The International Forum “Women in the Modern Economy: challenges and solutions” was held in Moscow on the 19th of November in the Marriott Grand hotel in Moscow.
The International Forum “Women in the Modern Economy: challenges and solutions” was held in Moscow on the 19th of November in the Marriott Grand hotel in Moscow. It was organized by the “Committee of 20”. 125 people attended the Forum, 69 of them being CEOs, VPs and Managing Partners of the big multinational and Russian companies. The participants represented more than 100 companies and organizations, Universities, NGOs and media.
Various aspects of women’s economic participation including their role in the modernization of the economy and innovation processes were discussed during the Forum. Major attention was paid to the challenges that women face in their working life and solutions that can help to expand their opportunities and realize their potential.
The Forum has become the most important event of 2013 concluding the work of the Committee of 20 on the project dedicated to the analysis and dissemination of best corporate practices aimed at the expansion of women’s economic opportunities and improvement of the conditions for their labor and professional growth. The project was implemented in partnership and with the support of ExxonMobil Russia. Inc
Special attention was paid to the programs helping to balance work and life and women leadership programs.
The results of the survey “Corporate practices for women: modern trend or strategic investment?” were presented and discussed at the Forum. The topic attracted big interest of those present and led to the vivid discussion.
The Forum consisted of two plenary sessions.
The first session was dedicated to the review of modern economic trends, analysis of women’s economic participation issues, some challenges and solutions were observed as well as the new opportunities for women were identified and discussed. Interesting ideas and hypotheses were made by the reporters.
The session was followed by the Plenary discussion where the Heads of the leading multinational and Russian companies expressed their opinions and views on major issues of women’s economic participation and shared the experience of their companies in the sphere of creating favorable conditions for their employees’ professional growth and talent retention.
Most of the participants recognized the Forum as an extremely successful event and thanked the organizers for the excellent organization of the Forum, for the very informative and bright presentations and definitely they were really impressed by the outstanding cast of the speakers and attendees.
The speakers of the Forum were:
The first session:
Anna Belova, Chairman of the Board of Russian Venture Investment company, Chairperson of the Committee of 20
Leyla Rzakulieva, Upstream P&GA Manager, ExxonMobil
Irina Kalabikhina, Professor, Moscow State University, WB and UN expert
Elena Fedyashina, Executive Director, The Committee of 20
The second session:
Svetlana Balanova, General Director IBS, Vice-President of the Committee of 20
Sophia Azyzian, Partner EY
Irina Eldarkhanova, Chairperson of the Group of Companies Konfael
Stanislav Kostyashkin, CEO Continent Express;
Mike Nolte, Vide-president, Merzedes Benz
Nickolayi Pryanishnikov, President Microsoft Russia;
Svetlana Sorokina, Director IBM;
About The C20
The Committee of 20 is a nonprofit organization of the most successful Russian businesswomen, who hold top positions in leading companies, have achieved their success in a comparatively short period by starting their companies from scratch and growing them into recognized industry leaders.
