Centennial Women’s Leadership Summit Speakers
Keynote Speaker: Angela Duckworth
Angela Duckworth is the Rosa Lee and Egbert Chang Professor at the University of Pennsylvania and faculty co-director of the Penn-Wharton Behavior Change for Good Initiative. A 2013 MacArthur Fellow, Duckworth has advised the World Bank, NBA and NFL teams, and Fortune 500 CEOs.
Prior to her career in research, Duckworth founded a summer school for underserved children that was profiled as a Harvard Kennedy School case study and, in 2023, celebrated its 30th anniversary. She has also been a McKinsey management consultant and a math and science teacher at public schools in New York City, San Francisco, and Philadelphia. Duckworth co-founded Character Lab, a nonprofit dedicated to advancing scientific insights that help children thrive.
Duckworth completed her undergraduate degree in advanced studies neurobiology at Harvard, graduating magna cum laude. With the support of a Marshall Scholarship, she completed an MSc with distinction in neuroscience from Oxford University and completed her PhD in psychology as a National Science Foundation Graduate Fellow at the University of Pennsylvania.
Duckworth’s TED talk is among the most viewed of all time, and her book Grit: The Power of Passion and Perseverance is a New York Times best seller.
Opening Speaker: Cecilia Conrad
Cecilia Conrad is the founding CEO of Lever for Change, an organization that brings ambitious funders together with other donors and a broad, inclusive global network of organizations to drive impact.
Dr. Conrad was formerly a Managing Director at the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, where she led the MacArthur Fellows program and steered the cross-foundation team that created MacArthur’s 100&Change—an athematic, open call competition that periodically makes a single $100 million grant to help solve a critical problem of our time.
Conrad had a distinguished career as both a professor and administrator at Pomona College, where she held the Stedman Sumner Chair in Economics and is currently a Professor of Economics, Emerita. Prior to Pomona, Conrad taught at Barnard College and Duke University. From 2007-09, she served as interim Vice President and Dean of the Faculty at Scripps College.
Conrad is a chair of the TIAA Board of Governors and serves on the boards of Giving Tuesday, the National Academy of Social Insurance, and the African Center for Economic Transformation, among others. She is also a trustee emerita of Bryn Mawr College, Muhlenberg College, and the Poetry Foundation.
Conrad was included in the inaugural Time100 Philanthropy list in 2025, Forbes 50 over 50 Impact List in 2024, Inside Philanthropy’s 2023 50 Most Powerful Women in Philanthropy, and NPT Power & Influence 2023 Top 50. She received her undergraduate degree from Wellesley College and her PhD in economics from Stanford University.
Susan Antolin
Dr. Susan Aryan Antolin serves as the Executive Director of Women for Afghan Women (WAW), one of the world’s largest NGOs dedicated to supporting Afghan women and girls. An Afghan American leader with extensive experience in research, business, nonprofit management, and program development, Antolin is deeply committed to advancing gender equality and expanding opportunities for underrepresented women and girls. In her role, she leads programs providing safety, education, mental health support, and humanitarian aid across Afghanistan and the United States, while strengthening the organization’s impact and reach.
Previously, Antolin led initiatives at the 30 Birds Foundation supporting resettled Afghan communities and advancing girls’ education, and co-founded Advancing Girls, a platform offering research-driven resources for mentors worldwide. She also served as an educator and administrator at an all-girls high school in San Diego for nearly a decade.
Dr. Antolin holds a doctorate from New York University, a master’s degree in education from the University of San Diego, and a bachelor’s degree from UCLA. She received NYU Steinhardt’s inaugural Visionary Award in 2024.
Dana Dakin ’64
Dana Dakin had a 35-year career in the financial services industry. Her work at Callan Associates, a leading pension consulting firm based in San Francisco, exposed her to the growing field of institutional money management, and in 1976, she left Callan to establish the first creative packaging agency to serve that community. Her firm was associated with many of the great launches in the business, and she went on to produce an eight-part PBS series with a John Wiley companion book, Beyond Wall Street: The Art of Investing.
Inspired by the belief that life is lived in thirds—you learn, you earn, you return—at age 60, Dakin founded WomensTrust, a nonprofit organization that empowers women and girls in Ghana. WomensTrust began as one of the first organizations to provide microfinancing to under-resourced women in the West African country, standing firmly against predatory lending. The nonprofit has grown into a vital bottom-up hub for community-based work that is focused on education, creating the foundation for lasting change.
Dakin was raised in the San Francisco Bay Area. She graduated from Scripps College in 1964 with a senior honors thesis on Pan-Africanism and later served for nine years as a Scripps College Trustee. For her work with WomensTrust, she was named a 2008 Purpose Prize Fellow, and in 2010, won the prestigious Isabel Benham Award.
In 2023, at age 80, she moved into a seniors community in Mill Valley, California, to teach the art of going bottom-up.
Zalika Milton Gardner ’94
Zalika Milton Gardner ’94 is founder and principal trainer of Kulima, LLC, where she serves as a consultant, professional coach, and facilitator. Kulima, from Swahili, means to cultivate. Kulima, LLC partners with leaders and organizations to cultivate sustainable leadership practices and thriving professional cultures.
At Kulima, Gardner’s attention to the experience of each client is based on her understanding of adult learning principles, neuroscience, and emotional intelligence. She is inspired by a deep belief in the human capacity for growth and love.
Gardner is an experienced speaker, and her 2014 TEDxPortland talk “Listening Differently,” has garnered tens of thousands of views on YouTube. She earned her undergraduate degree in psychology from Scripps College and an MA in Educational Leadership from Columbia University Teachers College.
Szeyin Lee ’14
Szeyin Lee is a Product Design Prototyper at Meta, where she designs and builds interactive experiences for next-generation technologies—mixed reality and virtual reality devices, and wearables.
Her work focuses on exploring how people will interact with emerging devices—using gestures, voice, and AI—before these products reach consumers. Lee builds working prototypes, conducts user research, and develops design frameworks that help teams make better product decisions. Several of her innovations have led to patent filings.
Lee thrives at the seam of design, engineering, and human behavior. She collaborates closely with researchers, engineers, and product teams to transform early-stage ideas into tangible experiences, synthesizing the learnings into design frameworks and product directions.
Before Meta, Lee was a software engineer at Microsoft. She studied Computer Science and Cognitive Science at Scripps College. That foundation in both technical systems and human cognition shapes everything she builds today.
Outside of work, Lee is passionate about building community. She co-founded Meta’s Knitting & Crocheting Club and mentors early-career designers. In her personal time, she enjoys ikebana, knitting, and dabbles in all kinds of arts and crafts.
Lisette Nieves, EdD
Dr. Lisette Nieves is the president of the Fund for the City of New York, implementing innovations in policy, programs, practices, and technology to advance the functioning of government and nonprofit services in New York City and beyond. She also serves as a Distinguished Clinical Professor at NYU where she co-founded the Center for Youth and the Future of Work at NYU Steinhardt.
Her books include Working for a Future: Equity and Access in Work-Based Learning for Young People, 2024, and Working to Learn: Disrupting the Divide between College and Career Pathways for Young People, 2020.
Nieves holds a BA from Brooklyn College, a BA/MA from the University of Oxford, an MPA from Princeton University, and a doctorate with distinction in Higher Education Management from the University of Pennsylvania. She has served as an Obama appointee on the White House Initiative on Educational Excellence for Hispanics and a Biden and Senate-confirmed board member of AmeriCorps.
Mona Sinha
Mona Sinha is the Chief Executive Officer of Equality Now, a global human rights organization dedicated to achieving legal equality for women and girls. Under her leadership, the organization advances worldwide advocacy to reform discriminatory laws and strengthen justice systems. Over the past three decades, more than 130 discriminatory laws have been reformed globally through Equality Now’s work with partners and governments, expanding protections and advancing justice for millions of women and girls.
With more than 25 years of cross-sector leadership spanning philanthropy, finance, media, and social impact, Mona has supported more than 90 organizations advancing social justice. She has helped catalyze over $1 billion in funding for transformative initiatives, grassroots movements, and innovative projects that strengthen women’s economic agency and elevate women leaders around the world.
Mona is also an executive producer of award-winning and Oscar-nominated films that bring powerful social justice stories to global audiences. Through storytelling and media, she works to shift cultural narratives alongside legal and policy change to advance gender equality.
She previously served as Board Chair of Women Moving Millions, a global philanthropic community mobilizing significant resources for gender equality. Mona currently serves on the Advisory Boards of the Smithsonian American Women’s History Museum, Columbia University’s Tamer Institute for Social Enterprise, and the Reykjavik Global Forum. Her leadership has been recognized by Forbes, Apolitical, and with the Ellis Island Medal of Honor.
A proud alumna of Smith College, Mona was awarded the Smith College Medal for her lifetime work advancing gender equality. She graduated magna cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa in economics from Smith and earned her MBA with honors from Columbia Business School.
Erin Fry Sosne ’05
Erin Fry Sosne is the Director of Strategy for the North Carolina Department of Health and Human Services’ Division of Public Health and a member of the division’s leadership team, guiding strategic direction, communications, policy, and staff engagement to strengthen public health statewide.
During the COVID‑19 pandemic, Fry Sosne helped lead North Carolina’s vaccination strategy with a strong focus on equity, supporting statewide partnerships and innovative outreach models that expanded access for historically marginalized communities.
Before joining NCDHHS, she spent nearly a decade at the global health organization PATH, where she advanced major policy and financing reforms for maternal and child health as Deputy Director of Policy and Advocacy. She also served as a Fellow at the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, contributing to cross‑disciplinary work at the intersection of science and public policy.
Fry Sosne holds a bachelor’s degree in bioethics from Scripps College and a Master of Public Health from The George Washington University.
Gavin Turek ’09
Since first breaking through with her 2017 EP Good Look For You, Gavin Turek ’09 has matched her magnetic presence and mesmerizing vocals with songwriting that speaks an unguarded truth about her inner life. Turek has collaborated with such eclectic artists as TOKiMONSTA, Mayer Hawthorne, and Hayley Kiyoko, earning acclaim from leading outlets like The Cut, Rolling Stone, Vogue, NPR, and Spin.
Raised on a melting pot of genres that still informs her sound today (classic soul and R&B, disco, 70s funk, 80s pop), Turek grew up in a musical household and first started creating her own songs at age six. An accomplished dancer, Turek lived abroad in India and Africa as part of her extensive dance training but eventually returned to her lifelong passion for music. She put out Good Look For You via her own label Madame Gold Records, shared a series of one-off singles (including 2019’s “2AM” and its Lena Waithe-produced video), then made her full-length debut with the high-concept and boldly experimental Madame Gold (a critically lauded album produced by Childish Gambino collaborator Chris Hartz). She released her highly anticipated sophomore album Diva of the People, in September of 2024, her most visionary work to date, and continues to create new music and perform around the world.
A Scripps alum, Turek earned her undergraduate degree in art history and Black studies.
