Athena Heads to Shanghai for Global Symposium

In March, Athena Director Kathryn Kolbert and Abigail Lewis, along with six Barnard students, participated in Barnard’s 6th Annual Global Symposium: Women Changing China, in Shanghai.  Kolbert moderated a lively and thoughtful panel, “Insights into Business and Finance,” with Bing Song, Managing Director, Goldman Sachs, Beijing; Jiang Peizhen, Chairman and General Manager, Golden Throat Group; Yuan Li, Managing Editor, Chinese Wall Street Journal; and Yunli Lou, Founding Partner, Milestone Capital. Nearly 300 women and students from across China attended the day-long event that was generously sponsored by Greenland Holding Group.  

Click here to read more about the symposium.

Student Fellows Conduct Leadership Workshop

Six Barnard Student Global Fellows (three of whom are Athena Scholars) conducted a very successful Young Women’s Leadership Workshop for Chinese students at the High School Affiliated to Fudan University in Shanghai.  More than 75 girls from 20 high schools participated in the program.  Under the tutelage of Athena’s Abigail Lewis, the Fellows developed a leadership assessment tool and helped the students create small social action projects. A school recycling program, a vocational training program for migrant workers, and a plan for a biannual competition to redesign school uniforms were among the projects that the Chinese students created.

For more information on the Young Women’s Leadership Workshop, please click here.

Athena Film Festival Goes to Berlin

In February, Melissa Silverstein, co-founder of the Athena Film Festival, traveled to Berlin, Germany to attend the 64th Berlinale. The Dortmund | Cologne International Women’s Film Festival in association with the Athena Film Festival on behalf of the International Women`s Film Festival Network) sponsored a well-attended panel Get Yourself Connected: a discussion on the situation of women in the film industry.

More than 200 guests attended the panel — including directors — and many called for a quota for women in public film funding. The international panel included film director Jasmila Žbanić, Cornelia Hammelmann from the German Federal Film Fund, Susana de la Sierra, General Director ICAA, Spanish Film Institute, Claudia Landsberger, Head of EYE International, Film Institute Netherland, Sanja Ravlić, President of the Gender Equality Study Group Eurimages, and Melissa Silverstein.   In March and April, Silverstein has been spreading the word about the Athena Film Festival at various speaking engagements across the globe. She presented at The Tricky Women Film Festival in Vienna, Women in Film and TV-AT in Halifax, Nova Scotia, and at Femcine in Santiago, Chile.

Upcoming Events

#StartupColumbia

Friday, April 11, 2014
8:30AM – 6PM
Diana Center, Barnard College

#StartupColumbia is Columbia University’s first annual entrepreneurship conference, organized by CORE, Columbia Entrepreneurs Organization (CEO), and Columbia Entrepreneurship with help from the Eugene Lang Entrepreneurship Center, the Athena Center for Leadership Studies, and Columbia Engineering.

For more information and tickets, click here.

Athena Power Talk: A Conversation with Jimmie Briggs

Tuesday, April 22, 2014
7PM – 8:30PM
Julius Held Lecture Hall, 314 Barnard Hall

This month, Jimmie Briggs, award winning journalist, educator, lecturer and social entrepreneur will deliver a Power Talk.  The creator of the “Man Up Campaign” that mobilizes people in 25 countries to stop violence against the women and girls in their communities, Briggs was selected as GQ Magazine’s “Better Men, Better World” winner in 2010, and most recently received a Medal of Distinction from Barnard College. With the eye of an intrepid storyteller, and the compassion that comes from bearing witness to far-flung tragedies in the world, Briggs is the author of Innocents Lost: When Child Soldiers Go To War, and is currently working on his second book, Blood Work; a personal memoir and exploration of manhood in the 21st century.

Click here to register for FREE tickets.