Keynote Speakers

Marie C. Wilson
President and Founder, The White House Project

Marie Wilson’s 30-year career as an advocate for women’s leadership is substantial. Creator of Take Our Daughters and Sons to Work® Day, author of Closing the Leadership Gap: Why Women Can and Must Help Run the World, and president of the Ms. Foundation for Women for nearly two decades, Wilson founded The White House Project in 1991 to help build a more diverse and representative democracy.  

Throughout her career, Wilson has been a driving force behind an array of achievements that include the Collaborative Fund for Women’s Economic Development, the Collaborative Fund for Healthy Girls/Healthy Women, and the Ballot Box Initiative, a national straw poll that highlights top women leaders. Wilson has also authored several studies on women’s leadership in politics, the media, and culture, and she co-authored the critically acclaimed Mother Daughter Revolution. She was the first woman elected to the Des Moines City Council in 1983, and in 1995 she served as delegate to the United Nations Fourth World Conference on Women.

Highly sought-after as a speaker on women’s political leadership and the interests of women and girls, Wilson has been a guest on most major network news programs in the United States, France, and Britain and has been featured in globally recognized newspapers and periodicals.

Wilson received the prestigious Robert W. Scrivner Award for Creative Grantmaking in 2002 for her many philanthropic accomplishments and the Leadership for Equity and Diversity (LEAD) Award from Women & Philanthropy. Drake University, where she once served as director of women’s programs, awarded Wilson an honorary doctorate of community service, and Chatham College presented her with an honorary doctorate.