Forbes Power Women’s Summit: Kerry Washington, Elaine Welteroth And More Talk Empowerment

The 2024 Forbes Power Women’s Summit provided platform for women to own their power and express their vulnerabilities. Hosted at Jazz at Lincoln Center on September 11, the day opened with actresses Jenn Colella and Nikki M. James, who performed songs from the Broadway musical, Suffs, setting the tone of women’s empowerment. Moira Forbes, president and publisher of ForbesWomen, followed up with encouraging the attendees to find comfort in their camaraderie with each other.

Elaine Welteroth, journalist, author, and founder of the birthFUND, talked about the power of advocating for her own maternal health. During her panel discussion, she opened up about how using a midwife when she had her first child versus going to a hospital saved her life.

She recalled her experience when, 12 days after she gave birth to her son, she developed two life threatening deep vein thrombosis (DVTs) in her leg. She called her midwife after the early-morning discovery, who then advised her to go to the doctor immediately. The relationship she developed with her midwife gave her the confidence to reach out without having to make a formal appointment.

“In a country where Black women are dying at three to four times the rate of white women, and over 50% of families are describing their births as traumatic, we need better options,” she added during her talk at the event. She also stressed the importance of empowering women with knowledge on alternative childbirth methods. 

Elaine created birthFUND to help expecting mothers to pay the out of pocket costs that come with midwifery. Investors in the program include Serena Williams and Alexis Ohanan, who have publicly shared their troubling experiences that have led to their own commitment to maternal health advocacy.

Kerry Washington, Emmy-winning producer, actor, director, activist, and founder of Simpson Street Productions, believes in the power of specific, intentional storytelling. Washington named her production company after the street her mother grew up on in Bronx, N.Y. Through her company, Washington aims to get to the universality of the stories told, such as highlighting the complicated relationship of a daughter with a father who’s been in and out of prison on her Hulu show “Unprisoned.” She looks for common threads so that the stories can resonate with her audience. 

“The specificity in storytelling is what leads to the universal. The more specific you can be about who a person is, what they want, what they think, what they feel, where they come from, suddenly they feel real, and your human connection to that person opens up and you realize how similar we all are,” she told the audience during her panel. 

She also finds power in trusting her instincts when approaching her production strategy.  While interviewing Washington on stage, ForbesWomen editor Maggie McGrath highlighted that the “Unprisoned” star’s latest projects all have a common thread of amplifying issues with criminal justice.

The common thread of these stories came to Kerry by coincidence. Trusting her and her team’s instincts to tell stories that they would watch themselves while centering stories that affect marginalized communities and provide them with resources to improve these communities.

“We feel like when we make content we don’t just want to impact people’s hearts and minds, we also want to give them the tools and the framework to be able to be responsible about the ways that we’re opening up people’s hearts and minds,” she said.

Dr. Joy Buolamwini, the self-coined poet of code, indicated that the power of AI’s use for good rests in the hands of the people working with it. As founder of the Algorithmic Justice League (AJL) and author of Unmasking AI, she has been able to examine harmful uses of AI related to marginalized communities. During her panel, she showcased photos of well-known Black women, including Oprah Winfrey, Michelle Obama, and Serena Williams, and illustrated how AI facial recognition software register these women as men in their databases. She encourages folks to opt out of facial recognition at TSA checkpoints in the airport through the Opt Out Club. Opting out decreases the amount of data these programs store. She also promotes this through her #FreedomFlyers campaign.

“If we show AI systems from IBM, Amazon, Microsoft, some of the leading tech companies failing on [these] women, it [is] a way of saying that what we are assuming to be the most sophisticated is actually deeply flawed,” Joy said.

Her presentation also included performance of her poem, “AI, Ain’t I a Woman?” Having a love for the art and tech world, Joy uses her poetry talents to bring humanity to issues within AI. “I want to live in a world where I can walk on the street and not be afraid that my face is going to be captured and used in harmful ways, or that I’m going to be targeted as a criminal suspect just based on the way I look through an AI powered system,” Dr. Buolamwini added.