Video: Secretary Clinton's Remarks to Techwomen Conference

Remarks at Techwomen Conference

Press Statement

Hillary Rodham Clinton
Secretary of State

San Francisco, CA

February 13, 2012

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America’s high-tech leaders are at the heart of what makes this country great. Your products change the way we live, work, and play. Now, I’m asking for your help on a new diplomatic priority: mentoring women entrepreneurs who are ready to help transform their societies. This program helps women – in the United States and throughout the world – to create connections that inspire ideas and innovation.
Last year, the Department of State connected dozens of women from the Middle East and North Africa with mentors from U.S.-based technology companies to teach them valuable skills. Thanks to the generous support of these companies, TechWomen from Algiers to Amman saw firsthand how American women drive innovation as they mapped out a path to create opportunities in their own communities back home.
Now we’re expanding this network to more countries. This year, TechWomen will include women from Tunisia and Yemen. We also need more mentors from American tech companies – and that’s where all of you come in.
If you’re not already a TechWomen mentor, I hope you’ll consider signing up. You’ll have fun. You might learn something yourself. And you can help a woman who already has a great idea, but just needs that extra bit of guidance or encouragement, to launch a new app or start a new business. Ultimately, that could mean more jobs and more stable societies – and that’s good for all of us.
Thank you.

**Video Added**Secretary Clinton's Remarks At Closing Luncheon for TechWomen Initiative

Remarks At Closing Luncheon for TechWomen Initiative

Remarks

Hillary Rodham Clinton
Secretary of State

Benjamin Franklin Room

Washington, DC

July 6, 2011

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Thank you. Thank you all very much. Thank you. (Applause.)

Well, this is such an exciting day for all of us here at the State Department who have been working on TechWomen, and I want to welcome you as you complete this first-ever TechWomen exchange program. I want to thank Acting Under Secretary Ann Stock and everyone in the Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs for the hard work they have done to make this so successful.

I also want to thank our partners at the Institute of International Education, which provides critical support to scholars and students from this country and many others as they forge partnerships across borders, and to the Anita Borg Institute, whose mission is one that I share – to increase the role of women in the field of technology and bring the benefits of technology to more women.

And finally, though, and most importantly, let me thank all of the women of TechWomen, the mentors and the mentees who have spent the past month exchanging ideas and expertise. I know that you’ve embarked on a continuing learning experience, forged new friendships and partnerships, and I hope that you will continue to invest in those for years to come.

Now, being a woman in the field of technology is not always easy. Being a woman in any field is not always easy – (laughter) – but there are so many opportunities in technology that we just have to forge ahead, and we’re doing so around the world because we want to make sure that all the tools that technology has made available are just as open to women as they are to men. And I also believe that innovation thrives on good ideas, and women have a lot of good ideas. And we don’t want those ideas to just die. We want them to be shared and to help others and to create businesses and jobs and improve lives. And it has a greater impact when technology has access for everyone.

So wherever you live, whether it’s in Silicon Valley or in the Middle East or North Africa, we want to support you. We want to support the software that you design, the engineering projects that you manage, the courses that you teach. We want to help you develop and apply new technologies, and we want to help you spread the word about what is available for all people.

Now, we see the impact of new technologies every day. We’re working with farmers in many parts of the world who are now using mobile phones to find the best prices for their crops. We’re working with health professionals so that pregnant women and new mothers can get good advice about how to care for their newborns via text messages. We’re working with students so that they can learn English through mobile language apps. And we’re working with civil society so that you can use the internet to uncover corruption and advocate more effectively for political and economic reform.

So we’re excited about the role of technology, and we want to help facilitate your use of it. Here in the State Department, we do what we call 21^st century statecraft. That’s just a fancy way of saying that we are trying to use technology to open up doors that are otherwise closed. And so for example, last week in Lithuania, Alec Ross, who is here and heading up a lot of our efforts along with his great team, convened what we call a tech camp. Now, a tech camp is an opportunity to bring together dozens of civil society activists, human rights defenders, NGO leaders from many different societies. These particularly were from former Soviet states like Belarus, Ukraine, Moldova, and others, because they’re interested in using the internet and connection technologies to forge political change, and to give people a voice who might otherwise not have one. And what we believe is that technology can be a great facilitator. It can also be used by governments and others to prevent people from being able to communicate.

So we have to stay a step ahead so that people are never deprived of their opportunity, as we saw how important that was in both Tunisia and Egypt over the last months. We’re seeing it in many other settings as well. And we want to help you really fulfill your own God-given potential, however you define that, by using technology as one of the many tools for enhancing relationships, building businesses, creating greater opportunities.

I also think it’s important that these conversations that you have begun this past month continue, and we hope that you will reach out to women and girls back home who can benefit from what you have experienced, because the world needs your contributions, and I know that each of you has such great potential.

So our work is just beginning together and we want to hear from you. I welcome you to stay in touch with us and to offer your suggestions, your recommendations, your constructive criticism, because we’re trying to create this opportunity, but then we’re going to step back and we’re going to expect each and every one of you to really carry on as you decide is best.

And in order to do more to encourage innovation and promote the spread of new technologies to give women and girls the support that they need to become leaders in this field, I’m very pleased to announce a new program that we will launch next year that will complement the TechWomen program. We’re calling it TechGirls and it will bring teenage girls – (applause) – from the Middle East and North Africa for an intensive month of educational activities here in the United States. And since it seems like technology is evolving so fast, we actually think having this opportunity for young women is as important as having it for more mature women, because I think there’s a creativity that can be generated by doing that.

We will look to you, the first class of TechWomen, to help us really make this program a success. I am so honored to join you in this effort. As Ann Stock said, I believe wholeheartedly in the universal rights of all people. One of my heroines, Eleanor Roosevelt, was one of the people back in the late 1940s who worked to write the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. At the time, that was passed unanimously at the beginning of the United Nations. And we’ve seen a lot of progress, but unfortunately, not in every place and not for everyone.

And the 21^st century is in many ways the time when women and girls should be fully embraced to be given their universal human rights no matter who they are or where they live. And we have this wonderful new invention that Eleanor Roosevelt could never have imagined, known as the internet, where people can talk across thousands of miles, where they can learn from long distance learning, where they can come up with ideas and share them with people next door or people on the next continent. It has so much potential for unleashing the creativity and building the opportunity that is at the root of any successful society and that should be available to every person.

So I’m thrilled that you are the pioneers, those of you who are the first TechWomen. And those who are the mentors, I thank you for taking time out of your own very busy schedule. I know how challenging it is still today to be a woman in technology in my own country. I look at my friend Lorraine Hariton, who came out of Silicon Valley after having been so successful.

So we know that there’s work to be done here at home as well as around the world, but we think the opportunities are almost unimaginable. So we congratulate you for having the imagination to come here for a month. And I know how exciting it will be to go home and to see your families and your friends and talk about what you’ve done. And I want you to know that we will continue to work with you, we will continue to support you, and we will continue to look for ways that we can empower women and girls through technology.

Thank you all very much. (Applause.)

SECRETARY HILLARY RODHAM CLINTON: Public Schedule for July 6, 2011

Public Schedule for July 6, 2011

Public Schedule

Washington, DC

July 6, 2011

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SECRETARY HILLARY RODHAM CLINTON:
9:15 a.m. Secretary Clinton meets with the Assistant Secretaries, at the Department of State.
(CLOSED PRESS COVERAGE)

10:00 a.m. Secretary Clinton meets with 2010-2011 Jefferson Science Fellows, at the Department of State.
(CLOSED PRESS COVERAGE)

10:15 a.m. Secretary Clinton meets with the women from the Middle East and North Africa and their American mentors who participated in the TechWomen initiative, at the Department of State.
(CLOSED PRESS COVERAGE)

12:00 p.m. Secretary Clinton delivers remarks at a closing luncheon for women from the Middle East and North Africa and their American mentors who participated in the TechWomen initiative, at the Department of State.
(OPEN PRESS COVERAGE FOR REMARKS)
Watch live on www.state.gov or click here for more information.

2:45 p.m. Secretary Clinton holds a bilateral meeting with Peruvian President-elect Ollanta Humala, at the Department of State.
(CAMERA SPRAY PRECEDING BILATERAL MEETING)

4:30 p.m. Secretary Clinton meets with President Obama, at the White House.
(MEDIA DETERMINED BY WHITE HOUSE)

5:15 p.m. Secretary Clinton attends a meeting at the White House.
(MEDIA DETERMINED BY WHITE HOUSE

Tomorrow: On Hillary Clinton's Agenda

Secretary Clinton to Honor "TechWomen" July 6 at U.S. Department of State

Office of the Spokesperson

Washington, DC

June 30, 2011

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On Wednesday, July 6, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton will honor 37 women from the Middle East and North Africa and their American mentors who participated in TechWomen, an initiative that harnesses the power of technology and international exchanges as a means to empower women and girls worldwide.

The event will take place at approximately 12 p.m. in the Benjamin Franklin Room at the Department of State. The event will be streamed live on www.state.gov.

TechWomen, which Secretary Clinton first announced during the Presidential Summit on Entrepreneurship in the spring of 2010, brought 37 women from Algeria, Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon, Morocco, and the Palestinian Territories to the United States for a five-week mentorship with their American counterparts at 24 U.S.-based technology companies. Later this year, U.S. mentors will travel to the Middle East and North Africa region to conduct workshops for women in the technology sector and young girls who have expressed an interest in pursuing a tech-based career.

Twenty four technology companies in Silicon Valley and the Greater San Francisco Bay Area are serving as mentors. They include: Adobe Systems, Inc., AT&T, Carnegie Mellon University – Silicon Valley, Cisco Systems, Ericsson, Facebook, Google, Hewlett-Packard, Huawei, Intel Corporation, Internet Systems Consortium, Juniper Networks, LikeList, mPay Connect, NetApp, Newcomb Anderson McCormic, Northgate Environment Management, Inc., Parallel Earth, SAP Labs, Symantec, ThoughtWorks, Yahoo!, and ZaReason.

These are outtakes from today's press briefing.

Victoria Nuland

Spokesperson
Daily Press Briefing

Washington, DC

July 5, 2011

TRANSCRIPT:

12:43 p.m. EDT

MS. NULAND: Good afternoon, everybody. I hope you all enjoyed America’s birthday yesterday. Sorry for the delay. We had a little technical difficulty with the audio today. A couple of short things at the top, and then we’ll go to your questions. First, to confirm thatSecretary Clinton will meet tomorrow with Peruvian President-elect Humala. We very much welcome his visit to the United States and look forward to continuing to strengthen our ties with Peru.

Snip

QUESTION: The Dalai Lama just arrived in DC in the last hour. Are there plans for meetings here, or if you could, at the White House?

MS. NULAND: He – the Dalai Lama is in Washington for the Kalachakra religious ceremony. Our Under Secretary of State for Democracy and Global Affairs, Maria Otero, is also designated as our special coordinator for Tibet issues. She’s going to meet him at the airport. She’s going to see him later today. And with regard to any other meetings in Washington, I don’t have anything to announce at the moment.

I cannot imagine that there would not be a meeting between them. I hope we see pictures. This is from his last visit, February 18, 2010.