Women Leaders Advancing Sustainability

The UN Foundation gathered four trailblazing women from different sectors – Kathy Calvin (President and CEO, UN Foundation), Victoria Mars (Board Member, Mars, Incorporated), Naoko Ishii (COE and Chairperson for the Global Environmental Facility), and Radha Muthiah (President and CEO, Capital Area Food Bank) – to discuss where we are on sustainability and gender equality in 2019, how women leaders are in the driver’s seat for sustainable development and climate action globally and locally, and the opportunities to work across areas and issues going forward.

As moderator and veteran White House correspondent Ann Compton noted, the very presence of this panel was remarkable: you could not have gotten this many female leaders together in one room 40 years ago when she first started her career. Today, 131 female members sit in the U.S. Congress. The UN has reached gender parity of its senior management. And we know that closing the gender gap is not a side issue but a moral imperative and economic necessity.