Project Overview

Celebrating its fifth anniversary with a summit at New York’s Lincoln Center April 3-5, 2014, Women in the World: Stories + Solutions, presented by Tina Brown LIVE Media, is one of America's foremost forums to showcase the work of women leaders from around the world. An exciting and powerful event centered on live journalistic storytelling, the Women in the World Summit brings to one stage inspiring women and men from diverse cultures and backgrounds. Featuring CEOs, industry icons, and world leaders, as well as artists, grassroots activists, and firebrand dissidents, the 3-day event makes vivid the stories of the courageous and intelligent women who are taking on the status quo in their native countries, leading peace movements in the face of war and conflict, and shattering glass ceilings in every sector.

Organisation

Women in the World

Team

The core team of Women in the World comprises a handful of employees, who work throughout the year researching, booking, planning and executing the annual summit. In the weeks leading up to the April summit, this staff is joined by additional producers who put together the onstage programs. We also work hand-in-hand with a production house to ensure that the three-day event at Lincoln Center goes off without a hitch. They partner with us to handle everything from talent management to technical operations, building and dismantling the set.

Project Brief

The 2014 Women in the World summit highlighted inspirational women, both well-known figures and unknown heroes, from around the world. Opening night featured an exclusive live conversation between Secretary Hillary Clinton and Madame Christine Lagarde of the International Monetary Fund about the challenges for women in the global economy. It included a harrowing report from Syrian women, eyewitnesses to the atrocities of war and an interview with Jordan’s Queen Rania. The summit also featured: Pussy Riot, Ken Burns on his Eleanor Roosevelt documentary, President Jimmy Carter on his book about women’s rights, firebrand activists from the Middle East interviewed by Jon Stewart, a mother of a convicted terrorist from the UK discussing her fight against extremism, comedian Sarah Silverman and her rabbi sister Susan from Israel, two teenage girls born into poverty worlds apart (in Peru and Compton) and united by their love of poetry, Pakistani girls risking their lives for girls’ education, Senators Kirsten Gillibrand and Susan Collins discussing if women can fix Washington, two brave women from the caste of untouchables in India fighting for justice and two amazing women from inner cities using sports and dance to keep kids out of drugs and violence.

Project Innovation/Need

The Women in the World summit connects women (and men) in an important face-to-face venue that is so sorely lacking in our era of social media and technological communication. Our participants are thrilled to have this inspirational set of programs over which to bond and network. We hear from many how hungry they are to connect in person and how much they appreciate the opportunity the summit affords them, as we often find women exchanging business cards in the theater, during break sessions, etc. We set up six iPad donation sites around the venue, with links straight to two dozen nonprofits that were represented on the stage; we also sent emails to attendees just after each block of programming ended, suggesting ways they could follow up and help the speakers with the causes that are so dear to them (the Sophisticated Sisters drill team of Camden, NJ, for instance, requested donations
for a van to help the girls get around).

User Experience

The 3-day long summit engaged those attending the event at Lincoln Center as well as a worldwide audience with 515 million Twitter impressions and 1.5 billion
press, online and broadcast impressions. Our green room became a virtual networking salon, where female firebrands from the Middle East connected with Jimmy Carter, Pussy Riot mingled with Hillary Clinton and survivors of the Rwandan genocide mixed with entrepreneurs from South Africa and young tech wizards. We’ve heard from countless participants and attendees about how Women in the World is changing their work and their actions. For example, an organization called “GetLit” -- which helped bring the young woman poet from Compton to our summit -- tells us they’re broadening their curriculum based on what they learned. We’ve heard about New York high schools adding a special class tied to our program on the “pornification of culture” with Rashida Jones. We know it is as important to our attendees as it is to us that our nonprofit partners benefit directly from the summit—from the donation stations noted above, from the proceeds of our onsite boutique, and from ticket sales (a portion of which go to Vital Voices).

Sustainability

Our set this year was built for last year’s show, stored, and reused, as were many other production elements. We sent our audience updates online as much as possible. And of course by choosing a venue in New York City, where many of our participants live or have reason to come to regularly, we reduce our need to send staff and equipment to a far-flung locale.