A Special TEDxMidAtlantic Salon: EVE
“Culture does not make people. People make culture. If it is true that the full humanity of women is not our culture, then we can and must make it our culture.” — Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
Imagine a future free of gender roles and stereotypes, where anatomy doesn’t influence one’s destiny and women can make career, family and personal decisions without societal pressure, stigma or discrimination. In this future, we understand that equality is not about bolstering a gender or group into a position of privilege, but instead about liberating both women and men, by eliminating gender norms, fixed roles and the judgment that comes with living outside these societal constructs.
While this may seem a fantasy, EVE: Everyone Valuing Equality will be an evening of ideas exploring the realities women face in the United States today, and how to move toward a 21st century of equal opportunity regardless of gender and gender identity. Our lineup of speakers will provide fresh perspectives on reinventing the status quo, and will challenge the audience to take part in the change necessary to make our country a better place for all people.
Salon Speakers
Watch Neera Tandon’s talk »
Neera Tanden
Center for American Progress
Neera Tanden is the President of the Center for American Progress and the Center for American Progress Action Fund. Tanden has served in both the Obama and Clinton administrations, as well as presidential campaigns and think tanks. Most recently, Tanden served as the Chief Operating Officer for the Center, where she oversaw strategic planning, operations, and fundraising.
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Tanden previously served as senior advisor for health reform at the Department of Health and Human Services, working on President Barack Obama’s health reform team in the White House. In that role, she developed policies around reform and worked with Congress and stakeholders on particular provisions of the legislation.
Prior to that, Tanden was the director of domestic policy for the Obama-Biden presidential campaign, where she managed all domestic policy proposals. Tanden had also served as policy director for the Hillary Clinton presidential campaign, where she directed all policy work, ranging from domestic policy to the economy to foreign affairs, and managed day-to-day policy announcements. In that role, she also oversaw the debate preparation process for then-Sen. Clinton (D-NY).
Before the presidential campaign, Tanden was Senior Vice President for Academic Affairs at CAP. Prior to that, she was one of the first senior staff members at the Center, joining as Senior Vice President for Domestic Policy when CAP first opened its doors. In between, Tanden was legislative director for Sen. Clinton, where she oversaw all policy and legislation in the Senate office. In 2000, she was Hillary Clinton’s deputy campaign manager and issues director for her Senate campaign in New York. Tanden also served as associate director for domestic policy in the Clinton White House and senior policy advisor to the first lady.
Tanden has appeared on NBC’s “Meet the Press,” ABC’s “This Week,” CBS’s “Face the Nation,” “The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer,” MSNBC, CNN, and Fox. She was named one of the “Most Influential Women in Washington” by National Journal and received the India Abroad Publisher’s Award for Excellence in 2011. Tanden was recently included on Elle magazine’s “Women in Washington Power List” and recognized as one of Fortune magazine’s “Most Powerful Women in Politics.” She received her bachelor of science from UCLA and her law degree from Yale Law School.
Watch Brigid Schulte’s talk »
Brigid Schulte
Bestselling Author
Brigid Schulte is the author of the New York Times bestselling book on time pressure, Overwhelmed: Work, Love & Play when No One has the Time, which named one of the notable books of the year by the Washington Post and NPR, and won the Virginia Library Association’s literary nonfiction award. She now serves as the founding director of The Good Life Initiative at the nonpartisan think tank, New America, and director of the Breadwinning and Caregiving program.
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She has spoken all over the world about the causes and consequences of our unsustainable, always-on culture, and how to make time for The Good Life by rethinking how we work, by re-imagining gender roles for a fairer division of labor and opportunity at work and home and, instead of seeking status in busyness, by recapturing the value of leisure. She was an award-winning journalist for The Washington Post and The Washington Post Magazine and part of the team that won the 2008 Pulitzer Prize. She now serves as the founding director of The Good Life Initiative at the nonpartisan think tank, New America, and director of the Breadwinning and Caregiving program, both of which seek to elevate the conversation, explore transformative solutions and highlight how work-life issues are key to excellence, productivity and innovation, as well as a full, authentic and meaningful life. She lives in Alexandria, Virginia, with her husband, Tom Bowman, a reporter for National Public Radio, and their two children. She grew up in Portland, Oregon and spent her summers with family in Wyoming, where she did not feel overwhelmed.
Watch Lisa Mallory’s talk »
Lisa María Mallory
DC Building Industry Association
Lisa María Mallory serves as CEO of the District of Columbia Building Industry Association (DCBIA) and has over thirty years of leadership experience in the private, nonprofit, and public sectors. Previously, Lisa was the Director of the DC Department of Employment Services a state/local workforce development agency where she had responsibility for overhauling one of the most troubled agencies netting millions of dollars in savings.
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DCBIA is a trade association of over 450 member organizations and thousands of professionals in all aspects of real estate development. Lisa is also President/CEO of PeopleStrat, LLC, a small, women/minority owned full service consulting firm.
Formerly, Lisa was Senior Vice President at ICF International and prior Senior Vice President at the Fannie Mae Foundation. She served the Clinton White House as a member of the Federal Senior Executive Service as Chief of Staff to Vice President Al Gore’s National Performance Review, Special Assistant at the US Department of Health and Human Services and Counselor at the US Social Security Administration and has worked for the US Senate Foreign Relations Committee and several Federal Independent Counsels. During her tenure in the Federal Government, Lisa was instrumental in advancing several domestic policy agendas to include the Family and Medical Leave Act, Work/Life Balance, and the Fatherhood Initiative. She led interagency task forces to benchmark and value diversity in the Federal workforce and improved the Federal Equal Employment Opportunity complaint process. Lisa began her career in the hospitality industry. Lisa’s areas of specialty are organizational assessments, performance management, capacity building and leadership development/executive coaching.
She obtained a BS in Business and Technology from the University of Maryland, MBA in International Business/Marketing from George Washington University and is completing her PhD in Public Administration and Leadership in the next few months. Lisa has completed numerous senior leadership programs at Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government and senior women leadership programs at the Kennedy School of Business and is a trained coach through Coaches Training Institute and a Linkage Inc. certified Master Coach.
Lisa is a member of Leadership Greater Washington’s Class of 2007 and serves as a volunteer and board member for several nonprofit organizations including the DC Chamber of Commerce and the Washington DC Economic Partnership. Lisa is a native Spanish speaker and is conversational in Italian, Portuguese and French.
Watch Sarah McBride’s talk »
Sarah McBride
Transgender Activist
Sarah McBride is the Campaigns and Communications Manager for LGBT Progress at the Center for American Progress. Sarah joined the Center for American Progress after completing her undergraduate degree at American University, where she served as student body president. At the end of her term, Sarah made national headlines when she came out as transgender in the student newspaper.
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A native of Wilmington, Delaware, Sarah currently serves on the Board of Directors of Equality Delaware, the state’s primary LGBT-advocacy and -educational organization. In that capacity, Sarah helped lead and served as the primary spokesperson for the successful effort to add gender identity and expression to her state’s nondiscrimination and hate-crimes laws during the 2013 legislative session. In 2008 she served as a field organizer for Gov. Jack Markell’s (D-DE) campaign and in 2010 as field director for Delaware Attorney General Beau Biden’s re-election effort. Prior to her work at American Progress, Sarah interned for the Gay and Lesbian Victory Fund and the White House.
Watch Teresa Hodge’s talk »
Teresa Y. Hodge
Returning Citizen Advocate
Teresa Y. Hodge, a passionate advocate for people with criminal connections, is committed to reducing the lasting harm caused by prison. It was a 70-month federal prison sentence, for a white-collar, non-violent, first-time offense, that introduced her first-hand to the justice system and mass incarceration in America. Upon coming home, she and her daughter Laurin Hodge co-founded Mission: Launch, Inc., a non-profit focused on introducing technology and entrepreneurship to previously incarcerated individuals as a way of ensuring self-sufficiency.
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Additionally, the organization founded and manages the Rebuilding Re-Entry Coalition, a citizen-led movement committed to creating a more just and inclusive society for returning citizens (a person who exits prison or jail). The Coalition is expanding the boarders of reentry opportunities and best practices from Washington, DC to Baltimore, MD with a focus on making re-entry more efficient and safer for everyone.
As the Executive Vice President for Mission: Launch, Inc., Teresa plays a critical role in building strategic partnerships and identifying returning citizens with an aptitude for entrepreneurship to participate in a 4-month inclusive entrepreneurship accelerator. The accelerator, known as Mission: LaunchPad, ensures entrepreneurship is accessible and inclusive for people with an arrest and/or a conviction. Prior experience as an entrepreneur helped Teresa to maximize her time in prison – looking for best practices to not only help herself but others get back on their feet upon release. Hodge is a certified life coach with a specialty in prison re-entry. While continuing to pen her memoir, she offers private coaching to women facing incarceration; these activities bring meaning and closure to the time she spent in prison. In 2014, she was selected to be one of the initial cohort members of JustLeadershipUSA, an organization committed to ensuring formerly incarcerated people are equipped with a strong voice to advocate for prison reform.
Watch Heather Foster’s talk »
Heather Foster
My Brother’s Keeper Alliance
Heather J. Foster is the Manager for Strategic Partnerships for the My Brother’s Keeper Alliance. In her role she manages the Alliance’s strategic investments in communities serving boys and young men of color. She previously served at the White House as Advisor for Public Engagement and President Obama’s primary strategist and liaison with African American leaders and civil rights advocacy groups.
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In this role she coordinated all of the Presidents events and meetings with the African American community including his most recent attendance in Charleston at the funeral of Reverend Clemente Pinckney as a result of the Charleston 9 shooting.
Foster developed the outreach strategy for the President’s remarks following Trayvon Martin trial and worked internally with others to develop the My Brother’s Keeper Initiative. After that she coordinated the administration wide response to the protests in response to the Ferguson, Staten Island, and Baltimore protests around racial profiling and racial bias in policing.
Before her service in the White House, Foster was a Policy and Outreach Adviser at the US Department of Education, managing outreach to community based organizations working to close achievement gaps and improve educational opportunities for children. Her earlier career was spent with two major law firms in the Chicago area specializing in management and intellectual property. She has received awards from, Ebony Magazine as one of their “ Political Women on the Rise,” and the National Journal as one of the “25 Most Influential Women Under 35 in Washington.” She is an Atlanta native and graduate of Northwestern University
Watch Elizabeth’s talk »
Elizabeth Acevedo
Writer, Performer & Educator
Elizabeth Acevedo was born and raised in New York City and her poetry is infused with her Dominican parents’ bolero and her beloved city’s tough grit. Acevedo is a National Slam Champion, Beltway Grand Slam Champion, and 2014 Women of the World Poetry Slam representative for Washington, D.C, where she lives and works. She holds a BA in Performing Arts from The George Washington University and an MFA in Creative Writing from the University of Maryland.
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With over twelve years of performance experience, Acevedo has been a featured performer on BET and Mun2, as well as delivered a TED Talk on the importance of the human connection. She has graced stages nationally and internationally including renowned venues such as The Lincoln Center, Madison Square Garden, the Kennedy Center of the Performing Arts, and South Africa’s State Theatre; she is also well known for poetry videos which went viral and were picked up by Upworthy, Everyday Feminism, and For Harriet.
Her poems have been published or are forthcoming in The Acentos Review, The Ostrich Review, Split this Rock, Callaloo, Poet Lore, The Notre Dame Review, Rappahannock Review, and Locked Horned Press. Acevedo is a Cave Canem Fellow, Cantomundo Fellow, and participant of the Callaloo Writer’s Workshop. Her manuscript, Blessed Fruit & Other Origin Myths, was a finalist for Yes Yes Books’ chapbook poetry prize and will be published in fall of 2016.
Watch Loide’s performance »
Loide
Musician
Lodie sings is jazz with a side of saudade. Afro-Luso rhythms fused with African-American blues. Born in France to her Mozambican mother and Guinea-Bissauan father, Loide grew up in California, at the intersection of seemingly disparate cultural expressions. With only hymnals, doo-wop, and soul allowed in her observant Christian home, these sonic styles formed the first strands of her melodic DNA. Later, she would fuse them with the Afro-luso melodies and verse she heard in the homes of family friends, the hymns she sang in Portuguese with her family, and the European classical compositions she studied and performed at church and school.
TEDxMidAtlantic 2015 Salon Details
Dates: Monday, November 16
Program Time: 5:30PM to 9:00PM
Location: Woolly Mammoth Theatre, Washington DC
Ticket Price: Free!
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