On the road again: organising the Global Summit of Women – Peking, May 2010

Last week we held the third meeting to prepare for the Global Summit. This year the Spanish delegation is composed of more than 30 professional women from different economic sectors.

This year’s event will be special, due to the fact that we are celebrating the 20th anniversary of this Forum, also known as the Women´s Davos. The host delegation is preparing it accordingly. In addition to the official program, they have organised several additional activities, such as a visit to the Expo in Shanghai.

The presentations and workshops lined up are very interesting, the most outstanding of them are those related to entrepreneurship (Finding New Markets, Branding Effectively Using New and Old Media, Financing your Business for Growth, Building your Business through New Media) as well as those related to the personal Leadership Development Track (What Makes for Successful Mentorship?, Developing Visibility Internally and Externally, Managing the Difficult Business Conversation).

Besides these, the sessions related to doing business in China, Using Technology for Microenterprise Growth, Funding and Managing Risks in Microenterprise Development etc appear as really appealing topics. No need to mention that China has been the fastest-growing major economy for the past 30 years, with average annual GDP growth rate above 10% and that women are an essential component of China’s growth—making up 45.5 % of the work force.

Not all is going to be work: the Chinese delegation have prepared several dinners and celebrations, in which networking will be encouraged between the participants, more than 1.000 women from all corners of the world. On top of this, our travel agency, American Express has organised a set of excursions so that we do not come back home missing the most important cultural and historical sites in the cities we visit: the Great Wall of China, Tiananmen square, the Forbidden City and so on.

This year, in attendance will be the first ladies of Tanzania and Namibia, the Vietnam vice-president, the Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Enterprise and Energy of Sweden, and also ministers of Greece, Bulgaria, India, Jamaica, México, Poland, Jordan, South Africa, USA, Iceland, Philippines etc. Unfortunately, again this year no Spanish institutional representatives will be in attendance.

We will also see a large number of CEO`s of companies from all over the world, as significant as Deutsche Telecom, Boeing, Morgan Stanley, MCM, ITT, Sun television, WalMart; and executives from other big companies such as Air Liquid, IBM, Microsoft, Marriot, Dell, Ogilvy, etc.

Spanish delegation will enjoy, during its stay in Peking, a special reception at the Spanish Embassy and in Shanghai we will be received at the Spanish Pavilion at the Expo, invited by Maria Tena, the Spanish Commissioner. Finally, the 26th, we will attend the Legacies of Women & Global Women’s Leadership Award Dinner for the President of Finland, Tarja Halonen.

All of this makes up a very interesting week for the education of all Summit attendees, but the most important part of it, in my opinion, is the network of really appealing relationships between the professional women from different countries, and over all, as Margarita de Cos said in her interview for “Mujeres&Cia”, the very special friendship links between the group of Spanish ladies, which each year incorporates valuable and interesting new members.

Marta Pérez Dorao