Female empowerment, inclusion celebrated at annual Forbes Women’s Summit

Global Business

Among the highlights at this year’s Forbes Women’s Summit in New York was a conversation with Hollywood star Priyanka Chopra and PepsiCo CEO, Indra Nooyi, who called “the next couple of decades, the decades of women.”

CGTN’s Karina Huber reports.

Elaine Chao, the first Asian-American woman to serve in a presidential cabinet, talked about her life in politics.

Former pop star Victoria Beckham was there to talk about how to build a global fashion brand by harnessing social media.

For those in attendance, it was all about female empowerment and inspiration.

“I think you can get lost in the daily grind so taking a moment like this summit where you pause and reflect to think about that and then look around you and left and right you see women standing with you. That’s the thing you need to go on to the next day,” said Andrea Richter, an attendee at the summit.

As always, “inclusion” was a buzzword at the summit with many of those in attendance pointing out that, in the future, minorities will be the majority. Sexual harassment was also a hot topic at this year’s event as it marks the first Forbes Women’s Summit since the global “MeToo” movement.

“The seismic barriers and abuses of power that either were ignored or overlooked have now come to the surface. They are no longer hidden,” said Moira Forbes, Forbes Media Executive Vice President.

Chopra said in the future women won’t feel the need to silently accept inappropriate advances from men in power.

“We will create a world where men are afraid to do that. We will create a world together where we stand by each other and say, ‘I’m sorry. You’re not doing this to my daughter because you did it to me, and that’s enough.’ And that is such a powerful time to be a woman,” said actress Priyanka Chopra.

Both Chopra and Nooyi said creating a strong sense of a sisterhood will be crucial to bringing about the needed changes.


Karina Huber sat down with one of the Forbes Women’s Summit speakers, Shivani Siroya, the founder of a micro-finance startup called Tala. Tala helps the underserved develop a credit history. Tala is currently available in five countries, but venture capitalists have just invested an extra $50 million in the company as it plans to expand globally.