Women Moving Millions

The purpose of Women Moving Millions is clear: to encourage members to set new standards for bold philanthropic leadership and to support their partners in raising greater resources for organizations committed to the lives of women and girls.

This nonprofit brings together women leaders and partner organizations to learn, share and connect with each other and external experts in “gender-lens” philanthropy. Since its founding in 2007, Women Moving Millions has inspired over 230 members to pledge over $600 million to organizations and initiatives that share our commitment to advancing women and girls around the world. More at womenmovingmillions.org

Alphachimp was invited to document the keynote presentations ranging from gender equality, protection of refugees, access to education, healthcare, curbing traditional practices such as genital mutilation and child-marriage.

Event Summary

During their three-day annual summit, WMM brings together over 130 members, prospective members, and partners to catalyze unprecedented resources for the advancement of women and girls.

This year, Women Moving Millions was honored to welcome Laura Arrillaga-Andreessen(Founder of the Laura Arrillaga-Andreessen Foundation) to The Annual Summit as our keynote speaker. In her remarks, Laura set out a call to action to embrace innovation and challenge in philanthropy, “to see every day as an inflection point for doing our philanthropic work better tomorrow” and to “not take no for an answer when the well-being of others are at stake”. For Laura, that means democratizing philanthropy, making it inclusive and to educate philanthropists freely and globally. What does it mean for you?
 
We were also thrilled to invite Pam Scott (Member of Women Moving Millions) to our stage to highlight the power of human-centered design as a framework and tool for elevating our work in social impact. Her advice to demystifying HCD? Understand, Define, Create & Ideate, Implement and of course, LEARN.
 
Our Friday Summit also featured a panel on Innovation + Entrepreneurship with Zubaida Bai (Founder of ayzh), Cheryl Dorsey (President of Echoing Green), Leila Janah (CEO of Sama) as our speakers and Elizabeth Gore (Entrepreneur-in-Resident at Dell) as our moderator. Together, they shared what it takes to innovate (experiment with models, seek hybrids, explore supply chains, etc.) and what it takes to succeed (align investor expectations, connect through stories, move from “bootstrapping” to equity or impact investing, and more).
 
We then invited Barrie Landry (Member of Women Moving Millions), Caryl Stern (President & CEO of U.S. Fund for UNICEF),Kuoth Wiel (Actor, Activist, Co-Founder of the NyaEden Foundation & Former Refugee) and Jessica Houssian (Chief Philanthropy Officer of Women Moving Millions) to share their personal stories and experiences working to address the global refugee crisis (over 65 million people have been forcibly displaced from their homes) and the role that innovation can play to empower women and girls in times of conflict. We were also lucky to have Shared Studios bring us live to Erbil, Iraq to meet Tafra, a school teacher, Myrna and Rind, two ten year old girls, to hear their stories of life in Harsham Refugee Camp. At the close of the session, Kuoth shared an inspiring message of encouragement to Tafra, Myrna & Rind: “There is hope. I want you to see that I am proof that there is hope.”
 
Our next speaker, Geena Rocero (Model, Producer & Trans Rights Advocate), then took the stage to share her story as a transgender woman of color and highlight her work to develop an intersectional and inclusive dialogue about the trans experience. That means, “when we talk about women’s equality… we need to talk across the spectrum of identity, policy, history, media, and culture.”­­
 
Geena’s session was followed by our panel on Innovation + Story featuring Jess Tomlin (Executive Director of The MATCH International Women’s Fund), Sherrie Westin (Executive Vice President of Global Impact & Philanthropy at the Sesame Workshop), Kamal Sinclair (Director of the Sundance Institute’s New Frontier Labs Program) and Cara Mertes (Director of the JustFilms Initiative at the Ford Foundation) who moderated the conversation. In this session, our panelists shared their work in activating storytelling in the form of codes, algorithms and puppets to transfer knowledge, shape attitudes and create a new future for women and girls around the world.
 
Finally, our last session introduced Sonita Alizadeh, 19 year old Afghan Rapper & Activist to the Women Moving Millions community in a breathtaking performance about her life and struggle to defy tradition and eradicate child-marriage.  In an interview with Mona Sinha (Vice President of the Board of Women Moving Millions), Sonita also shared a few inspirational parting words about changing her destiny: “I had a vision for my life, and my dreams helped me to be loud and to be brave.”­­­ We heard Sonita loud and clear. 

Facilitated by superstar Lisa Witter co-founder of Apolitical and former COO of Fenton, the largest public interest communications firm in the US. She has been a commentator and moderator for outlets including NPR, MSNBC, CBS and the Clinton Global Initiative. She has worked in government for the Seattle City Council. She is a WEF Young Global Leader and sits on the Global Agenda Council on Behaviour.

Creative Mornings Nashville with Parker Gates

On a recent and wonderful Creative Morning, I had the pleasure of scribing for my good buddy, Parker Gates in the stoke.d studio.

In front of 100+ members of Nashville's creative community gathered at The Skillery, Parker presented on design thinking—that amorphous, misunderstood, and mystical process of exploring and understanding people and problems in order to create effective solutions.

Creative Mornings Nashville

www.creativemornings.com/cities/nsh

Parker Gates is a co-founder of stoke.d, a human-centered design practice.

Stoke.d focuses on education, and regularly partners with global organizations in ongoing projects. He also teaches Design Thinking at the d.school at Stanford University.

Parker lives in Nashville, Tennessee, where he helps run an experiment in collaborative space, called stoke.d studio.

more at: stokedproject.com | @stokedproject

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TEDxNashville 2014 : Going to Mars, Ending Slavery on Earth, and Fighting for a Dignified Death.

This was Nashville's sixth TEDx event, our locally organized, independent instance of the decades-old TED events.

“TEDxNashville crackles with bright ideas and emotion” as speakers and performers played a sold out crowd of about 1,800 inside the Tennessee Performing Arts Center.

Alphachimp's Peter Durand was on stage for the sixth year to capture these ideas worth sharing. Speakers included political activist John Jay Hooker, entrepreneur Turner Nashe, NASA manager Chris Crumbly, End Slavery Tennessee's Derri Smith, Tulane University's Joel Dinerstein and other impressive speakers. 

For more detail, read this article by Tony Gonzalez writing for The Tennessean with some behind the scenes photos of artist and curator Sally Taylor, Tulane "professor of cool" Joel Dinerstein, and emcee Eddie George.

More information at: www.tedxnashville.com

A Visual Summary

Facebook's 5th Annual Compassion Research Day

Alphachimp spent a fascinating day, scribing for and learning about Facebook's research on encouraging people to resolve conflicts and reach out to friends in need.

Speakers pose with Alphachimp's artwork created live from their content.

Facebook has partnered with some amazing experts in human interaction, developmental psychology, emotion science, and evolutionary theory to help people have more meaningful and authentic dialogue and to resolve disputes that might arise.

In line with the mission and core values of Facebook's Compassion team, this public event shares the team's research questions, specifically: How does the perception of a hurtful post by a viewer often widely varies from the intent behind it?

In the words of Dalai Lama himself:

Experience has shown me that the greatest inner tranquillity comes from developing love and compassion. The more we care for the happiness of others, the greater is our own sense of well-being. Cultivating a close, warm-hearted feeling for others automatically puts the mind at ease. It helps remove our fears and insecurities and gives us strength to face obstacles — it is the ultimate source of success in life.

The organizers write: “We are passionate about helping people cultivate and express this compassion in interactions both on and off Facebook, and we are honored to have the opportunity share what we've learned.”

Learn more about Facebook's research on prevention of bullying, self-harm, and dangerous speech at:

FACEBOOK.COM/COMPASSION

PopTech 2014: A Decade of Documenting Rebel Lions

PopTech is a unique gathering of brainiacs, maniacs, rebels, spectacles, and indefinable superheroes. This year, the 18th annual conference was hosted by John Maeda, formerly of MIT and RISD, and truly a rebel in the zone of graphic design, computer science, art, education, and leadership. 

PopTech 18: Rebellion

PHOTO by Michael Duarte

And, 2014 was Alphachimp's 10th year to capture ideas graphically.

Traditionally, Alphachimp's founder Peter Durand creates paintings and drawings for each speaker using acrylic, oil pastel, Sumi ink, brushes and charcoal.

For the 10-year anniversary, however, Durand went digital. He served as an electric scribe for each of the 20+ presenters and performers, working in real-time on a large Wacom Cintiq 22HD tablet (think of an iPad the size of a suitcase).

Peter describes his first PopTech experience:

When I was first invited to scribe in 2004, I was standing in Radio Shack, shopping for cutting edge mobile technology: a new Motorola Razor cellphone.

The guy on the phone was Andrew Zolli. I was busy and distracted, but the guy was so excited and convincing, so I said yes.

Before I arrived, I thought PopTech was going to be another typical business conference. I remember listening to the first few speakers and having the same reaction as any first-timer:

‘Whoa... this is waaaay more than I expected.’

Along with the excitement of traveling with PopTech to events in Kenya and Iceland, my greatest pleasure has been to be involved with the Fellows Programs, working with social entrepreneurs and scientists right at the tipping point of their careers.

Every year, to my great relief, I have been shocked and honored to be invited back to witness brilliant people bring ground-breaking ideas to life.

View a 10-year visual catalog of PopTech Speaker Art by Alphachimp on Flickr.

Dangerous Ideas at Ciudad de las Ideas 2013

Held annually in Puebla, Mexico, La Ciudad de las Ideas (CDI) is an “International Brilliant Minds Festival”, unique in its genre and created by the polymath Dr. Andrés Roemer, whose purpose is to empower citizens and present the most provocative and innovative ideas in science, technology, art, design, politics, education, culture, business, entertainment and other areas of knowledge. 

Alphachimp's Peter Durand produced individual painting and drawings for each artist, scientist, leader, performer and "Gifted Citizen" who shared their dreams with us on stage.

See artwork on Flickr: http://www.flickr.com/photos/alphachimpstudio/sets/72157637614049504/

More photos and all of the speaker posters:

SEE SPEAKER ART ON FLICKR