Finding female speakers for conferences about advertising is not a very easy task. At all.
Late this summer, Nancy Hill of the 4As had a (publicly) terrible time of recruiting female speakers, despite the fact that she is a woman. The original list of speakers had just 3 women, compared to 16 men (and was called out by Cindy Gallop, among others), resulting in a letter than Hill wrote on the 4As website demanding that women "Speak Up":
"You would think that women would jump at the chance [to speak] just like men do. Is it because we feel the need to focus on our current jobs, our own companies? Our families? Is it because there are so few senior females that they get recruited so much more frequently than men?"
The plea must have worked, because the final list for the 4As had a slightly more respectable 7 women, to 19 men (even if Nancy Hill herself was one of the 7).
SO
Last week's 3% Conference boasting (count 'em) a whopping 41 female speakers, deserves a huge round of applause. The list included some pretty big names:
Cindy Gallop, started BBH NY & was named 2003 Advertising Woman of the Year
Margaret Johnson, ECD & Associate Partner at Goodby
Colleen DeCourcy, CEO + founder of Socialistic, founder of Organic, ex-Chief Digital Officer at TBWA
Susan Hoffman, Employee No. 8 and now ECD at Wieden
And to anyone who is in desperate need of females in our industry to be on your next conference stage, this blogger graciously put together a list.
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