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Getting Women off the Sidelines in Business & Public Life

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WIE Symposium 2011

Women: Inspiration & Enterprise

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Partner:: Women: Inspiration & Enterprise
Location:: 82 Mercer
New York, NY
Event Date:: 09.19.11
Speakers:: Deborra-Lee Furness,; Kirsten Gillibrand,; Donna Karan
Tags:: women; rights

Summary: WIE Inspiration Day: Getting Women off the Sidelines in Business & Public Life

Donna Karan
Fashion Designer

Senator Kirsten Gillibrand
U.S. Senator for New York

Deborra-Lee Furness
Australian actress, director and producer

Inspiration Day features some of the most impressive minds in philanthropy, politics, business, entertainment and media. Whether your goal is to make a real difference to the issues you care about or to get tips from your role models about overcoming the obstacles to success, here’s where you'll get help becoming the very best version of yourself.

WIE Network is a next generation media company that aims to inspire social change through the creation of engaging and inspirational filmed content, large scale forums and innovative social media programs. The company’s properties include the annual women’s conference, The WIE Symposium; WIE Interact, an online social network for women, and a new online reputation service to be announced. Other projects include a feature film about legendary African heroine Yaa Asantewaa; and a documentary that explores the role of forgiveness in conflict resolution around the world.

WIE Network’s principals are television host and political commentator June Sarpong, and branding and entertainment marketing expert, Dee Poku. According to Sarpong and Poku, the WIE Symposium was created as way of uniting women from different backgrounds. The event engages women from the world’s wealthiest nations in the quest to give a voice to those less fortunate than themselves: "As New York based British women of Ghanaian heritage, we consider ourselves to be citizens of world. And as such our mandate is to unite and empower women everywhere. We all share common goals of wanting to be happy and successful, to have strong families and dynamic careers. And that’s what the WIE Symposium is about, setting aside our differences and uniting behind our common aspirations."

Bio

Deborra-Lee Furness

Deborra-Lee Furness (born 1955) is an Australian actress, director and producer. Furness is a passionate supporter of children and defender of their human rights across the globe. In 2005 she co-founded The Rafiki Society in Vancouver, which is operational in assisting orphanages in Africa. Furness is the founder and patron of National Adoption Awareness Week in Australia.

She is patron of the Lighthouse Foundation for displaced children in Melbourne Australia, patron of the Bone Marrow Donor Institute for children with leukemia, and patron of International Adoption Families for Queensland. She is also on the Advisory Committee for Film Aid International, working with refugees throughout the world. Furness is Executive Director for the Worldwide Orphans Foundation Australia.

Kirsten Gillibrand

United States Senator Kirsten Gillibrand has made her presence felt in Washington, helping lead the fight to repeal "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" and passing legislation to provide health care for the 9/11 first responders who are sick from toxins at Ground Zero. Her work led Newsweek and The Daily Beast to name Senator Gillibrand one of “150 Women Who Shake the World.”

The New York Times called Senator Gillibrand's commitment to promoting transparency in Congress a "quiet touch of revolution,” and The Sunlight Foundation, the leading advocacy organization dedicated to openness in government, praised Senator Gillibrand as a “pioneer” for her work.

Senator Gillibrand earned another major legislative victory by passing legislation in the Senate that for the first time that makes any insider trading by members of Congress, their staff, and federal employees clearly illegal. The Washington Post called the bill “the most substantial debate on congressional ethics in nearly five years.”

Donna Karan

Donna Karan is an American fashion designer and the creator of the Donna Karan New York and DKNY clothing labels.

Karan began her career as an assistant designer with Anne Klein in the late 1960s, where she was eventually promoted to associate designer in 1971. When Anne Klein herself died in 1974, Takihyo Corporation of Japan became the new owner and Karan, together with her former classmate and friend Louis Dell'Ollio, became head designer of the house.

In 1984 Donna Karan left Anne Klein and, together with her then husband Mark Karan and Takihyo Corporation, she started her own business "to design modern clothes for modern people." She showed her first Donna Karan women's collection in 1985.

Women's Role in Innovation Is Key to Advancement

02 min 10 sec

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Senator Kirsten Gillibrand (NY) declares that although women are burdened by economic gender inequalities, they are key to America leading the way in global innovation.
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42 min 17 sec

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