Skip to content

Thirty Seven East

A communication and business development agency based in New York City with networks in Brazil, France and Mexico

  • Home
  • About
    • 37EAST
    • JC Agid
    • Memory Lane
  • Women’s Conferences
    • Women’s Forum for the Economy & Society
      • Amazing Women
      • Business Development | Media | 2007 – 2017
      • Brazilian Delegation | 2011
      • Brazil | 2012
      • Brazil | 2013
      • Brazil | 2014
      • CEO Champions
      • Myanmar 2013 | 2014
      • New York
      • Mexican Delegation | 2014
      • Mexico | 2016
      • Mexico | 2017
      • Seven | 2008
    • Women in Africa Summit 2019
    • Women in Africa Summit 2020
  • Culture
    • American Friends of
    • Art and Culture | Gallery
  • Hospitality, Travel and Wellbeing
    • AIR FRANCE | KLM
    • L’Avion | Openskies
    • Hotel Plaza Athénée New York
    • Valmont
  • News
  • Marion Naufal Illustrations
  • Blog
  • Testimonials
  • Contact

Category: Fire Chat With

The Vital Power of Youth and Words

January 18, 2021January 18, 2021 by JC Agid 1 Comment

The Vital Power of Youth and Words: 22-year-old Poetess Amanda Gorman to Perform at Joe Biden’s Inauguration

A Rock, a River, a Tree 
Hosts of species long departed
Marked the mastodon,
The dinosaur, who left dried tokens
Of their sojourn here

Maya Angelou, On The Pulse of Morning

Continue reading “The Vital Power of Youth and Words”

Posted in Amazing Women, ART, Byline JC Agid, Culture, Fire Chat With, Gender Issues, Marion Naufal, Uncategorized, Women can have it all, Women Empowerment, Women Entrepreneurs
Tagged Al Gore, Alyse Nelson, Amanda Gorman, Assouline, Barack Obama, Barbara Bush, Bill Clinton, Christine Lagarde, Diane Von Furstenberg, DVF, Gayle Kabaker, George Bush, Harvard, Hillary Clinton, Jacinda Ardern, JFK, Joe biden, Malala Yousafzai, Martine Assouline, Maya Angelou, On the pulse of a morning, Poetry, RBG, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Tipper Gore, United Nations, Vital Voices, Vital Voices: 100 Women Using Their Power to Empower, Women can have it all, Women Empowerment

Women Have Power: Let’s Hear Them

November 3, 2020November 17, 2020 by JC Agid Leave a comment

Women Have Power: Let’s Hear Them
A conversation with Alyse Nelson, President and co-Founder of Vital Voices for Global Partnership. Co-editor of Vital Voices: 100 Women to Empower Other Women (Assouline)

Forget for a moment Joe Biden’s victory as President-elect and Donald Trump’s struggles with defeat, one of the main news from the 2020 American Presidential election is Senator Kamala Harris. For the first time in history, a woman—a Black, Asian woman—will become the first female Vice President of the United States. Harris will also rank first in line to succeed Joe Biden as President.

Besides the election of Kamala Harris, women seem to have taken center political stage whether it is in the United States or on the opposite side of the world.

Women actually played a key role in the 2020 American elections a mere 100 years after the 19th amendment of the American Constitution granting women’s suffrage was passed. Fast forward to 2020, 57% of women—and among them 90% of Black women—chose the Democratic candidate over the incumbent President, according to NBC News. Women also voted more than men (52%). In other words, they decided the Presidential outcome and chose Joe Biden although Donald Trump increased his base of white women voters.

Ahead of the Presidential election, another woman, Justice Amy Coney Barrett also made history and became the only the fifth woman to sit on the United States Supreme Court in 230 years. A woman Justice has replaced another one. While it surely seems to be a positive step for women’s empowerment and gender equality, succession might not be as simple as just having a woman leader succeeding another one. Ruth Bader Ginsburg was the American champion of women’s rights; based on the 48-year old Justice Barrett’s past judicial positions show, the new Justice is not.

Continue reading “Women Have Power: Let’s Hear Them”

Posted in Amazing Women, Byline JC Agid, Culture, Fire Chat With, Gender Issues, Mujeres, Women can have it all, Women Empowerment
Tagged Alyse Nelson, Amanda Gorman, Amanda N'Guyen, Amy Coney Barrett, Assouline, Diane Von Furstenberg, DVF, Gayle Kabaker, Habiba Ali, Hillary Clinton, Jacinda Ardern, Joe biden, kamala harris, Martine Assouline, Melanne Verveer, Rouba Mhaissen, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Saskia Nino de Rivera, Seven, susan collins, Tina brown, Vital Voices, Vital Voices for Global partnership, Vital Voices: 100 Women Using Their Power to Empower, Women's Forum for the Economy and Society

The Power of Words to Empower Women

September 9, 2020January 15, 2021 by JC Agid 3 Comments

To Power of Words to Empower Women: Five questions to poet Amanda Gorman


Amanda Gorman looks a bit younger than her age of 22 says, and at 22, the Los Angeles born activist has already reached heights that very few people have. A Harvard University student, she made her way as a Youth Delegate to the United Nations in 2013  after listening Pakistani survivor Malala Yousafzai speak. Her own words made her poet. She became the first National Youth Poet Laureate in 2017 and ambitions to run for President in the United States sometimes.


A young poet? Think again. Arthur Rimbaud was a teenager when he composed some of his most famous poems.


Gorman is a poet, an activist and a social entrepreneur. Period. She is a leader whose voice is already vital. She created a youth writing program, read poetry on MTV and at the Library of Congress, and she just authored the foreword of  Vital Voices: 100 Women Using Their Power to Empower (Assouline). No wonder her portrait, created by Gayle Kabaker, made the cover of a book that includes Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton, New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern, European Central Bank President Christine Lagarde, Fashion Designer Diane Von Furstenberg, and Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg.


No surprise either: her foreword is a poem. It is about words after all, and sharing them.


(more…)

Posted in Byline JC Agid, Culture, Fire Chat With, Gender Issues, New York, Women can have it all, Women Empowerment, Women Entrepreneurs
Tagged Alyse Nelson, Amanda Gorman, Assouline, Christine Lagarde, Diane Von Furstenberg, DVF, Feminism, Gayle Kabaker, Jacinda Ardern, Malala Yousafzai, Poetry, Poety, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Vital Voices, Vital Voices for Global partnership, Vital Voices: 100 Women Using Their Power to Empower

At Your Home Without You: Jerry Wonda Shares Music He Loves

August 27, 2020September 7, 2020 by JC Agid Leave a comment

At Your Home Without You: Jerry Wonda Shares Music He Loves

When I connected via Zoom with producer and former Fugees’ bass player Jerry Wonda Duplessis, I was greeted with music and rhythm, Bowie’s Let’s Dance! Seated with his bass guitar at arms’ reach at his Minnesota studio, minutes away from Prince’s home and the sadly well-known street where George Floyd was choked to death, Wonda is doing what he loves the most, sharing the music he loves.


His music of course. That includes hits such as Fugees’ cover of Killing Me Softly, Shakira’s Hips Don’t Lie, Carlos Santana’s Maria Maria, Melissa Ethridge’s Pulse and more recently the viral success of Newark’s Mayor Ras Baraka’s What We Want.


Music from others as well. That day, Wonda was in the mood for the period-worthy Harold Melvin’s Wake Up Everybody and a song he and I both like dearly, The Eagles’ iconic Hotel California. With some of his musical friends, Wonda launched early May ‘Share Music You Love,’ an initiative to raise funds for MusiCares and help musicians while concerts are halted. A UN Goodwill Ambassador for Haiti, Wonda is also working on bringing music, voices and musicians, professionals or not, from all over the world into a song to symbolize unity.


Born in Haiti, Wonda has never forgotten the donkey he rode to school before he moved to East Orange, New Jersey, into the home of his cousin, Wyclef Jean. He now lives for sharing his luck and dreams with others, children who like him, are born into poverty. “I went to school to be a recording engineer,” Wonda told me, “but I wanted to be Quincy Jones. I wanted to make the music, I wanted to be a producer. I wanted to produce a lot of Michael Jacksons!”


And so, he did.

 

Continue reading “At Your Home Without You: Jerry Wonda Shares Music He Loves”

Posted in ART, Byline JC Agid, Covid-19, Culture, Fire Chat With, New York, Not At Home With
Tagged Alicia Keys, Amores como el nuestro quedan ya muy pocos, Amy Winehouse, At Home Without Me, At Your Home Without Me, Beenie Man, BET, Beyonce, Bono, Bounty Killer, Bryson Tiller, Carlos Santana, Charlie Walk, Chez Vous Sans Moi, City High, Clive Davis, Dirty Dancing, DJ Khaled, Eagles, Fugees, George Floyd, Grammy's, Harold Melvin, Havana Nights, Hips Don't Lie, Hotel California, Jerry Wonda, Jerry Wonda and Friends, John Forté, John Legend, Justin Bieber, Killing Me Softly, KRS One, Lauryn Hill, Maria Maria, Mary J Blige, Melissa Ethridge, Musicares, Prince, Pulse, Quincy Jones, Ras Baraka, Rudi Dubois, Shakira, Share Music You Love, The Eagles, The Score, U2, Wake up everybody, What We Want, Wild Thoughts, Wycleaf Jean, Wyclef Jean

At Your Home, Without Me: Ramatuelle, Jacqueline Franjou’s Essential Festival

August 1, 2020August 2, 2020 by JC Agid Leave a comment

At Your Home, Without Me: Ramatuelle, Jacqueline Franjou’s Essential Festival

Tonight, August 1st, 2020–and until August 10th. If you are in Ramatuelle, a little village above the Mediterranean Sea near Saint Tropez in the South of France, you might be among the luckiest people. While almost all summer cultural events have been canceled in France, Jacqueline Franjou is opening the 2020 Festival of Ramatuelle, a series of plays, stand-up comedies, and concerts under the stars and the songs of crickets. A must attend annual event, a rarity this year.

This summery feast  has been scheduled every August since 1985. But with movies, theaters, operas and museums still closed in most places around the world because of containment and a very much still present covid19 pandemic, the mere possibility to see comedians and musicians on a stage has become an extraordinary experience. This year’s Festival is an act of audacity and resistance, against all odds, a small, yet safe step to keep us on the pace of being humans, together. 

I was fortunate to attend last summer and I remember fondly the performance of French actor Gérard Depardieu (Golden Globe 1991 for Peter Weir’s movie Green Card) sing Barbara’s most iconic songs in a soft and elusive voice.

I cannot go this summer but will have a special thought for Franjou, the co-founder and President of this Festival, a woman I was lucky enough to work with for a few years and who has never been afraid to be disruptive to keep all of us thinking beyond the obvious. We need this festival, we need culture to fill our hopes and dreams, we need words and scores and stories to pave our immediate future.

Next is the translation from a French interview I did with Franjou while I was still confined in New York and she was already planning this week’s performances (published in Le Petit Journal).

Continue reading “At Your Home, Without Me: Ramatuelle, Jacqueline Franjou’s Essential Festival”

Posted in Amazing Women, ART, Byline JC Agid, Covid-19, Culture, Fire Chat With, Not At Home With, Women can have it all
Tagged Barbara, Christophe, Covid-19, COVID19, Gérard Philipe, Gerard Depardieu, Green Card, Guy Bedos, Jacqueline Franjou, Jean-Claude Brialy, Jean-Laurent Cochet, Michel Boujenah, Peter Weir, Pierre Desproges, Ramatuelle, Saint Tropez, Women's Forum, Women's Forum Brazil, Women's Forum for the Economy and Society, Women's Forum Mexico, Women's Forum Myanmar

Posts navigation

Older posts

Subscribe to Blog via Email

Enter your email address to subscribe to this blog and receive notifications of new posts by email.

2021 Thirty Seven East
  • Home
  • About
  • Women’s Conferences
  • Culture
  • Hospitality, Travel and Wellbeing
  • News
  • Marion Naufal Illustrations
  • Blog
  • Testimonials
  • Contact
  • Facebook
  • LinkedIn
  • Twitter
  • Instagram
  • Youtube
Thirty Seven East
Proudly powered by WordPress Theme: Venture.