Amanda Southworth at the Opening Keynote Session

Storytellers Winners Introduced by Laysha Ward

Serena Williams Says Women Need to Push Against Boundaries Till They Budge

Looking out at a crowd of more than 12,000 women who attended the Pennsylvania Conference for Women last week, Serena Williams said “I’ve traveled the world, and I’ve never seen anything like this,”

In a conversation with Ellen McGirt, senior editor of Fortune, Williams spoke about women supporting women, pushing boundaries, sexual harassment, and more. Widely recognized as the best tennis player in history, Williams is an increasingly outspoken advocate on women’s issues. Read more…

Amal Clooney Speaks about Today’s Defining Moment in Women’s Rights

Amal Clooney, who has been called the “consummate feminist superhero,” usually speaks about human rights issues that women face in other countries. But at the 2018 Pennsylvania Conference for Women, the international human rights lawyer spoke at length about issues women are facing in America.

“In the United States, a woman is assaulted every nine seconds,” Clooney said. “For too long, predators have felt safe, and women have felt unsafe.” But, “we are living through a moment of reckoning and a rebalancing of power,” Clooney added. “Survivors deserve justice…. Women deserve to be believed and deserve to be respected.” Read more…

Maysoon Zayid Makes Disability Mainstream

The first thing Maysoon Zayid said when she took to the stage at the 2018 Pennsylvania Conference for Women was: “I’m not drunk.” But, she quickly added, “the doctor who delivered me was.”

She went onto explain that she has cerebral palsy, which causes her to involuntarily shake all the time. But Zayid doesn’t want anyone to feel sorry for her. “I’ve got 99 problems, and palsy is just one,” she quips. Among her other problems, she explains: She is from New Jersey.

Zayid, who is developing a comedy series inspired by her life for ABC, is making disability mainstream. Read more…

Amanda Southworth Calls Out Bystanders

Sixteen-year-old app developer and activist Amanda Southworth took the stage at the 2018 Pennsylvania Conference for Women and captivated the room with a deeply personal story forged in the pain of her childhood anxiety and depression. With the backdrop of a national mental health crisis that affects 1 in 5 kids between the ages of 3 and 17, Southworth delivered this message: Suffering can be invisible, but it is not inevitable, and we can all do something about it.

“Action is not important,” she began, “it’s mandatory. The world will continue to hurt us until we join the effort to fix it—things won’t get better unless we make them. We have a responsibility not only as women but as people on this earth to do our best to improve things. If we have the ability to be fighting then we need to be—for the people that don’t have that ability.” Read more…