After a Champagne reception toasting the initiative’s 20th anniversary and the $16 million in funding it has so far awarded to 360 entrepreneurs around the world, attendees took their seats in the museum’s crimson-hued performance hall for the night’s conversations.
Cyrille Vigneron, Chairman of Cartier Culture and Philanthropy, moderated the first dialogue with Dr. Bohannon, who spoke on the gender-based knowledge gap underpinning women’s healthcare and research in the United States. “What you don’t fund, you can’t research, and what you can’t research, you can’t treat,” warned the author of Eve: How the Female Body Drove 200 Million Years of Human Evolution. “Change in science isn’t simply changing a policy. It’s social change,” she continued, setting the stage for Kloss and Lakshmi’s talk with Vigneron on the role of empathy in leadership.
“It’s not just investing capital in women entrepreneurs. There’s this ripple effect when you believe in and hold a space for young women and gender-expansive youth to be seen and connect with each other,” Kloss told Vogue, reflecting on more than a decade at the helm of her tech incubator Kode With Klossy.
Lakshmi pointed to her years spent helming the Endometriosis Foundation of America as co-founder, along with her advocacy work through the U.N. and the ACLU, as the blue print for her future. “I want the next decade of my life to be about mentoring young women,” she told Vogue. “In the way that there’s the old boys’ network, I want to create an ‘old broad network,’” she said, laughing. “What is power worth if you can’t spread it around and wield it properly?”
