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Meet Our Honorees

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  Ada Williams Prince

  Director, Program Strategy and Investment, Pivotal Ventures

  Vision Award

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  Ada Williams Prince

  Director, Program Strategy and Investment, Pivotal Ventures

  Ada is an established thought leader at the intersection of philanthropy, equity and global economic development.  At Pivotal Ventures, founded by Melinda Gates, she directs high level engagement and strategies to advance social progress in the United States. Specifically, in the areas of adolescent mental health (globally and domestically), and accelerating the power and influence women and girls of color.

  Ada brings over 20 years of experience working on social impact globally and domestically. She has served as a Program Officer for the Marguerite Casey Foundation, Director of Special Projects for OneAmerica, and Senior Advocacy Officer at the Women’s Refugee Commission and a number of other senior program positions.  She’s held international posts with the International Rehabilitation Council for Torture Survivors in Brussels, Save the Children in London, and with Refugees International, and the Office of Foreign Disaster Assistance at USAID. 

  Ada has served as a board member for several organizations including, the Refugee Women’s Alliance in Seattle, chair of the board of directors of Wandsworth Women’s Aid UK, a domestic violence shelter and Crisis Text Line. Currently she serves on the board of PAI (a global reproductive health organization) and the Women’s Funding Network.

  Ada holds a BA and MA degrees from the School for International Training in Brattleboro, VT and the University of Bradford in England, United Kingdom. She and her family live in Seattle. 
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  Carla Harris

  Vice Chairman, Managing Director, Morgan Stanley

  Celebrating Women Award

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  Carla Harris

  Vice Chairman, Managing Director, Morgan Stanley

  Carla Harris is a Vice Chairman, Managing Director and Senior Client Advisor at Morgan Stanley.  She was most recently as a Vice Chairman responsible for increasing client connectivity and penetration to enhance revenue generation across the firm. She formerly headed the Emerging Manager Platform, the equity capital markets effort for the consumer and retail industries and was responsible for Equity Private Placements.  In her 30 year career, Ms. Harris has had extensive industry experiences in the technology, media, retail, telecommunications, transportation, industrial, and healthcare sectors. In August 2013, Carla Harris was appointed by President Barack Obama to chair the National Women’s Business Council.

  For more than a decade, Ms. Harris was a senior member of the equity syndicate desk and executed such transactions as initial public offerings for UPS, Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia, Ariba, Redback, the General Motors sub-IPO of Delphi Automotive, and the $3.2 Billion common stock transaction for Immunex Corporation, one of the largest biotechnology common stock transactions in U.S. history.  Ms. Harris was named to Fortune Magazine’s list of “The 50 Most Powerful Black Executives in Corporate America”, Fortune’s Most Influential List, U. S. Bankers Top 25 Most Powerful Women in Finance (2009, 2010, 2011), Black Enterprise’s Top 75 Most Powerful Women in Business (2017),  and “Top 75 African Americans on Wall Street”, and to Essence Magazine’s list of “The 50 Women Who are Shaping the World”, Ebony’s list of the Power 100 and “15 Corporate Women at the Top” and was named “Woman of the Year 2004” by the Harvard Black Men’s Forum  and  in 2011 by the Yale Black Men’s Forum.

  Prior to joining Morgan Stanley, Carla received an MBA, Second Year Honors from Harvard Business School and an AB in economics from Harvard University, Magna Cum Laude.  Carla has also received Honorary Doctorates of Laws, Humanities and Business from Marymount Manhattan College, Bloomfield College, Converse College, Jacksonville University, Simmons College, the College of New Rochelle, St. Thomas Aquinas College, Babson College and Fisk University, Wake Forest University and Felician University respectively. Carla Harris is actively involved in her community and heartily believes that “we are blessed so that we can be a blessing to someone else.”

  She is the past Chair of the Board of the Morgan Stanley Foundation and of The Executive Leadership Council, and sits on the boards of Sponsors for Educational Opportunity (SEO), The Sesame Workshop, Mother Cabrini Foundation and is an active member of the St. Charles Gospelites of the St. Charles Borromeo Catholic Church and the Mark Howell Singers.  She is a member of the board of overseers of Harvard University and of the board of directors of the Walmart Corporation and Cummins Corporation. Ms. Harris was co-chair of the National Social Action Commission of Delta Sigma Theta Sorority, Incorporated. She has been named to the New Jersey Hall of Fame (2015) and has received the Bert King Award from the Harvard Business School African American Alumni Association, the 2005 Women’s Professional Achievement Award from Harvard University, the Pierre Toussaint Medallion from the Office of Black Ministry of the Archdiocese of New York, the Women of Power Award given by the National Urban League, the Women of Influence Award from The Links, Incorporated and many other awards.  In her other life, Carla is a singer who has sold out concerts at the Apollo Theatre, and released her third gospel CD “Unceasing Praise” (2011) , her second CD, a gospel album titled, “Joy Is Waiting”, was featured on BET Nightly News while her first CD entitled, “Carla’s First Christmas”, was a bestseller on Amazon.com in New York and in record stores, and was featured on the CBS Evening News with Dan Rather in his “American Dream” segment.  She has performed 5 sold out concerts at Carnegie Hall. Carla is also the author of the books, Strategize to Win (2014) and of Expect to Win (2009) (Hudson Press) and the soon to be released, Lead To Win (2022).
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  Elizabeth Yeampierre

  Executive Director, UPROSE

  Celebrating Women Award

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  Elizabeth Yeampierre

  Executive Director, UPROSE

  Elizabeth Yeampierre is an internationally recognized Puerto Rican attorney of African and Indigenous ancestry and environmental/climate justice leader who is the executive director of UPROSE, Brooklyn’s oldest Puerto Rican community-based organization. She is also the Co-Chair of a national alliance called Climate Justice Alliance and the co-founder of #OurPowerPRnyc. Her award-winning vision for an inter-generational, multi-cultural, and community-led organization is the driving force behind UPROSE. She is a long-time advocate and trailblazer for community organizing around just, sustainable development, environmental justice, and community-led climate adaptation and community resiliency in Sunset Park. In addition to that, she was recognized in 2015 by Vogue as a Climate Warrior and one of the 13 women on the frontline fighting against Climate Change. Ms. Yeampierre has been a featured speaker at local, national, and international forums including Sage Paris 2015, 2016 GRI Amsterdam, White House Forum on Environmental Justice, Yale, Harvard, Cooper Union, Columbia, and universities, colleges, and conferences all over the country and spoke at the opening climate rally for Pope Francis at the National Mall, The Battle for Paradise at Cooper Union with Naomi Klein. Her work is featured in several books, in addition, being featured in Latina Magazine, VOGUE, Vanity Fair, The Guardian, Grist, American Prospect, Al Jazeera, Huffington Post, Democracy Now, The Intercept, and a variety of media outlets throughout the United States, Latin America, and Europe. In 2014, Ms. Yeampierre was part of the leadership of the People’s Climate March Mobilization – a march of over 400,000 people across New York City. She played a major role in ensuring the frontline was made up of young people of color, and successfully proposed the adoption of the Jemez principles for democratic organizing, which have since become the roadmap to building just relationships in the climate justice movement. Elizabeth was recently featured in the NY Times as a visionary paving the path to Climate Justice. In 2018, she was awarded Frederick Douglass Abolitionist Award FD200, She recently was named by Apolitical as Climate 100: The World’s Most Influential People in Climate Policy. 

  Twitter: @yeampierre ; @uprose

  IG: @uprosebrooklyn 

  FB: UPROSE Bk 
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  Min Jin Lee

  Author

  Celebrating Women Award

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  Min Jin Lee

  Author of Free Food for Millionaires and Pachinko

  Min Jin Lee is the author of the novels Free Food for Millionaires and Pachinko, which was named a finalist for the National Book Award and runner-up for the Dayton Literary Peace Prize. Her writing has been featured in The New Yorker, The New York Review of Books, One Story, The New York Times Book Review, and The Wall Street Journal. She is the recipient of fellowships in Fiction from the Guggenheim Foundation, the Radcliffe Institute of Advanced Study at Harvard, and the New York Foundation for the Arts. In 2019, she was inducted into the New York Foundation for the Arts Hall of Fame. She is a Writer-in-Residence at Amherst College and serves as a trustee of PEN America and a director of the Authors Guild. She is at work on her third novel, American Hagwon and a nonfiction work, Name Recognition.
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  Rebecca Cokley

  Program Officer, U.S. Disability Rights, Ford Foundation

  Celebrating Women Award

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  Rebecca Cokley

  Program Officer, U.S. Disability Rights, Ford Foundation

  Rebecca Cokley is the program officer for the foundation’s first-ever U.S. Disability Rights program, which is focused on strengthening the field, building a pipeline of diverse leadership, promoting disability pride, and mobilizing resources toward disability rights work. She also serves as the foundation’s liaison to the President’s Council for Disability Inclusion in Philanthropy.

  Prior to joining Ford, Rebecca was the cofounder and director of the Disability Justice initiative at the Center for American Progress, where she built out a progressive policy platform that protected the rights and services disabled people depend on for survival and also developed innovative solutions like a proposed disabled worker tax credit and increased access to capital for disability-owned small businesses. She also stewarded a campaign that resulted in an unprecedented 12 presidential candidates developing disability policy platforms.

  Prior to her work at American Progress, she served as the executive director for the National Council on Disability, where she worked on sexual violence on college campuses, policing reform, and the civil rights of disabled parents. A three-time presidential appointee, Rebecca served in key policy roles at the Department of Education and the Department of Health and Human Services, as well as oversaw diversity and inclusion efforts for the Obama administration.

  Rebecca is a frequent speaker and contributor on issues of public policy and disability inclusion in the media and at major national conferences. She has a bachelor’s degree in politics from the University of California, Santa Cruz.