Under the Sisterhood

Today we’re marching for change with Athena Jones a daughter, sister, breast cancer advocate and a journalist with more than two decades of experience in print and broadcast media. A skilled writer, moderator and public speaker, she began her career at Bloomberg News in Chile and Argentina. She covered the 2008 campaigns of then Senators Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama for NBC News and the National Journal and worked as an NBC White House producer from 2009 to 2011. Athena joined CNN as a correspondent in 2011. She served as a White House correspondent during the first Trump administration and as a national correspondent in New York until August 2024. 

Athena is a breast cancer survivor and advocate and is co-directing a feature documentary (Sisters’ Keepers) on Black women, breast cancer and health equity. She graduated cum laude from Harvard University with a bachelor’s degree in Government and has a master’s degree from Columbia’s Graduate School of Journalism.

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Today we’re marching for change with Fulya Müftüoğlu a mother, daughter, sister, women’s advocate and a Berlin-based multidisciplinary artist and Organizational Change Designer. After more than 15 years in the corporate world, she shifted her path toward art, facilitation, and human-centered change. 

Today, she works at the intersection of creativity, emotional awareness, and transformation, creating workshops, performances, and participatory art experiences that invite people to reconnect with themselves and each other. Her work explores themes such as resilience, vulnerability, identity, boundaries, and our capacity to move through change. At the heart of her practice is a simple belief: creativity can help us make visible what is difficult to name and open new possibilities for how we relate, work, and live together.

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Today we're marching for change with Shelley Zalis, a mother, daughter, sister,  known as the “Chief Troublemaker,” CEO & Founder of The Female Quotient. Shelley is a trailblazing CEO, entrepreneur, three-time movement maker, and global advocate for women in the workplace. 

Today, Zalis is dedicated to the Business of Equality®, amplifying the visibility and voices of corporate women globally and driving systemic change across industries. She co-founded #SeeHer, a groundbreaking initiative to ensure accurate portrayals of women in media, and launched The Female Quotient, known for its signature Equality Lounge®—spaces for conscious conversations and collective action that are inclusive destinations at industry conferences worldwide. Earlier in her career, Zalis pioneered online research by founding Online Testing Exchange (OTX), revolutionizing the market research industry before selling the company to Ipsos for $80 million.

At The Female Quotient, Zalis has built the largest global community of more than 6 million women in business spanning 30 industries and 100 countries. Her work fosters collaboration, connection, and intentional action to change the equation, close the gender gap and transform workplace cultures.  

Recognized as one of LinkedIn’s Top 20 Most Influential Voices globally, Zalis is a sought-after thought leader and contributor to TIME, Forbes and IMD. Her numerous accolades include the Matrix Award from New York Women in Communications, the Global Leaders 50 List, the Industry Legend Award from the AdClub, the Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year Award, and the Entrepreneur Award from Springboard Enterprises. The Female Quotient was recognized as a Fast Company Brands That Matter in 2024. 

A visionary leader, Zalis proves that breaking the rules - rules mainly made for and by men before women were in the workplace - is key to creating equality for all.

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Today we’re marching for change with Maya Rupert, a daughter, sister, women’s advocate, and political strategist, and the third Black woman in history to run a presidential campaign. She is the Executive Vice President at Blue State. She is the author of The Real Ones: How to Disrupt the Hidden Ways Racism Makes Us Less Authentic. She hosted the Image Award-nominated podcast When We Win with Maya Rupert, and she is a frequent guest on MSNOW, CNN, NPR, where she shares her expert political and cultural commentary. Her writing has appeared in The New York Times, The Atlantic, and Slate. 

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Today we’re marching for change with Monica Kretschmer, a mother, daughter, sister, and visionary founder, podcast host, speaker, and global thought leader advancing women’s leadership and allyship worldwide.

She is the Founder and CEO of the Universal Women's Network™, Women of Inspiration™ Awards, and SupportHER™—globally recognized platforms built on a defining belief: Women of Inspiration don’t wait for opportunities—they create them. Through her work, Monica has created a far-reaching ripple effect that enables women to go further, faster, together.

Monica’s leadership was forged through lived experience. After leaving a 15-month marriage with a seven-month-old baby, she spent 15 years navigating complex litigation, including a 22-day trial. Rather than allowing the experience to define her, she transformed adversity into purpose—rebuilding her life from the ground up and channeling resilience into impact.

Over the past decade, Monica has amplified more than 1,200 women globally through awards, media, publishing, and live experiences, expanding visibility, credibility, and opportunity for women across industries.

As the host of the Women of Inspiration™ Podcast, Monica leads conversations with influential leaders, CEOs, and founders in positions of power—amplifying the voices of women who lead, inspire, and motivate.

A serial entrepreneur and movement-builder, Monica is known for building stages where women are seen, heard, and valued. Her forthcoming memoir, ALL IN, chronicles her journey of survival, rebuilding, and becoming—and the mission that continues to drive her work.

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Today we're marching for change with Dr. Gina Newsome Duncan, a mother, daughter, sister, a Harvard-trained psychiatrist, and proud Hampton University alumna, where she earned her Bachelor of Science in Chemistry. She received her medical degree from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and completed her adult psychiatry residency at Massachusetts General Hospital and McLean Hospital through Harvard Medical School.

Dr. Duncan previously served as an Assistant Professor of Psychiatry and as the Associate Dean for Admissions at the Medical College of Georgia at Augusta University. Since 2015, she has been in private practice at Eastover Psychiatric Group in Charlotte, North Carolina. There, she provides strengths-based psychotherapy and medication management for adults with mood and anxiety disorders, with a particular focus on adult ADHD.

Beyond her clinical practice, Dr. Duncan leads AbundantLily Consulting, LLC, through which she provides mental health expertise and compassionate, practical guidance for families. In this capacity, she serves as the Lead Mental Health Expert for The Steve Fund’s Family Corner. Her professional leadership also includes service as a Regional Trustee for Black Psychiatrists of America (BPA) from 2022 to 2025. Dr. Duncan has been named a Castle Connolly Top Doctor in Charlotte since 2023

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Today we’re marching for change with Dr. Tiffany Troso-Sandoval a mother, daughter, sister and a board certified medical oncologist with more than 25 years of experience caring for women with cancer at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center. 

Trained at Princeton and Cornell, she founded Winning the Cancer Journey LLC to support, educate, and guide female oncology patients through their health journeys. As Chief Medical Officer at Second Look LLC, Dr. Troso also provides virtual medical oncology opinions to patients with breast and gynecological cancers. 

Dr. Troso-Sandoval discovered that taking extra time to educate her patients— often considered inefficient in the medical field—taught her what patients actually need from their oncologist. The result is her forthcoming book, Calming the Cancer Chaos: An Oncologist's Guide for Women to Understand, Organize, and Take Control of Their Cancer Care (September 2026). Dr. Troso is also a keynote speaker, expert medical-legal witness, host of The Empowered Cancer Patient Podcast, and an editorial advisor for Women’s Health.

Here's a link to her new book: Calming the Cancer Chaos

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Today we’re marching for change with Ashlei A. Rodgers, MPH, a daughter, women’s advocate, health equity strategist, public health enthusiast, and founder of Sparkles & Rodgers, where she advises healthcare organizations, nonprofits, and pharmaceutical companies on building community trust, improving health literacy, and expanding access to care.

Before launching Sparkles & Rodgers, Ashlei spent more than 18 years working across global strategic communication agencies and public health institutions, including the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the Pan American Health Organization (PAHO/WHO), and the International Planned Parenthood Federation (IPPF/WHR). Her work has spanned the U.S. and Latin America, covering women's health, sexual and reproductive health, infectious disease, health equity, and community engagement.

Ashlei is also the creator and host of Public Health Uncensored, a podcast launching this fall in partnership with the National Public Health Coalition. Through candid conversations with healthcare experts, advocates, and frontline workers, the show examines how policy decisions are reshaping the U.S. public health system and the human impact of those decisions.

Ashlei earned a Bachelor of Arts from Baylor University and a Master of Public Health from the Tulane University School of Public Health and Tropical Medicine. Outside of work, she enjoys traveling the world, spending time with family and friends, and saying yes to new adventures. She's never met a stranger and hopes to leave the world a little better than she found it.

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Today we’re marching for change with Alicia Ely Yamin, JD, MPH PhD, a mother, daughter, sister, women’s advocate, a Lecturer on Law and Senior Fellow at the Petrie-Flom Center at Harvard Law School, where she directs the Global Health and Rights Project. Yamin currently teaches at Harvard Medical School as well as Harvard Law School. She is the founding editor of the multi-disciplinary Brill/Nijhoff series, “Global Health, Human Rights and Social Justice.” 

Yamin has held distinguished visitorships at a variety of universities around the world, and is known globally for her inter-disciplinary work in relation to economic and social rights, reproductive justice, the right to health, and the intersections between development paradigms, political economy and human rights.

But she is not just an academic.  Yamin has lived in Latin America and East Africa for much of her professional life and worked with local advocacy organizations, including co- founding a program on health and human rights in Peru. In the United States, Yamin served as Director of Research and Investigations at Physicians for Human Rights, Senior Advisor to Amnesty International in its Global Campaign on Poverty, Demand Dignity, and Senior Adviser on Human Rights and Health Policy at Partners In Health. She is now on the coordinating committee of the all-volunteer Defend Public Health, which was established when the second Trump Administration came into office.

In 2016, Yamin was appointed by the UN Secretary General as one of ten international experts to the Independent Accountability Panel for Women's, Children's and Adolescents' Health in the Sustainable Development Goals (2016-2018, reappointed 2018-2020). She served as chief consultant to the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights and drafter of the first guidance on a ‘human rights-based approach to health’ to be adopted by the UN Human Rights Council in 2012, which related to maternal health.

Yamin has served on numerous other UN, WHO and other expert committees on global health. 

But her work is notable for how it uses the law as well. As a specialist in international and comparative law relating to health and sexual and reproductive rights issues, Yamin regularly submits Amicus Curiae briefs and provides expert testimony to tribunals around the globe. In 2011, Yamin was named by the Colombian Constitutional Court as an Independent Expert on the implementation of T-760/08, a structural judgment that led to significant health system reform. She also served on the oversight committee for health of the Constitutional Implementation Commission in Kenya (2012-2015).

A revised and substantially expanded second edition of her latest monograph, When Misfortune becomes Injustice: Evolving Human Rights Struggles for Health and Social Equality, was published by Stanford University Press in 2023, anda Spanish version from the Editorial UniAndes/Siglo (Colombia) just came out in 2026.

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Today we're marching for change with Dr. Cheruba Prabakar a mother, daughter, sister, women’s advocate, a board-certified OBGYN and minimally invasive surgeon. 

She helps women with fibroids live a life with reduced bleeding, pain, and improved fertility. In October 2022, she opened her own Gynecology & Surgery practice in the Bay area, where she provides highly personalized, accessible care to women through all phases of life. She is able to provide care in creative ways: in the office and via online coaching programs. 

She has dedicated her career to helping women with fibroids and recently wrote a book as a resource for those suffering from this medical condition. It is called "Fibroids: Finally Heard." 

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