I Wish My Mother Had Taken Mackenzie Scott’s Advice

Issue 215 — December 19, 2022

My mother’s Wedgewood Bone china and Tiffany crystal wine, water, and cordial glasses glisten in the hutch I bought, where they could be not just stored but seen.

Mother had kept them packed away for many years. Why? Because she was “saving them for nice,” as she put it.

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Sistering: How Mutual Support Gives Female Philanthropists the Courage to Draw a Bigger Circle

Stacey Engle, VP for Marketing at Fierce and I shared our respective programs helping people have those difficult workplace conversations. Issue 66 — September 17, 2018 Women like to do things together. Nowhere is this more evident than in philanthropy where women’s giving circles and organizations large and small are making ripples, waves, and sometimes sea changes with…

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The Sum – Meaning of the Week: Transform

The first responsibility of leadership is the creation of meaning.” —Warren Bennis. Word of the week is TRANSFORM. As in the women who transformed Rwanda. As in women transforming lives and communities through philanthropy. As is in a transformational confrontation with one’s power demons. Ever have one of those weeks when you have to, as I…

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She’s Doing It: Mallika Dutt Defines Her Terms for Global Human Rights

Mallika Dutt

“You have to meet Mallika—she’s amazing!” my friend Lynn Harris enthused. She was so right. There are few people with visions big enough to encompass human rights on a global scale and then create breakthrough ways to advance them. Mallika Dutt did just that, and she tells her story in this week’s “She’s Doing It.” President and CEO of Breakthrough, the global human rights organization she started is based in New York and India and uses the power of arts, media, and pop culture to advance dignity, equality, and justice. Read on and be sure to watch the powerful video’s they’ve produced to deliver the message.

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Putting Your Purse Where Your Principles Are

Swanee Hunt sings the Mother Goose ditty, “The king was in the counting house counting out his money; the queen was in the parlor eating bread and honey,” to describe the gendered roles about money she learned at the knee of her Texas oil magnate father. Her sister, Helen LaKelly Hunt, talks about how her father brought her husband into his business because in the 1950’s it never occurred to him to hire his daughters.

How they went from that beginning to seed and lead the Women Moving Millions campaign which has thus far raised $176 million in $1 million+ gifts for women’s funds and organizations across the country reflects a journey often taken by women of wealth who want to use their money for worthy purposes. Indeed, while well-heeled men often go into politics or start businesses, women are more likely to start social movements or fund charities.

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