We’d like to extend our gratitude and appreciation to all who joined us, from near and far, for our 8th Annual Summit. Over three days, we gathered as a community of changemakers who shared empowering stories of courage, strength, and defiance. We are inspired by this collective community and its enduring fight to achieve a gender equal world.

This year’s Summit theme, “The Power of You,” was a call to action to activate our individual potential, strength, networks, influence, and voice to achieve gender equality. This work takes all of us – united in shared purpose and pursuit – to pave the path of progress. With women controlling a third of global wealth, we have entered a new era of resources by and for women. During our time together, we called upon our community to imagine a world we want to live in. Even our beloved Gloria Steinem has joined our efforts as an honorary member.

We shared with our community our ambitious new vision of a gender equal world. In this future, women and girls around the world enjoy the freedom to raise their voices, step into their power, and have their leadership celebrated. In this world, there’s parity at the highest levels of government, in board rooms, corner offices, and classrooms. Access to healthcare is equitable and inclusive. Our journey through it is a safe one, free from violence. The cultural narrative is reflective and honoring of the complexity of our stories. Instead of less than 10% of global philanthropic dollars being directed to women and girls, we’ve achieved parity.

We shared our values, beliefs, manifesta, and strategic goals (listed below) that will serve as a roadmap and guide for the organization over the next five years.

• We will double the size of our collective impact by 2025 by growing our community and drive an additional $275M in resources to the field.
• We will invest in the leadership journey of our community to enhance their philanthropy, expanding our current educational program offerings to increase opportunities for connection and deepen learning. This includes regional convenings, our Philanthropic Leadership Program, connection to thought leaders, and research and insights on strategic philanthropy.
• We will spark a demonstrable increase in resources for women and girls from other external sources, seeking to strengthen the overall ecosystem by creating an advocacy agenda to drive more resources to the field.

We were also excited to share our new brand and website at the Summit. We thank our partners at Teal Media and at Hive for bringing our vision to life. If you haven’t taken the time to visit the new website, please do so and watch as it unfolds with more stories and content.

Because our individual power fuels the collective us, we are excited to share that our theme for the 2020 Annual Summit is the “Power of Us”, which will take place in Washington, D.C., September 10-12, 2020.

This theme will shine a light on the power of our collective force. By working together, we can author a history that will look very different on paper than the one that is unfolding now. Nothing is written in stone. No statistic is intractable. Each voice matters. The time is now for us to be ambitious, activate our leadership, and harness our collective strength to advocate for change. The world needs you, so please save the date (and bring a friend)!

We extend hearts full of gratitude and thanks to our Board of Directors, the force that was our amazing MC (WMM member Shaun Robinson), our member community, the incredible WMM team, The Event Studio, and all of our amazing speakers and sponsors who participated in this experience. Your support and efforts will aid our collective mission to achieve a gender equal world.