Programme

You probably thought Barbie was a doll. With a few careers and a penchant for high heels. But that was before the Summer of 2023, when the tiny, 64-year-old fashion icon who launched a gazillion playdates, launched a mega-watt, big screen-to-every-screen gender equality movement – awash in pink – Pantone Barbie Pink (219C) that is. 

Oh and Barbie – the movie – broke box-office records to become the first woman-directed film to gross more than a billion dollars. If you missed the movie, you would have had to be way off-the-grid to also miss Taylor Swift’s colossal, culture-quaking, money-making Eras tour – friendship bracelets anyone? – or Beyonce’s most recent The Renaissance ‘tour de force’.  And if, unlike Harry and Meghan, you didn’t snag the VIP box to catch Queen Bey – maybe you checked out The Women’s World Cup? It broke ticket sales and TV viewership records.

Beyonce herself asked and answered the question 12 years ago, “Who run the world? Girls.”

The Summer of 2023 proved that Bey knows all and a doll with very small shoes can make a giant leap for womankind. We’ll start our discussion there. 

Candace Bushnell, journalist and author of Sex and the City, The Carrie Diaries and more, is no stranger to giant leaps. In Manolos, with a cosmo in hand, perhaps. She dared to celebrate the power of women’s relationships with each other – and lots of others – and built an enduring multi-platform franchise that shape-shifted the lives of twenty-something women everywhere. And Ashley Etienne, Senior Advisor at Powell Tate, CBS News Senior Political Contributor, former Deputy Assistant to President Joe Biden, Communications Director to Vice President Kamala Harris and, prior to that, Communications Director and Senior Advisor for Nancy Pelosi, who knows that shape-shifting women’s lives takes policymakers willing and able to push the boundaries to obliterate them.

Gail Heimann, CEO of Weber Shandwick, will moderate a candid and likely spirited conversation with Candace and Ashley that will celebrate Barbie, Taylor, Beyoncé, Carrie, women athletes and policymakers; pushing us to consider what the world of marketing/communications can and must do to propel the she-conomy and keep the wave of Barbie Pink — and gender equality, above all — going.