Role Models Inspire at The White House Project’s Epic Awards

By Melissa J. Anderson (New York City)

Speaking last week at the White House Project’s annual Epic Awards, the organization’s president, Tiffany Dufu said, “My dad used to always tell me, ‘Tiffany Dufu, if you want to have something you’ve never had before, you’re going to have to do something you’ve never done before to get it.’ What I want to have now is for women leaders to reach [levels] we’ve never seen before.”

The White House Project works to prepare women for leadership in politics, business, and the media. The Epic Awards honor individuals who have made big strides when it comes to increasing the percentage of women in leadership roles.

“We will have achieved success when we’ve bottled, mass reproduced, and distributed that White House Project equation to an entire generation of women,” Dufu said.

The host of the event, Geena Davis, Academy Award winner and founder of the Geena Davis Institute on Gender in the Media, remarked, “Our goal has to be to get so many women into leadership that we can focus on their agenda, rather than on their gender.”

Igniting Leadership in Business

Beth Brooke, Global Vice Chair of Public Policy at Ernst & Young and Board Member of the WHP, announced the honoree of the EPIC Go Lead Award – her boss, Jim Turley, Chairman & CEO of Ernst & Young.

She described a personal story of how, after the death of her father, Turley helped make the travel arrangements for Brooke and her family to travel to Florida to be with their mother – despite all of the flights to the area being sold out because it was spring break. “It’s these collective actions, sometimes small, sometimes seemingly unrelated to women’s leadership, that have given women like myself the ability to bring our whole selves to work.”

Accepting the award, Turley said his belief in the importance of diversity comes down to performance. “Really diverse teams generally don’t perform really middle of the road. Some are off the charts great,” he said, while some of them fail. “It all comes down to culture,” he explained, describing how corporate culture can make or break a diverse group.

The market is also demanding greater diversity, he continued. “Seventy-five percent of all employees and 75 percent of all customers are not going to be white men. It’s really remarkable to step back and think about that.”

He also believes that boards and executive committees must diversify. “Too pale, too male, and too stale defines an awful lot of boards in this country,” he said. “That defines an awful lot of management and executive teams in this country. And that is something we are working on in this country.”

Impact of Mentoring

Susan Taylor, former Editor-in-Chief of Essence Magazine and CEO and Founder of the National CARES Mentoring Movement, was presented with the The Marie C. Wilson Impact Award for “Igniting the leadership of the next generation of leaders to follow their dreams.”

Taylor explained that she founded CARES when she learned of startling statistics when it comes to the state of education of black children – 86% cannot read or do math at grade level, she explained. “But when the call to action to went out the male and female African American community to get involved with mentoring our young, [responses came from] white women, then white men, then black women, then black men. We all know the crisis, we need mentors in the reverse order,” Taylor said.

Founded in 2005, CARES works to recruit and develop mentors within the African American community, and then direct them to mentoring groups around the country. According to the organization, they have now served 125,000 young people.

Taylor said, “I’m honored to receive this award that is named in honor of a woman I truly admire,” noting that WHP founder Marie Wilson has been a pioneer when it comes to including women of color in the movement to advance women in leadership.