a celebration of women’s power & resilience
Thursday, May 28th at 7:00pm (PST)
Leadership starts at home. Join Close the Gap California for an inspirational evening starring some of today’s most courageous and progressive women leaders.
U.S. SENATOR TAMMY BALDWIN (D-WI)
Raised in Madison, Wisconsin, Tammy Baldwin was inspired at a young age to be a public servant and champion of just healthcare policy. Shortly after receiving her law degree from UW-Madison in 1989, Senator Baldwin was elected for three terms to the Wisconsin State Assembly as State Representative for the 78th district. In 1998, she was elected to the House of Representatives as the first openly gay female Congress member. She served seven terms in the House, gaining middle class bipartisan support through her efforts on the Budget Committee, the Judiciary Committee, and the Energy and Commerce Committee. In 2012, Senator Baldwin successfully ran for senator, making history as Wisconsin’s first openly gay woman to serve in the Senate. In this position, Senator Baldwin’s main policy concerns are the student debt crisis, college affordability, and healthcare. She has spearheaded efforts such as the Bank on Student Emergency Loan Refinancing Act, America’s College Promise Act, the Working Student Act, the Perkins loans aid program for low-income students, and the Red Act. In part due to challenges she faced as a child to get healthcare coverage for an illness deemed a “pre-existing condition,” Senator Baldwin also led the fight for the Affordable Care Act in the United States House of Representatives and Senate, which no longer denied coverage for children with pre-existing conditions. Senator Baldwin is a member of the Senate Appropriations Committee, the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions, and the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation.
CONGRESSWOMAN LAUREN UNDERWOOD (D-IL)
Congresswoman Lauren Underwood shattered the glass ceiling as the first woman of color and millennial to represent Illinois’ 14th Congressional District. She also made history as the youngest African American woman to serve in the U.S. House of Representatives 116th Congress. She serves on the House Committee of Veteran’s Affairs, Homeland Security, and Education and Labor as well as the House Democratic Steering and Policy Committee. Alongside other Democratic representatives, Congresswoman Underwood participates in the Future Forum, which ensures that the voices of the Congressional Black Caucus, Next-Gen Americans, and the LGBT Equality Caucus are heard and their agendas put forward. Before being elected to Congress, Underwood was a senior advisor to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services helping to implement the Affordable Care Act. Representative Underwood is a registered nurse and believes that equitable healthcare is a human right.
CA LIEUTENANT GOVERNOR ELENI KOUNALAKIS
Lieutenant Governor Eleni Kounalakis was sworn in as the first female and 50th Lieutenant Governor of California by Governor Gavin Newsom on January 7, 2019. Kounalakis was the first Greek-American woman and one of the country’s youngest ambassadors when she served as President Barack Obama’s Ambassador to the Republic of Hungary from 2010 to 2013. In 2014, then-Governor Jerry Brown appointed Lt. Gov. Kounalakis to chair the California Advisory Council for International Investment. She also was a Virtual Fellow at the U.S. Department of State, Bureau of Intelligence and Research between 2014 and 2017, where she specialized in international trade and immigration. She currently is the director of the Association of American Ambassador’s and a National Democratic Institute “Ambassadors Circle” advisor. Prior to public service, Lt. Gov. Kounalakis was president of a respected California housing development firm where she worked for 18 years and built master-planned communities for the Sacramento area. She is a passionate advocate of early childhood development and served as a member of California’s First 5 Commission and the California Blue Ribbon Commission on Autism.
MANDANA DAYANI
MANDANA DAYANI is the Creator and Co-founder of I am a voter., a nonpartisan movement that aims to create a cultural shift around voting and civic engagement. Its mission is to inspire and excite this generation by making voter identity mainstream, aspirational, inclusive and an integral component of personal identity.
Mandana began her career as a corporate attorney at top international law firm, Paul Hastings. She then worked as a talent agent where she developed licensing and endorsement opportunities for celebrities before going in house to work with stylist and entrepreneur, Rachel Zoe, to launch the Rachel Zoe Collection and to launch and lead her company’s initiatives in business development, digital media, strategic investments, licensing, publishing, endorsements, and television production. After 6 years, Mandana joined EBTH as Chief Brand Officer where she served as part of the leadership team which raised $84.5 million in venture capital, built its strategy and teams across all its consumer facing functions, led the company’s rebrand, and sold and produced its eponymous TV show to HGTV. She is also the founder of The Learning Series, an event series for women leaders.
Mandana earned her JD from the USC Gould School of Law and her BA from the University of Southern California. She is an immigrant from Iran and lives in Los Angeles with her husband, Peter Traugott, and their two daughters.
LAUREN GREENFIELD
Named by The New York Times as “America’s foremost visual chronicler of the plutocracy,” Emmy-award-winning filmmaker/photographer Lauren Greenfield has produced groundbreaking work on consumerism, youth culture and gender for the past 25 years. Her documentary films Thin, The Queen of Versailles and The Kingmaker, and photographic monographs, Fast Forward, Girl Culture, and Thin have been screened, published, and exhibited around the world, as well as collected by cultural institutions including the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA), J. Paul Getty Museum, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMOMA), MOMA (New York), Smithsonian, and the International Center of Photography.
The Queen of Versailles won her the Best Documentary Director Award at the Sundance Film Festival and was named by Vogue as one of the top documentaries of all time. Her viral ad, #LikeAGirl, swept commercial awards, including a 2015 Emmy, 14 Cannes Lions 2015 (including the Titanium Lion), 7 Clios, 5 Art Directors, 8 pencils at the D & AD Awards, was named 3rd Best Ad of the Decade, earned Greenfield the #1 Director/Most Awarded Director by AdAge (the first woman to top this list)and the Best in Show at the AICP Awards, and has become part of the Museum of Modern Art’s (MoMA) permanent collection. In 2015, Greenfield was also named one of the 2015 Top 10 directors in Adweek’s Most Creative 100 People and by American Photo as one of the 25 most influential photographers working today (American Photo) and was one of 10 commercial directors featured in the 2015 Creative 100 in Adweek.
Greenfield’s Generation Wealth, garnered her the 2018 Photographer of the Year from the Art Directors Club, The Paris Photography Prize 2018 (PX3), and the Lucie for Best Book Photographer of 2018. The record-setting companion exhibition opened in Los Angeles at the Annenberg Space for Photography on April 2017 and has since traveled to the International Center of Photography (New York City), the Nobel Peace Center (Oslo), the Fotomuseum (The Hague), Deichtorhallen Hamburg, and the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art (Copenhagen). The accompanying film, Generation Wealth, opened the 2018 Sundance Film Festival, screened at the Berlinale, SXSW, the Museum of Modern Art in New York, and was released worldwide by Amazon Studios. Film Independent awarded Greenfield the Spirit of Independence Award, and the Writers Guild nominated Generation Wealth for Best Documentary screenplay.
Greenfield’s latest documentary film, The Kingmaker (2019), about the former First Lady of the Philippines, Imelda Marcos, premiered at the Venice Film Festival, followed by Telluride, Toronto, and London, making it the first documentary to play all four festivals. The Kingmaker has garnered a Writers Guild Nomination, three Critics Choice Nominations and the Critics’ Choice honor for the “Most Compelling Living Subject of a Documentary.” It was named one of the “Best Documentaries of 2019” by Variety, Hollywood Reporter, the Boston Globe, Chicago, Philadelphia, and Bay Area critics and has been lauded by critics in the Philippines. The film premiered on Showtime streaming beginning February, 2020.
In 2019, Greenfield and Evers launched a production company Girl Culture Films to address the lack of diversity behind the camera in advertising.
CHLOE X HALLE
Atlanta born sisters Chloe x Halle music range from mature acoustic pop to contemporary R & B. The pair released their full -length debut album The Kids Are Alright in 2018 to critical acclaim, anchored by the title track and the single “Grown,” which was the theme song for the television show and Black-ish spin-off, Grown-ish. The sisters opened for Beyonce on European dates of her Formation world tour and were featured on Michelle Obamas’ charity single “This is for my Girls”. The R&B duo just shared the official music video for their new single “Do It” this month. Entertainment Tonight raved, “Beyonce protégés Chloe x Halle are currently making savage music: songs that are classy, bougie, and ratchet. The sister duo’s newest single, “Do It,” is their most danceable track yet, something you can kick around the house to while still enjoying their uniquely complex harmonies”.
