I have spent much of last week, when International Women’s Day was held, pondering how I can #BeBoldForChange in a time when working for a more inclusive, gender-equal world has never been more important, at home or abroad. Forgive me as this is not the usual blog on legal developments, but since I have this little blog soapbox, I thought I would exercise it just a bit.
On Wednesday, the actual day of International Women’s Day, I spent a wonderful evening in the new Venable DC office at an event honoring the Power of Resilience with an insightful conversation between my partner Stephanie DeLong and Debra Smilley-Wainer, the Senior General Counsel — International at Raytheon Intelligence, Information and Services (IIS). Later in the evening, I was rocked to my core at the Vital Voices Global Leadership Awards honoring women from around the world serving on the frontlines of change, including a Malawai chief who is reversing child marriages and ensuring girls have access to schools, and a digital activist in India using crowd source data to pinpoint and combat sexual violence in India. And I was not alone, of course. The press reports the First Lady spoke about equality and a focus on education for women at a White House lunch honoring International Women’s Day.