According to its website, Iowa Women Lead Change (IWLC) is the state’s premier leadership organization for women, offering comprehensive leadership resources including events featuring prominent speakers, frequent networking opportunities, and other important services to advance women’s leadership in all aspects of their lives. It strives to inspire leadership growth through education, collaboration and organizational effectiveness.
We’re proud that speakers at IWLC’s Central Iowa Conference on Oct. 27 will include DMU President Angela Walker Franklin, Ph.D., who will lead a session titled “Embracing Diversity as an Institutional Imperative.” She’s a great choice for such a discussion: During her tenure, DMU has focused its mission on educating diverse groups of highly competent and compassionate health professionals and has incorporated inclusiveness among its core values. Multicultural programming has been expanded. In addition, DMU was among the recipients of the 2015 Friends of Iowa Civil Rights Award, and the National Association of Diversity Officers in Higher Education selected the University as the recipient of its 2015 Institutional Excellence Award. Further, in January, President Franklin was honored with the Martin Luther King Jr. Achievement Award of the Iowa Department of Human Rights Office on the Status of African Americans.
President Franklin also is the author of An Unconventional Journey – An Unlikely Choice (WestBow Press, 2014), which describes her life from growing up in a small town in South Carolina to her progression through several leadership positions in higher education, culminating to her appointment as DMU’s 15th president in 2011.
President Franklin will be in good company among the conference speakers. They include:
- Anne-Marie Slaughter, a Princeton University foreign policy expert, a former top official at the U.S. State Department and now president and CEO of New America, a public policy institute and idea incubator. Described as “an innovative and prolific scholar” by Foreign Policy and named one of the magazine’s Top 100 Global Thinkers four years in a row, she will deliver a keynote titled “Unfinished Business: Right the Balance – Women, Men, Work, Family.”
- Dana Points, editor-in-chief of Parents and Fit Pregnancy and Baby. In addition to leading Parents to win more than 40 awards recognizing its excellence for editorial and design, she is a member of the March of Dimes board and chairs the board of Safe Kids Worldwide, an organization working to prevent unintentional childhood injuries. She is also president of the American Society of Magazine Editors and was chosen as one of Folio’s Top Women in Media in 2015. Her keynote is titled “Take Back Your Time.”
- Kim Martin, chief brand officer of Meredith Corporation and a brand champion across all Meredith National Media Group brands. In addition to overseeing Meredith’s brand marketing activities, she has developed a strong and robust millennial growth strategy for Meredith Corporation to increase the total number of young women engaging and connecting with key Meredith brands. She will lead a session on “The Generational Workplace.”
- Sara Blakely, founder and owner of SPANX Inc. Selected one of Time magazine’s 100 Most Influential People in the world and featured on the cover of Forbes magazine, she signed the Giving Pledge in 2013 to donate half of her wealth to support her larger mission, empowering women. She will deliver the conference’s closing keynote.
The IWLC “Generation: SHE” Central Iowa Conference will take place at the Community Choice Credit Union Convention Center, 833 5th Avenue, Des Moines. For additional information and registration, visit the conference website.
