Wednesday, May 30
4:00 p.m.-5:30 p.m.
Nobel Peace Laureate and Liberian peace activist Leymah Gbowee has emerged as an international leader in her efforts to promote peace, democracy, and women's rights. As founder and president of the Gbowee Peace Foundation Africa, she works to help girls and women realize their potential as full participants and leaders in building and sustaining peace and security.
Gbowee is also head of the Liberia Reconciliation Initiative, executive director of the Women Peace and Security Network Africa and a founding member and former coordinator of the Women in Peacebuilding Network/West African Network for Peacebuilding. Her leadership of the Women of Liberia Mass Action for Peace--which brought together Christian and Muslim women in a nonviolent movement that played a pivotal role in ending Liberia’s civil war in 2003-- is chronicled in her memoir, Mighty Be Our Powers, and in the award-winning documentary, Pray the Devil Back to Hell.
She is also the Newsweek Daily Beast's Africa columnist and a member of the African Women Leaders Network for Reproductive Health and Family Planning. She is the recipient of prestigious awards including the Blue Ribbon for Peace by Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government and the Gruber Women's Rights Prize. She holds an MA in Conflict Transformation from Eastern Mennonite University (Harrisonburg, VA).
Gbowee will be signing copies of her book, Mighty Be Our Powers: How Sisterhood, Prayer, and Sex Changed a Nation at War, after her plenary address.
