Kick off the International Women's Day with dynamic speaker Susan Blaustein, Director of Millennium Cities Initiative (MCI), a project of the Earth Institute at Columbia University, and Founder/Director of WomenStrong International (WSI), a consortium of non-governmental organizations in five countries dedicated to eradicating extreme urban poverty by enabling women and girls to live healthy, fulfilling lives.

Note: This event is FREE, but you must RSVP with Eventbrite HERE

DISCLAIMER: This event is entirely hosted by Changemaker Chats. Participation is for women and anyone who identifies as a woman. More info Changemaker Chats can be found HERE.

"Given the remarkable resilience, strength, and wisdom exhibited every day by the women and girls with whom we have the honor of partnering, perhaps together we can help today’s leaders appreciate and consider women’s rights and needs. If not, we’re training thousands of inspiring, fearless girls and women to take their places, to lead with empathy, strength, and vision, with no room for greed or self-interest. Changing the world, we call it: in other words, women’s work." Susan Blaustein, HuffPost.

Dr. Susan Blaustein co-founded and directed the Millennium Cities Initiative (MCI), a project of the Earth Institute at Columbia University committed to sustainable urban development across sub-Saharan Africa. There, over the course of a decade, Dr. Blaustein repeatedly witnessed the effectiveness of local women and girls in the cities’ poorest communities, as they took the lead in effecting transformative change.

Before her work at the Earth Institute, Dr. Blaustein served as a senior consultant and analyst with the International Crisis Group, a Brussels-based think tank focused on conflict prevention; she worked as well with the Coalition for International Justice, a Washington-based NGO supporting the efforts of international criminal tribunals to prosecute gross human rights abusers in Rwanda, the former Yugoslavia, Cambodia, East Timor and Sierra Leone.

Dr. Blaustein reported on conflict, politics, economics and social injustice from the Balkans, Southeast Asia and Washington, DC, for such publications as The New Yorker, Harper’s, The Wall Street Journal, The Nation, The New Republic and the Los Angeles Times and is completing a book about the Rwanda genocide. Dr. Blaustein served previously as Assistant Professor at Columbia University, where she still teaches. Her doctorate is from Yale University, she was a Harvard Junior Fellow in the Society of Fellows at Harvard University, a Guggenheim Fellow and has been the recipient of multiple awards.