Meet Lori Sokol, Interim Board Chair

Lori SokolAs a publisher, journalist and researcher working for the empowerment of women, I find myself particularly honored to bring this experience to a leadership position with such an outstanding news organization as Women's eNews.

Over my 30-year career as a magazine publisher, I have championed pertinent social issues, including gender equality, the needs of working parents, environmental sustainability and strides made by female professionals to smash the proverbial "glass ceiling."

As a journalist, I have brought conversations on work/life balance to news outlets across America via media outlets such as the Baltimore Sun, the Philadelphia Inquirer, MSNBC, CNBC and Fox Five Live. My book on this subject, "The Agile Workforce and Workplace: The New Future of Work," was published by Working Mother Media/Bonnier Corporation in .

My passion for women's equality spurred me, as a doctoral candidate in educational psychology, to research the media's influence in crafting gender roles, further seeking to expose how stereotypes are created and maintained.

Women's eNews Board of Directors


DR. HOLLY ATKINSON
Dr. Holly Atkinson is Chief Medical Officer and Senior Medical Correspondent for HealthiNation, the leading consumer health video network. She has extensive experience as a medical correspondent, including assignments with NBC's Today show, The CBS Morning News, Lifetime Medical Television, and the PBS health show BodyWatch. She is author of the best selling book Women & Fatigue, and is currently working on her new book, 5 Keys to Maximum Health, which is due out early next year.

Dr. Atkinson is also Assistant Professor of Medicine and Co-Director of the Advancing Idealism in Medicine Program at Mt. Sinai School of Medicine and Assistant Professor of Public Health at Weill Medical College of Cornell University in New York. Dr. Atkinson devotes considerable time to a number of not-for-profit organizations. She is thrilled to be a board member of Women's eNews. She is also Immediate Past President and current board member of the Nobel Peace Prize-winning organization Physicians for Human Rights, which uses the tools of medicine and science to document human rights violations and then mobilizes people to advance health and justice for all.


Faith Hope Consolo
FAITH HOPE CONSOLO
Recognized worldwide as the "Queen of Retail," Faith Hope Consolo is renowned for her expertise as a consultant and retail broker who has been instrumental in revitalizing and sculpting retail corridors across the nation -- and beyond. The sheer volume, size, and distinction of her transactions, combined with her extraordinary experience in a global array of retail markets, have set a high standard among real estate specialists.

The comprehensive scope of her work extends to virtually every facet of retail real estate and every kind of location -- from urban and suburban streets to malls, shopping centers, lifestyles centers and power centers. While best known her luxury market savvy, Ms. Consolo's clients come from virtually all segments of the market, spanning top-tier fashion to mass merchandising. She regularly works on behalf of private and public investors, entrepreneurial owners and real estate developers with significant portfolios or single assets.

With an unparalleled ability to tailor customized, highly focused solutions on a client-by-client basis, Ms. Consolo oversees retail operations for the retail services divisions of Prudential commercial real estate offices nationwide. She is also a co-founder of SBS, an international network of luxury retail brokers. During a long and storied career, Ms. Consolo has advised and encouraged myriad retailers as they emerge as major players and has helped transform lackluster neighborhoods into sought-after shopping districts.

Ms. Consolo is based in Manhattan but her reach is global. She is a master in the art of securing leases in locations where companies can maximize profits while enhancing the neighboring stores and retail landscape.


GORDON GRAY
Gray received an undergraduate degree from Harvard University and two graduate degrees from Columbia University, one in Middle Eastern languages and cultures and one in journalism, class of 1977.

Gray was a newspaper reporter for four years and entered the family business in the area of media, cable, radio and most recently magazines. His interest in Women's eNews is a natural outgrowth of his studies and experience. He sees Women's eNews as an enormous opportunity to empower women globally. Gray was the force behind creating the Arabic version of the site to help increase awareness of Arabic culture and language, as well as give Arabic-speaking women in the world a valuable source of reliable information.

As a philanthropist, he's been a lifetime supporter of education and the arts.


Rita Rodin JohnstonRITA RODIN JOHNSTON
Rita Rodin Johnston is a partner in Skadden's Intellectual Property and Technology; Information Technology and E-Commerce; Media and Entertainment; and Outsourcing practices. She focuses her practice on domestic and international transactions involving the Internet, content, emerging media and complex technologies on behalf of clients that are start-up entrepreneurs, investors and multinational corporations.

She regularly structures and negotiates technology and intellectual property transactions — including strategic alliances, joint ventures and other partnership arrangements; trademark, copyright and technology licensing agreements; development and distribution agreements; information technology and business processing outsourcing agreements; and marketing and co-branding agreements. Her practice includes strategic intellectual property asset purchases and sales; technology mergers and acquisitions; initial public offerings, restructurings, and project finance matters. She also advises companies on social media issues, business and compliance issues, open source issues, privacy matters and branding issues. Ms.Rodin Johnston repeatedly has been selected for inclusion in Chambers Global: The World's Leading Lawyers for Business, Chambers USA: America's Leading Lawyers for Business, and The Best Lawyers in America. She is a frequent lecturer and author on a variety of e-commerce, media, trademark and technology-related topics.


SAMUEL F. PRYOR III
Born in New York City in 1928, Pryor attended Taft School, Yale University and University of Pennsylvania Law School. He entered the Marine Corps in 1953 and retired in 1955 as a captain in the reserve. As the Korean War ended and he received his commission, he spent his second year as an assistant to the Commandant and assigned to the Navy Judge Advocate General's Corps.

Sam joined the law firm of Davis Polk and Wardwell at the start of 1956 and remained with the firm until his retirement in 1998. In 1964 he started the firm's Paris office where he remained with his family for over three years.

His practice was corporate, and largely corporate finance, representing JP Morgan, Morgan Stanley, Smith Barney & Company, and Donaldson Lufkin & Jenrette. Foreign clients were a large part of his practice, representing the British government on the sale of British Petroleum and British Airways. He also represented the Italian, Spanish governments and the Republic of China in international transactions, as well as a number of French banks, including Credit Lyonnais, Bank de Paris and Societe Generale. In the U.S., he represented RJR Nabisco, Exxon and AT&T on financial transactions.

He has had many interests in the not-for-profit area. He has been an Overseer of the Penn Law School, president of the Appalachian Mountain Club, vice-chairman of the Church Pension Fund, and co-chair of the Republican Majority for Choice. Currently, he is chairman of the World Rehabilitation Fund and the Westchester Land Trust and serves on the boards of the League of Conservation Voters, the National Forest Foundation, the Palisades Interstate Park Commission, the New York Chapter of the Republican Majority for Choice and Women's eNews. He joined the board of Women's eNews because he wanted to expand his knowledge of women's issues to support his efforts in the Republican Party.


MARGARITA QUIHUIS
Margarita Quihuis is the founder of Indigo Financiera and a 2004-2005 Reuters Fellow, Stanford University. Currently a social entrepreneur Margarita Quihuis' career has ranged from developing high-end aerospace systems to gender-focused design to leading the pioneering Women's Technology Cluster business incubator and most recently as a venture capitalist and Reuters Fellow at Stanford.

Her current efforts include financial innovation for the unbanked both in the United States and in developing countries and encouraging technological innovation on behalf of humanitarian needs. In 2004, she was recognized by Women's eNews as a 21 Leaders for the 21st Century for her efforts in increasing access to capital for female entrepreneurs and was named as one of WITI's women to watch in 2003.


Many readers have asked why the site has an . The short answer is that the board and staff believed that was enormously important to provide accessible, unbiased news on global women's issues, at no cost, to those in the region.

The Background

During the summer of 2002, Women's eNews learned that, while most of our readers were based in North America and Western Europe, a surprisingly high number were based in Saudi Arabia, Qatar and other Arabic-speaking countries. In fact, the visitors from the Middle East ranked fourth--after North America, Western Europe and unknown--in frequency of visits.

At about the same time, the United Nations' Development Program issued its ground-breakingFirst Arab Human Development Report. The report painted a disturbing portrait of a region under-utilizing and under-investing in its human capital, with dire consequences for the region's people as well as the rest of the globe.

"Despite the differences across the region," the report said, "three critical deficits face all Arab countries: freedom; women's empowerment; human capabilities and knowledge relative to income." It went on to say that Arab countries scored lowest on the freedom index out of all regions in the world, as well as in large scale illiteracy and deficiencies in the education system.

In addition, the report said: "Utilization of Arab women's capabilities through political and economic participation remain the lowest in the world in qualitative terms. In many countries of the region, women suffer from unequal citizenship and legal entitlements. In some countries with elected national assemblies, women are still denied the right to vote or hold office. And one in every two Arab women can neither read nor write . . . These deficits must be addressed in every field: economic, political and social."

Women in the Middle East: Increased Participation Is a Must

Several months later, at a United Nations conference in Beirut in November 2002 on women's role in the media, the U.N.'s executive secretary for the region, Mervat Tallawy, said that the media, with all the technological advancement within their reach, could help in transforming the traditions and customs which had greatly hampered the advancement of Arab women. She said she hoped the media would promote positive changes, including alternatives to the negative and stereotypical image of women.

Reflecting Tallawy's concern, a 143-page report, Women's Rights and the Arab Media (Centre for Media Freedom--Middle East and North America, CMF MENA, , London) found that the Arab media ignored women's concerns by and large, reinforced stereotypes and were without women in management positions. Three of the report's five recommendations are relevant to the development of Arabic Women's eNews.

 

The report called for the following:

(The first recommendation called on human rights advocates to familiarize the Arab media with the provisions of the relevant international conventions and action programs in favor of women's rights and the fifth called on donors to support these efforts called for in the other four recommendations.)

The report makes clear that none of this could occur without a free press and called on Arab states "to provide and reinforce constitutional and legal guarantees of freedom of expression and abolish those laws and measures that limit the freedom of the press."

Arabic Women's eNews

As unbiased source of underreported news about women throughout the world, Women's eNews responded to these challenges.

Women's eNews developed an Arabic-language version--one that would translate Women's eNews articles into Arabic as well as produce original content for Arabic Women's eNews in Arabic. (This original content could then be translated for the benefit of our English-speaking audience on the Women's eNews site.)

With support from a private donor committed to supporting freedom of the press, Women's eNews contracted with a firm specializing in Arabic language Web sites to construct a site replicating the Women's eNews site as closely as possible for the Arabic reader. Women's eNews also engaged an experienced U.S.-based Arabic-speaking journalist to act as editor of the site and contracted with a professional translator with extensive experience in dealing with American news stories being reproduced in Arabic.

We think it is important to fulfill the classic role of journalism especially for women throughout this region and provide reporting on the facts and views about their lives.

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