Chapter 13

Being in the Rooms Where It Happens

“WHY AREN’T THERE more women on the TED stage?” I asked Chris Anderson, chief curator of the TED conferences. We were taking a Sunday afternoon walk in 2009, basking in the aftermath of yet another awesome TED conference. “I’ve been a TEDster for years, and value the TED Talks I hear at the conferences and watch online, but I’ve noticed that most of them are given by men. Surely, there are women with ‘ideas worth spreading,’” I said, quoting TED’s famous tagline.

“I’m sure there are,” Chris answered. “We just have a bit more difficulty finding them. I was looking for a woman rocket scientist this year, but just didn’t find one.”

“I’ll find one for you,” I heard myself offering, “and I’ll also send you a list of tech entrepreneurs, physicians, architects, artists. You name the sector, I’ll find a woman for it.” And with that offer accepted, I began to send him names of women for the TED stage.

THAT’S ESSENTIALLY THE origin story of how TEDWomen came into being. Chris recommended I meet with the smart women on TED’s leadership team at this time, and after several brainstorming sessions, we proposed a new TED conference dedicated to TED Talks by women. Chris agreed that the timing was right and we put together a team that was led by June Cohen, then editorial director, and included Lara Stein, who was leading the burgeoning TEDx movement; Ronda Carnegie, who headed up partnerships; and Kelly Stoetzel, one of the leading curators and now head of conferences at TED. I signed on as editorial director, continuing my responsibilities as CEO of the Paley Center for Media. We had no sooner announced the first TEDWomen conference for 2010 when the avalanche of criticism began:

“Don’t create a pink TED!”

“Women shouldn’t be put into the TEDWomen ghetto!”

“You’re going to lower the standard of a TED Talk.”

And perhaps the unkindest cut of all: “Women want to be on the real TED stage, not some feminist sideshow.”

Some charges of gender washing came from women who were already longtime “TEDsters” and either wanted to keep their privileged places inside that mostly male-dominated culture and community at the time, or perhaps were honestly concerned that TEDWomen might be viewed as a “lesser” option for speakers.

I shouldn’t have been surprised or even disappointed by the criticism, but I was. Most of these hostile tweets and Facebook posts were from women, and that’s always the hard part for me—women not supporting other women. Some see this as internalized self-hatred; I think of it as part of cultural conditioning to compete and compare, leading us to sometimes vote against our own best interests or to buy into a scarcity ideology that there are only a few places at the top and it’s best to protect that turf rather than try to share it or to advocate for another woman to get her own turf.

The press fanned the flames of the burgeoning controversy, but Chris and the TED team didn’t back off their support. Instead, we decided to embrace the criticisms as the theme for the first TEDWomen conference.

On December 5, 2010, in the nation’s capital, TEDWomen 2010 welcomed a sellout audience of more than one thousand attendees, and as the lights went down in the theatre at the International Trade Center, the opening video posed the same question we had been hearing for months: “Why a TEDWomen?”

The screen at the front of the theatre flashed with a single, incomplete sentence: “Talking about women’s ideas in 2010 is .”

One by one, the blank was replaced with words we’d heard from critics in the previous year.

Not necessary. Irrelevant. Gender ghettoizing. Dated. Risky.

Then the video offered some alternative opinions:

Important for progress. Bold. Worthwhile. A game changer.

Moans, then laughter, then cheers rose from the audience as we collectively acknowledged the skeptics and then used the moment to highlight the profound potential of TEDWomen.

That week, we broke new ground with the world-changing ideas of forty-two women and eight men (we were clear that this wasn’t a women-only conference or program, just one that reversed the ratio of gender voices on the main TED stage or seen on TED.com in 2010).

That first program had its share of marquee names, such as Hillary Clinton, who was secretary of state at the time, and former secretary of state Madeleine Albright. Ted Turner appeared, too—and joked in an onstage interview that he thought the conference was named after him! Sorry, Ted—but TED actually stands for technology, entertainment, and design, even though that program definition expanded long ago and TED is just TED, recognized and respected as a breakthrough idea that well-prepared and well-presented talks about ideas would find an online audience. Indeed, TED Talks are available in nearly every country, translated by volunteer translators into multiple languages and viewed by hundreds of millions of people.

It’s a pretty impressive reach for an organization that began in Monterey, California, with a few hundred mostly male technologists, engineers, and scientists.

In our first year, we also featured TED Talks by not one but two rocket scientists, as well as two robotics engineers! Cynthia Breazeal, founder and director of the Personal Robots group at MIT’s Media Lab, explored the conundrum that we use robots on Mars but not in our living rooms and argued that we need robots to be socialized. Heather Knight, who runs Marilyn Monrobot, a robot theatre company with comedy performances, shared some of the work she’d done to help integrate socially interactive robots into the world, where they could be of value in areas like education and medical care.

Featuring women from other countries was a focus, too, and Dr. Annet Namayanja, a farmer from Uganda, got a standing ovation when she shared a new process for producing a bean that had more protein and nutrients for a population that relies on them for sustenance.

Eve Ensler brought the audience to its feet—again—with an impassioned plea for a global community of women to be more aware of the violence threatening one out of three women in the world.

Buddhist leader Joan Halifax took up the difficult subject of death and coping with grief.

Omega Institute for Holistic Studies founder Elizabeth Lesser issued a caution about otherizing and suggested that we all take someone we considered the other to lunch.

There were talks and conversations during meals and breaks, and at one of the community dinners, Arianna Huffington held us rapt with her convincing argument that we all need more sleep. It turned out that Arianna had taken a red-eye to give that talk, which she sandwiched between two conference commitments in the same day. I don’t know when she sleeps, but I have loved watching her thrive as a visionary entrepreneur and good friend.

We also introduced a new kind of TED session: duets, two people giving one TED Talk together. A Masai father, Lemeria Ole Leperes, and his daughter, Jacklyne Mantaine Lemeria, traveled for the first time out of their village to stand in their traditional dress and talk about their family’s decision to join a movement to end the practice of female genital mutilation in their region. Wildlife filmmakers and conservationists Beverly and Dereck Joubert spoke about the threat to the big cats, elephants, and rhinos, subjects of their award-winning documentaries and critical to the survival of the fragile African ecosystems in which these two remarkable human beings, National Geographic explorers for two decades, live and work.

Over the years, these duets have included mothers and sons, husbands and wives, business partners, and in one especially memorable talk, a young woman from Iceland stood with the young Australian man who had sexually assaulted her when they were both teenagers. There were tears, disbelief, even anger in that room that day, but also admiration for the courage it took Thordis Elva and Tom Stranger to go public with their story of healing and reconciliation. For me, it was a brave step forward that helped many people view their own experiences with sexual assault through a different lens and perhaps find a new path to understanding and even forgiveness. Theirs was a very brave talk and a somewhat controversial experience for the TEDWomen audience, but Chris supported us in tackling tough subjects.

Also at this first TEDWomen, a then little-known Google executive named Sheryl Sandberg took the stage to talk about a phenomenon she was witnessing in the tech industry—young women “taking their foot off the pedal just as they should be accelerating in their careers.” She called for women to lean in to opportunity. She had planned to talk about technology, but right before she went onstage, Sheryl told me how hard it had been to say good-bye to her daughter—again—to fly to Washington, DC, for this conference. “Tell that story!” I urged, and she did! The talk was well received but none of us, including Sheryl, had any idea what a phenomenon Lean In, the book based on the idea of her TED Talk, would become: it launched a global movement, landing Sheryl on the cover of Time magazine. More recently, her position as COO of Facebook put her on the front-page news again, but this time for allegations of the company’s role in the 2016 presidential election.

From that first TEDWomen to the present, the TED team has always been clear that TEDWomen isn’t a “women’s conference” as such, but rather a TED conference with a central narrative about women’s ideas and accomplishments. Unlike TED, which convenes in the same venue in Vancouver every spring, TEDWomen has moved every year, tapping into new communities while sustaining a large group of TEDWomen who return time and again.

Another objective of TEDWomen was to connect and build a global community through the TEDx organizers. We have accomplished that beyond our expectations. In 2010, more than two hundred TEDxWomen licensees organized convenings all over the world and in hundreds of US cities, taking a live feed of the TEDWomen program and adding their own on the same theme. Every year the size of these simultaneous conferences has grown, and we have, in fact, built and sustained a global community of women and men coming together to hear TED Talks at TEDWomen and curating their own TEDxWomen conferences.

The responses over the years from these gatherings are reminders of how many remaining barriers to women’s voices and ideas still exist. Consider the TEDxWomen convening that takes place in Saudi Arabia. The TEDxWomen organizer wrote me that she has to take extra precautions to convene somewhere where doors can be locked, so that the women students can learn from the diversity of subjects and themes of a TEDWomen conference without the content being censored.

OVER THE YEARS, I’ve noticed that a narrative will sometimes emerge that was unplanned in our curatorial meetings—as a number of talks will reference a common idea and lift it into a meme. Spatial justice was one such idea that evolved at TEDWomen 2017 in New Orleans. Harvard-trained architect Liz Ogbu, a woman of color, introduced the term to explain why design needs to be looked at through lenses of equality, fairness, and justice. Liz invited us to look at how architecture can thoughtlessly perpetuate systemic injustices dividing communities and isolating individuals.

In a later session, another architect and woman of color, Deanna Van Buren, talked about how she’s been designing restorative-justice centers instead of prisons. If we’re looking at prisons simply as a place to imprison instead of rehabilitate, she told us, we’re not looking at how design can foster justice; we’re just perpetuating mass incarceration, a problem that disproportionately affects African American men. “You can’t just go in and create a new space until you go through a process of truth and reconciliation; you need to first understand everything that’s been lost in that community so you can rebuild it,” Deanna told us.

In another session, John Cary, also an architect, demonstrated how most buildings, designed by men, reflect a gender lens—for example, ladies’ bathrooms never have enough stalls! The novel theme of spatial justice, which crossed all lines of community and environment, emerged as one of the most talked about of the entire conference. Many came up to me and said, “That idea of spatial justice shifted the way I think about everything now.”

That’s the point, actually, and the satisfaction of curating TEDWomen—to shift perspectives through new ideas and powerful personal stories and experiences. We’ve made it possible for more than three hundred women—scientists, architects, artists, activists, and writers; leaders from government, civil society, and social enterprises—to give their TED Talks and to see their ideas spread to the world. So rather than creating a pink ghetto, as some feared, TEDWomen has made TED a more inclusive community, too. The numbers of women at the big TED have grown substantially, as have the numbers of talks by women on TED.com.

THERE IS NO question that TED has set new standards for all conferences. A TED Talk may be a life-defining invitation, a singular opportunity to have your talk captured with multiple cameras and by the most experienced production team, on a well-designed set and with months of preparation. More and more, I observe that in every forum that features talks, the influence of TED Talks is clear. What makes a successful TED Talk? TED’s curator, Chris Anderson, answers that question in his book, TED Talks: The Official TED Guide to Public Speaking. I recommend it for everyone, and we send a copy to every potential TED speaker.

Of course, being a good storyteller is key and women are, in my experience, innately good storytellers. But what many have to overcome are self-imposed barriers, such as the fear of sounding braggy, a feeling I experienced writing this very book! Even the most accomplished female scientists and technologists or physicians worry about being good enough to give a TED Talk—a response that I’ve never heard from any man I’ve coached!

There is also a very particular alchemy that happens when women gather together, which is one of the benefits of TEDWomen that I value most. I hear from women in the audience about a talk or a conversation that ignited something new for them—a new direction, passion, purpose. Or how they met someone they later collaborated with, or formed a deep friendship during dinner. I think some women come more for the community than the talks! I noted a group of about twenty women sitting together during lunch at a recent TEDWomen, talking, laughing, and listening intently to one another.

“How do you all think the conference is going so far?” I asked them. “Did you all come together?”

“Never met before!” one volunteered. Another added, “We’re all search executives on this side of the table,” and from the other side, another said, “And on this side, we’re all therapists of one sort or another.”

I had to smile. “This is an interesting combo; maybe your connection will lead to better-adjusted women getting bigger and better jobs.”

That got a laugh, but I heard the following week that one of the search executives at the table did, in fact, put forward one of the family therapists across the table for a major executive position in a pharmaceutical company. Such outcomes are not our intention, but it’s part of being in the rooms where this and so much more can happen.

One clear intention for me in curating TEDWomen and other conferences is that often there is an opportunity to showcase some of the awesome women I am lucky enough to know as friends. In one particularly memorable interview on a TEDWomen stage, I talked more about female friendships with two such friends, Jane Fonda and Lily Tomlin, whose friendship is the frame for their series, Grace and Frankie.

“I don’t even know what I would do without my women friends,” Jane said onstage. “They make me stronger.”

Lily added, “Recent research points out that not having close female friendships is as detrimental to your health as smoking or being overweight.”

“Our friendships are full disclosure, we go deep, we risk vulnerability, that’s something that men don’t do,” Jane agreed. “Women’s friendships are like a renewable source of power.”

For me, that interview summed up why it matters for us to be in these rooms together—tapping into that renewable source of power!

We’ve done some reframing about age, too, at TEDWomen. Every year, we’ve invited girls to give TED Talks, showcasing the smart young women of tomorrow whose ideas are worth knowing and spreading.

A twelve-year-old Google Science Fair winner started her TED Talk with “All my life, I’ve wanted to cure cancer!” She’s on her way to producing research that just might unlock a new treatment. And at the other end of the age scale, one of my favorite older and wiser women, the outspoken ninety-four-year-old “Queen of Creole Cuisine,” Leah Chase, set the audience buzzing when she shared her opinion:

“Young women just don’t know their power. They don’t seem to know yet that women are just smarter than men.” Leaning forward from her chair to make the point, she added, “You’ve got to remember about men: you have to build them up, honey. It’s not hard; just fill ’em up with cheap gas. That’s all it takes.”

Mrs. Chase got a big laugh, but the fact is her conversation on TED.com is getting a lot of views as she also shared a bold commitment that she and her husband held firm during the days of civil-rights demonstrations and violence: their restaurant, Dooky Chase, was open to all activists, black and white, making it a popular stop for the Freedom Riders who were risking dangers every day to protest a segregated South.

The privilege of being able to offer the unprecedented reach and impact of a TED Talk to women and, yes, some good men, whose work deserves to be known, better understood, and celebrated; whose ideas can and do ignite important conversations and outcomes; whose commitments to creating opportunities and access are changing lives and communities… these are the reasons for me that TEDWomen came to be and continues.

My partnership with TED is work that fully engages my passion and aligns with my purpose as an advocate for other women and my desire “to be in the rooms where it happens”—to paraphrase a popular song from Lin-Manuel Miranda’s Broadway hit, Hamilton. In these rooms and forums and conferences, history is sometimes made or rewritten, culture is challenged, power paradigms are shifted, communities and connections are created and sustained, and ideas worth spreading are shared.

CONFESSION: I AM something of a conference addict. Last year, I participated in six women’s conferences on three continents in four months. I had experiences that enriched my life with new connections, reconnected me with old friends, and stimulated new thinking and plans. I always feel my time at such gatherings is worthwhile, and now new research confirms the value: data collected in a Harvard Business School research study conclude women who go to women’s conferences are twice as likely to get a promotion within a year and three times as likely to get a 10 percent salary bump! I’m not looking for either at this time in my life, but this is a meaningful outcome for women who could benefit in their careers by their participation in women’s conferences, which are sometimes dismissed as a gabfest or as purely personal or social time.

Researcher Shawn Achor, author of The Happiness Advantage, adds another layer to the value proposition with the finding that 78 percent of the attendees at women’s conferences felt “more optimistic about the future,” while 71 percent “felt more connected to others.” This feeling of connection, Achor says, brings results: “If people feel like they are trying to get out of depression alone, or fighting inequality alone, or striving for success alone, they burn out and the world feels like a huge burden. But there is a powerful, viable alternative to individually pursuing success and happiness: doing it together.”

At one of the Women and Power conferences convened every two years by the Omega Women’s Leadership Center in Rhinebeck, New York, I had been asked by the founder and my good friend Elizabeth Lesser and Leadership Center director, Carla Goldstein, to interview one of the women Nobel laureates attending that year—Jody Williams. You may remember she had been awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for her work in negotiating treaties to eliminate the dangers of remaining land mines in areas where they had been used to target civilian populations. I began our conversation with a question about how she was using the power that comes with being a Nobel laureate.

“I’m not powerful,” Jody shot back, defensively. “I hate that term and I don’t think of myself as having power.” I pushed back, reminding her that anyone who can negotiate treaties with difficult governments and achieve the results that her organization had achieved, and the global recognition of a Nobel Peace Prize, had a kind of power or certainly influence. She continued to resist the description, and perhaps, to make her point another way, she kicked off her cowboy boots, a signature wardrobe item for Jody, and did the rest of the interview with bare feet dangling on the main stage. I followed suit, barefoot and toe to toe, in a way I can’t quite imagine happening anywhere other than at this women’s gathering at Omega, where we are encouraged to connect with nature and nurture body and soul. Jody and I got more personal, unpacking some of the challenging stereotypes and barriers that keep women from owning their personal power and using it collectively.

I acknowledge Omega’s Women and Power conferences for putting the subject of power forward, reframing it as a means and not an end in itself; supporting the journey for so many of us to own our power; and modeling through the leaders and programs featured during the conference how we can use it, and share it. Like Jody Williams and other remarkable women I have met at Omega and around the world, I deflected and denied my power for many years after I clearly had some as well as a significant sphere of influence. I’ve come a long way on this journey, discovering more every day, actually, about how to use my power for the biggest and most significant impact. Today, I have quotes about power on my business cards and call my independent company, POW! Strategies—Power of Women—and if nothing else, interesting and sometimes provocative conversations result when I give someone my card.

In the interest of diving deeper into the subject of women and power, I partnered with former TEDWomen colleague, Ronda Carnegie, and with support from the Rockefeller Foundation, we convened two women leaders forums at the Bellagio conference center in 2017 and again in 2019. With small cohorts of women leaders from the front lines of power in government, civil society, business, media, and philanthropy, we shaped some principles for how power can be used to be a transformative change leader—attributes often associated with women. What Ronda and I have observed in these forums and what I am experiencing in all the rooms and conferences where women come together, share stories, shape solutions, and make things happen is that connected women leaders are the transformative force needed more than ever. As everyone from Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi to the iconic Beyonce reminds us, “No one gives you power. You have to take it.”

Let’s take it and use it to make a better world.

DANGEROUS TIMES CALL FOR DANGEROUS WOMEN

In Conversation with Sandi Toksvig

I first met Sandi in one such room where it happens—at the WOW conference in London. I knew who she was long before: she’s been a well-known writer, performer, and host of musicals and programs on British radio and television for many years. She hosts the closing-night ceremony called Mirth Matters at WOW every year, and it’s a favorite! Currently, she’s the host of two of the BBC’s most popular shows.

Sandi is also an activist. In March of 2015, Sandi cocreated with journalist Catherine Mayer the Women’s Equality Party (Sandi quipped that they gave it that name “because we wanted to be clear”) to fight for women’s equal pay and equal representation in politics, business, education, health-care research, and more. Today this political party has more than 65,000 members and seventy branches throughout the UK, and according to the Daily Telegraph, is “the fastest growing political force in the UK.” Sandi’s TED Talk at TEDWomen 2016 presented equality as an idea worth spreading, and it’s become more dangerous and effective in getting more women to run and to win political campaigns.

When did you begin to think of yourself as a dangerous woman?

Sandi: I’m in my fourth decade in show business and have got used to being seen as a danger to the accepted order. When I came out in 1994, there was not a single out lesbian in the world of British entertainment. I came out partly because I didn’t realize anyone thought I was in and because I had three kids and didn’t want them to live their lives in the shadow of a secret. I believe secrets are a cancer of the soul, and I wanted my babies to stand up, proud of their family. That week the Daily Mail, one of the more reprehensible UK tabloids, published a front-page headline declaring, “If God had meant lesbians to have children he would have made it possible.” As I was a lesbian with three kids, it seemed to me the editor was not quite thinking things through, but I didn’t really have time to argue.

Immediately the death threats began, mostly from high-minded religious people who wanted to kill me on God’s behalf because presumably God was busy and they needed to pick up the slack. It seemed I was threatening thousands of years of belief by merely existing. We had to go into hiding and in the still of the night; it was terrifying. Nearly a quarter of a century later, things have calmed down. I didn’t ask to be seen as dangerous, but if it is the badge I have to wear in order to get things done then I shall wear it with pride.

Is there an age component to feeling more dangerous?

Sandi: I don’t think feeling dangerous has to do with age. I suspect most women can recall a time in their youth when they became enraged for being treated in a particular way based entirely on gender. Maybe age allows us to care less what people think. I hope I grow more dangerous and disgraceful with each passing year.

I suppose my journey toward dangerousness began when I was four and my father came home from a business trip with a rocket for my older brother and a silver necklace for me. I was sure I could build a rocket faster and better than any boy, and I was so angry. It is a rage that sits within me and can still be triggered by the producer who calls me forceful in a derogatory way while he smiles at the badly behaved male comics I often work with who are merely being creative.

I remember there was a couple who my parents knew well. He worked and she stayed home looking after their two sons. They became like family. He was a big guy and strong. Sometimes he would get mad at something his wife had said or done. He’d put his hand on the back of her neck and squeeze it hard until she apologized. All the other grown-ups just let him do it. No one ever said anything. I haven’t seen them for years, but sometimes I think of her. She’ll never know that somehow I am still trying to stop her being treated like that.

How does being dangerous play out in your life and work?

Sandi: I think it is very tough for my wife and family; being married to an activist is exhausting and some days I tire myself. It would be nice to just let a few things slide and hope someone else catches the ball.

The hardest challenge is to energize the next generation. Society has become so focused on the self; there is such death of empathy on social media that getting anyone to look up from their phone and out to the world seems a Herculean labor. I’m hopeful that the Women’s Equality Party will get women off social media and onto podiums and into political office.

Are you optimistic about women leaders bringing about greater equality in these dangerous times?

Sandi: Amazing women fight every day for a better world. I don’t know if I can make a difference, but I believe they can. Maybe together we can inch the world forward.

As we talk, I am about to board a train to Brussels to address the European Women Alliance on the subject of gender equality. Women from twenty-seven countries are gathering together to see how we can help each other. I imagine that the room will be crawling with dangerous women, and that, at least, is a heartening thing and more of these rooms everywhere is where we need to be, together.