Scripps College President Lori Bettison-Varga has been selected as a visionary delegate for Vision 2020, a national project to advance gender equality. As one of only 13 visionary delegates, she will advise and assist 102 women from around the country who were chosen as national delegates to help shape the future of women’s leadership into the next decade.
Bettison-Varga will also serve as a discussion expert in a science, technology, and engineering panel at a two-day conference in October 2010 that kicks off Vision 2020.
“I am very excited to be involved in the Vision 2020 initiative,” said Bettison-Varga. “Scripps College has long been a community of strong women who work to improve gender equality.”
The national delegation consists of two women leaders from each of the 50 states, including the District of Columbia, who have demonstrated a commitment to helping women and girls. The delegates include a federal judge, medical doctors, college and university professors, state senators, leaders of women’s organizations, and high-ranking executives. Serving for three years, they will mobilize resources to bring about positive change and implement elements of the decade-long Vision 2020 agenda.
“The credentials and commitment of the women who applied to become national delegates were astounding,” said Lynn Yeakel, director of Drexel University College of Medicine’s Institute for Women’s Health and Leadership, which oversees Vision 2020. “We have no doubt these women will be effectively leading the initiative in their states.”
The opening conference begins October 21, 2010 at the National Constitution Center in Philadelphia and will focus on eight conversation topic areas: arts and culture; business, law and finance; communications and media; education; politics and government; health; philanthropy, faith and volunteerism; and science, technology and engineering. Each conversation will have three panelists, two moderators and 200 audience members participating in a dynamic discussion about issues and solutions to these issues in their fields.
For more information about Vision 2020 and the national delegates, contact Drexel’s Institute for Women’s Health and Leadership at [email protected] or 215-991-8830 or visit http://www.drexel.edu/vision2020/.
Vision 2020 is a national project of the Institute for Women’s Health and Leadership at Drexel University College of Medicine focused on ensuring gender equality by energizing the dialogue about women and leadership. In 2010, Vision 2020 will develop and launch its decade-long action agenda to move America toward equality by inspiring and engaging new generations of women and men to finish the work of the suffragists, who pursued women’s right to vote as fundamental to social and economic justice. The centennial of the 19th Amendment to the Constitution will be celebrated in 2020.