Keynote Speakers

Gloria Steinem

POSITION: Writer, Organizer, Co-Founder of Ms.

Gloria SteinemGloria Steinem is a writer, lecturer, political activist, and feminist organizer. She travels the globe as an organizer and lecturer, and is a frequent media spokeswoman on issues of equality. She is particularly interested in the shared origins of sex and race caste systems, gender roles and child abuse as roots of violence, non-violent conflict resolution, the cultures of indigenous peoples, and organizing across boundaries for peace and justice.

In 1972, Steinem co-founded Ms. magazine, and remained one of its editors for fifteen years. She continues to serve as a consulting editor for Ms., and was instrumental in the magazine’s move to join and be published by the Feminist Majority Foundation. In 1968, she helped found New York magazine, where she was a political columnist and wrote feature articles. As a freelance writer, she’s been published in Esquire, The New York Times Magazine, and women’s magazines as well as for publications in other countries. She has produced a documentary on child abuse for HBO, a feature film about the death penalty for Lifetime, and been the subject of profiles on Lifetime and Showtime.

Her books include the bestsellers Revolution from Within: A Book of Self-Esteem, Outrageous Acts and Everyday Rebellions, Moving Beyond Words, and Marilyn: Norma Jean, and in India, As If Women Matter. Her writing also appears in many anthologies and textbooks, and she was an editor of Houghton Mifflin’s The Reader’s Companion to U.S. Women’s History.

Ms. Steinem helped to found the Women’s Action Alliance, a pioneering national information center that specialized in nonsexist, multiracial children’s education, and the National Women’s Political Caucus, a group that continues to work to advance the numbers of pro-equality women in elected and appointed office at a national and state level. She also co-founded the Women’s Media Center in 2004. She was president and co-founder of Voters for Choice, a pro-choice political action committee for twenty-five years, then with the Planned Parenthood Action Fund when it merged with VFC for the 2004 elections. She was also co-founder and serves on the board of Choice USA, a national organization that supports young pro-choice leadership and works to preserve comprehensive sex education in schools. She was the founding president of the Ms. Foundation for Women, a national multi-racial, multi-issue fund that supports grassroots projects to empower women and girls, and also a founder of its Take Our Daughters to Work Day, a first national day devoted to girls that has now become an institution here and in other countries. She was a member of the Beyond Racism Initiative, a three-year effort on the part of activists and experts from South Africa, Brazil and the United States to compare the racial patterns of those three countries and to learn cross-nationally. She is currently working with the Sophia Smith Collection at Smith College on documenting the grassroots origins of the U.S. women’s movement, and on a Center for Organizers in tribute to Wilma Mankiller, Principal Chief of the Cherokee Nation. As links to other countries, she helped found Equality Now, Donor Direct Action and Direct Impact Africa.

Ms. Steinem received the first Doctorate of Human Justice awarded by Simmons College, the Bill of Rights Award from the American Civil Liberties Union of Southern California, the National Gay Rights Advocates Award, the Liberty award of the Lambda Legal Defense and Education Fund, the Ceres Medal from the United Nations, and a number of honorary degrees. Parenting magazine selected her for its Lifetime Achievement Award in 1995 for her work in promoting girls’ self-esteem, and Biography magazine listed her as one of the 25 most influential women in America. In 1993, she was inducted into the National Women’s Hall of Fame in Seneca Falls, New York. And in 2013, President Obama awarded her the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the highest civilian honor. Rutgers University is now creating the Gloria Steinem Endowed Chair in Media, Culture and Feminist Studies.

* Invited by the Young Women’s Leadership Network (YWLN).

Arianna Huffington

POSITION: Editor-in-Chief | Huffington Post and Author of The Sleep Revolution

Arianna HuffingtonArianna Huffington is the co-founder, president, and editor-in-chief of the Huffington Post Media Group, and author of fifteen books.

In May 2005, she launched The Huffington Post, a news and blog site that quickly became one of the most widely-read, linked to, and frequently-cited media brands on the Internet. In 2012, the site won a Pulitzer Prize for national reporting.

She has been named to Time Magazine’s list of the world’s 100 most influential people and the Forbes Most Powerful Women list. Originally from Greece, she moved to England when she was 16 and graduated from Cambridge University with an M.A. in economics. At 21, she became president of the famed debating society, the Cambridge Union.

She serves on numerous boards, including The Center for Public Integrity and The Committee to Protect Journalists.

Her book, Thrive: The Third Metric to Redefining Success and Creating a Life of Well-Being, Wisdom, and Wonder debuted at #1 on the New York Times Bestseller list. Her 15th book, The Sleep Revolution: Transforming Your Life One Night At A Time, on the science, history and mystery of sleep, will be published on April 5, 2016.

* Sponsored by the National Coalition of Girls’ Schools.

Baroness Sue Campbell

POSITION: Chair | Youth Sport Trust

Baroness Sue CampbellBaroness Sue Campbell has been with the Youth Sport Trust since the charity’s inception. Sue is a former junior international pentathlete and netball player and went on to represent the UK as a player, a coach, and a team manager. Trained as a physical education teacher, Sue has taught at a school in Manchester and lectured at Leicester and Loughborough Universities. Before joining the Youth Sport Trust, she was Chief Executive of the National Coaching Foundation (now Sportscoach UK) for 11 years.

Among many honors, Sue has received 10 honorary doctorates, the latest of which was awarded from Queen’s University Belfast in July 2013. In June 2003, she was awarded a Commander of the British Empire for her services to sport. More recently, the Baroness was awarded the Lifetime Achievement Award at the 2012 Sunday Times Sportswomen of the Year Awards and was the Chair of UK Sport (until early 2013), where she presided over Team GB and ParalympicGB’s largest medal haul in living memory.

* Sponsored by the Girls’ Schools Association.

Nuria Chinchilla

POSITION: Professor, IESE Business School, University of Navarro

Nuria ChinchillaNuria Chinchilla has a PhD in Economics and Business Studies from the University of Navarra, a law degree from the University of Barcelona, an MBA and a PhD from IESE Business School. She studied at Harvard Business School and Stanford Graduate School of Management. She started her career as a Professor at IESE in 1984. She is a consultant to a wide range of companies and a member on the boards of various organizations. She is a member of Top Ten Management in Spain, as well as many other professional associations and academies, including being a member of the Awards Panel for the Fundació Bufí y Plana and Barcelona Empresa Innovadora; on the Board of Directors of Rural Family Schools of Catalonia; on the Awards Panel for the Fundación Privada Mª Teresa Rodó, the VIP Advisory Board of the EPWN European Professional Women’s Network, and of Women International Networking (WIN) of Womenalia. She is also a member of CEDE (Association of Spanish Directors), APDO (Spanish Association of Professionals in Organizational Development), EWMD (European Network for Women in Management Development), AEDIPE (Spanish Association of Personnel Directors), founder and President of the IESE Women’s Lobby and Academic Mentor to the Women in Business Club at IESE.

Prof. Chinchilla advises regional and state governments all over the world. Some of her publications are: “Guide of Good Practices for the Flexible Company” (2004-2007, 2009), and the “Guide for Equal Opportunities for men and women in companies” (2005 and 2007). She is a distinguished expert on Work Life Balance for the United Nations and is a driving force of promoting feminine leadership in companies and society. She is a pioneer in promoting networking between women through different events such as MDir in Madrid, Women’s lobby in Barcelona (both of them, monthly), and as a member of the GBRW (Global Board Ready Women).

Prof. Chinchilla serves as Academic Director of different programs at IESE focused on women, such as: Women in Advisory Boards, Women and leadership, and Alumnae Breakfasts “Women in Power”. The areas she specializes in are work-life balance, coaching, professional careers, time management, interpersonal conflicts, organizational change and development, executive committees, and competencies.

Prof. Chinchilla has received numerous awards and honors, and her biography appears in the book “Celebrities of Catalonia 2010”. In 2008 Professor Jeffrey Pfeffer from Stanford University wrote a case study about her that is given in his course “Power & Influence” and in many other Business Schools entitled “Nuria Chinchilla: The Power to Change Workplaces.”

* Sponsored by the European Association of Single-Sex Education (EASSE).

Kakenya Ntaiya

POSITION: Founder and President, Kakenya Center for Excellence

Kakenya NtaiyaLife for Kakenya Ntaiya was supposed to follow the traditional path. Engaged at age 5, she was to be circumcised by the time she was a teenager, an event that would mark the end of her education and the beginning of her preparations for marriage. But Kakenya had a different plan. First, she negotiated with her father: she would be circumcised only if she could also finish high school. He agreed. Then she negotiated with the village elders to do what no girl had ever done: leave her Maasai village of Enoosaen in south Kenya to go to college in the United States. She promised that she would use her education to benefit Enoosaen. The entire village collected money to pay for her journey.

Kakenya received a scholarship to Randolph-Macon Woman’s College in Virginia (now Randolph College). The girl who grew up without electricity wrote papers on international relations and political science on the computers in the university library. She went on to the University of Pittsburgh, where she received her Doctorate in Education in 2011. While completing her studies in the U.S., she married and had two children.

As an undergraduate, she became the first youth advisor to the United Nations Population Fund. In that capacity, she traveled around the world as a passionate advocate for girls’ education, which she sees as a crucial tool for fighting the practices of female genital mutilation and child marriage.Kakenya is now fulfilling her promise to her community. As the founder and president of

Kakenya Center for Excellence, a girls’ primary boarding school in Enoosaen, Kenya, Kakenya believes that education will empower and motivate young girls to become agents of change in their community and country. The Center opened its doors in May 2009 and currently has 170 students in grades four through eight. It has become a beacon of hope to the girls and parents in Enoosaen.

In 2013 Kakenya was honored with the Global Women’s Right Award from the Feminist Majority Foundation, was recognized by Women in the World as a “Woman of Impact” and named a Top Ten CNN Hero. Kakenya was honored with a Vital Voices Global Leadership award in 2008 and as a National Geographic Emerging Explorer in 2010. She was named as one of Newsweek’s “150 Women Who Shake the World” in 2011 and was counted among the Women Deliver 100: The Most Inspiring People Delivering for Girls and Women. Her story has been the subject of a Washington Post series, a BBC documentary, and many magazine articles.

* Sponsored by the National Coalition of Girls’ Schools.

Rosario Oreta Lapus

POSITION: President, Miriam College

Dr. Rosario Oreta LapusDr. Rosario Oreta Lapus earned her Doctorate in Education at the University of the Philippines, and holds two Masters Degrees: a Master in Education from Boston College and a MS in Gerontology from the University of Massachusetts in Boston. She also did postgraduate work for several years at the Harvard Graduate School of Education as visiting scholar-researcher. She has diplomas in French studies from the Universite de Grenoble and the Universite de Paris a la Sorbonne. She completed her undergraduate work at Assumption Convent where she finished Bachelor of Arts Major in Foreign Service, cum laude. She is a member of both the Sigma Phi Omega (Honor & Professional Society in Gerontology) and the Pi Lambda Theta (Honor & Professional Association of Women in Education).

She is currently the President of Miriam College. She served as Massachusetts statewide coordinator for its Healthy Aging program on Fall prevention. She is presently the Chairperson of the Consortium of Women’s Colleges in the Philippines and Board member and Accreditor for Graduate School Level of the Philippine Accrediting Association of Schools, Colleges and Universities (PAASCU), among other local affiliations. Dr. Lapus was one of 15 heads of Catholic universities worldwide chosen to participate in the International Federation of Catholic Universities’ (IFCU) Rector’s Program, “Leading Catholic Universities in the 21st Century: An Action Oriented Program for Institutional Heads”.

Holly Ransom

POSITION: CEO, Emergent Solutions

Holly RansomHolly Ransom is the CEO of Emergent Solutions, a company specialising in the development of high performing intergenerational workforces, leadership and social outcomes.

In 2012, she was the youngest person to be named in Australia’s “100 Most Influential Women”, and also became the world’s youngest-ever Rotary President. In 2014, the Australian Prime Minister appointed Holly to chair the G20 Youth Summit, and her corporate career has involved working as Chief of Staff to NAB Wealth Chief Executive Andrew Hagger and for Rio Tinto CEO Sam Walsh. Holly’s company Emergent Solutions has worked with the likes of INPEX, CBH, Conoco Phillips, KPMG, as well as local, state and federal government departments around the world.

Holly is renowned for generating innovative solutions to complex multi-stakeholder problems for corporations, governments and non-profit organisations, and for coaching and professionally mentoring leaders of all generations around the world.

* Sponsored by the Alliance of Girls’ Schools Australasia.