For the past 28 years, Glamour’s Women of the Year Awards has honored game changers, rule breakers, and trailblazers. This year’s class of extraordinary females is no exception. The stories of our honorees often start with the same idea: a woman who refuses to wait for someone else to make things better. Alone, or with an army behind her, she decides to act.
To kick off the celebration, Glamour is hosting our second annual Women of the Year Live Summit at Spring Studios in New York City—led by comedian Phoebe Robinson—followed by our annual awards ceremony on Monday, November 12. The summit will feature sessions with body-positive activist Ashley Graham, Today co-anchors Savannah Guthrie and Hoda Kotb, singer-songwriter Halsey, along with many more inspiring women.
Follow our coverage, below, as we share every unforgettable moment and our panelists’ invaluable wisdom from the Women of the Year Live Summit.
Breakfast With Aerie
PHOTO: Craig Barritt
Our Women of the Year Summit kicked off as any great morning should: with breakfast, a lot of coffee, and a pep talk from Aerie global brand president Jennifer Foyle and #AerieREAL model Iskra Lawrence. The model, who’s been at the forefront of the body positive movement, spoke about the importance of sisterhood and being kind to yourself—and how the brand is making changes to raise women up.
“A few years ago, I started the Mirror Challenge, where instead of looking in the mirror and seeing all the insecurities screaming and shouting at me, I decided I was going to find the things I appreciated about myself,” Lawrence told the crowd. “I either told myself verbally in my head or I wrote it on Post-It notes. So one of the amazing things we implemented in all Aerie stores is having Post-It notes. Changing rooms can be a pretty negative place if you’re not feeling one-hundred or if something doesn’t fit the way you want it to, or if you’re going through changes in your body, we wanted to create a positive environment.”
“So I’m hoping you’ll all start writing your own Post-Its,” she continued, inviting women to come up to the stage and leave their own notes for themselves or another “sister” who could use a word of encouragement. Let’s just say what everyone wrote is surely an example of what’s to come today.
Opening Remarks With Phoebe Robinson
PHOTO: Ilya S. Savenok
“Hello, my name is Phoebe Robinson, and I am your Nordstrom Rack version of Oprah today.” We’d disagree—our host of the day is nobody’s discount emcee, but we wouldn’t expect the author and comedian to kick things off any other way. If you follow her on 2 Dope Queens or have read her book “Everything’s Trash, But It’s Okay,” you know Robinson has a way of finding the humor in even the darkest of topics.
To introduce today’s theme “Women Rise,” she touched on the major wins women have had this year—”The midterm elections were the most exciting thing for me. Two native American women won, a bunch of black women won, hopefully Stacey Abrams will win”—along with the importance of having strong women role models in her own life. “Women have done so much for my career. My mom is a very smart, wonderful, funny woman. She’s where my sense of humor comes from. Writing for magazines like Glamour has been empowering for me. I feel like I’ve learned my biggest lessons from other women. They’ve taught me things like stop telling yourself no before other people do. Stop saying sorry. I’m not saying sorry anymore. I’m going to be like a white guy.”
She ended the speech with a call to share stories about the women who have raised you up using the hashtag #GlamourWOTY. “Send me a picture or photo with your mom, girlfriends, you with your gyno if you’re close to each other, cousins, anyone, a moment that shows women rising up together, celebrating each other.”
For more of Robinson’s best quotes from the Summit, click here.
From Anguish to Action How to Lead During Crisis
PHOTO: Ilya S. Savenok
During the first panel of the day, Glamour Editor-in-Chief Samantha Barry and The Washington Post‘s Global Opinions editor Karen Attiah discussed what happens—and how do you react—when things go horribly wrong. Barry noted that crisis can come in many forms—it can be personal, it can touch your community, or in the gut-wrenching case of Attiah, it can play out on a global stage. Attiah was the editor of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi, who was captured and killed because of his work as a reporter.
“We recruited him about a year ago to write for us,” said Attiah. “He put himself into self-exile. He was critical of the Saudi Crown Prince in particular. He was someone who really believed in his country, really loved Saudi Arabia, but he just wanted to be free to speak his mind about the country.” Attiah said she’s still trying to cope with the horrific loss. “I still can’t believe he was taken from us and from his family in such a brutal way. It’s not just an attack on journalism, it’s an attack on The Washington Post.” The one thing that keeps her—and the team—going, she said, is not a fight against the attacks on journalists, but a fight to tell the truth.
She also discussed President Trump’s dangerous rhetoric surrounding the media, and women of color in the media in particular. (Many were surprised to learn that Khashoggi’s editor was a young woman of color.) “If he’s attacked three black women journalists, we don’t have black women or women of color who are White House correspondents,” said Attiah. “We can’t control Trump, but what the media can control is how seriously we take sending reporters who represent the world around us and represent the demographics trends that the U.S. is going in. Many times my white colleagues don’t have the same grounding or sensibilities. That is a reckoning we should have.”
As for advice for the other women in the room? “Sometimes you feel like Tweeting into the void doesn’t always help,” she said. “I think I heard the advice once that to a certain extent journalism or opinion writing can be about anger—about righteous anger. You’re seeing what’s going on, and you’re asking questions. That’s a way of pushing back. At a very basic level, I used to journal. Try to write [your anger] out, to get it out there, and use your creativity to channel what you’re feeling. Sometimes just expressing what you’re going through is a form of creating bonds, solidarity, and activism.”
My Woman Rise Moment: I Listened to That Inner Voice
You might know Yvonne Orji as Issa Rae’s wisecracking best friend, Molly, on HBO’s Insecure. But what you might not know is that her journey to get there was entirely faith led. Orji emigrated from Nigeria to America when she was six years old, and says she never imagined a career in comedy was a even possibility…until God showed her the way one fateful evening in college.
“One night, when I was trying to figure out what was next and needed some clarity, I heard Him say, “Do comedy,” she told the room. “I wasn’t funny. I was like, nobody laughs at me. Nobody was like, ‘That Yvonne is SUPER funny.’ At that point, I was on my way to becoming a doctor. I was stalling because I got my masters in public health. This is what you do when you’re the child of immigrants—you go to school to avoid going to school. And then after I got my masters, I was still not ready to be a doctor. I wanted to go to Liberia, which was just finishing a war, because it was easier for me to go to a war-torn country than tell my parents that I wasn’t going to be a doctor.”
On a leap of faith, she made the jump though and moved to New York City to pursue comedy, which went about as well as you’d expect. “Pretty soon after I moved to New York, I found myself with zero dollars and zero leads,” she said. “Let me tell you right now: That’s not sexy. OK? Because Sallie Mae wants her money, like all of it.” She continued: “Here I was, 25 years old, with two degrees, and not even the $7 to get a slice of pizza. I was like, was this really the life I risked it all for? I have a family that loves me and cares about me, and I am broke.”
The thing she says turned it all around was the power of saying yes to whatever opportunity came her way. “I said yes to the temp job I hated but allowed me to perform comedy at night,” she said. “I said yes to taking over a stand-up show in New York City. I said yes to a residency in a college production in Richmond, Virginia, that gave me two days to get there. I said yes to being a writer in the writers room for a TV show in L.A.”
Her parting words for the audience? “Inside all of us exists some kind of compass—whether it’s divine or otherwise—but it’s something desperately trying to navigate you and all of us to the life we know we were destined to live. So I think the choice is pretty simple: Keep letting fear sidetrack you or take what you’ve been given, maybe even told from God above, and say yes. But whatever it is, keep going. Keep doing it.”
Read Orji’s full speech here.
Stop Hiding, Start Shining
PHOTO: Ilya S. Savenok
Just a few years ago, it was unheard of to see anything other than thin, flawless, mostly white models in fashion ads. And models with any kind of visible health condition? Forget about it. Times are changing, though, and in part thanks to brands like Aerie, women of all different backgrounds, abilities, and sizes are now being celebrated for who they are. And that’s exactly what our Stop Hiding, Start Shining panel was about.
AerieREAL Role Models Danielle Candray (an alopecia advocate), Gaylyn Henderson (the founder of Gutless and Glamorous), and Evelyn Riddell (a type-1 diabetes advocate) joined Jess Weiner, the CEO of Talk To Jess (an organization about women’s empowerment), to discuss the social stigmas around health conditions and how they’re finally beginning to fade.
“I was only 14 when I was diagnosed with Crohn’s Disease, an inflammatory bowel autoimmune disease that can affect your entire body,” said Henderson. “Because of the severity of my condition my doctors told me I needed an ostomy—which meant removing my entire colon. At first, I said no way. I thought I was too young—I thought an ostomy was for old people. That it would smell. That it was nasty! And all I could think was I didn’t want to spend my whole life with a bag hanging off of me. But there came a time that I had no choice. I was in constant excruciating pain and getting worse. The disease was killing me.”
She went on to discuss how much better she felt after getting the procedure, and how much it meant to be cast in a global underwear campaign as a model with a colostomy bag. (Something that was met with much fanfare when her ads launched earlier this year.) “I’m an underwear model—it’s incredible!” she said. “I always tell people, ‘You have to do what’s best for you, no matter how it may look to somebody else.’ It’s a process, accepting yourself for all that you are. But being authentic with yourself and sharing your truth is essential. It’s a superpower, and everyone in this room has it.”
Turn a Big Idea Into Bigger Business
PHOTO: Ilya S. Savenok
Here’s a not-so-fun fact for you: For the second year in a row, only 2.2 percent of venture capital funding is going to female-led companies. The women on our business panel—which was moderated by Sutian Dong, partner at Female Founders Fund—fall in that tiny percent and shared with the audience how they were able to defy the odds and launch successful companies with VC support. Audrey Gelman is the founder of The Wing, a women’s co-working space and social club; Tyler Haney is founder and CEO of athleisure line Outdoor Voices; and Jen Rubio is the co-founder of Away luggage, those adorable suitcases you’re seeing all over Instagram.
If you’re looking to start your own brand, here are biggest takeaways you need to know:
Nobody knows your business better than you. “We realized there was no such thing as traditional start-up experience,” said Rubio. “We said we’re going to build the Warby Parker of luggage, but we realized there is no play book … You’re going to get a lot of advice from people, but unless your inputs are the same, that advice doesn’t go. So we took a lot of advice and learned to filter through that.”
Don’t get discouraged by the no’s. “Being a woman when you’re building a company for a woman is an advantage,” said Haney. “There’s an opportunity for a female to shake up the space and create a brand that is resonating for everyone. What I found is that I got a lot of nos at first because guys didn’t get it. But what worked ahead of time was when I sent things to wives of the investors. That is when I started to get yeses.”
Be really, really sure that you want to do it. “Know there is a lot of crap coming your way,” said Gelman. “It’s part of the job.”
Check out our in-depth recap of the panel here.
History Is Happening Now. What’s Your Role?
PHOTO: Craig Barritt
“What gets remembered is determined by who is in the room doing the remembering,” Betty Reid Soskin likes to say. The 97-year-old park ranger is one of our Women of the Year honorees, and she’s made it her life’s mission to make sure the stories of underrepresented people are being documented and celebrated. One of her biggest achievements? The Rosie the Riveter/WWII Home Front National Historical Park, where she leads talks about the Rosies and the typically white narrative about the women who served the war effort, but also interweaves her experience as a young black woman in segregated America.
Soskin and moderator Kimberly Drew, an art curator and social media manager for the Metropolitan Museum of Art, discussed how women (and particularly women of color) have to fight claim a seat at the table—and because of us doing so, we’re seeing our history being written in a more inclusive way. “Because I was in the room, albeit as a field rep, I was able to supply so much of the history that—by no means was being ignored by intent—but was rolled over by history,” Soskin told Drew. “I was able to participate in the history of a national park just by being in the room.”
She says that now, at 97, she’s able to look back and know that these periods of chaos are the moments when democracy is being redefined. “It’s in those periods where we can get at the reset buttons,” she said, adding, “Every single day, in every way, by what we do or fail to do, we are creating tomorrow. And just as I helped to create the future that I’m now live in, everyone in this room is creating the future their children are going to live in.”
Even despite the dark history currently being written during the Trump era (like Charlottesville), Soskin says she’s optimistic that Americans will ultimately fight to do what’s right. “The power is in us collectively. We’ve proven that ever since 1776,” she said. “I think that’s where my optimism comes from: Having lived long enough to know that it’ll work out.”
Closing the Dream Gap: Showing Girls (and Ourselves) What’s Next
PHOTO: Ilya S. Savenok
If anyone’s qualified to talk about making your dreams come true, it’s three women who have refused to take no for an answer: Mindy Kaling, Hoda Kotb, and Savannah Guthrie. But even the Today co-hosts and * The Mindy Project* star acknowledged it’s easier said than done. Their biggest advice for women looking to build their confidence and make their dreams come true is to put in the hard work. From that, they say, comes the confidence and the courage to think you can achieve anything.
“I always just did the leg work, and it meant I never came to anything unprepared,” Kaling told the crowd. “The only reason I was able to be confident was because I literally couldn’t not be confident with the amount of research and preparation I did.”
Kotb, Guthrie, and Kaling also discussed a conundrum many women face: the balance between being assertive and coming across as “likable.” Kaling told a self-deprecating anecdote about how never being perceived as conventionally attractive by men actually made asking for things easier. “When you are ignored in that way, things like confidence and asking for things in your professional career become a little easier,” she said.
Read our full recap of the Dream Gap panel here.
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