The U.S. Consulate in Vancouver is a proud supporter of women’s empowerment, education and leadership. This fall, the Consulate supported two outstanding conferences that brought light to these issues, EXCELerate: Grow Your Business with the Speed of Collaboration and Mothers as a Catalyst of Change: Inspiration from Around the World.
EXCELerate 2015: Grow Your Business with the Speed of Collaboration, brought together women entrepreneurs and professionals from all sectors, including small, medium and large-sized enterprises and organizations, impacting and increasing the economic empowerment of women globally through knowledge, connections and collaboration. The U.S. Consulate in Vancouver was happy to sponsor two American Speakers through the U.S. Embassy’s Small Grants Program: Julia Hubbel, award-winning entrepreneur, international professional speaker, seminar leader, and prize-winning journalist; and Dan Price, founder and CEO of Gravity Payments. Hubbel and Price addressed audiences of over 200 women entrepreneurs at the conference, which took place in Vancouver September 30 – October 2, 2015. On October 2, Consul General Lynne Platt hosted a reception for the conference organizing body and American participants who had traveled to Canada to participate in the event.
Mothers as a Catalyst of Change: Inspiration from Around the World, organized by HIPPY (Home Instruction for Parents of Preschool Youngsters) brought together representatives from across Canada from social service sectors, government, university and academia, community organizations and journalists, to learn about the role of women and mothers in social change and economic development. Over the past 15 years, HIPPY Canada has reached out to provide more than 6,200 lower-income New Canadians, Aboriginal and other Canadian mothers with structured lessons and practical information that develop their own and their children’s personal skills, with the aim of ensuring that both children and families have a better opportunity to succeed in school and society. With support from the U.S. Embassy’s small grants program, the Consulate welcomed a Missouri-based speaker, Adrián Cerezo, who was the conference’s keynote speaker on November 27. Cerezo, a Fellow at Yale’s Edward Zigler Center in Child Development and Social Policy and an Education Fellow at the Conservation Research Center of the Smithsonian Institution, spoke to over 150 participants of the conference about how nurturing young children drives global sustainable development.
