver book. I mean, I'm just saying, OK? They had to be single as well as young, and they were fired if they married or aged out over 30 or so. Altogether, the goal of airline executives seemed to be to hire smart and ornamental young women to use them as advertising and come-ons to work them hard to age them out soon. Flight schedules were so merciless that on some airlines, the average stewardess lasted only 18 months. As one United executive said, if a flight attendant was still on the job after three years, I'd know we were getting the wrong kind of girl because she's not getting married. And in fact, when the head of an airline had to testify in Congress about some of this stuff, and explained that, you know, flight attendants had to be under-- explained what I just said, and Congresswoman Martha Griffiths, bless her heart, famously asked, "Sir, are you running an airline or a whorehouse?" I mean, sorry for the term whorehouse, but anyway, good for Martha Griffiths, right? [LAUGHTER] She was all right. So when I was wandering around on the road, they were so kind to me. You know, they would take the arms out of the three-across seats so I could lie down. They would sneak me meals from first class. You know, it truly was like having a flying movement. And that's why I met Dusty Roads, because she was part of Stewardesses for Women's Rights, and we met in 1973. She really made a huge, huge difference. And so many flight attendants made a huge, huge difference. And I began to realize something was happening when they had to wear buttons-- I think it was United-- "I'm Linda. Fly me." And that went on for a couple of years. And one day I got on an airline, and I saw a woman with a button that said "I'm Sharon. Fly yourself." [LAUGHTER] So I definitely knew that something was changing. And that is so much thanks to Dusty, who was and is a pioneer organizer in a field of women's employment that symbolized everything that we know that is wrong, right? And that is still wrong. They're still fighting-- the unions of flight attendants. There's still all kinds of job problems. So I hope that the next time we get on an airline of any kind, and now there are male flight attendants, which would have been anathema. As always, if you create more justice for one group, you create more justice altogether, right? So now there are male flight attendants. But it is a whole area of employment that kind of replicates all the problems that we have been talking about. So I don't know-- I mean, I'm sure that Dusty's going to be OK. She just was having breathing problems. She and her wife drove here. It's somewhat ironic that at this moment in time, she can't fly because of breathing problems. I should think that would be such a relief, you know, that she can't. But they drove here, and were here this morning. We hope and believe that she's gonna be just fine. So we thought we would make a little film of get well, Dusty. - Yes. GLORIA STEINEM: Just to make sure-- - Cue Dylan. OK. So we wanna send this to Dusty. And we're gonna say, since you're such an amazing audience, we're gonna say, get better soon, Dusty. Practice. - Get better soon, Dusty. GLORIA STEINEM: Get better soon, Dusty. - OK. And then you're gonna pull out your phones, and you're gonna tweet about watch Dusty Roads make her story. OK? All right. You don't have to do that on the film. That's after. GLORIA STEINEM: OK. - OK. So get better soon, Dusty. OK. Ready everybody? One, two, three. - Get better soon, Dusty. GLORIA STEINEM: Get better soon, Dusty. - Woo-hoo. Thank you, Gloria. Thank you all. Thank you for stepping in. Go have a nice break. Come, come. No, you can go. GLORIA STEINEM: Oh, OK. OK. [MUSIC PLAYING]
DUSTY ROADS: I don't think that we should take the crap that we've been taking for so long. And unless we stand up and fight for it, nobody else is. [MUSIC PLAYING] My mother and my father were both educated. So education was important. And it was smart to be smart. I was 12 or 13 when I saw the cover of "Life" magazine. And it had different stewardesses. And I opened it up, and I went, oh, she's flying to Hawaii. [GASP] She's going to Hong Kong. I want to do that. [MUSIC PLAYING] We had a lot of emphasis on safety and a lot of emphasis on how to care for people and then also how to bend over in the aisle without showing everything because we all wore skirts. We passed out magazines. We passed out mints. And we were to talk to the passengers. One of the most thrilling passengers that I had was Eleanor Roosevelt. She was so charming and so warm, just lovely. It was a fabulous career, and it was looked up to. We were admired. But there was a tremendous emphasis on personal appearance. It was almost like open your mouth. Let me check your teeth, like a horse. They would give us girdle checks. You couldn't be married, and you obviously couldn't be pregnant. [MUSIC PLAYING] I came to realize that this is a national problem, discrimination, gender discrimination against women. Did they fire the pilots at age 32? No. Did they fired the engineer? No. It was terrible discrimination to tell you you're a worthless. We don't need you. You're over the hill. Goodbye. That's a terrible thing to tell somebody. [MUSIC PLAYING] I wanted to make it better. I wanted to make it a career instead of just a job and a profession. I started calling my girlfriends that had been fired. And they all got to come back and keep their seniority. [MUSIC PLAYING] Europe-- London, Paris, Frankfurt, fly fishing in New Zealand. And then the last few years I flew Hawaii. That was just-- loved Hawaii, oh. I had one guy come up to me in the airplane once and say, what is it with you girls? What are you complaining about? He said, why do you not like to be girls? I said, there's a big difference. I don't want to be a man. I want to be a woman, and I want it to be fair.
REGINA WILSON: My goal is to have the badest obituary ever. You're not going to have enough pages to say the things that I've done. [MUSIC PLAYING] In 1992, I went to Javits Center, and I was there for a black expo. A recruiter came up to me and asked me if I ever thought about becoming a New York City firefighter. And I said, no. Then he started to talk about, well, you know, this would be a great unique opportunity for you, because there's not a lot of African-Americans, and there's not a lot of women on the job. So I thought, like, why not me? And why is it that they think that a woman can't do this? The first part of becoming a firefighter, I had to take a written exam. I remember sitting in my classroom getting ready to take the test, and I was surrounded by white men. I was the only black female in the room. I've never felt that much alone in my life, but I had to sit strong and know that I had to fight, and know that I deserve to be here just like they did. There were drill instructors that, soon as they came on Randall's Island, their goal was try to break my spirit. You don't belong here. You're not fast enough. You're not strong enough. Any time you want to leave, I'll walk you to the gate. All of those negativities just built me up. [MUSIC PLAYIN] It infuriates me when people in general say women aren't strong enough, men have the most upper body strength. Just let me pull you out, save your life, and then you can determine whether or not I did the best job once you're alive, because I came in the building to save your life. [SIREN SOUNDS] [MUSIC PLAYING]
- Please welcome Diana Trujillo. [MUSIC PLAYING] [APPLAUSE] DIANA TRUJILLO: Thank you. For the last 18 years, I have introduced myself as Diana like you just heard it-- or Dee-ahna. But my actual name is Lady-- that's right, Lady. I didn't come up with that. Lady was the name that my family put on me-- that women on my family call me Lady Diana Trujillo. Their idea was that I was going to reach far beyond their expectations. Their idea was that I was going to go for those dreams that they couldn't achieve. So they called me after Lady Diana, of course. But, you know, I felt less of royalty and I felt more like a badass space warrior princess. So, yeah, that was me. I used to think one day, I'm just going to do that. One day I'm going to be this badass space princess, but I have no idea how to get to space because Colombia doesn't have a NASA equivalent, so I'm not sure how these plans will work. But we'll figure it out. The women in my family gave me a lot of the strength that I have today. They gave me-- if you're Colombian, you understand this-- [NON-ENGLISH SPEECH]-- which is the willing to fight for what's right. And they pour everything on us. They gave me everything they had. And for three generations, the women in my family built a family, built a business, built a home. For three generations, the women in my family started with nothing and they succeeded. And for three generations, as soon as they succeeded, the men in my family left them. And they left them with nothing. They left them with nothing, but what they didn't realize is that they left me with three gifts-- which I'm sure they didn't think they were gifts-- they were shaping me into something else, supposedly. But the first thing is they used to say I was altanera. Altanera means extremely disrespectful to men. [APPLAUSE] I got that crown-- this is why I feel now like the queen princess-- I got that crown because I will not keep my mouth shut when they will mistreat the women in my family, especially when they will abuse them. [APPLAUSE] Then they proceeded to say that I didn't know my place. I didn't know my place because I could not keep my mouth shut when they would try to diminish the women so they could feel powerful and on top of everything. And then they said the thing that made me very confused also is-- you're not a girl. You don't look like a girl. You don't dress like a girl. You're not exposing your body as you should as a girl. Like, no. That makes me feel uncomfortable. I don't want to display my body that way. So for many, many years, I felt like the only job that I had, I sucked at it-- which it was a job that I didn't even want to have which was to be a good girl and get married, whatever that meant to the men of my family. Now as soon as my dad got divorced of my mom, he came to me and said, you know, it's time for you to leave too because my plans do not involve you. My plans are to move on to a different family, a newer family, one that doesn't have you guys around. So I found myself in the United States with no money, with no language, with no immigration status at all and not knowing what I was going to do with my life. But then one night, I was looking at the stars and I was looking at the moon. And I thought, I got to do better than this. I gotta do better than this. I need to become the Latina woman that I am supposed to be. I need to become that Latina woman that will fulfill the dream of my women-- not the dream of the men, the dream of my women. I need to become that Latina woman that will have the life that my mom, my great grandma deserved. Like three generations, they couldn't do what they wanted. I need to do it for them. I want to live a life where I can fulfill my intellect with education-- an education that will give me purpose and mission. [NON-ENGLISH SPEECH]-- space exploration is too difficult, you're not that smart. I'm telling you this because I love you. Are you serious? I want to stop here and remind everybody 2% of the STEM jobs in the United States are held by Latina women. We need to increase that. We need to increase that. And we think about like where is it coming from? Well, your entire life your parents, your dad, the men in your family tell you that you aren't good enough, you're not that smart. Let the LEGO for your brother, not for you. You play with dolls. I also wanted to live a life where I can work on a task that I chose-- a task that will give me meaning to me, not a task that was specifically designed for my role. I wanted to live a life where I could have everything. Where I could have my family and I could also have a career. [NON-ENGLISH SPEECH]-- pick a simple career if you don't want your man to cheat on you because he will feel less than you if you're too busy and if you're more successful than him. It's like-- so am I supposed to be submissive? Because that's not the word that defines me. I'm supposed to be altanera, which was a little bit better than submissive in some cases. So I wanted to live a life where I can do what was morally correct and not feel defiant or out of place. I wanted to live a life where my whole self is sufficient and I don't have to feel like I need to adjust myself because I speak too much or because I speak too fast or because I speak up. [NON-ENGLISH SPEECH] is not what you said, it's how you said it. I think it's because I said something is what you mean. [APPLAUSE] I wanted to live a life where everything that I have in my heart I can put out there and nail it. I wanted to be my space warrior. And I'm here to tell you today that I had to redirect my life. I had to redirect the way that I was thinking about it. I had to redirect the way that I was approaching life, because I realized that whatever tools life have given me were actually a good thing if I transformed them into a positive thing. Yes, there were a lot of things that were happening in my life in the past. But there were things that also taught me to find my [NON-ENGLISH SPEECH]-- my will to fight. And today, I want to tell you that I am here to help you. I'm here to inspire you. I'm here to remind you that we women have value. That it's not that I'm special that I was able to come out of a home where there was a lot of domestic violence. It's because I tried to redirect my life. And I want you also to consider the fact that yes, we have moments where we're scared. Yes, there moments where you don't even know what's going to happen to you because you're so petrified. But then it is up to you and to God to define who you are and who you are to become-- nobody else's. So I'm here to just remind you to inspire you and to tell you that we can make it work. You got this. I got this. I'm not special, so we can all do it together. [APPLAUSE] Today, I am part of an international team of scientists and engineers. I was part of a small team that landed an SUV-sized laser beam eye nuclear power robot on the surface of Mars. And, like the video said, I am now also part of a team that is tasked to discover or to answer one of the most fundamental questions that we all have, which is, is there life out there? Now I want to tell you, though, that we all deserve to be in that room-- we women, we Latina women deserve to be in that room when we actually discover the unthinkable. When we realize that there's something out there bigger than us, we all need to be in that room. Because when we do it, we're not going to do it as subdivisions, we're not going to do it as different teams. We're going to do it all of us together as planet Earth. Thank you very much. [APPLAUSE] [MUSIC PLAYING]
DIANA TRUJILLO: I am the person that came from another country trying to figure out a better life in a different place, and then took that little seed and expanded it to taking the entire human species into the next level of exploration. [MUSIC PLAYING] I grew up in Colombia, in Cali. i lived there until I was 17. Growing up, it was the responsibility of the woman to make sure that my dad, my uncle, my grandfather were happy when they would come home, food was on the table, and everything was taken care of. My mom was actually the smart one. She was in med school when she met my dad. And then she got pregnant with me, and she dropped out. My parents got divorced when I turned 12. After that happened, my mom had nothing. No money. We didn't even have food. And we boil an egg, and then we cut in half, and that was our lunch that day. I remember just laying down on the grass and looking at the sky and thinking, something has to be out there that is better than this-- some other species that treats themselves better, or values people better. [MUSIC PLAYING] I literally thought, what's the hardest thing a human being can do? If I could be out there as an astronaut and represent humanity, there was no more bigger honor than that. And when you, Dad, see my life, you're going to realize that we can bring-- we women bring something to the table. I was the first immigrant Hispanic woman on the program. I got to meet astronauts. I got to meet CEOs of companies. None of them looked like me, and among all of the people that talked to us, there was only one woman. But as I was talking to them, I realized we had a lot of things in common-- the way that they thought about the universe and exploration, the way that they thought about humanity. I found my people, is kind of what I felt. [MUSIC PLAYING] Once you come out of the launch vehicle, TELCOM takes over. Can you hear me, is the question that you're wondering. Can you hear the rover? Small job with a lot of impact. Multiple times, when we did multiple hours and weeks of testing, it wasn't going smooth enough. You're wondering, I hope this is working. [MUSIC PLAYING] The fact that we got the first picture-- I could not believe we had done it. This is Mars. This is Mars. I am one of the first 30 people in the world to see these pictures of Mars. The fact that we actually found out that Mars was at some point habitable, that leads to the next question, can we actually find some evidence that there was at some point life on Mars? We're going to take a sample with Mars 2020 and put it on a tube to be ready to be returned back to Earth. All of those missions are also thinking about human exploration-- all the little pieces that, at least, we need to figure out for us to even conceive the idea of sending a human. As a little girl, I saw the woman in my family give up a lot. It gave me the tenacity that I needed to say, I'm not going to give up on my dream. I want to be out there, looking back in, showing my family that women have value, that women matter. [MUSIC PLAYING]
- Please welcome Shannon Schuyler. [MUSIC PLAYING] - (SINGING) Hey, lips, say hello to me. I'm a girl on a mission. I don't need your permission. Singing 1, 2, 3. Baby, this is me. SHANNON SCHUYLER: Hello, everybody. So, I get the great pleasure to talk to you a little bit about purpose. And as you can see, my title is chief purpose officer, which is actually a pretty cool title. But very early on, I realized a couple of things. First, I looked around to see who else was called chief purpose officer, and I didn't find anyone, and so I thought I wouldn't have a lot of people to do drinks with. So that was a negative. And then I thought but nobody then knows what a chief purpose officer should do, which was pretty good, and nobody could tell me I was doing it wrong because nobody knew what right looked like, also very good. So I went into this very positively. And I knew overall what purpose is really about for business is you want to bring humanity into the products and services that you have to optimize your impact. And your impact these days need to go far beyond revenue generation, but what are you doing for society? Which makes great sense because at PwC, our purpose is around building trust in society and solving important problems. It's about moving from being transactional to being transformational. But the other thing I learned very quickly is when you think of purpose-- and how many of you, when you think of purpose, you got to think about personal purpose, right? It's hard to say, all right, I'm going to think about a corporate purpose but not let that word kind of hang internally. And so I worried that somebody would say, what is your purpose? And I would be like, I have no idea. And so I did kind of my own journey of "Eat, Pray, Love", and so I took a time, couple, two weeks, trying to figure out what was my purpose so I could tell people when they asked me? And that meant I did some wine tasting and I did some retail therapy and I did some Orangetheory, and I was like, I'm going to find my purpose. I'm going to find it. And after two weeks I was just sore, and I found nothing. So, I was getting ready. And women, as you know, sometimes your wallet needs to match your purse, and so you change everything, right? It drives my husband crazy. So I was going through changing my purse and my wallet, and my wallet fell out. And suddenly I realized I had these playing cards that were in my wallet, and suddenly I realized what my purpose was. So at the age of 22 I put one of these first cards in my wallet when my mother passed away. Over the next five years, the women in my family passed away-- aunts, grandmothers. The women who were a part and led this matriarchal family, who always sat at the head of the table were no longer there. So all of the passion and strength and sassiness and classiness and joy and disruption, that was now part of me. And so all of this time, after all these decisions that I've been making, it's because I'm living their legacy. They are my true north. They are my purpose. So now I take all of that back and I get back into the firm and say, well, what do we need to do? Well, the first thing we need to do is figure out what people's purposes are. This isn't just about the firm's purpose. We have to figure out how these things intersect, how they come together. And in doing that, we did a study and we said people realize that what purpose was was a sense of fulfillment. They wanted to be fulfilled. Go figure. I work 10, 12, 14 hours a day. You want to feel fulfilled, right? Totally logical, but we weren't there. People want a sense of meaning and a sense of belonging so that they can actually be transformational, but they need an opportunity to figure out where that is because 7 out of 10 people will now leave their organization if they do not have that sense of fulfillment. Good news-- 80% of employees out there truly believe it's their responsibility to find it, and 40% own up to the fact that it's them themselves who are keeping themselves from realizing what it is. But we have to create a culture that allows people to find themselves, to find what fulfills them. Whether that's through purpose assessments, other tools, whether that's saying this is not about just training you to learn a skill. This is about why that skill is important, why that skill can help you and help the organization move forward. We live in a time that is incredibly uncertain, and we have complex tensions that either can ignite or extinguish our courage to act. I believe that your courage to act is based upon your knowing what fulfills you, about you knowing what your purpose is, and all of us deserve to go on that journey, whatever that journey looks like, and frankly, to be able to go on that journey far before I did 24 years into my career. And all of us together as leaders also have the responsibility to ensure we take everybody else on that journey, that we are the ones probing to find out what fulfills you. How do you feel like you belong? What is your purpose? What is your North Star? And I know now what I didn't know before is those four women, they have guided me to make the decisions that I make. I might have made different decisions, better decisions if I had thought about my purpose before, but nonetheless, that North Star will be with me forever. So find yours. Thank you. [APPLAUSE] [MUSIC PLAYING] - (SINGING) Feel it. Say hello to me. I'm a girl on a mission. I don't need your permission. Singing 1, 2, 3. Baby--
[MUSIC PLAYING] LORI BONGIORNO: Hello, Makers Conference. Welcome to day two. As I mentioned last night, I am thrilled to be here as the new general manager of Makers, leading the initiative to accelerate the media brand that exists to accelerate the women's movement, not just in the US, but globally, as well. But over the next two days, we are focusing on all of us in this room, showing up for ourselves and for each other. So in the interest of that, Dylan asked me to share a life hack. And the first thing that came to mind was this Google Doc that I use that streamlines communications with my direct reports. And when I really thought about it, I realized it's not just about these practical time savers. We're all running at 150 miles an hour, and staying grounded for me, at least, can be a real struggle. So what I wanted to share today is something that I actually learned from Abby Wambach at a leadership initiative last fall. She asked us to all compile a bunch of photos that made us happy and put them in an album on our phones. And the next day, she asked us to look through them. And I have to say, it made me really happy to see a family of my-- no, to see a photo of my family in a random field in Oregon watching the solar eclipse or to see 33 of my nearest and dearest when we rented out Di Fara for an impromptu pizza party. In 30 seconds through this album, I could be transported to a completely different mindset, no matter where I am. My most recent addition particularly brings a smile to my face. It's from a recent trip I took to Costa Rica where I learned to surf. [CHEERING] OK. I can't believe I let myself put that picture up there. But surfing for me is definitely a work in progress. But when I look at this photo, I can almost hear my very patient surf instructor, Jefferson, saying to me, Lori, be aggressive, and look where you're going. [LAUGHTER] And I think that's advice that could benefit all of us, right? Be aggressive. Look where you're going. Spend a few minutes to make an album that connects you to the larger picture, or find some other small thing that's your saving grace. To help each other, I think we should all collect these life hacks to share. Abby's idea made a really big impact on my life, and I'm sure others would, too. So if you guys could please tweet your hacks to Makers Conference, that would be amazing. And with that, let's get started on day two. [CHEERING] [MUSIC PLAYING]
- Please welcome Alex Wallace. ALEX WALLACE: Welcome to the 2019 Makers Conference. I am so, so thrilled to be here. In 2012, the inimitable, irreplaceable, and remarkable Dylan McGee began this tradition and collected the largest number of women's stories anywhere in the world. The brand has a convening power like few other. Fittingly, we're so excited that Verizon is our parent, a company that is truly committed to creating a digital world that provides and drives positive change. So this week is-- I will be the least interesting person that you will hear from in the next few days. In fact, I made a list of the people that we're going to be hearing from, advocates, activists, heads of business, industry, journalists, thought leaders, actors, athletes, and women. The most amazing thing, and that's why I love the theme of this year is that none of them have done it alone. I thought a lot about this about being a woman, and how we all got here. And how we got here together. And so this theme all of us recognizing what we can achieve when we stand here and do this together when we unify around a singular goal. And that is advancing the cause, and the power, and the rights of women. So with that, thank you very much, and off we go.
- Please welcome Dyllan McGee. DYLLAN MCGEE: Welcome to the 2019 MAKERS Conference! Woohoo! This is our fifth conference, which is really hard to believe. And we are really feeling the love. Yeah. We're feeling the love. And as you can tell, we're going with the theme all of us. And this is big. It speaks to the fact that it's going to take all of us working together for gender equality, and all of us bringing our whole selves to the table, right. So some of you are already bringing your whole selves to the table. Gloria Steinem, you're good. But seriously, this is what MAKERS is all about, telling the stories of real-- real women who are sparking passion and igniting change. Perfect example, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. Hello. I'm sure you're all following her on Instagram. And that is the level of commitment that I'm talking about, that all in, no excuses, drop everything and run for office kind of vibe. That's what MAKERS is all about. We don't want to sit back. We want to accelerate this movement. And so over the next 36 hours, we're going to work together to make big moves. We're going to talk about MAKERS expansions. We're going to talk about new MAKERS research. We're going to encourage all of you to forge new friendships because when we all come together, our movement is that much stronger. And of course, as always, you're going to hear from trailblazing women and men who are all in on equality. Yes, men. We had so much fun with you last year. We decided to invite you back. I mean, we can't do all of us without you. OK. So there's something I've always wanted to do on the MAKERS stage. And it's our fifth conference. So I figured this is the year. It's sort of a warm up for all of you, right. I was talking to Abby Wambach backstage. And I was like, I don't work out. But this, we're going to work out. OK. So it's going to be a little call and response. It's easy. It's just getting a little team bonding going. So I'm going to say who's going to make big moves? And you're going to say all of us. Right. Got it. So I'm going to say who's going to make big moves? You say all of us. And we do it twice. OK. OK. Ready? Who's going to make big moves? - All of us! DYLLAN MCGEE: Who's going to make big moves? - All of us! DYLLAN MCGEE: Yes we are! Oh my god! So speaking of big moves, last year our MAKERs@ board of directors stood up on the stage. And one by one, they made a pledge for how they were going to change the world in 2018. And I'm happy to report they lived up to their promises so much so that we're going to do it all over again for 2019. So will the MAKERS@ board of directors please stand so we can thank you for your relentless work in 2018? [APPLAUSE] I can't wait to see what you guys got up your sleeves for 2019. OK. So I think you get it now. The key over the next 36 hours is bringing all of you to the movement. So I thought I'd give you a little taste of all of me as seen through the eyes of our sponsors. Spoiler alert. I'm white. But thank you 23andMe for celebrating diversities, whatever they may be. So over the past five years, I've stood up on this stage in my heels. But guess what? If you want to know the real Dyllan McGee, we're taking these babies off. Woody, where are you? I'm putting on my new Rothy's sneakers! And in case you're going to be looking for me over the next 36 hours, and you can't find me backstage or around, I'm going to be in the Rothy's FitLab. I am pretty obsessed. OK. So also if-- that feels so good. OK. If I thought it was appropriate, I would also change into my Lululemon leggings, which I have been wearing for the past three days in the lead up to this conference. But I decided a costume change on stage might not be appropriate. So let's just keep it at Lululemon is crushing it when it comes to equal pay. And we are so honored to have them as our first ever wellness partner. OK. All of me should probably include a confession that I don't have it all figured out. Some of you may have seen an article in New York Magazine's The Cut, came out this week. And it exposed that I have a little bit of a challenge with work life balance, so much so that I think I need a consultant, and not just one like Pricewaterhouse and Cooper's kind of consultants. So PwC, I'm very relieved you're here. I need you. So but really, All of me wouldn't be possible if I didn't grow up in a society that allows me to choose what my destiny is. So I'm very honored that we have SK-II here with us. They're going to be debuting a brand new global video that talks about Chinese women who are working with their families to meet them halfway. It's a bold campaign. And we are honored that they'll be launching it here with us. Don't miss it. Thank you, SK-II. Thank you.
[APPLAUSE] DYLLAN MCGEE: Please welcome the perfect 10, Katelyn Ohashi. [MUSIC PLAYING] Oh, Katelyn, you're in your comfies, too. We're starting this conference off right. So how many of you saw that? Woo! I mean, how many people viewed that video? KATELYN OHASHI: I think it's at 100 million-plus views now? [SHRIEKS] So-- DYLLAN MCGEE: I mean, I'm sure we all have our theories and know why that is, but I'm curious, why do you think that is? KATELYN OHASHI: I think I saw a lot of comments about the joy it brought people, and the smiling and, just, the teammates in the background I think added a nice touch to it all, too. DYLLAN MCGEE: Yeah, it's incredible watching your team cheering and dancing with you. God, oh, my God, I can't stand it. OK, so, all right. So, I mean, we all look at that. It does look like perfect joy, Katelyn, but I have to believe that there's a shit load-- that was the word that came to my head, sorry. A lot of pressure, right, going into that. And so I'm curious, and I-- we could learn. We could all learn how do you deal with that kind of pressure? KATELYN OHASHI: I think being able to trust the process and everything that I prepared to do helps a lot. And being able to have my teammates to lean back on-- DYLLAN MCGEE: Yeah. KATELYN OHASHI: --every time I go out there. And honestly, I really do have the time of my life every time I step on the floor. Like, I love what I do. DYLLAN MCGEE: Like, that's real joy? KATELYN OHASHI: Yeah, that's-- that's all real. DYLLAN MCGEE: It's funny because people think of gymnastics as a, you know, there are a lot of individual events, but yet you keep referring to the team. KATELYN OHASHI: Yeah. [? Inner ?] league gymnastics is very individual, and so coming to college after my league career was something you have to kind of get used to because you're not used to having people that really care about you and, like, love you unconditionally, and support you. And everything you do really affects them. So learning that was a transition, but being able to have that was so amazing. DYLLAN MCGEE: And you mentioned that transition. I know that when you were younger, you had a shoulder-- injury-- [LAUGHING] --and decided at some point you weren't going to do gymnastics anymore. Can you tell about that? KATELYN OHASHI: Yeah. So when I was 16 years old, I was in the top prime of my career. I had just come off of winning 2013 American Cup, and I was told I might not ever be able to do gymnastics again because I had a horrible back injury. And during that time, I got my shoulder cleaned up, and then I had another shoulder surgery. So hearing those words at 16, when I had the Olympics as my path and that's what I was going to pursue, was hard to hear. But at the same time, I had been kind of miserable for a while. So it was like a weight was lifted off my shoulders. And I was like, wait a minute. I might not ever have to do this again. Like I might not ever have to put on a leotard and it was, like-- DYLLAN MCGEE: Aren't they comfy? KATELYN OHASHI: I mean, I used to sleep in them when I was a kid. So, like, I used to love them. [LAUGHING] But then you start hearing about, like, all the negative comments about your body and your legs. And you're like, I don't want to put it on anymore. DYLLAN MCGEE: I mean, that's interesting. I know that, you know, part of internet fame, I mean, you've had some fun moments. I love Gabrielle Union making you your Wednesday crush or whatever it's called. And, I mean-- so-- but tell me about the body shaming piece of it, because it's fun to have all that social media love, but there's a downside to it. How do you tune that out? KATELYN OHASHI: Well, you know how everything is energy, right? And so everything that you read, you can let either affect you or not. So I kind of-- if I ever read anything negative, like, I let myself take it in, and then kind of just wipe it out. But it took me a long time to be able to do that. And during that time, I did a lot of writing, and I actually have just recently done, like, a photography session and had like five models, smashing mirrors to break beauty standards. And I got so much negativity for it, which was crazy because I'm like, I'm trying to do something here. Like, I don't know. But actually, I would love to share a poem, if I can. DYLLAN MCGEE: I mean, what do you think? Yes! Please. KATELYN OHASHI: It's called "Your Daughter." I stopped looking in the mirror out of fear of not liking what was staring back, for the words that might formulate an attack striking at the confidence I lack. Wishing the mirror would just crack and shatter into a million pieces like my heart towards myself. Finding all the right words to cut deeper until I'm negative, according to the scorekeeper. But who keeps count is me, and as far as I see, I don't like what I see. And I need to be what I think I should be, yet it is me who keeps the score. So why do I keep counting? Why do I keep hating? Why do I keep rating, inflating, debating, and dictating? Why am I waiting to look in the mirror and hear the words I'd tell my daughter if I caught her hating herself, and what would I tell her? What would I show her? How can I show her that we are so much more than our weight, and the number on the scale or the image we see should never create hate. It's time we recreate our thoughts to generate love. Rising above the hate we have felt and the hate we have dealt, and put on our seat belt and crash into love. [APPLAUSE] DYLLAN MCGEE: Woo-hoo! You get a hug for that. KATELYN OHASHI: Thank you. DYLLAN MCGEE: That's beautiful. KATELYN OHASHI: Thank you. DYLLAN MCGEE: Thank you, Katelyn. I didn't even know she was going to do that. That's amazing. You know, I know a big inspiration for you has been your coach. What is it that is her special sauce? I know the two of you are such a dynamic duo. KATELYN OHASHI: Yeah, so I think, one, she's never done gymnastics in her entire life. Yeah. DYLLAN MCGEE: OK. [LAUGHING] KATELYN OHASHI: So there's this book that's, like, all about geniuses and how they've all immigrated-- integrated and have a new perspective, and a different one. So I think that's one of the biggest things that I could take away. And she always tells us if there's one thing that I've taught you, it would be that life is a series of choices. And the choices we make dictate the life we will live. And so I think that this discussion now is, like, super intentional because I think I've built myself up. And now that all these doors are opening from this viral video, I've been very intentional with my choices. DYLLAN MCGEE: Well good. I'm glad one of your intentional moments was coming to Makers. [LAUGHING] And speaking of-- I'm so curious. I mean, you have a room filled with all of these incredible people representing so many industries. So I'm sure they all want to offer you a job. What do you want to do? You're a senior, right? This is it. You graduate in May? KATELYN OHASHI: June. DYLLAN MCGEE: Or June, OK. KATELYN OHASHI: Yeah, so I basically-- so because I'm writing a lot of poetry and I love to write in general, there's a couple works in progress. And then on top of that, I would really love to go out to Players' Tribune and intern for the summer. And then maybe, potentially, "Dancing with the Stars." DYLLAN MCGEE: Nice. OK. You've got your to-do already. Put that on your action list, people. KATELYN OHASHI: And then eventually, I would love to do a lot of work with domestic violence. That's something I'm super passionate about. DYLLAN MCGEE: Great. OK. You've got your volunteer, everybody. Take advantage. [APPLAUSE, MUSIC PLAYING]
- Please welcome Lori Bongiorno. LORI BONGIORNO: That was a tough act to follow. Good evening, though. It is so great to be here in the company of all of you. I've always wanted to come to the Makers Conference. And I think it took becoming the GM to finally get an invite. So I'm a recent empty nester, which I think some of you can relate to. And maybe others are looking forward to. And I got a call one night from my son, who's a freshman in college. And he said, I have a long weekend. And I'd love to come home. And I was excited to see him and also a little bit touched. But then I realized that I was not the 40 something year old woman he was taking the Megabus home to see. It was Heidi Schreck. He had heard about What the Constitution Means to Me from his playwriting professor. And he said it was not to be missed. And he was right this time. We saw the play about 48 hours before Kavanaugh was confirmed. And I have not been able to stop thinking about it ever since. I'm not alone. The play has sold out more than multiple times off Broadway. And it's been called the best of the year by a dozen publications from the New York Times to the New Yorker to the Hollywood Reporter. In this autobiographical play, we meet a teenage version of Heidi Schreck who actually earns her college tuition traveling the country, winning debates, speech and debates, for the American Legion. And she revisits that time now. She traces the history of women in her family for four generations through the lens of the Constitution, in particular the 14th Amendment. Oscillating between her teen self and her current one, she tells a story that feels both unique and universal. And she takes on challenging topics such as domestic abuse suffered by her grandmother. But it still feels surprisingly optimistic. And I think you'll see that this play reminds us that healthy debate is critical, particularly now, and that we all should be open to questioning everything. I'm so glad that you guys to-- get to witness the magic of this play. What the Constitution Means to Me opens on Broadway next month. And I can't wait to see it again. So enjoy.
GLORIA STEINEM: Now, I'm lucky to have seen the entire play, all right, and you all have to see it on Broadway. It is a miracle. It is the most original, informative-- and I think that everything we create has a story. The play has a story, right? Like a person. - Yeah, absolutely. GLORIA STEINEM: So what made you think this incredibly original idea could be a play? HEIDI SCHRECK: I don't know where the idea came from. I knew for about 20 years that I wanted to make a play about this experience I had as a teenager, because it was so formative for me. I really did. I was a very-- I did love the Constitution as a young girl, and I wanted to revisit that time. And when I started to make the play I began, as I said, to become quite disillusioned with the document, and I also started to trace the history of four generations of women in my family, and began to understand the way the document had not protected them. And I just-- from that I sort of understood the form it needed to take. I understood that it needed to-- that I needed to actually appear as myself. That I needed to testify openly and honestly, and not sort of couch the play in any kind of fiction. That I wanted it to be sort of as real and human and anti-theatrical as possible. So that's kind of the genesis of it. Also I had spent-- I'd seen the silence that my female ancestors had sort of been forced to endure, and I felt like I am lucky and privileged enough to live in a time when I don't have to be silent. So I decided I should speak. [APPLAUSE] GLORIA STEINEM: OK, and here's the other miracle, all right? How did you two come together? ROSDELY CIPRIAN: OK, I was in the debate room, you know just practicing debate. I think I was-- GLORIA STEINEM: Explain the debate room. ROSDELY CIPRIAN: Oh, it's a learning lounge. It had-- at that time it had a lot of book, just shelves and shelves and shelves of books, and then it's a whiteboard right there, and then there's like more empty shelves. We were repairing it at the time, and there was two tables with three chairs, and there's Mr. Beattie's desk like behind the two chairs, and he's there and he's just-- and then there's a table. GLORIA STEINEM: Where was it? I mean the debate? ROSDELY CIPRIAN: I was in my school. GLORIA STEINEM: We don't all have a debate room. ROSDELY CIPRIAN: It was in my middle school. GLORIA STEINEM: In your school. ROSDELY CIPRIAN: Yeah, my middle school. GLORIA STEINEM: OK. His chair was just there. He was the judge, so he was constantly judging us. So you would just stand in front of the podium, it would actually be a podium, and you would debate, and he would tell you to stop and start, what you did bad, which you need to start over again. And we just keep working and working and working and working. And he was just like, oh. I think they're having auditions for this play. You should really try out. They're asking for a young debater, and I was just like, oh. OK. And then I-- and then I really got some more information when I was in my grandmother's house. My mom called my grandma, and then they were just like, oh, this audition. And they think they got you or something. It's like it was a long time ago. It's very scattered out. I don't really remember. HEIDI SCHRECK: Well you were only 12. GLORIA STEINEM: And what did you think when you first met her? HEIDI SCHRECK: I couldn't believe it. GLORIA STEINEM: When you met each other. HEIDI SCHRECK: Well, I-- so I was out of town at the first audition, and I got a call from the judges saying, we just met this incredible young debater. We have to cast her. And I wanted to cast someone 15, because I wanted to cast someone who was my age when I did the contest. But she was 12, and he said I just-- I think we have to cast her. So I came back and she came back in, and we talked for a long time, and she did her own speech sort of extemporaneous speech, and I really thought she was one of the most brilliant young people I'd ever met. And I agreed that we should cast her, even though she's only 12. GLORIA STEINEM: OK now, here's my part of this, OK? All right. I am utterly hooked on the fact that our constitution came from the Iroquois Confederacy. Right? HEIDI SCHRECK: Yes. GLORIA STEINEM: And in fact that meant that everybody was equal, everybody was included. There were circles of consensus building for the seven huge nations and so on. So a lot of the problems of our constitution that you point out did not exist in its origin. Right? So does that make you feel mad as hell? HEIDI SCHRECK: Yeah. Well, you when you came to the show you told me the story which I didn't know, which is that when Benjamin Franklin met with some of the leaders of the Iroquois Confederacy-- GLORIA STEINEM: He invited. HEIDI SCHRECK: Or invited them, right? GLORIA STEINEM: To into the Constitutional Convention. HEIDI SCHRECK: Oh, right. GLORIA STEINEM: Yeah, he invited Iroquois men. HEIDI SCHRECK: Yes. GLORIA STEINEM: He didn't have the sense to invite women, but when the Iroquois men arrived the first thing they said was, where are the women? ROSDELY CIPRIAN: Yeah, that makes me furious as well. And I-- yeah. I didn't know that story until you came to the play, and I think we're going-- [INAUDIBLE] we're going to put into the debate on Broadway. GLORIA STEINEM: Because this I think this speaks to the crazy way we learn history. HEIDI SCHRECK: Yes, absolutely. GLORIA STEINEM: I mean, if we learned history when people began as opposed to when Columbus arrived, thinking he was in India. I mean people are only called Indians because he was such a lousy navigator. He thought it was in India. We would have a very different view. Is there some way we can build that in? HEIDI SCHRECK: I don't know. I mean that certainly was the process of the play for me is going back and realizing that all the history I'd been taught was a lie. That so much had been left out of it, that it was so whitewashed. That was my sort of-- that's sort of the journey of the play is realizing how much I had been taught that was wrong. I don't know. I mean I feel like we're all doing it today, right? Where people have been doing it, incredible people like yourself, have been doing it for generations. But I guess we just keep trying to tell the stories that get cut out. GLORIA STEINEM: Well, yeah. I mean there are two things history and the past, and they are not the same. HEIDI SCHRECK: Right. GLORIA STEINEM: Right. So we're all trying to complete it. And I think it would be so much more inspirational. Now here's my other question. OK. The whole world is divided into two kinds of people. Those who divide everything into two, and those who don't. And the whole idea of a division into two comes from gender. So societies that don't have gender, and the Native American cultures did not have he and she. They didn't have gendered pronouns. There was much more recognition of diversity. Right? So is there any way we can build three or four or more? At least three-- let's say three-- into a debate structure? HEIDI SCHRECK: Oh. I mean we certainly have the people to do it. I think that's a fantastic idea. What do you thing? ROSDELY CIPRIAN: It seems very interesting. I want to get into that. I didn't even know about the Iroquois. GLORIA STEINEM: Yeah. ROSDELY CIPRIAN: Till now. HEIDI SCHRECK: Yeah. GLORIA STEINEM: Yeah, because I mean the native cultures didn't divide into two, so that you would-- and witches for instance, who were just working on women's health. That's why they were called witches. Really, I'm not making this up. OK. But a coven was 13 people, because they didn't want to be able to be divisible into two. Right? HEIDI SCHRECK: Oh yeah. GLORIA STEINEM: Smart. HEIDI SCHRECK: Yeah. That's really smart. Maybe that's why we're three people on stage. GLORIA STEINEM: Yes, now we've solved everything. We're three people. HEIDI SCHRECK: I mean, I do love the idea of fracturing the debate into-- or yeah, it's true that we're certainly still buying into the binary in the way we're approaching the problem. I think it's interesting to think about translating that. GLORIA STEINEM: But I'm really grateful that we decided to just keep the Constitution in spite of everything. Because actually the move for a Constitutional Convention comes from the ultra right wing and the control in upstate legislatures, so they can almost do it. And there's not too many things that scare me as much as the idea-- HEIDI SCHRECK: I agree with you. GLORIA STEINEM: Of rewriting the Constitution. Right? So thank you for your wisdom. [APPLAUSE] HEIDI SCHRECK: Thank you. GLORIA STEINEM: All right. And from now on we're going to start when people started, OK? Not all the bad stuff started. All right? OK. And we are going to challenge the whole idea of history. We're going to have three, not just two. But we're never going to forget the miracle that we just saw on this stage, and that we're going to see on Broadway. You all have to go.
ARLAN HAMILTON: You will be left behind if you do not catch up as an investor and invest in the people that are today underrepresented, today underestimated, but tomorrow's leaders. I grew up in Dallas, Texas. My mom probably would describe me as someone who had a lot of interests. And everything that I found great interest in, I would just go all in on. I would constantly ask questions. And I spent more time in the principal's office, because I was a behavioral problem than anyone else I knew. And I wasn't being aggressive. But what I was, was a tall, black girl, in Texas, who was lippy, who was talking, who was asking questions. And that just wasn't OK. I thought, this is amazing. I love the fact that she was a black woman in charge. And I said, I don't know how I'm going to do it, but I'm going to be around this energy as much as humanly possible. And from that point on, it became my mission to work on concert tours. So I taught myself how to book a tour. I would call all these cities and find these different clubs, and I would call them over and over and over again. Of course some people are going to say no. But someone will say yes eventually. And if I can get one yes, I can get 100. All these people who are in the entertainment world, they were all investing into Silicon Valley. And I said, what is Silicon Valley? What does that mean? And so I started doing research. And I essentially put myself through a four-year home-schooled university about venture capital and the startup ecosystem. Pretty much my whole spiel to everybody was, hey, I'm a gay, black woman. You don't see many of me in Silicon Valley. Don't you want to? A lot of guys would write back and say, we don't talk about that around here. Really quickly I understood how much of an opportunity that would be. If I said, OK, what is a safe place that's indoors, but it's open all night, and I could somehow pretend that I was there, just like, stuck or something? The airport. I would tell myself, I'm just a world traveler who has missed their connection. And that is why I'm sleeping on this ground. And then the rest of the day I would get on that train and I would go down to Silicon Valley and meet with investors and get them to invest in this fund, and do all of that without letting them know that I was homeless. When I got that yes from her, that, I'm in, and let's go for this, I did just a little bit of a dance in the parking lot of a grocery store that I spent a lot of time using as my office. And I never looked back. When I found out I was going to be on the cover of Fast Company, I just started crying. All I could think of was, like, me, years ago, looking for her-- a black woman on a business magazine who isn't a celebrity, who turned herself into something. People who are not often represented, they don't feel heard, they don't feel seen. It has nothing to do, really, with me. It's about what it represents. It's our cover.
CAROLYN EVERSON: There are people that I have assembled in my life that, when big decisions are upon me, I will turn to them. Every company has a board of directors. Why shouldn't every person? [MUSIC PLAYING] As a kid, I was somebody that never, ever wanted to go to sleep. I was very active. I ran for student government. I was always taking on issues of social importance. I think I was always a bit of a rebel. I was probably a bit of a handful for my parents. [MUSIC PLAYING] There was a frenetic energy on the campus. And everyone was thinking about what kind of business could I start. And I spent a good amount of my time working on the business plan for what would an internet site be for pet owners. I flew to San Francisco to meet with her. And she and I had very different views on how to build out the business. And by the time I flew back to my room on campus, I had a fax that I was being terminated. And I went from being one of the incredible success stories, getting funded, having their dream come true, to crashing and burning literally days before final exams. I wore a baseball cap to cover my tears. I felt like a huge failure. My whole dream had gone away. Part of the thing from failure is, yes, there's the fear of additional failure. But there is also this incredible push to prove that person wrong. Someone called and said, Sheryl Sandberg would like to have a conversation with you. I said, what are you talking about? I just got to Microsoft. I can't possibly have this conversation. He said, the head of the global sales organization role is opening up, and she wants to speak to you. And I spent the day with Sheryl and Mark and realized that, oh, my goodness, this is something I have to do. You know, we spend a lot of time at work. We invest a ton of time in our careers and our teams. And I just deeply believe that, at the core, the two most important things for every human being is their health and their happiness. Everything else can be worked on if you've got those two things. At the end of the day, our relationships with the people that we love matter the most. I want to be known as a leader that creates an environment where people can have exceptional careers, but exceptional and extraordinary personal lives. And my hope is that my legacy, long after I'm gone, is going to be about how deeply I cared about people. That's where the magic is.
JOHN LEGEND: I don't like when guys are like, oh, I have a daughter now. So now I care about women's rights. It's better that you care about women's rights now, but it's a shame that you didn't before. I'm from a small city called Springfield, Ohio. We were a working class family, didn't have much. My father was a factory worker. My mother was a seamstress. She was very smart and very loving. She taught us at home and placed an extreme value on the power of education to change our lives. My grandmother was the church organist, teaching me to play gospel piano in [? Oregon ?] and giving me that experience of performing in front of people from a very young age. I grieved pretty seriously when she passed away. My mother went into a pretty deep depression after that. Dealing with her mental health issues started to self medicate and use drugs and that kind of led her to really a downward spiral. And it kind of led to the breaking up of our family. There were people in my life who helped make sure I didn't lose my way. My father was very strong and reliable. And he taught us about character and what it means to be a good person and success as loving what you do, doing well at it. I felt a bit out of place actually at Penn. I was quiet. I was a little bit withdrawn from the social scene. But the thing that made me feel connected was being a musician. I sang in an accapella group. And I connected with other people by them seeing me sing, and I was never afraid to get up on stage and perform. I'd always grown up looking up to artists, who had used their voice to make a difference. I always thought that was just part of what artists are supposed to do. We visited groups of women in prisons all over the country. Many are dealing with mental health and drug issues. Also many of them were mothers, who had kids on the outside. And part of the punishment for them was also punishment for their entire family. I know what that's like because I know what it was like to deal with my mother going through the same thing. She's doing great now, but there were times when we didn't know if she would even survive that time period. What she needed was help, not punishment. I'm inspired by Chrissy as someone whose fierce and outspoken and funny and willing to take on opposition. With her experience and her perspective, I think I was able to write with more empathy, more human connection than I had before. Now we have a little girl named Luna. Having a daughter, it gives you just that little extra reason that you need to fight for those things because we gain from women's brainpower. We gain from women's intuition. It's important for people to acknowledge that there are kind of implicit biases that go into how minorities are treated and how women are treated. A lot of people want Chrissy to just shut up and look pretty. A lot of them want me to just shut up and sing. But she has something to say, and I love that she's willing to say it. Why would you want to miss out on the perspective of half of the population in the world? That just seems kind of silly. [MUSIC PLAYING]
AMANDA NGUYEN: People ask me, well, why is the system so broken? And the honest answer to that is that the law has a gender. And that gender isn't female. [MUSIC PLAYING] When I was a kid, I loved space. I wanted to be an astronaut. People would often joke that I'd run into things because I was too busy looking up at the sky. [LAUGHS] My parents were refugees from Vietnam. And so I grew up understanding quite viscerally the cost of freedom and what that means, and to never take that for granted. I have never fully understood the definition of lonely as much as I did when I walked out of that hospital after having my rape kit done. And when I started researching my rights, one of the attorneys walked me through what next steps I could take to pursue justice. But that route takes years on average. And I wanted to graduate, to pursue my career. And what was very evident to me is that I had to make a choice. Justice or my career. I remember talking to Leland about whether or not I would still be able to pursue my astronaut dreams if I decided to fight for my own civil rights. And Leland says to me, "Space is going to be there." [LAUGHS] The survivor bill of rights includes the right for your rape kit to not be destroyed before the statute of limitations, the right to have a copy of your police report, and the right to have access to your own patient medical records. When I first started, it was hours upon hours of me telling my personal story to politicians. I went home and I cried because it was so tough. The next morning, I was in this Uber ride where I was going to the United States Senate. And he asked me why. So I told him. Tears just welled up in his eyes, and he turned to me and he said, "My daughter is a rape survivor. Thank you so much for fighting for my daughter. Has anyone told you that they love you today? I love you." I'll never forget that dad. I remember standing on the balcony overseeing the floor of the House when the votes were cast. The speaker called in a roll call vote to prove that our country could stand together on something. I watched Elizabeth Warren and Jeff Sessions stand on the floor together and vote for this. It was an incredible moment. In some countries, when a survivor becomes pregnant as a result of her rape, she is forced out of the education system. In some countries, there's a bribery fee to report your rape. I mean, imagine a 14-year-old who has to do that. That's not feasible, and that's not right. We are but a blink of an eye in the universe. So what are we going to do with our flicker on earth? I'm going to use mine to fight for rights and go to space. [LAUGHS]
