Women's Leadership News | February 2016
$200,000 Gift Takes Steinem Chair Campaign over $2 Million Mark

Just a year and a half after launching the campaign to create an endowed chair in honor of feminist icon Gloria Steinem, we have surpassed the two million mark in donations. The funds raised, totaling over $2.1 million, are from more than 250 individuals and 12 foundations. The goal for the Steinem initiative is to raise $3 million to create the Gloria Steinem Endowed Chair in Media, Culture and Feminist Studies and $500,000 for the Steinem Program Fund.
 
"Never before has an endowed academic chair been named for a living feminist icon," said IWL Director Alison Bernstein. "We are delighted that this latest donation to push the funds over $2 million came from another female media pioneer, Fran Zone/John Mack Carter Fund."

Fran Zone, an award-winning leadership communications strategist, is the founder and CEO of Zone Communication.   She is also the founder and steward of the John Mack Carter Fund. According to Zone, "The Fund stemmed from a national public awareness campaign I helped create in 1992 called The Coalition to Stop Sexual Harassment. The Campaign's major champion was John Mack Carter, former Ladies' Home Journal, McCall's, and Good Housekeeping editor."

The Steinem Chair is a unique collaboration among the IWL, the School of Communication and Information, (SC&I) and the Department of Women's and Gender Studies. Read more about the vision for the Gloria Steinem Chair and how it will advance women's leadership in media.
Why it matters...
A Note from Alison R. Bernstein

As part of our "Seats at the Table" crowdfunding initiative to raise support for the Gloria Steinem Chair, we promised an intimate conversation with Gloria to the top donors. Last week, Gerry Laybourne, creator of the Nickelodeon brand and founder of Oxygen Media, and I had the pleasure of sitting in my dining room on the Upper West side drinking tea (yes Women are like tea bags!) and encouraging the conversation via conference call.

Needless to say, it was timely: our major focus was on media, culture and gender as it relates to the style and substance of the current election cycle.
We asked Gloria and our donors to consider questions about how the blurring of entertainment and politics affects our democracy and how future occupants of the Steinem Chair could engage young people, especially women, who will be our future media leaders.

We came away with the overwhelming concern for investigative journalism and its future. We might even consider a well-known investigative journalist to be the first occupant of the Gloria Steinem Chair. We began imagining students embarking on collective assignments to investigate topics of grave concern.

Many wise women were on the call and we were reminded that the Steinem initiative is all about social change and that it matters more than ever.

Special thanks to Gloria and our donors who joined the conversation -- and to all of you who are working to get us to our goal. Please help us keep the momentum going and support the Gloria Steinem Endowed Chair today.                       
            
From Exclusion to Inclusion:
250 Years of Women at Rutgers
"Really? I never knew that!" That's what you will be saying when you join us to delve into the history of women at Rutgers. Students will share their little known findings from months of archival research. Leading Rutgers women's studies scholars will open our eyes to the transformational scholarship on women that is remaking the known world. Don't miss this special Rutgers 250 event.

March 8, 1-6:00 PM Mabel Smith Douglass Room, Mabel Smith Douglass Library
Filmmaker June Cross Named
2016 Laurie Chair
June Cross
 photo by Clare Holt Photography
 
June Cross, the Emmy award winning filmmaker and journalist, is our 2016 Laurie Chair in Women's Studies. She will be working with the IWL consortium, Douglass Residential College, and the Department of Women's and Gender Studies to produce a documentary film on 250 years of women at Rutgers. This exciting project is a collaborative initiative of the IWL consortium and funded in part by the new Mary S. Hartman, Edwin M. Hartman, and Samuel M. Hartman Founder's Fund at the IWL.

Wilhemina's War, Cross's most recent film, is the story of Wilhemina Dixon, an uneducated daughter of sharecroppers, who becomes a force in helping her granddaughter survive the health risks and social stigma of living with HIV in the South, where HIV/AIDS is the leading cause of death among African American women. The film bears witness to the resilience and determination of the human spirit in the face of tremendous adversity.

The broadcast is Monday, February 29, 10pm EST. Check local listings here, and watch a special preview.
Rutgers University Institute For Women's Leadership  | 848-932-1463 |   iwl.rutgers.edu 
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