Justine Masika Bihamba, is one of the founders of Women's Synergy for the Victims of Sexual Violence, a women's human rights organization working in the Democratic Republic of Congo.
She leads a group of amazing women who help other women who have been the victims of sexual violence.
Yvonne R. Davis, President and CEO of DAVISCommunications, is an internationally recognized leadership development coach, speaker, and award winning journalist. She is an expert in cross-cultural and global emerging markets. She's also an AWR member.
These paragraphs are excerpted from and article she recently wrote about Sheikha Lubna for Middle East Online.
Sheikha Lubna Bint Khalid Al Qasimi was named United Arab Emirates Minister of Foreign Trade in early 2008.
Her appointments paved the way for three other women cabinet Ministers, as well as a growing host of young highly talented woman Ambassadors with considerable clout and power in their own right.
She is the forerunner of the women's empowerment in the UAE; influencing positive change in the entire Muslim and Arab world.
Sheikha Lubna is a blue blooded Princess -- the Qasimi family heads two of the UAE's seven Emirates (Sharjah and Ras al-Khaimah). She does not do any dainty stepping however. She is always thinking and busy on her blackberry, sending and receiving messages to and from leaders around the globe, she knows in her position she has fully replaced a size 10 man's shoe with a pair of pumps.
Natalie McIntyre (aka Macy Gray) is touted by many to have soared to
musical stardom at the end of the 1990s. And in some ways she
definitely did.
However, I recently read an account of her story in Fitting in Is
Overrated, a wonderful book by Leonard Felder (a psychologist,
counselor, author and occasional contributor to my favourite publication
Ode Magazine), in which her seemingly meteoric rise to celebrity is
cast quite differently.
Felder’s gives a more human, and I think more interesting account of
Natalie McIntyre’s youth than other articles I’ve read, and describes
how she stumbled in fits and starts into a career as a successful
singer songwriter.
Here’s a short version of Macy Gray’s story, based on bits and pieces
taken from a section in Felder’s book, as well as others found at the links below:
Didacienne Mukahabeshimana's journey from fear to love had led to founding a women's group, which visits prisoners accused of taking part in the Rwandan genocide...
A few years ago my family, was kicked out of our home after some tribal
clashes. My family is from the Kikuyu tribe and we have often been at
war with another tribe the Kalenjin.
The clashes always cause a lot of innocent deaths and suffering. The
hate between the tribes keeps on spreading. In January last year, more
than a thousand people were brutally killed and hundreds of thousands
internally displaced.
Even before my family was kicked out of our home, I already hated all
Kalenjins. I had been fed with a biased frame and prejudices against
them. When my family was thrown out of our home, my hatred grew. I
wanted everyone to hate them. I kept passing on the seedlings of hate
to all willing listeners.