Stephanie Nolen

Stephanie has made a home in some of the world’s most unequal countries and made the topic of inequality a major focus in her reporting. She has seen some governments make progress in reducing the gulf between their richest and poorest citizens, and other governments fail miserably at it, even with sincere commitments and billion-dollar budgets. Inequality has emerged in the past five years as one of the single most important factors in elections, and as a key cause of civil strife, in both rich and poor countries, with repercussions that are global. In this presentation Stephanie helps audiences explore what have we learned about what works, what doesn’t, and why it matters to us. 

Key Takeaways:
• How to better understand inequality.
• The actionable steps we can take to address it.

Having lived in the world’s most impoverished and troubled regions, Stephanie has witnessed the work of some extraordinary individuals who have led to a massive change in their societies. From the fight to stop deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon; to ending the forced marriage of girls in rural India; to getting affordable, life-saving drugs for people dying of AIDS in South Africa: all of those battles had leaders who stood up, alone at first, and at great personal risk, and convinced others who once believed they were powerless to join them in the fight. Drawing on her years of telling these stories, Stephanie shares the traits these leaders have in common to show audiences what we can learn from their courage and their experience.

Key Takeaways:
• How to effectively persuade others of the possibility of your vision.
• Why staking your own reputation, integrity or survival can lead to change that matters far beyond the individual. 

Stephanie challenges audience members to consider new perspectives; she explains the structural forces at work behind situations that can seem immutable in typical news coverage, and she details real-world ways that your actions can have an impact on global issues. 

Race, gender, caste – there are many ways in which societies are structured to privilege some and exclude others; they tend to be overlaid together, in hierarchies of exclusion. Stephanie has studied these systems up close on five continents and seen firsthand the ways in which they damage people, and countries. The demand for more just and equal societies is motivating political change worldwide. In this presentation, she explores the ways in which individual activists and whole communities build successful strategies and alliances to fight back.

Key Takeaways: 
• Where the demand for change is coming from and how it impacts our organization and society.
• How successful leaders, businesses, communities, and countries respond.

Getting and keeping girls into school has been a major development goal around the world for the past 15 years. There are troves of data to support how societies transform when girls have that opportunity. Stephanie has reported on the issue in dozens of countries and seen up close what works, and what doesn’t, for getting girls access to education. Some of the obstacles are predictable, but many are surprising – and so are the solutions that Stephanie shares in this presentation. She helps audiences better understand them by illuminating the structures that make societies unequal and how they can be challenged.