International Women’s Day
Dialogue on Diversity Honors
“March is International Women’s Month; March 8th is International Women’s Day!” With these words Ma. Cristina Caballero, President of Dialogue on Diversity, begins the observance of this important time of year!. Today’s Newsletter celebrates two of the century’s illustrious women achievers.  Subsequent newsletters will highlight the lives and work of many other figures from the courageous and talented band whose work has at last come to its much deserved light.
H.E. Ivonne a-Baki, whom Dialogue on Diversity honored in 1999 with its INTERNATIONAL AWARD in the annual ceremonies at the Hall of the Americas of the Organization of American States, is a native of Ecuador, but spent some years in Lebanon with her husband. Back in Ecuador, she held a number of governmental posts (most never before held by a woman), among them the top administrator in the critical and heading the ministry of production and trade, in the early 2000s. and  stints in the U.S. —first in a four year window straddling the twentieth century, and most recently from an appointment by the President the Republic in 2020, a post in which she is with the full flowering of her skills representing the country in a most delicate period in the relationships of Latin American polities to the U.S. and of the economic and civic development of Ecuador, both with the world and with the Andean countries bound in their own trade pact, which was negotiated and urged into action by H.E.. A-Baki herself, and in foreign affairs around the world, inclusive of diplomatic and cultural relationship with western Europe.
In the midst of a busy life H.Et. A-Baki has as well studied art history, at the Sorbonne and at Harvard, where she founded the university art society. This branch of her skills and spirit has issued in serious attention on a new facet of her multifaceted personality — the artistic. She was moved to make this skill her own in a series of sophisticated paintings, many of which grace the walls of the Ecuadorian Embassy in Washington, D.C. 
Another high achiever honored in 2006 by Dialogue on Diversity, with its ENTREPRENEURSHIP AWARD, at the Organization of American States, Washington, D.C., is Sonia Marie de León de Vega, conductor of the Orquesta Santa Cecilia at Los Angeles, California, an ensemble of some 85 players, founded in 1997, which holds its own in the crowded artistic environment of the metropolis. The musicians under Ms. Leon de Vega’s bâton are professionals of high order, and the orchestra’s musical portfolio includes the gamut of serious music — from the standard western classics to the rich vein of harmonies being produced by the composers of the Latin American nations, music that, unjustly, is little heard in North America, where its sonic effects and novel harmonies are enthusiastically appreciated in when the opportunity offers itself. 
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