Tag: Hillary Clinton

Women Have Power: Let’s Hear Them

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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.

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One Hundred Women to Inspire Us to Change

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One Hundred Women to Inspire Us to Change
Vital Voices: 100 Women Using Their Power to Empower (Assouline)


On September 6, 2020, French philosopher Elisabeth Badinter wrote an editorial in Le Journal du Dimanche, one of France’s main Sunday’s paper to denounce a dangerous post #metoo radical neo-feminism, which she says transforms all women into victims and all men into presumed aggressors. At the same moment in the United States, Assouline and the American foundation Vital Voices published a groundbreaking book with 100 portraits and texts of women ‘using their power to empower.’

Women belong in all places where decisions are being made. It shouldn’t be that women are the exceptions.

Ruth Bader Ginsburg, lawyer and former Justice, United States Supreme Court


Their names are Ruth Bader Ginsburg (RBG passed away a few days after this article was published), Melinda Gates, Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, Nancy Pelosi, Michelle Bachelet, Geena Davis and Jacinda Ardern. Some have led countries, some head a foundation, one is a US Senator, while another is one of the most powerful judges in the United States. The book also features Panmela Castro, Xiye Bastida, Yin Myo Su, Hindu Oumarou Ibrahim, Andeisha Farid, Amani Ballour, and Tarana Burke. Less known in the Western media, they too run foundations, corporations, paint large murals, engage in politics, and transform the healthcare delivery landscape of their communities.


There are 100 of them in this book edited by Alyse Nelson, President and co-founder of Vital Voices Global Partnerships, along with Hillary Rodham Clinton, Melanne Verveer, and Madeleine Albright. This Washington-based non for-profit organization works with women in 182 countries to help them become professionally empowered, visible and heard. One hundred portraits painted by Gayle Kabaker, one of the greatest American illustrators, known especially for her New Yorker covers. One hundred women who share their visions, their ambitions, and raise their voices. They could be a thousand, a hundred thousand, millions. In fact, these 100 women leaders, activists, lawyers, politicians, entrepreneurs, diplomats, financiers, biologists, journalists, athletes and artists are de facto ambassadors of half of the world’s population.

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At Your Home, Without Me. Alexandra Morris’ Own Guide to Reinvent Parties

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At Your Home, Without Me: Alexandra Morris’ Own Guide to Reinvent Parties

— Note that Tastings and Vranken Pommery America, along with the French Institute Alliance Française, will host a webinar / food, wine and Champagne tasting next June 29th at 630pm EST. Although limited to FIAF Young Patrons, you sill could participate by registering through Tastings Website (Click Here) | limited spots available, fee applies for dinner, wine and champagne delivered to your doorstep in New York City (60USD per person all included) —

The New York restaurants were asleep, all of them, when thousands of miles away, the godfather of dining, of elegance and the signature behind the crême brulée discreetly passed away in his native hilltop Tuscan village of Montecatini at the age of 88. Sirio Maccioni, the founder of the legendary Cirque, had defined an era of New York cuisine. Sirio was not a chef, but a Maître D’, a master in welcoming the rich, the famous, the Sinatras, and and the rest of us, the invisible food lovers. When he was in Manhattan, Sirio sat at the entrance of Le Cirque everyday faithfully, until its doors were finally closed in 2018. Sirio hired the best chefs from around the world, and was notorious for stealing them from other kitchens, which is how he came to find Daniel Boulud in 1986.

To Alexandra Morris, the glamorous, mischievous, somehow reserved, founder of Tastings–one of New York’s most renowned catering companies, as well as two restaurants in East Harlem, Maccioni was a legend.

When restaurants eventually wake up from the Covid pause New York, the landscape will be an uncharted territory. The elders perhaps will recall Maccioni’s tales and wonder what he would have done to adapt to the new gastronomic scene and to the disappearance of flamboyant cocktails and galas for a while. Alexandra Morris has already started to imagine her new tasty relationship with her clients, the restaurant at home and the digital parties. She calls it, ‘Tastings 2.0.’

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A Hug to Humanity

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A Hug to Humanity


Fire-chat with Saskia Niño de Rivera, founder of Reinserta in Mexico

Saskia Niño de Rivera was the first of the Vital Voices Gala evening’s honorees to walk back on stage at Washington D.C.’s Kennedy Center Opera on April  24th, 2019.

The Mexican activist went straight to Hillary Clinton, and without hesitation, hugged the former Secretary of State and co-founder of Vital Voices, a global foundation launched in 1997 to support women who advance economic opportunity, increase political and public engagement, end gender-based violence and promote human rights across 180 countries and territories.

 

A few moments before, the audience saw a video of children playing in Lucha Libre disguises (the famous masked Mexican wrestlers). One them, drawing, is heard wishing: “I want to go to the zoo; when I am big, I want to be a fireman; and when I am really big–yeah–if I am really big, I will be The Hulk.” 

 

A childhood fantasy, indeed, except this child cannot even go to a zoo. This child is one the 700 children born and raised in a Mexican jail.

 

Saskia Nino de Rivera and Hillary Clinton | (c) Lancer Photography | 2019
Saskia Niño de Rivera and Hillary Clinton | (c) Lancer Photography | 2019

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Omowale

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Omowale, The Child Has Come Home
Firechat with with Tope Fajingbesi Balogun, author and founder of United for Kids and of She-Eo
Member of the American Delegation to the 2019 Women in Africa Summit

The day Social Entrepreneur and Nigerian-born Tope Fajingbesi met with Presidential hopeful Hillary Clinton, she still thought she would end up working in the White House developing a project she calls Omowale (literally: the child has come home). The former accountant turned author, activist and serial entrepreneur is participating in the 2019 American delegation to the Women in Africa summit in Marrakech (June 27-28), along with former co-host of The View and lawyer Star Jones, Vital Voices President Alyse Nelson, media leader Ann Walker Marchant, Cartier Women’s Initiative Award North America judge and angel investor Birame Sock, Founder of Shea Radiance Funlayo Alabi, filmmaker Felicia Taylor, New York based ethical designer Ingrid Bruha and EBW founder Ingrid Vanderveldt among others (full list of delegates: check out http://www.wia-initiative.com/ and app).

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