NEW YORK, Nov. 8, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- The Women's Forum of New York will host its fourth biennial Breakfast of Corporate Champions on November 14, 2017 in New York City to honor S&P 500 and Fortune 1000 companies with at least 25 percent female representation on their corporate boards. This event will bring together an audience of over 600, ranging from CEOs and Board Directors, to business leaders, government officials and thought leaders all with a common goal: gender parity in the boardroom by 2025. These game changers come together to share why gender balance on boards is smart business and how to make it happen.
"Our goal of gender parity in the boardroom by 2025 is becoming a powerful movement," said Janice Reals Ellig, CEO of The Ellig Group and Chair and Founder of the Event. "As an organization of top women leaders, the Women's Forum of New York believes the tone for change is set at the top and we salute these CEOs for accelerating gender balance in their own boardrooms and inspiring others to do so as well."
This year's Breakfast of Corporate Champions will feature a call to action from tennis legend Billie Jean King, who founded the Billie Jean King Leadership Intiative with Teneo four years ago, to foster more inclusive leadership including more representation of women and diversity in corporate America. The Women's Forum of New York will honor 375 companies who have successfully accelerated the advancement of women onto corporate boards. The highest honor, the Muriel F. Siebert Leadership Award, will be presented to Mary Barra, CEO of General Motors. Under Mary Barra's leadership, GM became the first major industrial corporation to achieve gender parity on its board. The award, named for a founder of the Women's Forum and the first woman to hold a seat on the New York Stock Exchange, recognizes companies and CEOs that have made a distinguished difference in advancing women's leadership at the Board level.
The Breakfast of Corporate Champions will include three executive panel discussions moderated by Rebecca Jarvis of ABC News, Susan Chira of The New York Times, and Andrew Ross Sorkin of CNBC. Each panel will discuss why and how U.S. companies should strive for gender parity in the boardroom. This year's panel speakers will be succeeded by a keynote by Ronald P. O'Hanley, President and Chief Executive Office of State Street Global Advisors, encouraging attendees and associated companies to take action in the path to gender parity.
Panelists participating in the Breakfast of Corporate Champions include:
-- Gender Diversity Creates Shareholder Value Moderated by Rebecca Jarvis
of ABC News with a special introduction by Cathy Engelbert, CEO,
Deloitte
-- Jeffrey Katzenberg, Partner, WndrCo
-- Mellody Hobson, President, Ariel Investments
-- Maggie Wilderotter, Former Executive Chairman and CEO, Frontier
Communications
-- Getting to Parity by 2025 Moderated by Susan Chira of The New York Times
with a special introduction by Marjorie Magner, Co-Founder, Brysam
Global Partners
-- Peter T. Grauer, Chairman, Bloomberg; Founding Chairman, U.S. 30%
Club
-- Dame Helena Morrissey, Head of Personal Investing, Legal & General
Investment Management; Founder, 30% Club
-- Steven Odland, President & CEO, Committee for Economic Development
-- Jeffrey Sonnenfeld, Senior Associate Dean for Leadership Studies at
Yale's School of Management
-- Julie Sweet, CEO, North America, Accenture
-- The Game Changers: CEO Panel Moderated by Andrew Ross Sorkin of CNBC
with a special introduction by Rodney O. Martin, Jr., Chairman & CEO of
Voya Financial
-- Laurence D. Fink, Chairman & CEO, BlackRock
-- Kenneth C. Frazier, Chairman & CEO, Merck & Co.
-- Adena T. Friedman, President & CEO, Nasdaq
-- Beth Mooney, Chairman & CEO, KeyCorp
-- Kendall J. Powell, Chairman, General Mills
The Women's Forum of New York is proudly partnering for this event with the U.S. 30% Club - an organization of CEOs with a goal of achieving 30 percent of S&P 100 board seats held by women by 2020. Peter T. Grauer, Chairman of Bloomberg and Founding Chairman U.S. 30% Club, is an honorary co-chair of the event along with Maggie Wilderotter, Former Executive Chairman and CEO of Frontier Communications.
At the event, the CEOs will also be encouraged to nominate women to the Women's Forum of New York CEO-Sponsored Database, a national database accessible free of charge to Board Nom/Gov Committees and search firms. In 2018, the database will extend its reach through partnership with Equilar, which will include the database in the Equilar Diversity Network.
The Breakfast of Corporate Champions will be held at Cipriani 42(nd) Street in New York City on November 14, 2017, from 7:30 a.m. - 11:30 a.m. For more information on the Women's Forum of New York or to learn more about the CEO-Sponsored Database, please visit https://www.womensforumny.org/.
About the Women's Forum of New York
The Women's Forum of New York is the city's premier organization of women leaders. The invitation-only membership of more than 500 women represents the highest levels of achievement across all professional sectors from finance to fine arts. The organization is dedicated to the advancement of women's leadership through programs which enrich members' lives both personally and professionally, through The Education Fund, which enables talented women whose potential has been disrupted by extreme adversity to resume their education, and through the Corporate Board Initiative, which extends and expands the contribution of women leaders through corporate board participation. Founded in 1974, the Women's Forum of New York is the flagship of the International Women's Forum, a global organization of over 6,500 outstanding women leaders in over 74 Forums around the world.
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Tara.mullins@ogilvy.com
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SOURCE Women's Forum of New York
