Vital voices : the power of women leading change around the world
(Book)

Includes bibliographical references and index.

The main focus of this work is how women around the world are leading powerful change. Women's progress is global progress. Where there is an increase in women's university enrollment rates, women's earnings, and maternal health, and a reduction in violence against women, we see more prosperous communities, better educated, healthier families, and the preservation of equal human rights. Yet globally, women remain the most consistently under-utilized resource. The organization VItal Voices Global Partnership calls for and makes possible transformative leadership around the world. In this work, the author, the president and CEO shares the stories of remarkable, world-changing women, as well as the story of how Vital Voices Global Partnership was founded, crossing lines that typically divide. For 15 years, Vital Voices Global Partnership has brought together women who want to enable others to become change agents in their governments, advocates for social justice, and supporters of democracy. They equip women with management and business development skills to expand their enterprises and create jobs in their communities. Their voices, stories, and hard-earned lessons, shared in thisi book are authentic and vital. The book features interviews and first-person accounts of global leaders, such as Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, president of Liberia, and Aung San Suu Kyi, Nobel Prize-winning Burmese pro-democracy leader, as well as several business leaders. It draws on the work of the Vital Voices Global Partnership, the organization founded by Hillary Clinton in 1997 as a government initiative that transformed into a leading non-profit, which enables a network of 10,000 emerging women leaders in politics, human rights, and economic development in 127 countries. These women have gone on to mentor and train more than 500,000. The book focuses on the key elements of the Vital Voices Global Partnership organization's five-step model of transformational leadership, including how to find a voice, lead with purpose, cross lines that divide, and more. Through the firsthand accounts of trail-blazing leaders, this book introduces women who are shaping our world.