Vital Voices: The Power of Women Leading Change Around the World

Conclusion

Leadership Is a Journey, Not a Destination

Introduced by Sally Field

Actress, Activist, and Vital Voices Board Member

Seventeen years ago, I too traveled to Beijing where I attended and participated in the historic UN Fourth World Conference on Women. I did not know what I would see and certainly was unable to anticipate how deeply it would affect me. My journey was perhaps magnified because my twenty-three-year-old son, who was in his third year of college at the time, accompanied me. As a mother, I watched this “typical American young man” stand in awe, listening to the stories of the women, young and old, from across the globe as they revealed their profound struggle for what to him had seemed so elemental.

I could see and feel ...