MIDDLEBURY, Vt. – Nancy Gibbs, the former editor-in-chief of TIME Magazine, will give the keynote talk at the Women’s Leadership Symposium, scheduled for January 18-20. Gibbs, who was the first female editor-in-chief at TIME, is founder of the FIRSTS Project, which features stories of women who have achieved extraordinary accomplishments in their professional fields. The talk will take place at 5 p.m. in Wilson Hall and is open to the public.

Erin Van Gessel ’17.5, president of Middlebury Women Leaders, says she and fellow club members Maryam Mahboob and Rae Aaron organized the symposium to commemorate the women’s march of 2017. The symposium is centered around women, but Van Gessel emphasized that it is open to all and that she is hoping for balanced participation from the full campus community.

In addition to the keynote address, the symposium will include several other sessions including a conflict mediation workshop with Middlebury President Laurie Patton on Thursday at 4 p.m. in Hillcrest.

On Friday, there will be a “Lean In Discussion,” also at Hillcrest, at noon. This gathering is open to students, faculty, staff, members of the greater Middlebury community, and alumni. The focus will be on “whether women need to ‘lean in’ to the workplace or if opting out is a better solution for today’s feminists.

On Saturday afternoon at 4, there will be a women’s rights discussion with women from the local Nulhegan Abenaki Native American tribe. This session is designed to compare and contrast Western feminism with other traditions of feminism.

The symposium concludes with a “She Should Walk” fashion show on Saturday evening at 8 p.m. in Wilson Hall. The event is a fundraiser for the organization She Should Run, a nonpartisan group in Washington, D.C. that recruits and trains women to run for political office. The students participating in the show will be wearing outfits supplied by Middlebury’s female-student-run-business Share to Wear.

For more information about the Women’s Leadership Symposium, contact Erin Van Gessel.