Feminism, Women’s Stories: The Creative Process: Empowering Stories, Inspiring Women, Gender Equality, Women's Rights & Empowerment

Pia Mancini is a democracy activist, political scientist, open source sustainer, co-founder & CEO at Open Collective and Chair of DemocracyEarth Foundation. She has worked in politics in Argentina as the Chief of Advisers and Deputy Secretary of Political Affairs, Government of the City of Buenos Aires and CIPPEC think tank. She has developed technology for democracy around the world and...

“I think we're sort of in a period where there's a lack of permissiveness, and I think there's sort of a constant moralistic debate about the rightness and wrongness of anything that's consumed. Like in America, there was even a debate about abortion and stuff like that stimulated by the film Blonde that in our minds was not a theme that Andrew and I discussed. It was much more about how...

Chase Irvin is a Canadian American cinematographer making waves in the film industry. Chayse has received immense critical acclaim for his vision and style. He has worked on features, shorts, and visual albums, most notably in his collaboration with Director Kahlil Joseph on the film Beyoncé: Lemonade. He lensed Spike Lee’s BlacKkKlansman, which received 6 Academy Award nominations, winning for be...

Professor Lisa Jackson Pulver is a proud Aboriginal woman with connections to communities in southwestern New South Wales, South Australia, and beyond. She is the Deputy Vice-Chancellor of Indigenous Strategy and Services for the University of Sydney and leads the institution's strategy to advance Indigenous participation, engagement, education, and research, including the...

“There are a lot of women who influenced my life, starting with my mother. My mother is of those women who managed the house, our lives, our family. And she's still there with incredible intelligence, curiosity...She reads, and sometimes I have conversations with her about themes that relate to the Biennale, to art, to architecture, and I'm always surprised. How can she know all this? And sometime...

Manuela Lucá-Dazio is the newly appointed Executive Director of the Pritzker Architecture Prize. In this capacity, she works closely with the jury, however, she does not vote in the proceedings. She is the former Executive Director, Department of Visual Arts and Architecture of La Biennale di Venezia, where she managed exhibitions with distinguished curators, architects, artists, and critics to re...

“I still do workshops on oppression generally, but at this point, I've been focusing mostly on a workshop that's called Reclaiming Nature Writing, which has been a workshop that takes the idea of nature writing, which at least in the US has always been seen as a predominantly white male field and looks at writers that have existed for hundreds of years that have always been writing about natu...

Amanda E. Machado is a writer, public speaker and facilitator whose work explores how race, gender, sexuality, and power affect the way we travel and experience the outdoors. She has written and facilitated on topics of social justice and adventure and lived in Cape Town, Havana, Mexico City, Berlin, Rio de Janeiro, and other cities. She has been published in The Atlantic, The Washington Post...

“With UnPrisoned and with really my whole body of work as a producer, I'm really drawn to stories that make people feel seen that take issues that have stigma and shame attached to them, and making those issues just more palatable and more human. And few people realize that 50% of American families are touched by incarceration. And when you meet someone like Tracy McMillan, who really is...

Joy Gorman Wettels is the founder of Joy Coalition, an impact producing venture with a focus on creating purpose-driven film and television content for a global audience. She executive-produced the newly-released UnPrisoned, and is currently working on a multi-part storytelling ecosystem inspired by landmark civil rights documentary Eyes on the Prize. Her body of work includes, notably, the c...

“I think being a young Asian woman and trying to lead people can be difficult in the sense that they have those assumptions in place. I do think the typical archetype of Asian women is that you're supposed to be quiet. And maybe those aren't going to be perceived leadership qualities, but in terms of what I have done to overcome that, I've really focused on building the trust and showing people th...

Maggie Grout is the founder and CEO of Thinking Huts, an international NGO that increases global access to education with innovative, humanitarian-driven technology solutions. Founded by Maggie  8 years ago, when she was15, Thinking Huts seeks to empower young people, especially girls, to achieve more opportunities by obtaining an education. Grout gave a TEDx talk in 2021 on “how we can tackl...

“It's a horrible situation and the fashion industry, it's really sexist in the way it really targets young women like this. Obviously, all of this is optional sort of advice, but you can do an audit of your social media feeds as a first thing and just be like: is following these people actually helping my overall emotional health? And if necessary, unfollow them. You can also shut down your social...

Tansy E. Hoskins is an award winning author and journalist who investigates the global fashion industry. She’s the author of The Anti-Capitalist Book Of Fashion, Foot Work, and Stitched Up. This work has taken her to Bangladesh, India, North Macedonia, and to the Topshop warehouses in Solihull. “It's a horrible situation and the fashion industry, it's really sexist in the way it really targets you...

“We've been doing some work recently, particularly on the vulnerable group that is pregnant women's farmers in West Africa and documenting that they are already exposed to really very extreme levels of heat, much more than I would have thought before we did this work. And it already appears to be having an adverse effect on the fetus. So at the end of a shift, you can show that the fetal heart rat...

Andy Haines was formerly a family doctor and Professor of Primary Health Care at UCL. He developed an interest in climate change and health in the 1990’s and was a member of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change for the 2nd and 3rd assessment exercises and review editor for the health chapter in the 5th assessment. He was Director (formerly Dean) of the London School of Hygiene & Tropi...

"I had never seen anything like Forsythe’s Choreography for Step Text, and I thought, “This is possible?”...The articulation, the structures, the musicality, and the curtain coming in and out was just radical and amazing. I just wanted to be a part of it. If you remain curious just about anything as an artist, you can make it compelling...it reminds me of what a beautiful visual artist, Jack Whitt...

Jill Johnson is an internationally renowned dancer, choreographer, artistic director, educator, producer, stager, movement consultant, and advisor. Her leadership in the dance field brings into service over three and a half decades of experience and a vast knowledge of diverse repertoires and methodologies to realize visionary, world-class programming, develop the next generation of artist leaders...

Mother: A Memoir “Pre-word In my mind's eye she is sitting at the circular white Formica-top table in the corner. Morning sunlight fills the kitchen. She has a cup of Milky Nescafé Gold Blend and is smoking a purple Silk Cut. She is dressed for comfort in a floral bronze-and-brown blouse and blue jumper with light gray slacks and blue slippers. She is absorbed in a crossword (The Times) but not ob...

Nicholas Royle is Professor Emeritus of English at the University of Sussex, England, where he has been based since 1999. He has also taught at the University of Oxford, the University of Tampere, and the University of Stirling; and has been a visiting professor at the universities of Århus, Santiago del Compostela, Turku, Manitoba, and Lille. He is a managing editor of the Oxford Literary Re...

"Well, I think if it's 'closer to the surface' as you so beautifully put it, it's usually that you see it through their personality a lot more. It's just not just their actions or the products that they create, but they somehow are sort of glowing with it, in a sense. And you usually see that when they essentially embody specific traits that we know to be very important for creativity. And one is...

Anna Abraham, Ph. D. is the E. Paul Torrance Professor and Director of the Torrance Center for Creativity and Talent Development at the University of Georgia (USA). She investigates the psychological and neurophysiological mechanisms underlying creativity and other aspects of the human imagination, including the reality-fiction distinction, mental time travel, social and self-referential cognition...

“It's such a privilege swimming through these places. And I almost feel like I'm getting a secret peak into the body of the planet and that's a very precious and almost a sacred kind of collaboration where I get to experience this, I get to see this, but if I'm going to take these insanely challenging risks I need to make it worthwhile and share what I've seen so that other people have the benefit...

Jill Heinerth is a Canadian cave diver, underwater explorer, writer, photographer, and filmmaker. She is a veteran of over thirty years of filming, photography, and exploration on projects in submerged caves around the world. She has made TV series, consulted on movies, written several books and is a frequent corporate keynote speaker. Jill is the first Explorer in Residence for the Royal Canadian...

"Erin Richards directed it, who is a friend who was actually just going to work with me on the Aliens poem, which is a piece about helping men see the world through women's eyes through the analogy of: imagine if aliens invaded, and they were giant and super sexually attracted to dudes. And she was going to direct it. And she was like, Well, who's directing the whole show? And I said,&nb...