2018 Global Summit

APRIL 27, 2018 (FRIDAY)

OPENING CEREMONY

CLICK HERE to see Hon. Dang Thi Ngoc Thinh, Vice President of Vietnam welcome participants to the 2018 Summit.

CLICK HERE to view a highlights video, featuring some of the world’s most influential women leaders.

MEGATRENDS: GLOBALISM VS POPULISM                   

CLICK HERE to Watch Excerpts from the Megatrends Panel

CEO FORUM – ENGAGING MIDDLE MANAGEMENT ON GENDER DIVERSITY

CLICK HERE to see highlights from the CEO Forum

WHY MILLENNIALS ARE CRITICAL TO 21^ST CENTURY ECONOMIES

CLICK HERE to Watch Excerpts from the Millennials Panel

ENTREPRENEURS FORUM

*Discussion Panel, no presentations available

BREAKOUT SESSIONS

Leadership Development Track: Shifting the Dial on Boards, Management and Markets

Why has the issue of women on boards progressed in some countries but not in others?  Usually, because there is a proactive national strategy in place that deliberately moves the needle.  Whether it’s engaging men in charge, or including gender diversity in corporate governance codes, or legislating mandates to increase women directors by a certain percentage, some countries have truly accelerated the pace of placing women in corporate leadership roles.  In this session, experts from Australia, New Zealand, France and Malaysia will share their countries’ successful move to speed up the increase in women’s presence in corporate board seats.

Entrepreneurial Track: Growing Your Business With Technology

Most women entrepreneurs assume their businesses are tech-ready once they have a website, links to some networks and a social media presence.  In this session, experts from tech companies will share practical pointers on how to maximize their use of existing platforms to grow their enterprises through expanded sourcing, client relations, direct marketing, administrative tools and generally more effective web presence.  How an entrepreneur uses the Internet for her own business provides a great example of how technology made her enterprise expand and thrive at the close of this session.

Issues Track: Preparing for 21^st Century Jobs

Corporate executives, researchers and an advocate share their own views as to the job growth opportunities in the future, much of which pivot on fears of the impact of emerging technologies replacing workers.  What skills do these future jobs entail?  How do they impact on women’s employability?  Which parts of the world would benefit the most in this job growth scenario?  If the new jobs are mostly tech-based, are employers moving fast enough to equip their employees?  Is academia moving fast enough to provide appropriate training? How do we prepare the next generation for the jobs that emerge in Africa and India, where the majority of youth are clustered?

Leadership Development Track: Cultural Intelligence for the Global Businesswoman

Given that clients, consumers and colleagues are increasingly across borders, being able to function well in a variety of settings is critical. This session looks into ways that participants can improve their cultural competence, so they can successfully conduct business as well as personally thrive in different cultures. Executives in this session will draw from their own experience and share what has worked as they’ve maneuvered successfully in various companies in different countries with different corporate cultures.  What does or does not work?  What are the ways that today’s women in business can work with and lead teams that are different from those they are familiar with?

Issues Track: Safeguarding Your Financial Future

This session is a practical how-to for women to aggressively plan their financial futures.  The reason is that women – even achievers who manage large entities – do not spend as much time on their personal finances.  They worry about the overall family budget, or their business’ finances, but not necessarily their own. The fact that women live longer and get paid less in every country makes planning for their future finances into their old age even more important, especially in countries where health care costs are not covered.  A group of renowned senior executives will give the demographic, cultural and economic framework for why women should plan for their personal financial well-being, advice on how to begin to do so, as well as consider the banking and financial services needs of women in emerging economies, both personal and entrepreneurial.

YOUTH FORUM: Creating Businesses that Transform Society

This session features young trailblazers who developed successful technology-based businesses.  What led them to create businesses out of their innovations, what lessons they learned as they built these enterprises and what they see as the next stage of growth will be covered by the presenters.

APRIL 28, 2018 (SATURDAY)

THE FUTURE OF NEWS IN THE DIGITAL AGE

BREAKOUT SESSIONS

Leadership Development Track: Building an Authentic Personal “Brand”

Whether an entrepreneur, corporate executive, government agency manager, or a leader of a nonprofit, women must create their own personal ‘brand’, a profile of themselves that they proactively define, as opposed to others creating it for them.  In this session, experts will not only explain the importance of such self-marketing but also how to go about developing that personal brand.  How does one convey that ‘brand’ both vertically and horizontally within an organization and outside to clients and peer professionals?  How do they incorporate that brand with their authentic selves?  If you move to another industry, how do you transform that brand into a new one that elicits respect in this new arena of work?

 Entrepreneurial Track: Greening Your Business

There are entrepreneurs who think that a ‘green’ business is a niche enterprise as opposed to any business that adopts green products and processes.  What is the business rationale for adopting ‘green’ initiatives for businesses of any size?  For large companies?  For entrepreneurs?  What often impedes implementation? In this session you will hear from experts who can give practical advice as to how to adopt environmentally friendly materials, procedures and technology that can reduce costs, increase market share as well as enhance branding.  A major company’s journey to coherent ‘green’ policies and practices will be shared as well as practical pointers on how entrepreneurs can embark on the road to ‘greening’ their businesses.

Issues Track: Using the Internet to Amplify Female Role Models

When women and men were asked to draw what a ‘leader’ looked like in a recent study, all drew the picture of a man.  Because so few women have had the opportunity to lead countries, companies, universities and other institutions, and those who do reach such positions are not necessarily chronicled in books and media, the concept of women leading is foreign even to women themselves.  In this session, presenters will share their initiatives to showcase women role models using the wide reach of the Internet.  Why is it necessary?  Because there is a global need to inform women themselves about the ‘glass-ceiling breakers’ in their midst whether at the national or local level.  This is an effort that needs to be replicated worldwide, as the same study with the drawing experiment strongly recommended to underscore that leadership has no gender.

Leadership Development Track: Developing Effective Media and Presentation Skills

Leaders are defined often by their ability to convey well an idea or proposal that convince others to follow.  A bad presentation whether internally within one’s organization or externally to an outside group can kill any good idea and diminishes one’s reputation.  In this session, experts will share simple techniques on how to be good presenters in any professional setting.  Moreover, how does one access media attention, whether print, video or on-line, to extend one’s professional ‘brand’?  Lastly, most businesswomen often have to make ‘pitches’ to internal teams, to potential clients or to possible funders.  The elements of a good ‘pitch’ will be shared by a seasoned entrepreneur, who has coached other women in business over the years and knows what works and doesn’t work.

Entrepreneurial Track: Protecting Your Business in the Internet Age

This session seeks to provide practical advice to women entrepreneurs primarily on how to protect their products, brand equity, customer data, marketing strategies, etc. at a time when the Internet generates cross-border exposure globally with both positive and negative results.  Ecommerce is becoming women’s domain, but what can entrepreneurs do to ensure as much as possible that their intellectual properties, their database, remain in their firm grip?  If Equifax can lose millions of customers’ most personal data given their size and supposed internal safeguards, what more can the woman entrepreneur, who is just trying to sell her products or services online, do? Experts provide advice to address these questions.

Issues Track: New Business Models for the 21^st Century

In this session, the Summit features innovative ways of doing business in the coming decades.  Doing social good while making profit are not mutually exclusive.  Innovative women in business from different countries will share the ways in which they have infused business growth with addressing some of the problems people face worldwide – a win-win business model that creates new pathways for businesses of the future.  It isn’t charity that they do, because these are hard-nosed bottom-line-minded entrepreneurs, but rather how to address future challenges for those less well-off while generating revenues.

WOMEN AND PHILANTHROPY: CLOSING THE PHILANTHROPIC    GENDER GAP

WOMEN CEO FORUM: DEFINING THE WORKPLACE OF THE FUTURE

CLICK HERE to watch excerpts from the Women CEO Forum

THE NEXUS BETWEEN ENERGY AND WOMEN’S ECONOMIC EMPOWERMENT                                               

 BREAKOUT SESSION

Issues Track: RE-IMAGINING THE WOMEN’S MARKET