Issue No. CCXV; January 11, 2014
SPECIAL EDITION
2014 GLOBAL SUMMIT OF WOMEN UPDATE: WOMEN CEOs
Delphine Cunci, Martina Koederitz, Adriana Machado, Amy McPherson, and Lay Lim Teo are a sampling of the women CEOs joining the 2014 Global Summit of Women in Paris, France on June 5-7, 2014.
If there is a plethora of male CEOs joining the 2014 Global Summit of Women (June 5-7, 2014) in Paris for the first time, there will also be women in charge of regional or country subsidiaries from four different continents, who will be participating in this year’s business and economic forum for women. With a look back and forward to today’s economy, panelists will share the changes they have seen in the workplace from the time they began their careers to the present. They will also discuss their views on “Redesigning the Workplace” to enable more women to access leadership roles as they have done. Joining this dialogue are:
- Delphine Cunci, Managing Director of Orange France and Deputy CEO of France Telekom Group, is one of the most influential women in France’s corporate world. An engineer by training, she is a 24-year veteran of the company, where she began her career in research and development and later assumed positions of increasing responsibility.
- Martina Koederitz, General Manager of IBM Germany, Austria and Switzerland, has been with IBM for 25 years. With early training in business, she built a successful career in sales, which catapulted her to leadership roles within the company.
- Adriana Machado, CEO of GE Brazil, is the first woman to head up this company. One of the ten most powerful women in Brazil, according to Forbes, she successfully brought to Brazil one of GE’s five research centers in the world. A researcher when she first began, her career spanned organizations such as the American Chamber of Commerce in Brazil and Intel.
- Amy McPherson, President and Managing Director, Europe Marriott International, started her career with Marriott in 1986. Before assuming this position, she was Executive Vice President for Global Sales and Marketing. In 2005, she was named by the Washington Journal as one of the “Women Who Mean Business”, saluting influential businesswomen in the region.
- Lay Lim Teo, CEO of Accenture Singapore and Senior Managing Director, ASEAN, is another long-term veteran of her company with 25 years of service. A Board Director of the Singapore Land Authority, she became a BoardAgender champion recently, joining 99 other CEOs in Singapore to support and promote gender-balanced businesses.
A LOOK BACK AT GLOBEWOMEN 2013
The women corporate leaders described above are just some of the many women leaders convened and brought together by GlobeWomen in 2013 in a variety of forums and programs that enabled them to connect, to exchange strategies and initiatives, to serve as role models and to learn from each other. It was a productive year that included events and programs held in different parts of the world that enabled GlobeWomen to once again meet its longstanding goal of advancing women’s economic opportunities.
GLOBAL SUMMIT OF WOMEN 2013
Representing the world’s diversity, over 1,100 women participated in the 2013 Global Summit of Women in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia on June 6-8, a record in the 23-year history of the Summit. From Azerbaijan to France to Honduras to Zambia, women leaders in business and government from 72 countries came together in a spirit of warmth and openness, prepared to share strategies for increasing women’s economic opportunities, to make new business contacts, and to learn from the distinguished presenters and participants alike.
H.E. Nguyen Thi Doan (Vice President of Vietnam), H.E. Atifete Jahjaga (President of Kosovo), H.E. Dato Sri Mohd Najib bin Tun Abdul Razak (Prime Minister of Malaysia), Datin Paduka Seri Rosmah binti Mansor (First Lady of Malaysia and Chair of the 2013 Summit), Irene Natividad (Summit President), Madame Keosaychay Sayasone (First Lady of Laos), and an enthusiastic global crowd at the Opening Ceremony.(Photo courtesy of Fleishman-Hillard)
Summit delegates are sure to remember Malaysia’s warm hosting of the Summit, outstanding cultural performances highlighted by the Permata Seni Children’s Choir, the Welcome Dinner at the Prime Minister’s Residence in Putrajaya and the Royal Dinner hosted by the Queen at the New Palace. As delightful as the cultural events were, the main reason 1,100 women came to Malaysia was to do business – and deals were done. At the B2B business match-making sessions organized by MATRADE of the Ministry of International Trade and Industry between Malaysian women-owned businesses and visiting Summit delegates $8.5 million of deals resulted and additional alliances developed over the course of the year following important contacts made at the event.
For more photos and videos from the 2013 Summit, click here: https://globewomen.org/globalsummit/?page_id=22
COLLOQUIUM ON GLOBAL DIVERSITY
Last February, over 60 senior executives gathered for the 2013 Colloquium on Global Diversity: “Creating a Level Playing Field for Women” which was held in conjunction with the World Bank in Washington, D.C. The Colloquium, the leading Executive Roundtable featuring best practices on gender equity in the workplace within a global context, brought together diversity executives from Canada, France, Germany, Mexico, Poland, Japan, and the U.S. to exchange best practices in corporate-wide programs that advance women globally.
Barbara Franklin, Irene Natividad, and Mary K. Bush discuss the board director’s role in diversity implementation.
The Colloquium tackled issues such as Pay Equity: Making it Happen Before 2065; A Global Look at Gender Diversity on Boards: Are Quotas and Other Initiatives Working; Making the Business Case on Gender Diversity to Middle Management. Participating companies included AT&T, Boeing, Credit Suisse, Daimler, Henkel, Johnson and Johnson, McDonald’s, Merck, and Wal-Mart, among others. 2013 marked the third consecutive year the Summit partnered with the World Bank to foster global exchanges on the topic of diversity. For more photos and presentations from the 2013 Colloquium on Global Diversity, click here: http://www.globewomen.org/Diversity/Diversity2013.html
The 2014 Colloquium on Global Diversity moves to New York on February 20-21, 2014. Global diversity executives interested in joining the 2014 Colloquium can visit http://globewomen.org/globaldiversity/ for more details.
CORPORATE WOMEN DIRECTORS INTERNATIONAL
The research arm of the Global Summit of Women, the Corporate Women Directors International, had a very productive 2013 highlighted by two significant research reports and three stock exchange Market Opens. These two reports bring CWDI’s research total to 22 in the past 17 years.
On February 21, 2013, CWDI released its 2013 Report on Women Board Directors of the Fortune Global 200 and Beyond. This report marked CWDI’s 5th update since 2004 on the status of women on the boards of the 200 largest companies globally. For the first time in the five reports, France overtook the United States’ lead role as the country with the highest percentage of women directors among the 200 largest companies. Propelled by quota legislation passed in 2010, a quarter of directors (25.1%) in France are now women, while the percentage in the U.S. peaked at 20.9%. Among the Fortune Global 200 companies, the average percentage of women directors came to only 15%.
For more findings from the report, click here: http://www.globewomen.org/CWDI/2013_cwdi_report.html
CWDI REPORT ON WOMEN BOARD DIRECTORS OF TOP RETAIL AND CONSUMER PRODUCT COMPANIES GLOBALLY
While the CWDI Report on Women Board Directors of the Fortune Global 200 focuses on the largest companies in the world and other reports focus on women directors in a certain region or country, CWDI extended its research into women directors in a particular industry in its report on Women Board Directors of Top Retail and Consumer Product Companies Globally. CWDI examined women directors in the retail and consumer products industry given women’s purchasing power as consumers. Are women adequately represented on the boards of these companies?
CWDI released this report on November 11th at the Harvard Club of New York to an audience of women board directors, senior executives, entrepreneurs, and other board diversity experts. The findings show that women account for 18.4% of directors serving on the boards of the world’s largest retail and consumer products companies globally. While the percentage reflects a better record of appointing women to board directorships than the 15% women’s representation on the boards of Fortune Global 200 companies, the percentage is still woefully low.
For more key findings from the report, click here: http://www.globewomen.org/CWDI/2013retailreportKeyFindings.html
These and other CWDI reports are available for order at: http://globewomen.org/CWDI/order_form.htm
CWDI MARKET OPEN: ZURICH, KUALA LUMPUR, AND FRANKFURT
In 2013, CWDI also brought together women directors and executives in three cities to perform a tradition, typically undertaken by men — Market Open. The first Market Open in 2013 took place in Zurich, Switzerland to mark Women’s History Month. 100 women business leaders came together to salute the contributions women have made to the economy in the country. The Zurich Market Open was followed by a Forum on Board Diversity held at the Stock Exchange. Joining CWDI Chair Irene Natividad in the Forum was the U.S. Ambassador to Switzerland Donald S. Beyer, Jr., the CEO of Egon Zehnder International, Damien O’Brien; German Stock Exchange Board Director Monica Maechler-Erne; and Diamondscull AG CEO Carole Ackermann, who also serves as a Board Director of Allianz Suisse.
Women business leaders in Switzerland gather for the bell-ringing at the Six Swiss Exchange in Zurich this past March.
The second Market Open of 2013 took place in Kuala Lumpur at the Bursa Malaysia, prior to the opening of the Global Summit of Women in June. Joining over 80 women business leaders from Malaysia and globally were the wife of the Prime Minister of Malaysia Datin Rosmah binti Mansor and the Chairman of the Bursa Malaysia Tun Mohamed Dzaiddin Abdullah. CWDI’s Market Opens for 2013 concluded with opening the Deutsche Boerse in Frankfurt, Germany on September 30. Fifty women board directors and executives opened the Deutsche Börse to salute German women’s contributions to the country’s economy as well as the country’s commitment to increasing women’s access to corporate leadership. A Forum on Board Diversity followed the Market Open featuring Daniela Weber-Rey, Chief Governance Officer and Deputy Global Head of Compliance for Deutsche Bank, member of the German Corporate Governance Code Commission and a former Board Director of BNP-Paribas.
(left) Ringing the bell to open the Bursa Malaysia in Kuala Lumpur with the wife of the Prime Minister of Malaysia Datin Rosmah binti Mansor. (right) Women executives in Frankfurt gather at the Market Open at the Deutsche Boerse in Frankfurt.
Since 2006, CWDI has organized 12 Market Opens. Other openings in previous years took place with women business leaders at NASDAQ in New York, the Toronto Stock Exchange in Canada, the Johannesburg Stock Exchange in South Africa, the Istanbul Stock Exchange in Turkey, the Madrid Stock Exchange, the Barcelona Stock Exchange in Spain, the Warsaw Stock Exchange in Poland, the Sao Paolo Stock Exchange in Brazil, and the Hong Kong Stock Exchange.
For more on CWDI’s stock exchange Market Opens, visit http://www.globewomen.org/CWDI/CWDI.htm.
LEGACIES OF WOMEN: ZURICH AND KUALA LUMPUR
Through the Legacies of Women Fora the GlobeWomen continues its outreach to university students by exposing them to women CEOs at programs usually hosted by higher education institutions in different countries. Two Legacies of Women Fora took place in 2013. The biggest Legacies event ever took place this past February at the National University of Malaysia (UKM) in Kuala Lumpur which was attended by 2,000 students. Moderated by Irene Natividad, three successful businesswomen — Chief Visionary Officer of MCM Holdings Sung Joo Kim, Executive Directors of YTL Communications Yasmin Mahmood, and CEO of Procter & Gamble Malaysia and Singapore Ellie Xie — shared their experiences and insights to help students preparing to enter the business world.
Another Legacies event was held in March at ETH (Swiss Institute of Technology) Zurich, which is regarded as the top university in continental Europe. Sharing their insights with the students in Zurich were Béatrice Guillaume-Grabisch who was the CEO of Beverage Partners Worldwide, Caroline Kuhnert, Managing Director, UBS Wealth Management Central Europe, and Carolina Müller-Möhl, President of Müller-Möhl Group.
For information on these and other past Legacies of Women Fora, visit www.globewomen.com.
Join 1,000 women coming to Paris at the
2014 Global Summit of Women
June 5-7, 2014
REGISTER TODAY AT:
Don’t receive this e-newsletter regularly?
Subscribe by clicking here.
CONTACT US
Global Summit of Women
1100 G St. NW, Ste. 700
Washington, DC 20005 USA
tel: 202-835-3713 / fax: 202-466-6195
email: summit@globewomen.com
