[Music]
so I came round
[Music]
[Music]
[Music]
you
in March 2000 a CEO I was in a meeting
with interrupted me to demand that I
accompany him to a hotel I listened in
stone silence trying to comprehend this
was actually happening as he explained
to me that it was payback time but the
businesses he has given my company so
far promising me that after a session
together he would begin to give me
really big jobs he scoffed when I
reminded him I was married and did I
mention I was seven months pregnant at
the time and very evidently so when I
pointed this out to him just in case he
thought I’d forgotten in case he thought
I was simply overweight and I’ll never
forget how he laughed and said all the
better at least I know tomorrow you will
say you’re expecting my baby I wonder if
we missed the connection between the
actions we take towards others and the
battles those who are own will one day
have to fight if you understand that the
legacy we leave our children is built
daily through our choices our actions
and inactions for good or for bad if we
know and understand that the world they
inherit from us will be better or worse
for the things that we intentionally
stand for or against this is my daughter
I should go back a bit this is my
daughter unlike her brothers she’s
highly intelligent very talented a
multiple award winner and she’s the
daughter any parents would be proud of
her father is convinced she takes after
him but you know the jury’s still out on
that
my daughter has very big dreams dreams
which carry no less weight with us than
to her brothers dreams and so we’ve
never tried to teach her that her
femininity would be any sort of a
limitation towards her achieving
aspirations in parenting have this way
however we’ve then also inadvertently
sold her the same line that generations
of parents have thoughts of their
daughters or when let’s call it a
half-truth we tell them that they can be
anything they want to be but in this
world it’s not that simple is it like
the average parent I weigh
I could protect my children from life’s
hard knocks as they faced that
inevitable transition between the ideals
of their childhood and the harsher
realities of adulthood but I will
confess that with each passing year
I find myself increasingly more worried
for my daughter than I am for my sons
and this is because of the parallels I
see in her life and mine that I really
wish did not exist you see my daughter
is today the young girl that I once was
and like her growing up for me was not
about being a girl I was simply a child
and as a child my achievements my
intelligence my capabilities were
celebrated as a child I was taught to
always do my excellent best so I could
become my excellent best as a child I
was taught to dream big to aim high I
was told that I could become anything I
wanted to be if I applied myself and how
many of you know that nobody could have
told me as a child that applying myself
would mean anything other than working
hard nobody prepared a young girl that I
was for a world in which because I am
female I find myself constantly
struggling to prove that I have equal
value as a human being that I matter but
I am capable that I am competent that
I’m deserving of respect and I deserve
the opportunity to give the world my
best I worry for my daughter because of
the way we’re raising her and the
disconnect with a world that still best
unfortunate striking resemblances to the
one I grew up in a world in which
unfortunately there’s a rising and
escalating rate of rape and violence
against girls and women of all ages a
world in which music media and
entertainment continue to denigrate
women and portray them as objects to use
and abuse a world that is still largely
hostile to women attaining heights of
achievement in government in business
and in society on that day in March 2000
something shifted in me fundamentally
it’s not like I hadn’t had other
experiences that impinge on my dignity
as a woman but nothing would literary
Trump this one I was pregnant for my
daughter you see my first two children
were boys
and so you will understand there was an
added excitement about this particular
pregnancy and to have had such an
experience while my innocent girl child
nestled in my womb was to say the least
an insult not just to her to myself but
also to her and I felt violated on her
behalf
many thoughts ran through my mind as i
sat there but i refused to question or
blame myself I was not about to make
myself the accused instead of a victim a
situation unfortunately too many women
find themselves in rather I chose to
feel sorry for that man because on one
hand he had seriously diminished himself
in my eyes and on the other hand I felt
a well of sadness for the women in his
life especially his daughters whose
pictures he so boldly dismayed in his
office my choice was simple I walked out
and never looked back
about this period I heard about the
glass ceiling for the first time and yes
many people say the glass ceiling is a
myth that is a self-limiting self
perpetuated and self-sabotage and
constructs that have been passed on to
women of all ages and tribes for decades
well glass ceiling or not that
experience for me was not a mythical
construct it was very real it was very
distressing and under a different set of
circumstances it had the potential to
destroy my sense of Worth permanently
but this goes beyond the glass ceiling
however there is a broader construct
that questions the value we place on our
women as a society and how this plays
out in the society as large so I chose
to allow that experience become for me a
significant positive turning points
rather than to let it break me down but
I also realized that I was privileged to
have had a choice I was already running
is somewhat successful business I grew
up in a good middle-class home with very
sound morals and values and I was ways
to be strong and confident so honestly
it didn’t take that much but what about
other women who don’t have these
privileges but who face the same kind of
challenges and worse women whose choices
might not have been so clear
in the face of their harsh realities
single mothers and widows struggling to
raise children on their own
married women who find themselves
saddled with the financial burdens of
the immediate and extended families
single girls who have been so battered
emotionally physically and in every way
you can imagine such that they don’t
even realize they still have a choice
all of these women were once just
somebody’s little girl ask the average
man who the most important person in his
life is the most likely response is my
mother so the average man his mother is
the epitome of human dignity respect
virtue and his daughter she says
priceless princess and this begs the
question why the same average man is not
able to see every other woman out there
to insist I believe that there is an on
the line and pervasive mix of
unconscious mind says blind spots and
biases that create a disconnect between
our estimations of our mothers our wives
and our sisters and our estimations of
every other woman out there how else do
you explain a man’s folly skewed belief
that his wife’s place is in the kitchen
and the other room while his daughter’s
place should be at the top of her class
that have a Business School I believe
that they have been generations of men
and unfortunately women too who have
been socialized and psycho spiritually
indoctrinated with a falsehood that
women are less than they are and deserve
less than they are but the reality is
that your daughter your sister is as
much every other woman out there to me
as – to you therefore if we do nothing
we end up propagating a cycle of
oppression that all women including us
ultimately experience the broken window
theory proposes that when a minor
violation or an infraction such as the
breaking of a window and a private
property is ignored it sends a signal
that more previous crimes can be
committed with impunity because nobody
cares and nobody is in charge and
using this theory for community policing
former mayor of New York Rudolph
Giuliani focused on small and seemingly
insignificant and innocuous tasks like
cleaning graffiti of the walls and
buildings and picking up of trash and
what happened was that humor crimes
began to reduce and over time more
violent crimes dropped by over 56%
making New York a much safer society
with a significantly higher quality of
life and this is his legacy to New York
in response to a critique about the
efficiency of this methodology Rudolph
Giuliani said obviously murder and
graffiti are two vastly different crimes
votes they are part of the community
continuum and the climate that tolerates
one is more than likely to tolerate the
other there is a parallel between the
value we place on our women in society
and the increase in unprecedented levels
of violence abuse and general oppression
of women folk that is in society today a
parallel that is very much like the
murder and graffiti continuum Rudolph
Giuliani spoke about I took that
experience from several years ago and I
asked myself what I would do with it or
would I let it slide and I chose to
stand as an advocate for my daughter and
for every other woman to hope that they
would have a different experience that
experience was fundamentally shattering
for me
and I continue to stand and to raise my
voice to declare that women matter women
counts and their story does not have to
be different at the end of the day when
we look at our relationships as
infinitely precious as a daughter is to
a father a mother to a son a sister to a
brother and as fiercely protective as we
are of these relationships then every
man must necessarily come to an
individual realization that unless he
stands for all women
he is inadvertently shortchanging the
destinies of his own when we don’t stand
for all women we propagate pain how many
of us have been broken emotionally and
psychologically because we grew up in
where the mothers were abused how many
of us would dream of our daughters going
through the things we saw our mothers
going through and if we would be
brutally honest there are some men that
would have to admit to themselves that
they would never want their daughters to
go through the things that they put on
the woman’s shoe we cannot continue to
live in a world when we believe that our
own daughters our sisters our own
mothers have somehow magically cordoned
off and insulated from the
objectification denigration abuse and
violence directed against women in a
society we refuse to change our
daughters will find themselves fighting
battles that I accumulate about shards
of broken glass that we refuse to pick
up pretending they don’t exist
pretending they apply to someone else or
pretending that you know someone else
will pick it up but what if we can
change the narrative what if we can
create a different story
what if each of us would determine to
pick one shred of glass and toss it in
the trash yes we might not be able to
mend the windows of femininity that have
been broken in times past but I believe
that we can at least ultimately
collectively stop society from breaking
down our women and our girls further I
chose to use that experience as a less
thing to say that I might not be able to
change the entire world but I can at
least change my corner of it if that man
were to be in the room today and I had
the opportunity of a do-over I would ask
him to envision either of his daughter
standing in my shoes and being told by a
man that her master’s degree doesn’t
count that her commitment and competence
and professionalism doesn’t count being
told in essence that the only way she
will earn her way to her next level of
success in business would be on her back
in the hotel room and I would ask him
how that would make him feel and I would
ask him if you understood that what he
was trying to do to me was paying
forward negative experiences that his
daughter and the women in his life might
likely face at the hands of someone else
and I would ask him if he wouldn’t
rather take a personal responsibility
for ensuring that his daughters his
niece’s his sister’s his granddaughter’s
have a different story to tell
specifically
I would ask him what would be your
legacy so the women of your generation
what will be your legacy so the women of
your generation and these are questions
for all of us really there are things
that we need to think about I chose to
use my business as a platform to create
room for the women who work with for and
around me so from increasing recruitment
opportunities to contracting
opportunities to increase the
representation of women of my
management’s and boards to using my
businesses to sponsor empowerment
programs for less privileged women these
are the pieces of broken glass that I am
picking up so counseling every woman
that makes herself available to a big
sister a question yourself what piece of
broken glass can I pick up what can I do
to change this rhetoric into a reality
and it doesn’t take much small steps in
your circle of influence have the
ability to create momentum and transform
the narrative for all our women pushing
back at sexual innuendo there are gay
tree marks and vulgarity directed at
women speaking up against rape violence
and domestic abuse in your circles
unhappy reporting abusers even if their
family or friends use your social pages
to propagate data media information and
intelligence that’s what women’s rights
and their I think stop patronizing the
music and the movies that object five
men and propagate violence against them
you are feeding an industry what you
will be doing by taking any of these
small steps is carrying out those kind
of seemingly innocuous actions like
cleaning graffiti of a wall but have the
potential to transform the way that one
more man one more organization one more
community and ultimately all of society
views are women United Nations former
United Nations secretary-general Kofi
Annan once said when women thrive all of
society including boys and men benefits
and the soft
sitting generations are given a much
better start in life
isn’t this the legacy we want to live
for our children but you see eleventh
legacy is not built after you’re gone
and legacy is something that you live
and believe it is a collection of small
steps and intentional acts that Express
who you are and the value you deliver to
the world while you are in it and this
is what lives on after you I give you
this question again what will be your
legacy to the women of your generation
I wouldn’t it be awesome if because we
each chose to be personally accountable
for changing this narrative we could
over time build a society where when our
children tell their daughters they can
be anything they want to be it really
would be true with no strings attached
thank you
[Applause]
you
[Music]
so I came round
[Music]
[Music]
[Music]
you
in March 2000 a CEO I was in a meeting
with interrupted me to demand that I
accompany him to a hotel I listened in
stone silence trying to comprehend this
was actually happening as he explained
to me that it was payback time but the
businesses he has given my company so
far promising me that after a session
together he would begin to give me
really big jobs he scoffed when I
reminded him I was married and did I
mention I was seven months pregnant at
the time and very evidently so when I
pointed this out to him just in case he
thought I’d forgotten in case he thought
I was simply overweight and I’ll never
forget how he laughed and said all the
better at least I know tomorrow you will
say you’re expecting my baby I wonder if
we missed the connection between the
actions we take towards others and the
battles those who are own will one day
have to fight if you understand that the
legacy we leave our children is built
daily through our choices our actions
and inactions for good or for bad if we
know and understand that the world they
inherit from us will be better or worse
for the things that we intentionally
stand for or against this is my daughter
I should go back a bit this is my
daughter unlike her brothers she’s
highly intelligent very talented a
multiple award winner and she’s the
daughter any parents would be proud of
her father is convinced she takes after
him but you know the jury’s still out on
that
my daughter has very big dreams dreams
which carry no less weight with us than
to her brothers dreams and so we’ve
never tried to teach her that her
femininity would be any sort of a
limitation towards her achieving
aspirations in parenting have this way
however we’ve then also inadvertently
sold her the same line that generations
of parents have thoughts of their
daughters or when let’s call it a
half-truth we tell them that they can be
anything they want to be but in this
world it’s not that simple is it like
the average parent I weigh
I could protect my children from life’s
hard knocks as they faced that
inevitable transition between the ideals
of their childhood and the harsher
realities of adulthood but I will
confess that with each passing year
I find myself increasingly more worried
for my daughter than I am for my sons
and this is because of the parallels I
see in her life and mine that I really
wish did not exist you see my daughter
is today the young girl that I once was
and like her growing up for me was not
about being a girl I was simply a child
and as a child my achievements my
intelligence my capabilities were
celebrated as a child I was taught to
always do my excellent best so I could
become my excellent best as a child I
was taught to dream big to aim high I
was told that I could become anything I
wanted to be if I applied myself and how
many of you know that nobody could have
told me as a child that applying myself
would mean anything other than working
hard nobody prepared a young girl that I
was for a world in which because I am
female I find myself constantly
struggling to prove that I have equal
value as a human being that I matter but
I am capable that I am competent that
I’m deserving of respect and I deserve
the opportunity to give the world my
best I worry for my daughter because of
the way we’re raising her and the
disconnect with a world that still best
unfortunate striking resemblances to the
one I grew up in a world in which
unfortunately there’s a rising and
escalating rate of rape and violence
against girls and women of all ages a
world in which music media and
entertainment continue to denigrate
women and portray them as objects to use
and abuse a world that is still largely
hostile to women attaining heights of
achievement in government in business
and in society on that day in March 2000
something shifted in me fundamentally
it’s not like I hadn’t had other
experiences that impinge on my dignity
as a woman but nothing would literary
Trump this one I was pregnant for my
daughter you see my first two children
were boys
and so you will understand there was an
added excitement about this particular
pregnancy and to have had such an
experience while my innocent girl child
nestled in my womb was to say the least
an insult not just to her to myself but
also to her and I felt violated on her
behalf
many thoughts ran through my mind as i
sat there but i refused to question or
blame myself I was not about to make
myself the accused instead of a victim a
situation unfortunately too many women
find themselves in rather I chose to
feel sorry for that man because on one
hand he had seriously diminished himself
in my eyes and on the other hand I felt
a well of sadness for the women in his
life especially his daughters whose
pictures he so boldly dismayed in his
office my choice was simple I walked out
and never looked back
about this period I heard about the
glass ceiling for the first time and yes
many people say the glass ceiling is a
myth that is a self-limiting self
perpetuated and self-sabotage and
constructs that have been passed on to
women of all ages and tribes for decades
well glass ceiling or not that
experience for me was not a mythical
construct it was very real it was very
distressing and under a different set of
circumstances it had the potential to
destroy my sense of Worth permanently
but this goes beyond the glass ceiling
however there is a broader construct
that questions the value we place on our
women as a society and how this plays
out in the society as large so I chose
to allow that experience become for me a
significant positive turning points
rather than to let it break me down but
I also realized that I was privileged to
have had a choice I was already running
is somewhat successful business I grew
up in a good middle-class home with very
sound morals and values and I was ways
to be strong and confident so honestly
it didn’t take that much but what about
other women who don’t have these
privileges but who face the same kind of
challenges and worse women whose choices
might not have been so clear
in the face of their harsh realities
single mothers and widows struggling to
raise children on their own
married women who find themselves
saddled with the financial burdens of
the immediate and extended families
single girls who have been so battered
emotionally physically and in every way
you can imagine such that they don’t
even realize they still have a choice
all of these women were once just
somebody’s little girl ask the average
man who the most important person in his
life is the most likely response is my
mother so the average man his mother is
the epitome of human dignity respect
virtue and his daughter she says
priceless princess and this begs the
question why the same average man is not
able to see every other woman out there
to insist I believe that there is an on
the line and pervasive mix of
unconscious mind says blind spots and
biases that create a disconnect between
our estimations of our mothers our wives
and our sisters and our estimations of
every other woman out there how else do
you explain a man’s folly skewed belief
that his wife’s place is in the kitchen
and the other room while his daughter’s
place should be at the top of her class
that have a Business School I believe
that they have been generations of men
and unfortunately women too who have
been socialized and psycho spiritually
indoctrinated with a falsehood that
women are less than they are and deserve
less than they are but the reality is
that your daughter your sister is as
much every other woman out there to me
as – to you therefore if we do nothing
we end up propagating a cycle of
oppression that all women including us
ultimately experience the broken window
theory proposes that when a minor
violation or an infraction such as the
breaking of a window and a private
property is ignored it sends a signal
that more previous crimes can be
committed with impunity because nobody
cares and nobody is in charge and
using this theory for community policing
former mayor of New York Rudolph
Giuliani focused on small and seemingly
insignificant and innocuous tasks like
cleaning graffiti of the walls and
buildings and picking up of trash and
what happened was that humor crimes
began to reduce and over time more
violent crimes dropped by over 56%
making New York a much safer society
with a significantly higher quality of
life and this is his legacy to New York
in response to a critique about the
efficiency of this methodology Rudolph
Giuliani said obviously murder and
graffiti are two vastly different crimes
votes they are part of the community
continuum and the climate that tolerates
one is more than likely to tolerate the
other there is a parallel between the
value we place on our women in society
and the increase in unprecedented levels
of violence abuse and general oppression
of women folk that is in society today a
parallel that is very much like the
murder and graffiti continuum Rudolph
Giuliani spoke about I took that
experience from several years ago and I
asked myself what I would do with it or
would I let it slide and I chose to
stand as an advocate for my daughter and
for every other woman to hope that they
would have a different experience that
experience was fundamentally shattering
for me
and I continue to stand and to raise my
voice to declare that women matter women
counts and their story does not have to
be different at the end of the day when
we look at our relationships as
infinitely precious as a daughter is to
a father a mother to a son a sister to a
brother and as fiercely protective as we
are of these relationships then every
man must necessarily come to an
individual realization that unless he
stands for all women
he is inadvertently shortchanging the
destinies of his own when we don’t stand
for all women we propagate pain how many
of us have been broken emotionally and
psychologically because we grew up in
where the mothers were abused how many
of us would dream of our daughters going
through the things we saw our mothers
going through and if we would be
brutally honest there are some men that
would have to admit to themselves that
they would never want their daughters to
go through the things that they put on
the woman’s shoe we cannot continue to
live in a world when we believe that our
own daughters our sisters our own
mothers have somehow magically cordoned
off and insulated from the
objectification denigration abuse and
violence directed against women in a
society we refuse to change our
daughters will find themselves fighting
battles that I accumulate about shards
of broken glass that we refuse to pick
up pretending they don’t exist
pretending they apply to someone else or
pretending that you know someone else
will pick it up but what if we can
change the narrative what if we can
create a different story
what if each of us would determine to
pick one shred of glass and toss it in
the trash yes we might not be able to
mend the windows of femininity that have
been broken in times past but I believe
that we can at least ultimately
collectively stop society from breaking
down our women and our girls further I
chose to use that experience as a less
thing to say that I might not be able to
change the entire world but I can at
least change my corner of it if that man
were to be in the room today and I had
the opportunity of a do-over I would ask
him to envision either of his daughter
standing in my shoes and being told by a
man that her master’s degree doesn’t
count that her commitment and competence
and professionalism doesn’t count being
told in essence that the only way she
will earn her way to her next level of
success in business would be on her back
in the hotel room and I would ask him
how that would make him feel and I would
ask him if you understood that what he
was trying to do to me was paying
forward negative experiences that his
daughter and the women in his life might
likely face at the hands of someone else
and I would ask him if he wouldn’t
rather take a personal responsibility
for ensuring that his daughters his
niece’s his sister’s his granddaughter’s
have a different story to tell
specifically
I would ask him what would be your
legacy so the women of your generation
what will be your legacy so the women of
your generation and these are questions
for all of us really there are things
that we need to think about I chose to
use my business as a platform to create
room for the women who work with for and
around me so from increasing recruitment
opportunities to contracting
opportunities to increase the
representation of women of my
management’s and boards to using my
businesses to sponsor empowerment
programs for less privileged women these
are the pieces of broken glass that I am
picking up so counseling every woman
that makes herself available to a big
sister a question yourself what piece of
broken glass can I pick up what can I do
to change this rhetoric into a reality
and it doesn’t take much small steps in
your circle of influence have the
ability to create momentum and transform
the narrative for all our women pushing
back at sexual innuendo there are gay
tree marks and vulgarity directed at
women speaking up against rape violence
and domestic abuse in your circles
unhappy reporting abusers even if their
family or friends use your social pages
to propagate data media information and
intelligence that’s what women’s rights
and their I think stop patronizing the
music and the movies that object five
men and propagate violence against them
you are feeding an industry what you
will be doing by taking any of these
small steps is carrying out those kind
of seemingly innocuous actions like
cleaning graffiti of a wall but have the
potential to transform the way that one
more man one more organization one more
community and ultimately all of society
views are women United Nations former
United Nations secretary-general Kofi
Annan once said when women thrive all of
society including boys and men benefits
and the soft
sitting generations are given a much
better start in life
isn’t this the legacy we want to live
for our children but you see eleventh
legacy is not built after you’re gone
and legacy is something that you live
and believe it is a collection of small
steps and intentional acts that Express
who you are and the value you deliver to
the world while you are in it and this
is what lives on after you I give you
this question again what will be your
legacy to the women of your generation
I wouldn’t it be awesome if because we
each chose to be personally accountable
for changing this narrative we could
over time build a society where when our
children tell their daughters they can
be anything they want to be it really
would be true with no strings attached
thank you
[Applause]
you
[Music]
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