https://youtu.be/ub8hZaTrKj0
Watch Leymah Gbowee, a 2011 Nobel laureate, speak at Vanderbilt’s Impact Symposium March 19, 2013.
Gbowee is a Liberian peace activist, social worker and women’s rights advocate. She is founder and president of the Gbowee Peace Foundation Africa, based in Monrovia. Gbowee’s leadership of Women of Liberia Mass Action for Peace, a nonviolent movement that brought together Christian and Muslim women to play a pivotal role in ending Liberia’s devastating 14-year civil war in 2003, is chronicled in her memoir “Mighty Be Our Powers” and in the documentary film “Pray the Devil Back to Hell.” The historic achievement paved the way for the election of Africa’s first female head of state, Liberian President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, and marked a new wave of women worldwide emerging as leaders in brokering lasting peace and security.
Gbowee is one of three speakers at Vanderbilt’s 2013 Impact Symposium. The other speakers in the series are former Sen. George Mitchell and former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak.