2020 Report on the Status of Women and Girls in California™
100 Years: From Women Earning the Vote to Claiming Their Power
Join Mount Saint Mary’s Center for the Advancement of Women as we celebrate 100 years of women’s empowerment.
2020 marks the 100th anniversary of the passage of the 19th Amendment, guaranteeing and protecting women's constitutional right to vote. Additionally, we celebrate the 25th anniversary of the Fourth World Conference on Women and the adoption of the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action, which is considered the most progressive blueprint ever for advancing women’s rights. Despite the progress women have made over the last century and the pledges of countless organizations and institutions to level the playing field for women, we are still far from parity. Join us to discuss a path toward future equity.
Program
Join us in celebrating 100 years of women’s empowerment and discussing the path toward future equity
View ProgramRegistration
Registration is closed for the 2020 Report on the Status of Women and Girls in California™
Registration ClosedSponsorships
Become a sponsor and join a community dedicated to the advancement of women and girls
Sponsorship OpportunitiesLocation, Time, and Venue
Skirball Cultural Center
2701 N. Sepulveda Blvd.
Los Angeles, CA 90049
Thursday, March 26, 2020
10:00 a.m. to Noon – Networking Breakfast and Program
12:30 p.m. to 2:00 p.m. – VIP Luncheon
Program Speakers
Melina Abdullah
Melina Abdullah
Melina Abdullah, PhD, is professor and former chair of Pan-African studies at California State University, Los Angeles. She was appointed to the Los Angeles County Human Relations Commission in 2014. Abdullah is a womanist scholar-activist – understanding the role that she plays in the academy as intrinsically linked to broader struggles for the liberation of oppressed people. She was among the original group of organizers that convened to form Black Lives Matter and continues to serve as a Los Angeles chapter lead and contributes to the national leadership. She is a leader in the fight for ethnic studies in the K-12 and university systems and was a part of the historic victory that made Ethnic Studies a requirement in the Los Angeles Unified School District. Abdullah is co-host and co-producer of the weekly radio program Beautiful Struggle which airs on KPFK, part of the Pacifica radio network.
Emerald Archer
Emerald Archer
Emerald Archer, PhD, is the director of the Center for the Advancement of Women at Mount Saint Mary’s University. She has dedicated her career to studying questions related to gender equity and women’s representation in non-traditional domains such as the United States military. Through the Center, Archer’s primary goal is to promote and increase gender equity in California and our region, and she leads the Center's efforts related to applied research, education and policy analysis. Archer has also published articles in The European Legacy and Armed Forces & Society, and is the author of a book titled “Women, Warfare and Representation: American Servicewomen in the Twentieth Century.”
Kimberlé Crenshaw
Kimberlé Crenshaw
Kimberlé Crenshaw, professor of law at UCLA and Columbia Law School, is a leading authority on civil rights, black feminist legal theory, critical race theory and race, racism and the law. She developed the idea of “intersectionality” in her groundbreaking 1989 essay, “Demarginalizing the Intersection of Race and Sex: A Black Feminist Critique of Antidiscrimination Doctrine, Feminist Theory and Antiracist Politics.” Crenshaw is the co-founder and executive director of the African American Policy Forum, a gender and racial justice legal think tank, and the founder and executive director of the Center for Intersectionality and Social Policy Studies at Columbia Law School. She is a leading voice in calling for a gender-inclusive approach to racial justice interventions, having spearheaded the Why We Can’t Wait Campaign and co-authored “Black Girls Matter: Pushed Out, Overpoliced and Underprotected,” and “Say Her Name: Resisting Police Brutality Against Black Women.” She hosts the hit podcast Intersectionality Matters, and has two forthcoming books: an anthology titled “On Intersectionality,” and an intellectual memoir on the same topic.
Ana Guerrero
Ana Guerrero
Ana Guerrero was appointed Mayor Eric Garcetti’s Council Office Chief of Staff in 2008 and has worked alongside him since he was first elected to the City Council in 2001. Her work as Chief of Staff has put Guerrero at the center of several transformative moments in modern Los Angeles history, including the successful movement to raise the minimum wage to $15 an hour; the Measure M campaign to fund an historic expansion of public transportation; College Promise, which ensures free community college tuition for all public high school graduates; the creation of L.A.’s landmark Green New Deal; and bringing gender equality to city Hall’s powerful boards and commissions for the first time ever.
Marisela Chávez
Marisela Chávez
Marisela R. Chávez, PhD, is an associate professor and chair of the department of Chicana and Chicano Studies at California State University, Dominguez Hills. She teaches and researches Chicana/o history, politics, and identity; women of color feminists; U.S. social movements; oral history and Latino/a immigration. Presently, she is revising a book manuscript that traces Chicana and Mexican American women’s activism in Los Angeles from the late 1950s to 1980s. Several articles she has already published are “Rooted in Community: The Scholarship of Chicana Political Leadership and Activism” and “Refocusing Chicana International Feminism: Photographs, Postmemory, and Political Trauma.”
Ann McElaney-Johnson
Ann McElaney-Johnson
Ann McElaney-Johnson, PhD, is the 12th president of Mount Saint Mary's, the only women’s university in Los Angeles. She is recognized as a thought leader for women’s issues and a champion for innovative teaching and learning. McElaney-Johnson is a member of boards including the Women in Public Service Project at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars; the Association of Catholic Colleges and Universities; and the advisory council of the Geena Davis Institute on Gender in Media, among others. She has over 25 years of service to liberal arts colleges throughout the country as a faculty member, associate dean and chief academic and student affairs officer.
Holly J. Mitchell
Holly J. Mitchell
Sen. Holly J. Mitchell is the proud daughter of career public servants, and she continued her family legacy of “firsts” when she became the first African American to chair the powerful Senate Budget and Fiscal Review Committee in 2016. Less than two months later, a profile in The Los Angeles Times described Mitchell as the “Legislature’s moral compass.” She proved to be just that in 2017 and 2018 when she oversaw the adoption of consecutive state budgets of nearly $200 billion each and won wide praise for directing funds to elementary and college students, health-care systems and long-neglected programs to assist infants, the elderly, youth and working families.
Rachel O’Leary Carmona
Rachel O’Leary Carmona
Rachel O'Leary Carmona has helped to inspire, equip and mobilize people to shape the actions and policies that affect their communities for well over a decade. A recognized expert on building transformational online and offline communities and networks, O’Leary Carmona has held leadership positions with Amnesty International, Women for Women International, Girl Scouts of the USA, the Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation, Wisconsin Public Television, and with the Mayors offices in Memphis, Tennessee and Somerville, Massachusetts. She currently serves as the chief operating officer for Women's March National
Francille Rusan Wilson
Francille Rusan Wilson
Francille Rusan Wilson, PhD, is an intellectual and labor historian whose research examines the intersections between black labor movements, black social scientists and black women’s history during the Jim Crow era. Her book, “The Segregated Scholars: Black Social Scientists and the Creation of Black Labor Studies, 1890-1950” was awarded the 2007 Letitia Woods Brown Memorial Prize for the best book in black women’s history. Wilson is currently an associate professor of American Studies & Ethnicity, History and Gender & Sexuality Studies and the interim chair of Gender & Sexuality Studies at the University of Southern California.
Virginia Scharff
Virginia Scharff
Virginia Scharff has served as Woman of the West Chair and senior scholar at the Autry Museum since 2003. She is a fellow and former executive board member of the Society of American Historians, was president of the Western History Association and currently serves on the executive board of the Organization of American Historians. A number of her books, including “The Women Jefferson Loved,” have been named as New York Times Editor’s Choices. Scharff is now working on a series of historical novels set in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, featuring four women who meet as students in a convent school in Paris on the eve of the French Revolution. Scharff is also a distinguished professor emerita of history at the University of New Mexico.
Xiaojian Zhao
Xiaojian Zhao
Xiaojian Zhao, PhD, is a professor of Asian American studies and former chair of the department. Her book, “Remaking Chinese America” was awarded the History Book Award from the Association for Asian American Studies. Zhao has taught at UC Santa Barbara since 1994. She has offered courses in Asian American history, Chinese American history, Asian American women's history, Asian Americans in American law and Asian American families. She has also offered advanced research seminars for students interested in working with archival materials.
Host Committee
- Emerald Archer, PhD
Director, Center for the Advancement of Women, Mount Saint Mary’s University - Kari Bolen, EdD
Director, Office for Diversity, Equity and Inclusion, Mount Saint Mary’s University - Barbie Brady
Senior Event Producer, Revolution Marketing - Kay Buck
CEO, Coalition to Abolish Slavery & Trafficking (CAST) - Araceli Campos
Founding Chair, LA County Women & Girls Initiative - Sylvia Hathaway Chavez
Managing Director, Look What SHE Did! - Asha Dahya
Author and Journalist - Geena Davis
Academy Award© Winning Actor and Activist - Brieanne DeWind
Social Media Curator, National Women’s History Museum LA Council
- Joy Donnell
SUPERJOY Media - Karriann Farrell Hinds
Vice President, Los Angeles County Commission for Women - Jackie Filla, PhD
Assistant Professor, Political Science, Mount Saint Mary’s University and President, Los Angeles City Commission on the Status of Women - Kimberly Freeman, PhD
Associate Dean, Chief Diversity Officer, USC Dornsife - Sabrina Garba
Founder and CEO, Glass Ladder Group and Women’s Impact Accelerator - Sarah Gibbons
Founder and CEO, Sarah Gibbons Company Executive Coaching - Nicole Haggard, PhD
Media and Social Justice Instructor, Mount Saint Mary’s University - Brady Hahn
Founder, The Noodle Collective, LLC
- Rosalyn Kempf, EdD
AVP Student Affairs and Women’s Leadership, Mount Saint Mary’s University - Abbe Land
Executive Director, Los Angeles County Women and Girls Initiative - Kristin McCowan
Executive Director, Getty House Foundation - Holly J. Mitchell
California State Senate, 30th District - Denise Pines
President, Medical Board of California - Luzanne Otte
Lawyer and Writer - Diane Reichenberger
VP Global Consumer Products, Mattel, Inc. - Megan Sellers
Business Intelligence, Verizon Media - Sharon Shelton
VP, Empowerment Services, YWCA Greater Los Angeles - Lindy Huang Werges
Entrepreneur, Diversity Advocate, Philanthropist