I personally know and deeply admire the couple who have been planning the center for close to a decade: Daisy Khan  and Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf, who are and have been for decades totally devoted to sharing a progressive interpretation of Islam – promoting women’s rights, condemning violence and advocating tolerance – within the Muslim community globally and building bridges with people of other faiths throughout the world.  I’ve been heartbroken to see them characterized as violent extremists as this is a complete misrepresentation of two people who are motivated by the noblest ideals.  

I’ve been as outraged by those who, building on the xenophobia exhibited by outrageous anti-immigrant laws enacted in Arizona and now being proposed in Florida, are trying to strip the 14th Amendment so that children born here won’t constitutionally be guaranteed citizenship.  America has been a land of immigrants since people from other nations arrived to join Native Americans.  And from its first pilgrim immigrants’ arrival, many escaping religious persecution, this nation held central the aspiration of religious pluralism.  While we have not always lived up to our ideals on these core facets of American tradition, they provide beacons of hope to people in the US and globally.

My Russian Jewish grandparents came here to flee the Czarist pogroms  and my Irish Catholic husband’s ancestors arrived to escape the potato famine.  The neighborhoods in which we each grew up have continued to absorb wave after wave of new immigrants with new religious beliefs: mine is now primarily Haitian who are primarily Pentecostal Christians and his is primarily Cambodian who are primarily Buddhists. 

This is the very strength of this nation: its ability to absorb people of differing nationalities, races and religions; while we have a long way to go for true equality, I can think of no other country that does as well in welcoming and integrating people with such great differences.

So, I was greatly encouraged when President Obama declared his support for the Muslim Center saying that opposing the project is at odds with American values.  I’ve similarly been heartened by people from around the country joining in protests against Arizona’s ill-conceived law.   And, as I am about to be the foreigner in another country, I can only hope that more people in the US and throughout the world will stand up for tolerance.

During the four days, participating women executives had the opportunity to learn more about interacting effectively with their boards of directors from Professor Paul Strebel who leads the IMD program High Performance Boards (HPB).  They were exposed to new ways to build and utilize their networks by Professor Martha Maznevski who directs the MBA program and is part of the IMD signature program Orchestrating Winning Performance (OWP), as is Toegel and Strebel.  As an SL coach, I facilitated a team completing an extremely challenging Mission Unknown task in one intensive day.   Divided into six segments – three team actions to formulate, initiate execution and complete their task, each followed by a rigorously honest debrief – we explored how they as individuals and a group tackled this purposefully ambiguous task.  In a safe environment, they evolved from a band of strangers each with her own way of acting and revealing (or not) to a team ready to give and receive constructive critique: the continuously growing level of trust and candor was palpable.

By the end of that day all participants had a much deeper knowledge of themselves and each other, including essential insights into their reactions to myriad challenge and each other’s differing styles.  But epiphany moments are fleeting so the next day I had back-to-back one-on-one coaching with each team member to more fully examine how she might apply her newfound understandings into concrete actions.  Together we analyzed what each needed to do first to keep their new-found awareness, second how they might start with small steps to act on that consciousness and third, what would be good long-term goals for them to set their sights on as they strengthened their self-awareness leadership muscles.  Most of them were particularly eager to envision clearly how they might apply what they’d gained in working environments that would not have this level of safety and support.  Each of them will have a follow up discussion with me in early autumn so we can evaluate what more they’ve learned through their practice of remaining aware and behaving with intention rather than falling back on habits that may not serve them well.  Based on where they are in that process, each will decide if she will continue to work towards her self-defined goals or instead course correct given possible deeper insights gained.

Please share your thoughts on the topics of self-awareness, authenticity and transformational leadership: I encourage you to include hyper-links to your work or other websites with interesting views of these themes.  At the end of the summer I return to IMD to be their next Executive-in-Residence for at least a year.  I look forward to receiving your ideas and feedback that I might incorporate into my research and presentations while there.

If you’re interested in reading more on self-awareness and leadership, see: Sage article, Understanding Leader Emotional Intelligence and Performance: The Role of Self-Other Agreement on Transformational Leadership Perceptions by John J. Sosik and Lara E. Megerian; Complex Acts of Knowing: Paradox and Descriptive Self-Awareness by Dave Snowden, first published in Journal of Knowledge Management; and the FP Executive Blog post, The Self-Awareness Journey to Leadership by Colleen McCormick.

Imani Perry, a Princeton University professor, published her first Huffington Post piece, which was picked up immediately by CNN’s Anderson Cooper 360 blog: as a direct result, CNN International featured her discussing the impact of media on how children view race.  Shelby Knox, a prominent feminist organizer, avid blogger and tweeter, published her first paid piece on the news site AlterNet.  Mac McClelland, a human rights reporter at Mother Jones, used her video journalism skills when she was one of the first people on the ground reporting as oil made landfall on the shores of Louisiana: her coverage was  picked up by the POLITICO Playbook and Newsweek.  PBS’s To The Contrary booked Jehan Harney for a panel discussion on the Muslim pray-ins happening in DC.

The WMC training program concluded with a half-day session at a major studio where the participants were grilled by on-air talent and received immediate feedback from television producers.  Our panel of four also included Annie Goodman, Fox News; Jenny Eliscu, Rolling Stone; and Deepa Fernandes, People’s Production House.  We each shared our experiences about how we experience being a woman in a senior position, what challenges we face and how we handle those.  

Please post your comments on how you deal with being or becoming a woman leader in your field or how, as a man, you support such women.   I especially welcome insights on or lessons learned about best practices from any organization in any sector where women and men are working towards achieving parity, benefiting from each other’s strengths and augmenting each other’s blind spots.

And read following one-paragraph bios on each of the 10 remarkable women who participated in WMC first 2010 Progressive Women’s Voices training.

Aimee Allison is a Bay Area KPFA radio host/producer, activist and author, with special expertise in the fields of social justice, environmental issues, and militarism. As an Army veteran and conscientious objector, Allison has a unique perspective on war and peace. Her book, Army of None: Strategies to Counter Military Recruitment, End War, and Build a Better World was published in 2007. Allison’s work combines deep understanding of local and national politics, and she has hosted broadcast segments everywhere from community radio to CNN. Aimee holds a BA in history and MA in education from Stanford University.

Jehan Harney is an award-winning Egyptian-American TV journalist and filmmaker. Her films have explored issues of immigrant communities, human trafficking, forced sterilization, interfaith issues and more. Currently, Harney is finishing a documentary for national broadcast on PBS called “Dream of America”. The film reveals the plight of Iraqi refugees in the U.S. Her short documentary on American-Muslim women, The Colors of Veil, recently won the LinkTV/One Nation Many Voices award. Jehan has also worked in TV news, including at NBC and ABC affiliates, and most recently covering Iranian issues for WashingtonTV. She has earned the Writers Guild of America-East’s John Merriman Award, among others. Harney has an MA in International Journalism & Public Affairs from American University in Washington, DC.

Shelby Knox is a prominent feminist organizer, nationally known as the subject of the Sundance award-winning film, The Education of Shelby Knox, a 2005 documentary chronicling her teenage activism for comprehensive sex education and gay rights in her Southern Baptist community. After the film’s release, Shelby became a national advocate for comprehensive sex education, testifying before Congress and many other local and regional civic bodies about the failure of abstinence-only-until-marriage programs. A widely-sought after speaker and prominent media commentator on feminism and reproductive rights, Shelby lives in New York City, where she is working on a book about the next generation of feminist activism.

Sally Kohn is the Chief Agitation Officer of the Movement Vision Lab, an online exchange about grassroots movement building and transformative ideas for the future. Sally is a blogger with the Huffington Post and her writing regularly appears in AlterNet, Common Dreams and other news sources online and off. Her op-eds have been published by the Christian Science Monitor, the Chicago Sun Times and the Orange County Register, and Sally is a regular guest on national talk radio shows and the online video series GritTV. Sally is a frequent speaker at progressive conferences and gatherings on the topics of movement building and the need for big picture vision.

Sharon Lerner A leading national voice on family/workplace issues and moms’ rights, Sharon Lerner is the author of The War on Moms: On Life in a Family-Unfriendly Nation, due out in May. She is a journalist who has covered a wide range of issues of concern to women for more than a decade. An award-winning journalist, Lerner has written for The New York Times, The New York Times Magazine, The Village Voice, The American Prospect, and other publications. Sharon has also received a National Headliner Award for her radio feature reporting and was a Senior Fellow at the New School. She has an undergraduate degree from Brown University and a Masters of Public Health degree from Columbia University. She lives in Brooklyn with her husband and two young sons.

Mac McClelland A rising star of progressive media, Mac is an expert on human rights, refugee populations and Burma. McClelland is on staff at Mother Jones as their human rights reporter, with other work published in The Nation, GQ The Daily Beast, The National Post, the Anderson Cooper 360 blog, Orion, AlterNet, as well as various literary journals and anthologies. Author of For Us Surrender Is Out of the Question: A Story from Burma’s Never-Ending War, called “truly stunning” by the Fund for Investigative Journalism’s Sandy Bergo, Mac has reported from locations across Asia and the US on wide-ranging subjects. She has been profiled by publications including The Advocate and is, most importantly and according to The American Prospect, “a total bad-ass.”

Samhita Mukhopadhyay is the Executive Editor of Feministing, the highest-traffic site for progressive young women on the web. A veteran writer, whose work has been featured in New American Media, Wiretap, Colorlines, the Nation, The American Prospect, and elsewhere, Samhita’s expertise is also widely sought as a speaker. In addition to being a prominent writer/blogger, Mukhopadhyay is also a leading digital strategist, with a background at the Center for Media Justice, providing media strategy for grass-roots organizing groups. Mukhopadhyay has a Bachelors degree in Sociology and Women’s Studies from SUNY Albany and a Masters in Women’s Studies from San Francisco State She is at work on her first book tackling what she terms the romantic industrial complex, addressing romance and dating from a feminist perspective.

 Imani Perry is a Professor in the Center for African American Studies at Princeton University. She is an interdisciplinary scholar who studies race and African American culture using the tools provided by various disciplines including: law, literary and cultural studies, music, and the social sciences. She is the author of the forthcoming book More Terrible, More Beautiful, The Embrace and Transcendence of Racial Inequality in the U.S as well as 2004’s Prophets of the Hood: Politics and Poetics in Hip Hop and has published numerous articles in the areas of law, cultural studies, and African American studies. Perry holds degrees from Yale, Harvard, and Georgetown universities.

Christine Trujillo A national leader on labor and employment issues, twenty year veteran teacher and labor activist Christine Trujillo is the President of New Mexico Federation of Labor-AFL-CIO, one of three women in the labor movement to hold such a high office. She is also President of the American Federation of Teachers, New Mexico; and a former elected official and Democratic Party leader. Winner of numerous awards, Trujillo’s expertise also includes public bilingual education and health care issues. Christine is one of the country’s most prominent Hispanic leaders.

Erica Williams Listed by Politico.com as one of Top 50 Politicos to Watch, Erica Williams is a dynamic young organizer and expert in issues of youth political participation and the increasingly racially & ethnically diverse electorate. In her work with the Center for American Progress, Williams has worked with the organization’s youth-based arm, Campus Progress, as well as Progress 2050, a project that develops new ideas for an increasingly diverse America. Before joining CAP, Erica worked at the Leadership Conference on Civil Right to coordinate grassroots activity in nearly 45 states to advance effective civil and human rights legislation at the federal level. She is a past participant of the American University Women and Political Leadership Training Program, a 2008 O Magazine Women Rule Leadership winner, and a 2008 Aspen Institute IDEAS fellow.

While Amnesty continues to focus on human rights defenders globally, they also have turned their eye more sharply on violations in the US.  One of their primary campaigns is to address the sharp increase of maternal health issues, particularly the rising number of poor women - largely those of color – who die unnecessarily at childbirth.  They also have an initiative to draw attention to the injustices in New Orleans and throughout the Gulf Coast five years after Hurricanes Katrina and Rita.  And, while this work is promoted by people of all ages, I was particularly struck by the palpable enthusiasm and capacity of the youth organizers.

A younger generation is pioneering geospatial technologies like satellite imagery for human rights monitoring and conflict prevention.  Listening to reports from their Science for Human Rights team I marveled at what they are doing, which is truly brilliant.  I already knew about this in phenomenon in multiple contexts, as I have the opportunity to work with many younger activists.  Most recently I’ve been blown away by the extraordinary achievements of the Fellows at Ghetto Film School , which is a particulary wonderful one of myriad youth empowerment initiatives run by and/or for high school age students.  It’s their idealism, vision and grit that gives me hope for our future.  All rights for all people, the theme of Amnesty’s annual meeting, is the clarion call of their generation and I am deeply moved by that.

And, often women who I know, many for several decades: we were the choir preaching to ourselves. A week earlier, I’d been discussing this issue with Ginka Toegel, who heads “Breakthrough Strategies for Women Executives” at the international business school IMD  where I soon will be Executive-in-Residence on Responsible Leadership.  

Our work now must be about “connecting the dots” not only between genders but among all types of stakeholders.  At the 20th anniversary symposium of the Center for Women’s Global Leadership (CWGL)  honoring its founder Charlotte Bunche, some spoke of capitalism as an enemy to be destroyed.  I believe it can be the most powerful engine for transformation when women truly are integrated fully into its decision-making and implementation gears.

Too many of the participants at events during the CSW represented governments and NGOs: not enough hailed from corporations.  Each sector has something very unique and vital to offer.  Through multi-sector partnerships, they each would benefit from the value-added of the other.  We no longer can afford to keep the extraordinary pockets of breakthrough women’s empowerment initiatives throughout the world isolated and segregated: we need to become connected and mainstreamed.

During the CSW, member states of the UN General Assembly were analyzing vital proposals about Gender Equality Architecture Reform (GEAR), including creating a UN gender equality entity led by an Under-Secretary-General.   In the US, President Obama appointed Melanne Verveer to serve as Ambassador-at-Large for Global Women’s Issues  and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has made certain that gender is included in every aspect of her work.

Indeed, we still have the need for safe spaces in which women leaders from all fields can share with each other their frustrations at and solutions to not being at the main table.  Yet, until more men – from government, business and civil society – join in this conversation, we will remain marginalized on the sidelines.  

Photo taken by Don Pollard Photography at the National Council for Research on Women (NCRW), event hosted at Goldman Sachs and sponsored by Deloitte & Touche.

Among their 100 MBA candidates, are 60 nationalities.  Similarly, the thousands of executives who participate in their specialized programs hail from myriad countries and their international faculty is comparably diverse.  IMD is ranked by The Financial Times 1st outside the US and 2nd globally, #2 worldwide by The Economist and 3rd globally in Executive Education by Forbes.  Go to IMD for a comprehensive overview.

 I had a professor who’d gone from a Harvard undergrad to a Harvard grad student to a Harvard adjunct to a Harvard tenured professor and had never so much as stood on a corner to register a single voter.  One of his first lectures had a title like “Why People Vote the Way They Do.”  He quoted the 1954 University of Chicago Berelson study and even footnotes from other academic papers that built off or disputed its findings.  After his lecture I said, “I find it remarkable that you just gave a lecture about how electoral opinions are formed and you never once mentioned the word money.” 

 With a straight face he said, “There’s no empirical evidence that money affects elections in any way.  Have you done a regression analysis on that?”  Many of the political science professors quoted in Kirpatrick’s piece seem to imply something similar.  OK, perhaps not out-flat bribery or actual transactional “a buck for your vote, sir,” but these major donors definitely get to spend a lot of professional and personal time with those who are going to vote on key issues.  Right now I’m picturing a particular bash on Nantucket where I was dancing with leaders of the US Senate: really easy to just drop an idea, oh so casually, if one was so inclined.

Thus, the insight that informs the comment of long-time Common Cause President Fred Wertheimer quoted in the article, “You can’t prove a negative, but…”  At a time when the distance between those in power and those who are feeling the burden of having virtually no power continues to grow – with considerable anger on the right and the left – we must take a stronger stance than having to prove corruption: undue influence should cause enough concern. 

This is why I agree with Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens’  assessment that the majority were wrong to treat corporate speech the same as that of human beings.  I am heartsick when I anticipate the vitriol we can expect from election campaigns to come.  And I am saddened to see more than 80 years of laws protecting the integrity of elections – from the 1925 Federal Corrupt Practices Act  to the formation of the Federal Election Commission in 1974 in response to Watergate to the 2002 “McCain-Feingold” Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act – eviscerated.

I’m keeping vigil on what happens next, including following initiatives like those of Ultimate Civics and the Campaign to Reform Democracy that are calling for a Constitutional Amendment.  While I’m not an advocate of that, I am interested in changing anything that reinforces the Corporate Personhood Doctrine.  And, I would like to see that sewer money kept away from our politicians.

So, “we, the people,” I welcome your thoughts on money, politics and the impact of this Supreme Court decision

The UN-Security Council-mandated International Security Assistance Force ISAF calls for the type of coordination practiced by nations like the Netherlands, where we can measure success.  In the US, we face myriad obstacles to achieving this balance of civilian and military engagement that requires increased cooperation among federal agencies with long histories of mutual distrust and wildly disproportionate budgets.  Add congressional district politics to those difficulties and you get a sense of the daunting challenge.  Nonetheless, DeGennaro is championing just such an effort and, according to her first-hand accounts, many of the most senior US Generals believe it is the only way for any type of “victory.”  See also: Leon Furth on “Forward Engagement” and “Anticipatory Governance”; Gabriel Marcella on “Lessons from Colombia”; Lamont Hempel on Environmental Governance: Global Challenge.

By serendipity, I addressed the Leadership Forum at about the same time DeGennaro addressed WPI and one of my central themes was how critical it is to get leaders from different sectors to recognize their mutual self-interest in collaborating.  This has been an area that I have pioneered since initiating multi-sector partnerships in the 1970s.  I worked with Nelson Mandela bringing together divergent constituencies for reconstruction and development in South Africa.  I brought together environmentalists and extractive companies to develop renewable resources in the US and abroad.  I helped multi-national corporations collaborate with nations and NGOs on improving their HIV/AIDS prevention, protection, testing and treatment. 

You can watch this one-minute clip in which I briefly describe critical skills of carefully listening to divergent views and acting as a translator to help seeming adversaries grasp that they have much to gain from become allies.  You can learn more about how I do this work globally by contacting beCause Global Consulting and you can follow me on Twitter @NadineHack.