2005 Women of Color & Allies Summit: Speakers

2005 Women of Color & Allies Summit:
Speakers

Tillie Black Bear

Tillie Black Bear, the executive director of the South Dakota-based White Buffalo Calf Woman Society, the first shelter established for women of color in the United States, helps 300 women and 600 children each year end the violence in their closest relationships.

In addition to heading the society, established in 1978, Black Bear worked with women's historian Sally Roesch Wagner to produce a poster series featuring the life experiences of female Native American elders from the nine Dakota/Lakota Nations in South Dakota. The series touched various aspects of the elders' experience, from the racist sting some felt from in-laws of European-descent to the difficulties of working in war-time factories and caring for families while their husbands were gone.

As a victim of domestic violence, Black Bear, a member of the Sicangu Lakota Nation/Rosebud Sioux Tribe, attended a 1978 two-day symposium hosted by U.S. Commission on Civil Rights held in Washington on wife battery. After an impromptu gathering in the restroom of the convention's hotel, Black Bear and a group of fellow attendees, who dubbed themselves the "the Bathroom Sisters," pledged to give domestic violence a national voice.

That year, Black Bear and other Bathroom Sisters formed the National Coalition against Domestic Violence to educate the public about domestic violence through advocacy and education programs. (The coalition was instrumental in passing the 1994 Violence Against Women Act, aimed, in part, at curbing domestic violence through intervention services and education.)

A few months later, Black Bear formed the South Dakota Coalition Against Domestic Violence and Sexual Assault and was a founding mother of the White Buffalo Calf Woman Society, Inc., the oldest shelter for rape and domestic violence victims abused on Native American reservations.

Mandy Carter

Mandy Carter

Black Bear, diagnosed with lupus in 1978, is currently on the list for a kidney transplant. She receives dialysis treatment for end-stage renal failure, but still works full-time at the shelter. Black Bear says she has drawn strength from the women's empowerment movement of the 1970s.

Mandy Carter

Mandy Carter is one of the nation's leading lesbian activists. Mandy helped found Southerners on New Ground (SONG) at the Durham Creating Change Conference in 1993. A noted speaker and winner of the prestigious Stonewall Award, Mandy has traveled extensively, educating audiences about LGBT rights in a broader social justice movement. Mandy has been described as an articulate and non-confrontational doer—someone who gets things accomplished by her motivational mentoring and exemplary and tireless activity.

Lorraine Cole

Lorraine Cole, Ph.D., president and chief executive officer of Black Women's Health Imperative, leads the only national organization solely dedicated to ensuring optimum health for Black women across their lifespans. In this role, she is responsible for all organizational operations, including public health activities, education programs, health policy development, advocacy, research and membership services.

Cole, who holds a doctoral degree in Communication Sciences and Disorders from Northwestern University, came to the Imperative with solid experience in minority health, organizational management, capacity building and program development.

She is the former executive director of the National Medical Association (NMA), the oldest national organization representing African American physicians. During her leadership tenure, NMA emerged from a period of financial downturn to becoming the strongest in its 105-year history, fiscally and programmatically. Prior to that position, she served as the executive director of the Minority Health Professions Foundation, nearly tripling the foundation's portfolio of funded biomedical research in schools of medicine, dentistry, pharmacy and veterinary medicine in historically Black institutions. She also had a distinguished tenure of service as director of minority affairs for the American Speech-Language-Hearing Association where she developed award-winning programs in multicultural professional education that became national models.

She is currently a member of the board of directors of the American Society of Association Executives, representing more than 20,000 professional and trade organizations. She is also on the board of directors of the LEAP Foundation, an organization that offers language skills training to enhance employability for public assistance recipients. She is a former research fellow for the Ford and the Rockefeller Foundations, as well as a former congressional fellow of the Congressional Black Caucus Foundation. Cole is the recipient of numerous national honors, awards and commendations for her programs and professional contributions.

Aileen Hernandez

A native of Brooklyn, New York, Aileen Clarke Hernandez migrated to California to become an organizer and later the Education and Public Relations Director for the Pacific Coast Region of the International Ladies' Garment Workers' Union. She was the Assistant Chief of the California Division of Fair Employment Practices from 1962 to 1965 when she was appointed by President Lyndon Johnson as the only woman member of the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission.

Frustrated with the limited power of the civil rights agency, she returned to San Francisco and founded her own urban consulting firm in 1967. The firm works with major U.S. companies, governmental agencies and grassroots organizations on a wide variety of issues facing cities—such as housing, employment, education, sustainable development, and transportation. She appears frequently on television, radio and the lecture circuit discussing race and gender relations, human rights, and civic activism.

In March 1970, she was elected the second president of NOW at the fourth National NOW Conference in Des Plaines, Ill., a suburb of Chicago. She has founded several Black women's organizations—including San Francisco-based Black Women Stirring the Waters, which recently published a book of essays by 44 of its members. She has won national and local recognition for her work in the civil rights and women's rights movements and serves on the boards of many organizations dedicated to social and economic justice.

A magna cum laude graduate of Howard University in political science and sociology, she also holds a master's degree in government, with highest honors, from California State University at Los Angeles and an honorary doctorate in humane letters from Southern Vermont College.

Her travels throughout the world have given her a global perspective on equity issues and she currently chairs the California Women's Agenda, a network of 500 organizations in the state dedicated to implementing the plan of action adopted by 189 countries at the Fourth World Conference on Women in Beijing, China in 1995.

Silvia Henriquez

Silvia Henriquez is the Executive Director of the National Latina Institute for Reproductive Health (NLIRH). She recently co-authored Our Health, Our Rights: Reproductive Justice for Latinas in California during her tenure as a health policy analyst for the Latino Issues Forum. Previously, Henriquez worked as the outreach director of the National Abortion Federation (NAF), developing strategies to increase reproductive health access for women of color across the nation. Before her work at NAF, she worked as an organizer, and thereafter the coordinator, of the Feminist Majority Foundation’s national campus organizing program. Henriquez also brings a commitment to the issue of women’s economic equality through her previous work with the AFL-CIO’s Solidarity Center, UNITE, and Fundación Maquilishuat in El Salvador. She holds a B.A. in International Affairs and an M.A. in Women’s Studies (with a concentration on immigrant women) both from The George Washington University in Washington, D.C.

Since taking on the role of Executive Director in 2003, Henriquez has positioned NLIRH to become a leading reproductive health advocacy organization for Latinas by increasing staff, doubling the organization’s budget, and strengthening the programmatic foundation of NLIRH. She has developed programs that emphasize developing new Latina and community-based leadership, as well as produced publications that work to increase knowlege around reproductive health issues. Under her leadership, NLIRH has promoted policy and advocacy initiatives that aim to improve the health of Latinas through NLIRH's Reproductive Justice Policy Agenda. Henriquez serves on the Boards of the Alan Guttmacher Institute and the Reproductive Health Technologies Project.

Hon. Doris Ling-Cohan

Dr. Aliyah Morgan

Aliyah Morgan, M.D., M.P.H., has been a primary care physician for over 30 years with a focus in the most stressed communities and culturally diverse neighborhoods of New York City. In addition, she has volunteered in North Africa, working with women and families. Respected as a local, national and international presenter and writer with a life long commitment as a community activist focusing on gender issues, HIV testing and counseling and access to care issues, Morgan’s primary interests include the medical and psychological impact of child abuse, neglect, poverty, substandard education, gender bias, war and STI's including HIV on the quality of life of women and children, in particular girls. As an educator of students in middle school through university post doctorate, Aliyah Morgan strives to mentor along the way.

Azar Nafisi

Azar Nafisi is a visiting fellow and professorial lecturer at the Foreign Policy Institute of the Johns Hopkins University’s School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS) in Washington, D.C. A professor of aesthetics, culture and literature, Nafisi held a fellowship at Oxford University teaching and conducting a series of lectures on culture and the important role of Western literature and culture in Iran after the revolution in 1979.

She taught at the University of Tehran, the Free Islamic University, and Allameh Tabatabaii before coming to the U.S.—earning national respect and international recognition for advocating on behalf of Iran’s intellectuals, youth, and especially young women. She was expelled from the University of Tehran for refusing to wear the mandatory Islamic veil in 1981, and did not resume teaching until 1987. She has lectured and written extensively in English and Persian on the political implications of literature and culture as well as on the human rights of Iranian women and girls and the important role they play in the process of change for pluralism and an open society in Iran and other Muslim societies. At SAIS, she is the director of The Dialogue Project, a multi-year initiative designed to promote, in a primarily cultural context, the development of democracy and human rights in the Muslim world.

Nafisi's writings include Anti-Terra: A Critical Study of Vladimir Nabakov’s Novels (1994) and chapters in Muslim Women and Politics of Participation (1997), Eye of the Storm: Women in Post-Revolutionary Iran (1992), and Religious Fundamentalisms and the Human Rights of Women (1999). Her op-eds and articles have been published in many major newspapers, and her cover story “The Veiled Threat: The Iranian Revolution’s Woman Problem,” published in The New Republic (Feb. 22, 1999), has been reprinted into several languages. Her latest book, "Reading Lolita in Tehran: A Memoir in Books," was published by Random House in March 2003.

Ritu Sharma

Ritu Sharma, a leading voice on international women's issues and U.S. foreign policy, co-founded the Women's Edge Coalition in 1998 to advocate international economic policies and human rights that support women worldwide in ending poverty in their lives, communities and nations. Sharma's research and advocacy have raised awareness in the U.S. government of the significant impact women have on economics in developing countries.

At the Women's Edge Coalition, she has brought together a network of actors from international aid agencies, domestic women's groups, human rights organizations and local activists to take joint action on international women's issues. Sharma has led the organization to many successes, including successful advocacy that helped win more than $72 million for programs to support Afghan women last year. In 2002, the Coalition helped increase the amount of U.S. money going to international programs to combat trafficking by 30 percent.

Irene Natividad

Irene Natividad is President of the Global Summit of Women, an annual international gathering of women leaders from around the world, and co-chairs Corporate Women Directors International, which promotes the increased participation of women on corporate boards globally. In addition, Ms. Natividad is Executive Director of the Philippine American Foundation. Most important, she runs her own public affairs firm, Globewomen, Inc., based in Washington, D.C.

Ms. Natividad’s commitment to promoting women, nationally and internationally, stems from her decade-long involvement with the National Women's Political Caucus, a 30-year-old bipartisan organization dedicated to electing and appointing more women to public office. Widely recognized for her outstanding leadership of the Caucus, she was elected President in 1985 and re-elected in 1987, the first Asian American ever to head a national political organization.

During the nineties, she assumed the chairmanship of the National Commission on Working Women, which works on economy equity issues affecting women through groundbreaking research and training programs. Her commitment to women’s economic empowerment has extended to the global arena, where she has provided a forum through the Global Summit of Women to exchange best practices in accelerating women’s economic progress.

Long known for her coalition work, Ms. Natividad serves on the boards of numerous organizations, from nonprofits such as the National Museum of Women in the Arts and the National Association of Corporate Directors to corporate advisory boards for Cigna and Wyndham International. She brings to each of these groups her policy expertise, skills in network building and creative program development. In 1994, she was appointed to the Board of Directors of Sallie Mae, a Fortune 100 company, by President Clinton.

A native of the Philippines, Ms. Natividad is also a leader in the Asian American community, where she has focused her energies in politically empowering a group frequently referred to as “the invisible minority.” She served as Deputy Vice Chair of the Democratic Party's Asian Caucus from 1982 to 1984, and has continued to organize numerous Asian American groups at all levels. She was the Executive Editor of the first-ever Asian American Almanac that was published by Gale Research in 1995.

Ms. Natividad’s work has been honored by numerous media organizations. In 2004, she was selected by Women’s eNews as one of the “21 Leaders for the 21st Century.” She was named in 1997 as one of “25 Most Influential Working Mothers” by Working Mother Magazine; in 1993 as one of the “74 Women Changing American Politics” by Campaigns & Elections Magazine; and recognized by A. Magazine as one of the top 25 influential Asian Americans. Ms. Natividad was also named in 1988 as one of the “100 Most Powerful Women in America” by Ladies Home Journal.

Lateefah Simon

Lateefah Simon, the executive director of the Center for Young Women's Development in San Francisco, was a 2004 recipient of NOW’s Intrepid Award. She has spent the last decade of her life advocating on behalf of young women who are or have been confined to juvenile detention centers, group homes, jails, and adult prisons.

Believing that the growing number of young women in the criminal justice system—largely overlooked by research, policies and services that focus primarily on men—reflects deeper social issues that demand caring, creative responses, Simon and her team have developed one of the nation's first peer-run education, employment and community reintegration programs for post-adjudicated and currently incarcerated girls. The Center's education program is run entirely by formerly incarcerated young women.

Raised by a working class mother in San Francisco's Western Addition, Simon watched as friends and community members lost their homes to gentrification, and their children, their economic stability and their lives to drugs. At 17, she was working at Taco Bell after school when an outreach worker encouraged her to take an entry-level position at the Center. She did, and quickly won promotions until, in 1997, at age 20, the Center's board of directors appointed her executive director.

Under Simon's leadership, the Center's work has included: a demonstration against arbitrary police sweeps organized by young Latinas who were being harassed and picked up by the police as suspected gang members; a group of multicultural former young sex workers who joined a mayor's committee to research alternatives to incarceration for young women who are former prostitutes; and a group of previously jailed young women who developed "how to stay out of the system" training for their peers and then fought to be allowed in the San Francisco Juvenile Hall to offer the workshops. The Center is currently developing an action campaign to protect the civil rights of lesbian, bisexual and transgender youth detainees, and is working closely with the city's juvenile probation department to develop ways for children to have more frequent access to their incarcerated teen parents.

Patricia Sosa

Patricia Sosa is a frequent progressive voice on PBS’ talk show on women’s issues, "To The Contrary." She is also the director of Constituency Relations for the National Center for Tobacco-Free Kids, enhancing the advocacy role of the campaign’s partner groups and expanding the number and types of constituency organizations supporting the campaign’s mission to protect children from tobacco addiction. Previously, Sosa worked for the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services as Director of the Intergovernmental Division in the Administration for Children and Families. She joined the Clinton Administration in 1993 as Director of Public Outreach for the President’s Welfare Reform Working Group.