Everwhere. By karen sherman. What a title, right . Each word of the title has meaning within itself and i think you will see that eliminated today during the conversation that karen will have with barbara. I am Marjorie Sims managing director at the Aspen Institute and sly pleasure to step in for my boss pam mosley who is the executive director of aspen and the Vice President at the Aspen Institute. Unfortunately she had a family emergency today and is not able to speak she was heavily involved in the planning and it was her honor to be able to host this book talk because she has been a very close friend for many years. If you know ann you know the personal relationships and commitments are very important to her so only in emergency would have kept her from opening this up. Again thank you for being here and im not going to spend a lot of time because you have the bios in front of you and i think its important to get into the conversation that i am honored to be able to introduce karen because ive known karen for a number of years and their work and im excited to hear the conversation also. Aspen is a policy program at the Aspen Institute. We may work to make certain families are able to move up the economic ladder and have economic mobility. Our approach to doing this work is call the whole family approach. It is very much about making sure families opportunities their goals and their needs are addressed first and foremost and lifted up in policy and programs. Ascend has been around for about 10 years. We have a Leadership Program in the network of nonprofit organizations and associations across the country. About 380 of them better taking a whole family perched to moving up the economic ladder. We also make certain that we work intentionally with policy programs and policymakers at the state and federal level to make certain that structural barriers are addressed and we also make certain you take a Racial Equity and gender and torque work. Driving some of the work is a thread through the work that ann has done over her career. Having friends like karen and the work that she has done and experiences that karen has had flourished over their relationship over many years. One of the things that ann is doing now is coconvening the aspen forum on women and girls which also is relevant to this conversation. That is the program and initiative with teddy clark who is the executive director as well as a Vice President at the Aspen Institute. She runs a program called the action Global Innovators Group and policy program at the Aspen Institute paid with that i just want to introduce Barbara Kline who is going to be leading the conversation with karen and there will be time for a question and answers to what we would like to do is make certain that you are fully aware that we are honored to have barbara and their conversation is here today and make certain that you know she is really talented. Barber has an amazing career not only as an actor but being a newscaster for a long time globally and here in washington d. C. So we are really honored to have you barbara and thank you. And karen thank you for being here. Im looking forward to the conversation and i will turn it over to you barbara. Thank you. Its so great to be here and its a real honor to talk to karen about her book. As some of you probably know karen sprat ground is one that has taken her all over the world through djou works with women in crisis from the former soviet union, afghanistan and bosnia, all very courageous, commendable and in my view a little crazy but then we get to this book. Im just going to give a broad outline if its okay with you and that is that she decides emphatically, she decides to go to rwanda for a year for work with her three sons, leaves her husband in bethesda and she decides to do this for work and also to work personally on her soul her psyche and to work on what she reveals in the book trouble in her marriage. She is brutally honest about all three of these assets in this book. I guarantee when you read it you will find there are times where you are not going to be able to breathe whether its stories of women that we work with that you have met or prescriptions of your own life. Is that a good summary of what the book is about . Yes. First of all thank you for being here and also thank you to marjorie for the warm introduction. I really appreciated and im such a huge band of the Ascend Program and the wonderful work you are doing so kudos to you all. I really felt its a story that i have wanted to tell even before i went to rwanda with three kids per this idea of being of person who could straddle that developed in the developing world for most of my professional career im in bethesda maryland and then im in afghanistan in the south sudan and the congo and looking at the way the women lived and are forced to live in a lot of these societies and contrasting that with a life that we have here. Isnt just a privilege question is sort of how women use choice in so many different contexts around the world and frankly not just the developing world but in the developed world to. To be able to tell the stories alongside my own i think it was an honor for me to be able to do that. Okay so why did you ride it all down . Why did you want to share all of this publicly . I spent 10 years working with a group called Womens International that works with womens societies and all the hotspots you mentioned afghanistan south sudan congo rwanda nigeria and kosovo and bosnia. It struck me that part of my job was to take down stories and i have no oaks full of them as you can imagine over 10 years and i took down these stories for purposes of writing Success Stories and also being able to monitor and evaluation. How you do your work and the stories come you live them. Out go away. They stay with you and i have all of these stories but there was a story that i hadnt told and its disingenuous to ride a book about other womens stories and not deal that put mine there alongside that page. Tell us if you would. Your story personally. You felt her you work through as you are working with women in a crisis. I grew up in Portland Oregon and it was a pretty typical childhood that my father was very abusive and he was abusive to my mother and also to the children. Interesting growing up i actually identified with my father versus my mother. I carry that with me for a long time. I really couldnt understand my mothers relationship in the family and where her missing voice was, why she would stay in a marriage that was abusive. It really wasnt until i was in rwanda over that year that i actually started to connect the dots between how i grew up and my mother and our family and how so many women around the world live including in rwanda. Its a story i had heard over and over again but i had personalized it. C2 questions here. I do want to know about how you did connect the dots and what was the connection but also one of the things in this book is how honest you are. You say your father was abusive. You get into it here. Tell us how that affected you and again its in the book and how you then get to how you became as an adult. I think we all have stories from childhood and the stories that we live with and for me the way i dealt with this growing up with this idea of being above reproach. Im going to be super competent in the superwoman prevent going to go out there and get straight as and get the great job and im going to have the three kids and do everything right but you know there is no such thing as being above reproach and i started, the catalyst really in my move to rwanda was that i had applied for the ceo decision and i didnt get it and i was devastated but in some ways i was unnaturally devastated i was revising i do want to say of the house of cards but the story i had told myself about everything and how was working in the things that i needed to do to be this person started to unravel a bit. Everything i had done to prop myself up with the family and the kids and all of that became quite vulnerable and quite raw. Rwanda helped me kind of unpack all of that. How . I think was getting a bit more perspective and sitting down and talking to a number of women survivors of war. Again i had taken down their stories but it was a job that this was about me looking at the stories in a different way. It was me really internalizing the stories not just for work but woman to woman about how these women often rebuilt their lives literally a brick at a time that one of the things i was doing in rwanda hence the title of the book is we were building the first of its kind womens Opportunity Center there in these women and the women brickmakers had handmade each and every one of the 500,000 bricks used to construct the womens Opportunity Center. Think of this, 500,000 bricks so it was a metaphor for how women rebuilt their lives a brick at a time and for me while i was in rwanda i was deconstructing it that i was on building it so that i could go but up again. Tell us the story, you have stories of individuals here that you met and deborah for example. How does her story how did you connect the dots to your life . Deborah is one of the most challenging stories in the book. Deborah had lost her husband and all six of her children in the genocide including not to be so graphic including having the baby that she was carrying on her back lifted up and had their neck cut and she watched all of her children die and her husband die in the water. She lay floating on the water until the killing stopped. She ran around for two weeks with basically just the clothing she had on her back and she was hiding with no food and no water. She went after her family, her neighborhood. There was nothing left. This was like somebody who had truly lost everything husband, children livelihood at home. We are having this conversation in her house. She went to the women for women program. She actually got trained in knitting and she got a knitting machine said to her by a relative who was living in europe and she started making knitted sweaters and things like that in that she started making money and she bought more machines. Then she had a retail shop and shes making thousands of dollars. She was talking about how she built her as ms. And she got a bank loan and she had a house and she went into partnership with some other people. Basically how she had rebuilt her life a brick at a time ended her case her bricks were sweaters. It made me realize that she could do that, anybody, anybody could do that. If you think you can survive anything and yet you are still able to live and smile and dance and find a bit of joy in life its just a sense of the ultimate sense of perspective is what i would say. Theres a huge part from floating in the water pretending she was dead and being trained to knit. She wanted to live. She didnt lose faith in life. How . You know i can answer that. I cant tell you what is inside of her that kept her going but what i can say is having spent 10 years working with women everywhere and not just in rwanda but multiple countries but its been 15 years working in the former soviet union. Theres something inside of women, women in particular and no disrespect to the men in the room but theres something inside women that keeps them going and keeps them striving and a lot of it has to do with just a cute a sick instinct for survival but in the case of deborah and many other women it had to do with keeping their families going and keeping something going and they built this deep sense of responsibility to keep going for others. I will give you one other story began im not trying to be gruesome here but to contextualize this there was a woman in bosnia. Theres a story about her were she had been working sidebyside with her once friendly neighbors in the war happened and her neighbors basically turned vigilante. Her husband was taken away and forced into hard labor. She was taken to this empty house by her once friendly neighbors and tortured repeatedly. Barbara stories are all about that too. [laughter]. So some of these women are in crisis. No longer genocide. The civil war in bosnia but it is every day for many of the women who stories you tell in this book. I am thinking of her one marriage the fact that many are not. Number two specifically the story about will i cant remember her name, the woman his husband was having to do with how much value he thought she brought to the family. This was in every day sort, but are talking about a political crisis or more. Karen no issues the story. It is interesting this question of food. And i has up a couple of times and not only in one of its idea that these husbands were basically parceling out food depending on the perceived worth of the woman. And so my husband told me that i should be fed like a bird because of not contributing financially so this control of food comes up multiple times but to think about a place like south sudan to where women really are valued beneath animals. And it isnt just about food women exercising of the levels of control about education, home and being able to plead the home. It is just how women are perceived and so many cultures. I dont want people to think this is just about africa or just about other countries like that because ive seen this marginalization and other places too. Its just less noticeable. Barbara in your own home are you going up. Karen thats right. Its in my own home it is in a lot of peoples home. How many stories of your caring about the me to movement that stories that women are sitting inside inside of themselves every single day and theres line in the book that everybody has a story. Even its just the one we tell ourselves to get through the day. In this true for a lot of people i think it is true a lot of women. Theyre just not able to share those stories. And think about this. The statistic discussed me. 116 women in the United States experience rape as their first sexual encounter. One and 16 women. Thats an astounding statistic. So these women are convolute women are afghan women or other women, it is all of us. Barbara also struck me when i was taking is the book how important the law is. Because you cite one and 16 in this country. At least we know it is wrong. And it is it in our laws right. Not that it is necessary played out. But i am thinking and other countries where the culture, does not recognize it necessarily. Karen you would be surprised how many laws are the books pretty you would be surprised. Its a reporting issue. This enforcement issue. And in many countries, and it is in this country to pretty fluent dont report or talk about it. Women dont have a place to go. A lot of it has to do with they dont have their own income to be able to make different choices and sourcing the book, having this day in choosing the state are two entirely different things. My mother cannot stay. And when i was going up u. S. Me how i know this, im always going to have my own income. Id never want to feel like im a person who has to stay. If i choose to stay, that is up to me. Barbara so that was taken to be more about work. So tell us the conclusion that you reached the way you synthesize all of the stories, any different parts of the world in many different cultures and what conclusions you came to the two basic means. Karen what i have seen in every single country contacts including the United States pretty two things give woman voice and choices are in education and the ability to earn an income and actually education without income is insufficient to change the status quo for women and girls. I have seen that play out everywhere. Education may give you boys but it does not give a choice. I think women need to have their own income in order to have that ability to nudge asleep but to be able to make different choices. And with these choices, how many and choices rather keeping children in particular girls from school printed choices that are suffering from violence or an abusive family. Barbara when you work in south sudan nigeria, what or how did you see it possible to start giving or helping girls and women get those two things going in their lives. Karen i think it is interesting, women for women, it was a one year long Program Based on job skill training, business skills pretty and really looking at different Market Opportunities for women to be able to earn income. Speech of your talking about selling bananas. Karen yes but it was about having a bit of income, a lot of these women would, i remember when they first joined the program they might buy a bunch of bananas of rain onto the family to show that there was value to the training that they had something to offer. Youd be surprised i was living in luanda, is spreading an entrepreneur competition and some women would start very Small Business and they would have liked 25 employees. They would new regional trainings and ilio partners in kenya. Youd be surprised how little it takes to make a difference in somebodys lives. It blew me away. Thats why talk about his brick by brick. He does not take that much. And i am working with a group called an institute which is also about voice and choice in creating Economic Opportunity for young women. It is the first and only Womens College in rwanda, it started ten years ago and it is all about a Diploma Program link to some of the Fastest Growing sectors in the economy and all about giving and earning an education. In the ability to earn an income and 86 percent of those graduates are in the workforce in rwanda right now earning on average 11 times that it media income there. Barbara is interesting that you mentioned the three sectors. In the country, the economy, and you focus on, not a college, like arts and sciences and liberal science or psychology or whatever, where the three. Karen Hospitality Management and terrorism and Information Systems rit Small Business management entrepreneurship and i think that the thinking was, we started with the private sector and we work backwards. So that we make sure that the skills that these young women for developing had relevance in the marketpla