United Nations Association-Dane County Women's Summit

media release: UNA USA Dane County is proud to present our first ever Women's Summit. The Summit will provide four expert panelists who will each present on how one of the four major crises of our polycrisis era adversely impacts women all over the world more severely than any other group. The speaker panel will be followed by Q & A. Lunch will be provided. Free and open to all.

Please register so we may prepare accordingly

The climate crisis will be addressed by Dr. Valerie Stull, an interdisciplinary environmental health research scientist in the Center for Sustainability and the Global Environment and a faculty associate in the Department of Community and Environmental Sociology at UW-Madison. Her international work focuses on sustainable food systems and the intersection of agriculture, climate change, and human health.

Conflict, both sexual violence as a tool of war and in an intimate partner setting, will be discussed by an attorney Michelle Rose, a whose legal background is in sexual assault and rape violence. She has worked tirelessly on the intersection of crime policy and women's issues. She got her start in family law. She currently owns her own legal and policy consulting firm that advises clients how to protect and promote equity in this volatile political climate.

The global economic outlook will be the subject of Dr. Gisella Kagy’s remarks. Her research through the School of Human Ecology at UW-Madison is in development economics with a focus on gender, employment in low-income countries, and the impact of early childhood and in-utero health shocks on later life health and human capital accumulation. She has projects in Bangladesh, Ethiopia, and Ghana.          

The lingering effects of Covid-!9 will be addressed by Dr. Zoua Vang, Meta Schroeder Beckner Outreach Professor and Professor of Civil Society & Community Studies in the School of Human Ecology at UW-Madison. She is also an integrated specialist in the Ecology of Healthy Communities with the Division of Extension’s Health and Well-Being Institute. Her research shows that under the COVID-19 pandemic, nativity status and gender have intersected in ways that disproportionately affect the mental health and economic insecurity of female immigrants, especially new arrivals

The panel moderator will be Karen Kendrick-Hands, an attorney specializing in public interest advocacy for cleaner air and mobility and transportation choices, including serving on various local, state, and regional advisory bodies, for more than 30 years. A member of the Rotary Club of Madison since 2012, Karen co-founded the Environmental Sustainability Rotary Action Group (ESRAG) in 2015. She was an Observer Delegate sent by Rotary International to COP24 in 2018 and COP26 in 2021. Karen presented to the Rotary Foundation’s Environmental Issues Task Force in 2020 on behalf of ESRAG.  RI’s Directors and the Trustees of the Rotary Foundation accepted the report unanimously and created a seventh Area of Focus: Protecting the Environment.