The New York Conference

IAWF’s 2013 New York City Women’s Conference
By: Houri Khalilian
Attorney at Law, Washington DC

We had an Iranian-American Women Foundation (IAWF) Conference in October, 2013 in New York City. For those of you who could not attend or who are not familiar with this organization, it may sound rather mundane and uneventful. Well, nothing could have been further from the truth. Meeting and connecting with such high-powered women and learning from their vast experiences was truly inspiring and invigorating. The impact of this conference was felt far outside the USA’s borders and resonated all over the world to empower Iranian women, regardless of their geographical location.
The conference was held in the heart of New York City and began with nearly 500 in attendance. A large billboard in Times Square glowed 24 hours a day with a powerful message: “Iranian-American Women: inspire, Empower and Connect.” Inside the halls of the Marriott Hotel at Times Square several sessions were in progress, each chaired and presented by world-renowned Iranian-American women with expertise in various disciplines, including finance, law, architecture, healthcare, IT, media, and construction, to name just a few. Among the conference attendees were Iranian women producers of CNN news, MPR broadcasting, directors and officers of Goldman Sachs, high-powered attorneys, owners of well-known multimillion dollar construction firms, architectural companies, health-care concerns, and more. Outside the auditoriums were presentation booths representing numerous ventures, either owned and/or operated by a member of IAW, including such high-profile fashion houses as Gucci and Manolo Blahnik, to name a few.
IAW Foundation has organized several conferences in California, New York, and in Washington DC with Nancy Pelosi, former Speaker of the House and current Minority Leader of the United States House of Representatives, greeting the attendees by video. IAW Foundation brought Iranian women together and created an immense synergy and force to be reckoned with, akin to bringing dispersed individual musicians together and creating a world class philharmonic orchestra. Although IAWF initially started and continues as an educational and networking organization, it has now also created a branch for charitable work to help Iranian American women in America and elsewhere in the world, with a special focus on helping underprivileged women in Iran.
IAW Foundation’s success is due in part to its culture, which praises all Iranian women regardless of their level of education, faith, or the extent of their professional achievements in America. It’s a culture that truly celebrates the life of Iranian women who have survived and succeeded while protecting, managing, encouraging and caring for their family members in a most difficult time period - post-revolution Iran and as new immigrants in the USA and elsewhere in the world. It’s a culture that reminds Iranian-American women that they were and are truly the cornerstone of the immensely successful Iranian-American community in America, proven by recent statistics from MIT showing that Iranians are the most successful immigrants among all other minorities in America on the basis of their education and wealth.
IAWF members are truly proud of each other’s achievements and greet each other with the utmost love and respect, with open arms and often teary eyes out of the simple joy of getting to know each other. Such compassion, love and great teamwork among women is indeed a lesson to be learned by all and especially by those critics and skeptics who often resort to old clichés, such as ”Iranians cannot work together,” “Iranians are great individually but dysfunctional as a group,”, or “praising women with high achievements creates resentment among others.” Instead, IAWF focuses on each individual’s similarities rather than differences, which results in a creation of goodwill among its members. The ground remains fertile in America for creating such goodwill among IAWF members. As post-revolutionary first generation Iranian-American women, IAWF members all share in upheaval, battles and ordeals and endured similar complications and struggles during the past 30-40 years for themselves and their families to survive and flourish in a foreign land.
So, it is with all her accomplishments that we say “hats off” to Mariam Khosravani and her team who have helped educate the skeptics and showed that the time has passed for hanging on to such old ideologies. In this era, we can learn well from her lessons in leadership and management in running a successful organization to promote Iranian women’s interest in America.