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

Max Stossel is an Award-winning poet, filmmaker, and speaker, named by Forbes as one of the best storytellers of the year. His Stand-Up Poetry Special Words That Move takes the audience through a variety of different perspectives, inviting us to see the world through different eyes together. Taking on topics like heartbreak, consciousness, social media, politics, the emoti...

"I like to say that Ginny & Georgia is a show about women by women for everyone. And I will say women in charge, they do things differently. I think that women, we tend to do relationships differently than men do. It's very, very important to me - and I'm not saying that men don't do this - but as a woman, as a female showrunner, it's very important for me to uplift young up-and-coming wr...

Debra J. Fisher is a writer, producer, and director. She currently serves as the showrunner, writer, and executive producer of the Netflix series Ginny & Georgia.  Season one of the hit series was watched by over 52 million subscribers in its first month on the platform, gathering a devoted fan base. The highly anticipated second season premiered on January 5th. Ginny & Georgia is Deb...

"It was difficult to actually write about my dad because as I mentioned in the book, he died in 2017, and he was obviously a really significant person in my life. He really instilled this whole idea that education is the key to a better life, and that it's the great equalizer. So my heritage is from Egypt, so they were not wealthy. When my dad studied at university, he was able to break out of his...

Dr. Joëlle Gergis is an award-winning climate scientist and writer at the Australian National University. She served as a lead author for the IPCC Sixth Assessment Report and is the author of Humanity’s Moment: A Climate Scientist’s Case for Hope and Sunburnt Country: The History and Future of Climate Change in Australia. Joëlle has also contributed chapters to The Climate Book...

"There is something about both my parents, but I think especially my mother, it's as if the horrible circumstances that they lived through being Jews in the Holocaust, my mother losing her entire family - it was horrible and traumatic, but it was almost like a very extreme human experiment. And it created something. It's like many times when you put somebody in extreme situations, and most of the...

Author, Screenwriter, and Director Etgar Keret is a recipient of the French Chevalier des Arts et des Lettres, the Charles Bronfman Prize, and the Caméra d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival for Jellyfish, which he directed with his wife Shira Geffen. Most recently, they created the TV mini series The Middleman (L’Agent Immobilier) starring Mathieu Amalric. His books include the short story collection...

"Another aspect of why I was drawn to The Gilded Age is because it's populated by so many strong female characters. And it looks like that's a common thread throughout the projects that I've done, there's always been a very strong female lead, an unusual female lead. And, I must say, I'm drawn to that kind of storytelling, and I'm drawn to those stories because I think it's important to tell those...

Cinematographer Manuel Billeter has worked across a variety of iconic and groundbreaking shows and films including Jessica Jones, Luke Cage, Iron Fist, Law & Order, Person of Interest, Orange Is The New Black, Lawless, and Alfonso Cuarón’s Y tu mamá también.  Most recently he has been Director of Photography on the HBO Max series The Gilded Age, starring Carrie Coon and Christine Baranski...

"I think leadership, particularly for women, can be a very dicey proposition because there's a lot of unconscious bias that we have to unpack, and sometimes that's internalized as well. And sometimes it's when you go before other people, but I think the confidence to know that one has earned one's place there. And it was important for me to remember, I do not have to be perfect because there is a...

Abby Ajayi is a British Nigerian writer and director who serves as a show creator, executive producer, and writer on the Amazon Series Riches, which is currently on Amazon Prime and premiers on ITVX in the UK on December 22. She has previously worked on the shows Four Weddings and a Funeral, How to Get Away with Murder, Inventing Anna, The First Lady, and Eastenders. As a result, she had the oppor...

"Akcja Demokracja asked its members to take ‘high-bar’ actions, such as holding strikes in support of women’s rights in Poland in 2017. Groups often discuss how to best support their members to run their own campaigns. OPEN organizations’ staff left their first summit with plans to experiment with Woodhull’s distributed campaign tools. Subsequently, many OPEN organizations established member-initi...

Nina Hall is an Assistant Professor in International Relations at Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies (Europe). She previously worked as a Lecturer at the Hertie School of Governance, where she published her first book Displacement, Development, and Climate Change: International Organizations Moving Beyond their Mandates? Her latest book is Transnational Advocacy in the Digital...

"I think one of the things in  Lady Bird  that's interesting is she is incredibly vulnerable, especially in relationship to her mom, and then she starts to come out of her shell and becomes more and more empowered and less and less vulnerable, in a sense. And so how do you convey that on screen? And a lot of it is just wanting that sense to be there.  Every movie is different. Every...

Sam Levy studied film in Paris with French New Wave director Eric Rohmer and began his career as an apprentice to legendary cinematographer Harris Savides. Sam first gained recognition as a cinematographer when he photographed Wendy and Lucy for director Kelly Reichardt - voted “One of the Best 25 Films of the 21st Century” by The New York Times. He went on to shoot France...

"I just love people's stories. I didn't go to college. I barely went to school. I left at a very young age. I wasn't really an academic. I was more visual, and I learned by seeing and by working with people. And that really was my passion. And, you know, we all have different ways of learning and doing, and for me, that was the way for me to learn was to work with people. And I did that at a...

Oberon Sinclair is the CEO and founder of the creative and branding agency, My Young Auntie. Since she founded the company in 1997, Oberon has collaborated with and managed an array of notable clients from the high luxury, art, fashion, food and lifestyle sectors, including Hermès, Vivienne Westwood, Fabergé, the Richemont Group, Jack Spade, ArtForum, Selfridges, Rizzoli Books, Island Records...

“And I try to make my figures not so gender-specific necessarily. Sometimes you can guess, but the image on the left was actually a man. You can't tell really. And the right one was a woman, but the idea that they could be the same person is...I'm just very fascinated also by the whole idea of what gender is because in my head I'm kind of masculine. I don't comport myself as transgender or anythin...

Gloria Pacis is a painter dividing her time between New York City and Hoboken, where she has her studio. She received her BFA from the University of Washington in 1976. She credits her years working as a set designer and scene artist for the dramatic, character-based elements of her paintings. She has participated in exhibitions at public institutions and universities, including Wing Luke Museum,...

"So let's look at historical trends. One very interesting thing is that women, for many generations, were relatively insulated from the problem of addiction, but in the last two generations, or for the last 30 years or so, we've seen vastly increased rates of addiction to drugs and alcohol among women. Alcohol is one example. So whereas previously the ratio of men with alcohol addiction to women w...

Dr. Anna Lembke is professor of psychiatry at Stanford University School of Medicine and chief of the Stanford Addiction Medicine Dual Diagnosis Clinic. A clinician scholar, she has published more than a hundred peer-reviewed papers, book chapters, and commentaries. She sits on the board of several state and national addiction-focused organizations, has testified before various committees in the U...

Fury Young and BL Shirelle are the powerhouse team behind Die Jim Crow Records, the first non-profit record label in United States history for currently and formerly incarcerated musicians. DJC Records’ mission is to dismantle stereotypes around race and prison in America by amplifying the voices of our artists.  As a pair, Fury Young and BL Shirelle form a perhaps unlikel...

"So when you go into parole, like when you're on your way, your friends will tell you, the ones who have been there, "Don't let them like upset you. Don't let them get you out of your character." And I remember the first time I went up to parole, I survived a police-involved shooting. So I was shot multiple times. And it was my time to go down there and talk about this situation. And I was wonderi...

"So the first thing I learned is that you need to live what you believe. Whether it's environmental justice, social justice, environmental protection, do whatever you can, live your best life to try to advance that good objective goal and belief. We can all do better in our own personal lives. And that's really important. I think the other thing that I learned, my parents did it in a different way...

Maya K. van Rossum is the founder of Green Amendments For The Generations, a national nonprofit organization dedicated to inspiring passage of Green Amendments in every state constitution across our nation, and also at the federal level when the time is right. She is an environmental attorney, community organizer, and the Delaware Riverkeeper, leading the regional advocacy organization, the D...