The disruptive challenges of the past year culturally, economically and politically, highlight the fact that independent funding for resources aimed at improving the lives and livelihoods of women and girls makes a difference. More is needed.

Giving Tuesday, December 2, the first Tuesday after Thanksgiving, is the vehicle that powers many non-profits, institutions and movements. That includes Take The Lead, with  the mission to “prepare, develop, inspire, and propels all women of all diversities and intersectionalities to take their fair and equal share of leadership positions across all sectors.”

Individual donations make a huge difference.

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What happens when you host more than 3,000 women in tech from across the globe in one place for the world’s largest conference for women in tech over three days with 300 sessions and more than 300 speakers?

You get unimaginable amounts of applause, laughter, mentorship, collaboration, learning, inspiration, brainstorming, friendship making, energy and action working for the good of women in tech fields and everywhere.

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“It is so much harder to be a girl now than when I was growing up,” says Fran Liebowitz, 75, author and outspoken public speaker on the subjects of gender, bias, identity, work, democracy, popular culture and the future.

Today’s culture is perilous, she says, speaking in a packed Northwestern University’s Cahn Auditorium in Evanston outside of Chicago. “It is not perfect, it is not even good. It’s all misogyny.  A lot is about being anti-woke.”

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“You really want to have a reason why you make art,” declares Sally Mann, who was speaking at the University of Chicago’s Ida Noyes Hall, built in 1916 as the women’s clubhouse and gymnasium.

This physical storied past was surrounding hundreds in the audience at the Chicago Humanities Festival, eager to hear from Mann, named America’s Best Photographer by Time magazine in 2001, a Guggenheim fellow, and author of the new book, Art Work: On The Creative Life.

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“I am not who you think I am. I am so much more,” said Robin Wall Kimmerer, Indigenous scientist, botanist and best-selling author of Braiding Sweetgrass and the more recent, The Serviceberry: An Economy of Gifts and Abundance.

Speaking at the Chicago Humanities Fall Festival recently on National Indigenous Peoples Day at the Morton Arboretum in suburban Chicago, Kimmerer, a SUNY Distinguished Teaching Professor of Environmental Biology, and the founder and director of the Center for Native Peoples and the Environment, offered lessons of gratitude, reciprocity and community in leadership and life.

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It has been a week of global and national record-breaking milestones for female leadership across generations in business, politics, faith communities, music, media and more. At a time of intense cultural pushback, scrutiny and divisiveness toward leaders identifying as women, what lessons can we learn so these breakthroughs are not just one and done?

A look at the momentous achievements on the recent calendar represent different points of view and approaches. It is up to individuals to learn what each leader supports and why.

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