Jin In will be presenting her work on “Doing Power Differently: Empowerment, Gender & Sustainability”.
About this session: At the core of global challenges—poverty, war, migration, climate change, and insecurity—is a crisis of power. For the next generation of leaders who will shape public policy and work toward global sustainability, it is imperative to understand and do power differently. This lecture presents a new model of doing power differently. Based on the inaugural Cambridge Element on Sustainability Girl Power: Sustainability, Empowerment, and Justice, it presents powerful data on gender and sustainability, shares inspiring stories of empowerment, and foremost, introduces a unique framework for ‘empowerment muscle’ training—for every one of us to build and practice. First, it awakens audience participants to staggering data on systemic gender disempowerment intersecting environmental degradation, violence, and exclusion, as well as the profound societal impact if girls and women were fully empowered. Second, from climate activist Greta Thunberg to Ukrainian NGO Girls, the all-girl Afghan robotics team emerged from villages ruled by the Taliban, the Chibok girls who were enslaved by terrorists inflaming #BringBackOurGirls, the #NeverAgain movement against gun violence in the United States, and the pro-democracy Hong Kong movement with adolescent girls at the frontline, today’s empowered girls are a transformative force for change leading national and global movements powered by technology. Lastly, they are case studies modeling a distinct skill—an empowerment muscle. Combined with pioneering data concretizing what empowerment is exactly, this lecture presents seven empowerment muscles for every current and future leader to build and strengthen—to do power differently. Please join this Girl Power lecture commemorating and celebrating International Women’s Day and Women’s History Month!.
About the speaker: Jin In is the author of Girl Power: Sustainability, Empowerment, and Justice, the inaugural element of Cambridge Series on Sustainability showcasing scholarship that investigates persistent, multi-scale challenges to global sustainability and strategies to address them. As Founder of a nonprofit organization For Girls GLocal Leadership (4GGL), Ms. In collected the first-ever global data on young women’s empowerment to drive equality and social change. Bringing national and global experience in equity and inclusion to higher education, Ms. In was formerly the inaugural Assistant Vice President of Diversity and Inclusion in the President’s Office, Boston University. As a vital member of the leadership, she conducted an extensive listening tour of its 37,000 students from 140 countries, over 11,000 faculty and staff across 17 schools and colleges in order to truly build an inclusive academic community.
With expertise in Girl Power as a powerful solution for sustainability, Ms. In has worked extensively with both Democratic and Republican U.S. administrations, the White House National Security Council, Departments of State, Defense, and Homeland Security, UN Agencies, NATO, global and grassroots organizations in 145 countries, serving over 10 million girls, particularly in world’s poorest communities. It all began at a crisis moment—the 9/11 terrorist attacks on U.S. soil. Serving as the inaugural girls’ health fellow in the first federal office dedicated to gender equity and policy, the Office on Women’s Health, Office of the Secretary, US Department of Health and Human Services, she created the first federal health program for young people, by young people, quadrupling congressional funding for girls and winning awards from the White House as well as the private sector.
Eastern born, western bred, Ms. In’s commitment to equity and empowerment stems from her personal story. Born into one of the wealthiest families but in an underdeveloped country with no rights or protection for females, poverty became her new reality at seven months when her father died, unexpectedly. South Korea, then, entrenched in systemic and systematic inequity and discrimination against girls and women, her mother immigrated them to the United States. There, she met her childhood mentor who trained and taught her—through community service and social justice action—that an eight-year-old immigrant from a poor country, raised by a widow, can change the world. Her childhood training has become a life-long practice and commitment to service and justice.
With a Master’s in Public Health from the University of California Berkeley, Ms. In has also studied medicine, global affairs and theology. For her extraordinary service to communities around the world, she has received many awards from her alma maters. In her free time, she enjoys baking, salsa dancing, and sky diving.
When: Thursday 13th of March
11.00-12.00 Talk and Q&A.
Where: SG1, Alison Richards Building on the Sidgwick site.
Zoom: You can also join us virtually on Zoom.
The weekly climaTRACES workshops, organised by Kamiar Mohaddes and Henning Zschietzschmann, are attended by a diverse group of people from economics, geography, politics, engineering, business, earth sciences, natural sciences, and history, generating interdisciplinary discussion. One person leads the session, on either a paper they have written, a work in progress, or just an idea they have and would like feedback on. This is also an opportunity for people to find our more about the team on what climaTRACES have been up to and what future events and research projects are being developed.
