Pat Mitchell

I had the absolute pleasure of interviewing CNN Chief International Anchor Christiane Amanpour last night at the Skoll World Forum in Oxford. I’ll share our entire conversation later, but here are a few video outtakes from social media.

This month, in partnership with The Rockefeller Foundation, I’m convening a women’s leadership forum at the Rockefeller conference center in Bellagio, Italy. Along with Ronda Carnegie, one of the TEDWomen co-founders, we’re gathering a group of women leaders from all over the world on the frontlines of change in culture, media, business, social enterprises and government.

If you know the history of this struggle, you know that an ERA amendment was passed by Congress in 1972. But in order for an amendment to become part of the Constitution, it needs three-fourths of the states to ratify it and that hasn’t happened yet. But momentum around ratification is building and may happen very soon.

One of anthropologist Margaret Mead’s most famous quotes instructs us to “never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world: indeed, it’s the only thing that ever has.” We might amend Mead’s observation to honor a group of thoughtful, committed teenagers across the world standing against climate change.

At SFF 2019, along with the most positive “buzz” I can remember about the films, the words often heard were “most diverse,” “most inclusive” — it was all that and more.

In an informative, bold TEDWomen talk, Project Drawdown author Katharine Wilkinson shares three key ways that empowering women and girls can help stop global warming. "Drawing down emissions depends on rising up," she says.

One of my favorite quotes is from the British writer Gilbert Chesterton: “Thanks are the highest form of thought and gratitude is happiness doubled by wonder.” My happiness is indeed doubled by the wonder-filled work that is creating change for individuals, communities and the small, fragile world we share.